The purpose of this grant is to connect schools and community so that they can offer culturally affirming and enriching after school summer learning programs that meet the needs of young people and their families.

We were only one of 24 grantees across the state that were awarded this opportunity. And out of, we were one of four school districts that were included in that as well.

educational benefits is the verbiage and maybe someone else knows a little bit more than I do, but that replaced free and reduced lunch applications. So, with the legislation that went through granting access to all students having free and reduced lunch, we changed the name of that to be able to still accommodate other methods in which people can access grants and funding.

This has been a model that's been able to help students explore different academic skills in different ways. So, like for example, the 101 Dalmatians play at Vadnais, there's 30 students currently participating. 15 of those have continual learning plans that have individual literacy goals aligned to that play.

I mean, it's hard in the summer, especially if parents are working. It's really is such a great space for students.

This is our inaugural year. This is our first year of existing as Mariner Middle School. And we build on the legacies of three outstanding White Bear Lake schools.

What we're really doing is empowering our teachers to lead other teachers and achieve our goals.

We know the sense of belonging is really important in middle school. It's just a kind of a truth.

If they don't feel like they belong, it's gonna be hard for them to do all of the other things.

So, we got down to we need students to be able to read, period. And then when they come to Willow, they need a feel of love.

I will say that relationships at time precede the learning. And so, how do our staff be able to understand what the students' needs are?

It's really cool to see a kindergartner or a first grader be able to use some pretty big terms to describe what they are doing or what they are not doing.

While I can't do that necessarily with the video, I can do it with an ability for them to see what the teacher said about them.

There's a provision in the law also says if you do this incorrectly, the contract is void. So, you know, we don't want to go through this twice.

First Student has been our primary vendor for many years. Right now, with fuel, they're 451 a route. Their proposal at 532.72, an 18% increase. And so, that's a increase we're a little concerned about and we will work with them more to see if that can be negotiated.

So, transportation bid or RFQ process processes is pretty complicated. And to have someone like Tom Watson who is familiar with what's going on across the state and very specifically around the metro, knows the providers, knows the trajectory there on.

He's talking about reducing by 5% that reimbursement level on special ed busing. So, Tim and I are talking about how we're gonna, see if we can skin some of these contractors and get that 5% out of them.