White Bear Lake Area Schools — Transcript
Saturday, March 15, 2025
Fiscal Year '24-'25 Preliminary Budget Review
Birch Lake Elementary Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) Update
Votes (2)
Review of Fiscal Year '24-'25 Preliminary Budget
The discussion covered the budget development cycle, historical underfunding of public schools, and the specific numbers for the preliminary '24-'25 budget. Revenues were projected at $142.3M and expenses at $141.5M, resulting in an $818K surplus. The board confirmed the district's 8.2% general fund balance met the 8% policy target. Other funds (Nutrition Services, Community Services, Debt Service) were also reviewed, with clarification that some projected deficits were due to strategic spending of accumulated reserves rather than structural imbalances.
Birch Lake Elementary Multi-Tiered Systems of Support Update
Julian Stanke, Kelly Pylkas-Bock, and Cynthia Mueller presented on Birch Lake's MTSS program, emphasizing its mission to educate the whole child. They shared demographics (225 students, 40% free/reduced, 17% ML population) and highlighted significant improvements in kindergarten literacy data. Specific data from FAST Early Reading Composite subtests (word segmenting, letter sounds, nonsense words) showed a dramatic reduction in at-risk students, with preliminary spring data indicating strong success. This success was attributed to curriculum alignment, universal 'Letters' training, and collaborative data analysis, fostering collective efficacy among educators.
Notable Quotes (6)
This is important because this is the general fund budget that allows us to hire staff, that allows us to pay for materials and resources that we use to educate our children. So this is something that every school district in the state is very painfully aware of, and likely every school board in the state is well aware of. So we just like to remind people of that funding and to continue to challenge leaders in the state of Minnesota to fully fund public education.
For next school year, we're looking at an ending fund balance of about $11,075,000, which would put us at 8.2% of our total general fund expenses, and that excludes our long-term facility maintenance expenses. The school board policy requires that we maintain an 8% fund balance, so that's always our target as we present this to you as a school board, showing that we're gonna be maintaining that 8% fund balance.
No, no. One of the really great things about having that additional fund balance is we're able to tackle some one-time expenses. So we're able to plan for some equipment replacements and upgrades, and so no, we're not continuing to project a deficit. You may see a deficit, again, for another year or two, just as we have that high fund balance. But it's not a structural imbalance, I would say.
So MTSS stands for Multi-Tiered Systems of Support, which really is a continuous improvement framework. Minnesota Department of Ed encourages school districts to adopt an MTSS approach. Great news for us. We have already been on that path for quite a while.
However, I have even more exciting news. I have some preliminary spring data. So right now we're looking at a tier three of our kindergartners at 10%, which is so much more in line. So then we know when we're servicing those kids, we're really truly servicing the kids who need it the most. Our tier two is now at 27%, preliminarily, and then 63% in the green, low risk. So that's just, to me, I've never seen data like this in my career, and it's just beyond exciting.
Letters is, it's the gold standard and it is intensive and does require a lot out of the educators. And our educators have really rolled up their sleeves and dug into this and they're making it happen.
Ordinances & Resolutions (7)
Document illustrating the historical underfunding of public schools relative to inflation since 2003.
The financial plan for the upcoming school year, outlining projected revenues and expenses.
A screener taking into account multiple subtests in reading, highly predictive of future reading success, used for kindergarten data.
A lagging indicator for student success, mentioned in the context of literacy data.
Screening data used for older students to assess reading progress.
Assessment tools used by the intervention team to measure student progress.
State legislation with requirements for reading instruction, which the district is already largely aligning with.