I now call this meeting of School Board Independent School District 624 to order. Uh will the clerk please call the roll? Yes. Thompson. Here. Arkin. Here. Beloyed. Here. Ellison. >> Here. Scar. Here. Stray Foggy. Here. Will you please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. We have before us an agenda. Mr. Scar. Oh, thank thank you. I wanted to um add a couple items. >> Okay. So, make a motion to add to the agenda a discussion on obtaining more parent input on the shift to fourth-fifth grade multi-age classrooms for next school year. Can I just ask a point of order, Mr. Chair? >> Yeah. Do we need to approve the agenda? Do I'm sorry. Do we need to make a motion and a second and then have an amendment? I was going to see if we could do it first so that we wouldn't have to prove it and then re-approve it. >> Okay. Thank you. So, we right now we have in front of us uh uh motion to add a discussion. Can you say that again? A motion to add to the agenda a discussion on obtaining more parent input on the shift to fourth-fifth grade multi-age classrooms for the next school year. Okay, we have the motion in front. Do we have a second? Second. Second. Uh any discussion? Okay. Um I do have a question. Is this um agenda item cuz I've had questions on this as well. Is this agenda item on a scheduled to be on an upcoming It agenda? Yes, it will be we're going to have it at the work session in April. Okay. Yes. Can I make clarifying comment? My my motion really is to talk about how we can get more parent input and guardian input on the on the process. Uh we received a very thoughtful articulate email from uh concerned parents and I've also heard from a couple other parents. So Um I I just want to say that I kind of like to wait until we hear from the committee when they come in and talk about it so that we have more information. That and that's my stance cuz we're going to bring it forward and that might be the time but we have the motion on the floor to put this to the agenda. Um Um Yes. Point of order. Um just a clarifying question. Will that be included in the agenda item that will be on next board's the next board meeting? As far as the input from the parents and >> No, right now we just get the we get input from the designing team. And so um we can go from there but I think it's important to hear from the designing team before Okay. see what they are going to bring forward cuz we don't really know what's coming forward yet. That was what I was thinking. Okay. Thank you. Yes, question? Yes. That is also what I what I was thinking. I think there is going to be a process and there's a plan to share that process. >> Yes. Um I would withdraw the motion if we are going to include in the discussion at the next meeting um parental and guardian input into the into the um into the change. And then if we do it next year or next month um are we going to have enough time to make that adjustment for the following year. Second two. Um It's the meeting in two weeks, right? >> Yes. >> Okay. So we should have enough time. We hope. Yeah. >> So I can I'll wait Well, you could bring that motion back at that point. We'll do. >> Let's see what we got coming forward. Did you have another motion? Yes. I'd like to make a motion to add to the agenda discussion on methods to improve board governance with more transparency and accountability for the benefit of the public interest in our community. So we have before us a motion to improve board governance. Is that what I'm hearing the highlights? All right. Do we have a second? Do we have a second? One more time. Do we have a second? Motion fails. All right. So we have before us an agenda. Can I get a motion to approve the current agenda? So moved. Okay, by Allison. Second? Second. Second by Thompson. Any discussion? Uh this will be a voice vote. All in favor say I. I. Opposed, same sign. We have an agenda. Motion passes. We also have before us a consent agenda. This consent agenda contains a variety of business items that come to us monthly including donations. Uh we are always truly grateful for all the support the community shows us in the in the donations they they give to our students and staff. And I want to say, on behalf of the board, thank you for that. Can I get a motion to approve the consent agenda? So moved. Okay, by by Deb. Who is it? Beloit. Beloit. And do I get a second? Second. Second by Ms. Allison. Um This will be a voice vote. Uh if you could call the roll. Yes. Thompson. I. Arkin. I. Beloit. I. Allison. I. Stark. I. Stryker G.I.? Okay. We have the consent agenda has been approved. All right. Well, it's now time to do public forum. Uh during public forum, the portion of the meeting, we ask public members who's asked to come up and speak. Um we'll give them 3 minutes. We have nine speakers for tonight. With 1 minute remaining, you will see the orange card will be held up to say that you have 1 minute. With 30 seconds remaining, you'll get a yellow card. And at the end of the 3 minutes, we'll just give you a like tap or let you know that it's over. Uh school district policy and data privacy laws preclude personal and student matters or data being discussed publicly. Speakers may not make allegations, charges, or complaints against any student or employee. Speakers may not Well, speakers will be called to the microphone and recognized one at a time. Only those individuals have been recognized be allowed to speak. Members of the audience may not engage in conduct that disrupts any part of the school board meeting or that otherwise impedes school board's ability to conduct business. So, what I'm going to say is that after your 3 minutes are up, I have one more opportunity for you. When you are done and we say 3 minutes up, I would you can also tell us what is one hope or dream you have for your child. We'd like to hear that too after you're done. So, what's one hope or dream you have for your child? So, as we get Tonight, we probably celebrate the achievements of our Athena Award winner, band, jazz band, choir, and orchestra students, and speech team members. Congratulations to each of you. We also extend our sincere gratitude to the dedicated staff and supportive family members who played a vital role in these state and nationwide successes. Please join us in watching a video highlighting their accomplishments. Go Bears. >> That was very impressive. Thank you. Uh, we're going to transition now to C2, Superintendent Report, Dr. Kavulich. >> Thank you, Chair Arkin. Tickets are now on sale for the middle school musical, Matilda Jr. Shows will be performed from April 23rd April 25th at Central Middle School Community Auditorium. Find the link for online tickets on the homepage of the district's website. In partnership with Light in the Well, White Bear Lake Area High School proudly presents A Time for Flight, a free multi-sensory orchestra performance centered on inclusivity and connection. The event will take place at 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday, April 28th in the high school's Performing Arts Center. Tickets and additional information are available online um at the Light in the Well website. Community members are invited to join me and other district leaders for coffee and conversation at the last coffee with Dr. K of the school year. We will be at Caribou Coffee in downtown White Bear Lake from 7:30 to 8:30 a.m. on Tuesday, May 5th. This is an opportunity to ask questions, share ideas, or just enjoy a good cup of coffee together. Willwerscheid fifth graders have been learning valuable career skills by working with community members on cover letters, resumes, and interview preparation. They're getting ready for their Donatelli's Takeover, where they will experience working as cooks, servers, and hosts from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. on May 5th, 19th, 26th, and June 2nd. I certainly plan to support them on at least one of those Tuesdays, and I encourage you all to do the same. We had a terrific time celebrating with incoming kindergarteners and their families last week. Students enjoyed spending time in their elementary building and even participated in a kindergarten signing day activity. Those families who haven't yet enrolled their child for kindergarten can do so on the enroll page of the website. We offer a strong We offer strong neighborhood schools along with options for International Baccalaureate and Elementary Spanish Dual Immersion. And we recently received word that two of our school leaders have been honored by the Minnesota Association of Secondary School Principals. White Bear Lake Area High School's Joe Held was named Capital Division High School Assistant Principal of the Year, and Mariner Middle School's Christina Pierre was named Capital Division Middle School Principal of the Year. Good luck to them as they move forward in the process for state level recognition. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Kasprzak. All right, we're going to go to information items. Scott? >> Yeah. Just a couple of questions on that. With that coffee with Dr. K, um would it be possible if we get a kind of a number of people that show up that are not district staff, you know, and maybe highlight some of the topics that are on people's mind? I think that might be helpful. Thank you. The other suggestion I have it The other suggestion that I have is um uh maybe we should have a I I would suggest the chair do a report and maybe poll board members and anything that the chair's in addition to a superintendent's report. Well, we'll look at it. Thank you for that suggestion. All right, we're going to move on to information item C3, graduation rates, Dr. Gillespie. Good evening, Chair Chair and members of the board. I'm going to quickly introduce who's um here with me tonight. I will be sharing our graduation data and then attendance data and then I've asked um each one of them to share a you know, another thing that we're doing from the field. So, and then at the end we'll be here to answer any questions. So, we have John John Linebarger, elementary principal at Mat-Su Central International, Russ Reid, high school principal, Angela Nelson, principal at Otter Lake Elementary, and Catherine Peterson, principal at Central Middle School. So, uh I really been spent a lot of time thinking about how to present this data cuz we're really proud of this data, but I think as we've heard a little bit this evening, people often um have questions on all of the different ways that we continually improve. And so, tonight I'm thinking about the kids um that persevered, especially our class of 2025. They were our first unified high school. Mr. could better talk about the impact and the leadership that they had, but this is a reflection of their graduation. Additionally, we have adults who are continuously committed. You've heard every time our principals come present, we're highlighting where we're excited about things and where we're continually improving. And so, tonight we're excited about our data and we couple that with continuous improvement and what we want to do to get better. I hope that you continue to hear that. So, again, our graduation data and attendance data, these two measures are lagging measures which come out for us. As you know, the graduation data comes out now for the previous year and then attendance data actually is two school years behind. So, I have our approximate data for last school year, which will come out in this August in 2026. But, last time we presented about this, we didn't have the finalized data from 23-24. We had our estimates. So, as we've talked about a couple times tonight and then you've seen throughout, we're really proud of our district-wide data. Our high school last year graduated at 97.3%. Our ALC graduated at 82.2% and then district-wide when we couple those, it's 93.9%. That does put us at the top of the metro area and it's something we've been continuously committed. And what we keep talking about internally is graduation rate often gets coupled with our high school. And it is a high school measure, but you cannot have a successful high school with every single thing that we're doing across our system. So, it is something that our early childhood educators, our elementary educators, middle school and high school should feel proud of because each time we're working on all of these different continuous improvement things you hear about from literacy, math, the work we're doing at ninth grade, middle school and the unique time that our kids have in there and they're discovering who they are. All of that matters and comes to this final graduation data. We do look and get compared to other area high schools. And so, I kept theirs from last year, too, to see, um, you know, ours is real consistent, a little bit of growth from the previous year from class of 2024. Um, and then, as you remember, not everyone has an ALC or ALP. So, these are the high school graduation rates, and then when our district graduation rate gets coupled, it is that ALC, um, and and the high school graduation. So, celebrations, um, I think it's important, and last year we really worked hard to describe what are the stories of those students who maybe haven't graduated yet. Cuz we want to make sure that we really know one, that we're not losing people in our system, but two, where are our students? And so, of the 24 non-graduates, 98.2%, so 593 of, um, 604 graduates graduates graduated according to plan. And what we mean is if we're proud of we have transition education programming where students can be with us, um, through '21 and '22, um, and get really specialized, it's based on their IEPs goals, but that that is part of the plan that's planned as they're looking at transition goals. And so, understanding that, um, we have students who've continued with us. Additionally, a measure that we're really, um, proud of and focus on is, how do we know students are doing well? So, we've raised the graduation rate, what does that look like for students needing developmental courses in college? In in 2018, 19% of our graduates needed, um, develop- developmental courses. For 2024, 9%. Now, this data lags 2 years. So, we don't yet have for the class of 2025 cuz they're currently freshman, um, what they needed for that, so I will be able to report on that next year. Again, I'd like to highlight our ALC graduation, 82.2%. Not only is a huge growth for them, but does stand out significantly with other area schools. And so, our continuous focus on how to help students with learning loss, and a lot of that translated in high school with credit loss during the impact of the pandemic. All of those students were in middle school, so all of those things coupled together. I wanted to highlight some of that cuz I think it's important. Every one of the indicators that we look at, so when you look at early literacy and early math, which we talk continuously with you, not only are those important for life outcomes, but they too impact whether students will graduate on time as young as third and fourth grade. Um we look at our multi-tiered systems of support and the levels of support that we're doing. And so to me, this measure is our students' persistence and the wonderful adults that work here and are continuously committed, but it is also that our support systems are working the way they're intended so that we really are raising the expectations for all students while closing that gap in terms of students who aren't graduating. It recognizing that sometimes life throws all of us curve balls and it happens even for our students, and so we do have programming for students um who maybe graduating in four years just isn't part of the plan and they can continue in our ALP or ALC. Um and then those students who it is according to their plan and that they need to be with us longer for their transition skills. The other piece is is middle school, I've really been working hard with our middle school principals and how how best to describe what's going there and the successes we have, but really identify where our areas that we want to improve on cuz middle school is a really unique time. Students' brains are forming really fast, they're discovering who they are. Many parents know that, you can reflect on your own students, but when we look as a whole system, we really want to honor the work that's done there. And so how are students um exploring who they are, looking into interests, really connecting and belonging at school cuz those are years as you know, if you lose them, it's hard to get them back. And so thinking about that. And then finally our high school, the work that we do in ninth grade is transformational because ninth grade is the most accurate indicator for graduating on time. If a student fails even one class in ninth grade, their likelihood of graduating drops significantly. So I think keeping all that in mind when you think about our whole system and all the things we're doing, again, none of us have said we've arrived yet because we think about the kids that are there and what we can do to support them, but we're really proud of this data and we should be. So, we had 43 students who didn't graduate. Who are those 43 students? 22 of them are currently enrolled, and so that's huge. They're continuing with us. They're in the programming that we've designed to support students. We had six students that were continuing and then dropped because they didn't show up with us. Um four students transferred to different schools. Two students reached compulsory age, and then um nine students with unknown reasons. Part of what was different this year is um because this is our first year for data for the unified high school, some of the students we we lost them when it was North Campus, and so we weren't able to see um they they didn't re-enroll with us, but they are part of um that overall factor when we count our graduates. We had 16 non-graduates um from the ALC, and then three transition education students. So, as we continue to dive in and look at, what I will tell you um is connecting attendance and graduation may not be make a ton of sense sometimes when we talk about it, but attendance is one of the greatest indicators that we have in terms of students who consistently attend better do better academically, and all of those outcomes that we've been talking about, they're more engaged, and then they're more likely to graduate on time. And so, that is why we couple these two areas. But if you think about it, our schools were continuously doing interventions around attendance, and so as those two things are out there, I want you to think about what is a student's daily lived experience when we think about why would I want to come to school? Families, as we know, some of our littlest students aren't the ones who get them to school, but there are barriers that people real barriers that people are experiencing, and you may hear some of that as our principals talk with that. With that said, we also are really proud of the the growth that we've seen in our attendance data. Again, um 23, 24 when I presented last year was our estimate. Um our internal person who does his estimates, he's really accurate and within just a couple percentage points, and it is a confusing um metric, so let me explain it. Um this is the percentage of students who attend school at least 90% of the time and they had to have been enrolled with us at least 50% of the year. So, principals, this isn't the way principals look at data. They may tell you this. Um, they look at their daily attendance. Who's here? We absolutely have systems that catch the consistent non-attenders. Um, but this is can be a frustrating data cuz it's lower than their daily attendance. And so, people who don't understand that metric will think only 80% of students are in school daily. That's absolutely not true. Most of our schools are above 90 if not close to 95%. This is tracking how do we cumulatively look at kids? Um, and 10% of the school year is 17 days, which seems like a lot, but if you've had a child get sick, multiple sicknesses, a family vacation, they can add up very quickly. So, our average uh um attendance for elementary has grown from 21-22 at 65.11% to our estimate for this past school year to 85%. That is significant when you look at 4 years, the years that we've had in terms of rebounding and when the during the pandemic. And so, the work that we're doing is really paying off and it absolutely is in partnership with families. We can't um do this work without them. Secondary at the high school, it has um grown from 60.27% to our estimate for uh for this past last year is 81%. Again, significant. Um, if you look at some of our middle schools, you'll you'll see some really big gains. Our high school steadily moving up. Our district data factors in our transition education center data and our ALC and those are lower and not accurate as we think about ways to keep take attendance. They're unique programs that have flexible attendance requirements. So, um we're still working through some of those glitches and to make sure that that's an accurate. We have it internally, but what gets publicly reported on those two programs. All right. So, really who you will love to hear from are our principals. And so, how I asked them, again, thinking about that day in and day out experience, I asked them to each highlight something for you that they're really proud of in terms of the work that we're doing to help kids feel stay connected, engaged, persist through our system. Then I have a few closing remarks and then again we'll take on questions, so. Which one? Thank you, board. I'm John Lindinger, principal at Matoska International. Thanks for having us and you know, one of the things that we think about in the elementary unit Matoska is how we build relations and connections. We know that you know, students want to come to school. Parents want their children to come to school. Unfortunately, sometimes there are very difficult circumstances, sometimes tragic circumstances that really get in the way. So, one of the things that that we work on is how do we and our support staff, our our district partners in teaching and learning and student support services help figure out how can we help our families when they run into these really difficult times. So, we can work together, can find community resources to help get them transportation to school, to help them find ways to walk to school and get to school. The other thing that I like to highlight is just how much our teachers and staff care about the the students. It is amazing how much I see our teachers and staff you know, picking up the phone, calling and saying, "Hey, how's it going? How can we help you? You know, what can we do to help reach out and get your child to school?" I've even seen teachers who will go around the classroom with a with a video camera and each kid will say, "Hey, we miss you. I wish you were here. I hope you can come back soon." And we get that out to our our students and families. So, we we have our systems that are really important. We have our county partners. We also know that you know, families and elementary kids mostly they really want to come to school and how we can help them get here and support them is just really important to what we do. Thank you. Good evening. We continue to focus on improving our period and full day attendance with students. Um, last year our theme was do I belong here? I think every student consciously or subconsciously asks themselves daily if they feel a strong sense of belonging and then where in our building uh is that belonging taking place? Um, I want it to be in every classroom and we continue to to work on how we greet students and how students greet one another and then um the different activities that we do in class ensuring that they're meaningful learning experiences and that um no matter where students enter into new learning it um we're there for them uh to support them and then help them make connections to their lived experiences. That that has gone a long way in helping students um continue to go to class. We have tried many different um procedural type things. Um, no passes the first 10 and last 10 minutes of class. We think students are more successful when they understand the learning targets for that day and then they can provide evidence of their learning uh at the end of the class period. We don't allow students to take their cell phones with them when they do leave the classroom on a pass. You'd be surprised how quickly students want to be back in their room. Um, they don't get access to their phone but they never want to be too far from it. Um, we're looking at ways to um prevent students from inviting other students to leave class if they need to be out on a pass. We also have so many adults in our building that have gotten to know uh our student body and do a really wonderful job helping move students along. Um, getting them back into class if there's somewhere they're not supposed to be. It takes a village. Um, we talk about the importance of uh every minute of every class period in terms of their learning and I think the the common language and some of the narratives we're discussing with our students is starting to resonate. Um but our kids, we have great kids and they make good choices every day and um much of our improvement is because uh our students understand um there's a there's an ownership component to their learning and they've chosen to make good choices. Awesome. Um yeah, I think you really cannot discount the power of welcoming students to school. I mean, first and foremost. So, you know what? Otter Lake, you come in and whether you're on time or tardy or coming back from an appointment, you're going to get welcomed with like, "Oh my gosh, we're so glad to see you." Um a hug. Students are coming to find us to greet us. Um and you know, everyone's kind of talked about that relationship piece, but you cannot discount students feeling safe and cared for at school because it really matters a lot. Um you know, some of the things that we've done, um we have really unique opportunities at at Otter Lake where we have done like our month-long read-a-thons. Students have been quoted to say it's the it's the their favorite part of their whole life. So, students like coming to school. Yes, very excited. Um because of because of opportunities to connect, to be welcomed, to belong. Um this year we have a kindness theme. If you drive past Otter, you'll notice that there's some signage out front um that's really kindness to our world. But students being able to connect with peers even of different grade levels. We have buddy classrooms. Um we have Bear Time where students get to reconnect with peers um because that is a driving force for elementary uh because that is you know, they don't drive if you didn't know. Um so, in order to connect with their friends, they they need to come to school. But um beyond that, students are really excited to learn. They're so incredibly excited to learn. They know that when they miss that they are missing something that's happening in class. Um and I have to say, so we have our new CKLA literacy curriculum um that we're you know in our third year of and students really enjoy what they're learning in the CKLA units and get really excited about it and the and the different things that teachers have kind of brought in so that they can experience that learning. I would just add to that the systems that we have in place for students who are needing additional support are really structured and there. So that could be a reason why students may not want to come to school. They struggle in school academically, it's hard for them. You know, they don't want to continually do something that's hard for them. But if they are supported and if they are given positive reinforcement, they have someone walking alongside of them, they know that it's safe and that doesn't become a reason then to to miss school. John mentioned some of the systems and structures we have just in terms of like tracking procedural type things like that. But part of that is educating families on the importance of attendance. You know, for the elementary level, I I think probably the most is that families go on vacation, which we totally appreciate and those days add up really quickly even though they're excused. And so it's really educating families around the importance of every minute that a student's in school and when you're gone multiple days in a row, kind of what that adds up even at the elementary level when they're learning how to read. So partnering with families and welcoming, you know, we we want families to have fun and and be with their family and be mindful of the our school calendar so students aren't missing so much school. Uh You're here. I'm sorry. There we go. Better? Uh so thinking about middle school, I remind myself every day that I get to live with a small village of 950 11 to 14 year olds and I choose to be there and I love it. And I also remind myself that there is no other time in a child's life other than from birth to 12 months that their brain is changing so quickly and rapidly developing. And so at Central, we have just really embraced the student experience. We want kids to leave and feel happy and proud of themselves. It's a time where they're really pushing um independence, and sometimes that means pushing boundaries. And so we have a commitment as a staff to say, you know, what when kids make mistakes, how do we help them to learn from their mistakes? That those mistakes don't define them, but they can change what they do going forward. And sometimes there's attendance issues, whether it's kids who are tardy, whether it's kids who are absent, and some of those things um are within their control when they are 12 years old. Um and what we do is we really sit down then and get to know them and talk with them. I want to give a huge shout-out to my school counselors, my school social worker, and my school psychologist who are anchors in doing this work. Um they take the time to talk with kids about their privileges that they have at middle school and how those privileges come with responsibilities. They really talk about why these are important, why they're important life skills, and how these skills will be used navigating situations both in school and out of school. Um and they're really working to teach kids how do they advocate for themselves? How do they communicate? How do they use resources so that they can be successful? Um I brought an example of a plan where they really sit down, they talk with the kids about you're being tardy, what's happening? And then what are some of the things within your control, and what are some options that you have? Um everything from setting an alarm clock to what if my transportation defaults falls through? What if I'm struggling with something that's causing me to be late? Who are people at school that can help me with that? Um and so I'm just I'm proud of the work that we're doing, that kids are being seen, they're being known by name, um and they're going home happy and proud. Thank you. Um we get to be the face of a whole administrative team um that serve our educators and who work with kids. And so I I we really work with wonderful, wonderful people who are crystal clear in their focus that our kids are going to succeed. And you know, as Russ said, our kids are wonderful and um it's a real privilege to get to work with them. And so we don't I don't know of anyone who's not trying to get it right for our kids. And we are pushing together as a team. And so um I hope you keep their faces. We have kids in here right now. We have some educators, but we really get to represent and be the face for that. And um I think it's important we honor their work. Lastly, our system and system change is hard. It's complex, especially um for public schools when we have all these different moving parts. But we've really done a lot to enhance the way we talk about data. Um and so I want to highlight those things. I did and I always look back, what did I tell you that we were going to do and did we actually do it? And I'm always excited when we have. Um and we we absolutely are leaning in in all these areas. So part of it is making sure we have accurate data and that we're monitoring it. And so we have had to do some tweaks internally around attendance. And also it's really important to me that for every student that doesn't graduate, we know the why and we've connected. And if we haven't, we have multiple checks in our system, including me looking at it before it's even finalized, um that we we do everything we can to find students as we know the doors that stay open for families um when they have a high school diploma. And we want to make sure that they don't lose out and know that these resources are here, especially as we have a partnership with 916, there's just a lot of options. Um we really have worked on how how do we support our new and transitioning students? So thinking about um you saw some of the kindergarten pictures, students entering kindergarten. This year they did a little signing ceremony, which is so exciting, where kids got to really be excited about coming into school. We think about going into sixth grade and what that looks like and making sure we're supporting. And then ninth grade as well. And so thinking through all of that, cuz when we looked last year, we noticed those are some times where we're seeing either increase in absences or when I looked back when we lost students, where were they in those areas. Um ninth grade success we've talked about um we've had BAR implemented building assets reducing risks for quite some time now. Um really looking at ninth grade success. Um we talked about pathways and being really clear as we transition to an ALP in our partnership with 916. How do we make sure um students and families know about those options? And then continuing to work with families around attendance and the supports. We're working right now um to get some more videos describing attendance and its importance in elementary school and um secondary and what that means as we continue to partner with them and then with the county resources if and when needed. So, I want to reiterate as we close, we're proud of our results and we know we still have work to do on behalf of our students and families and we're we're we're the commitment is there and we're constantly doing different things. Um but graduation really is a reflection of our our system. Our students stayed engaged, our educators connect with them, and we should be really proud of where we sit in White Bear Lake Area Schools. So, thank you and we're here now for any questions you might have. >> questions? Ms. Strait, would you So, congratulations. I think that is excellent news about the graduation rates. Having been in education for 32 years, knowing how complex our little people can be and how we are always trying to meet their individual needs and help them. Um so, thank you. The SLED data, can you just remind me what that is? Yeah, so SLED data is a database that that that link will take you there. And they track um post The ones I know, there's it's quite a robust data, but post high school data. So, it'll show us what schools our students enrolled in and then they track students and the percentage of students that had to enroll in developmental courses. And developmental courses, as many of us know, students pay for but don't get credit towards whatever, you know, certification or a degree that they're working on. And so, to drop it that significantly over time is is wonderful and we obviously want to keep leaning in and finding out how we can best support our students. Thank you because that does say a lot about when people are saying well the achievement data they're going on to college and they're being more successful than they were in the past. So, thank you. Um I do appreciate working with the team and focuses on attendance statewide that how you welcome kids, what you're doing when they're missing, it really matters especially when they're late, it really matters, things that I had not thought of before. Um we really had to hone in on attendance um statewide. You you spoke to 22% or 22 students that um of the 22 of the students that didn't graduate are currently enrolled. Are they in our regular like as a senior, what does that kind of programming look like? They're either at the ALC or they're at transition education. We obvi- really work individually. Most students don't want to stay at the high school, doesn't mean they couldn't, but they usually go to those two programs. Okay, and then I noticed um in elementary attendance rates that Willow is is significantly lower than the other schools. Are there is there are there specific supports that you are all talking about to target that issue? Um yes, really Willow's team is phenomenal and um we'll definitely have the Gen Sex are here to present on on the work that they've done, but we've used that team as a model. And so, how they've really leaned in on the support teams and stuff. They are partnering with some state resources around how to really look at the data and increase it, but um you know, a lot of their work there it has been rippled out. So, they really do intentional family engagement events. They're really looking at how to partner with families and remove barriers of students, helping them if you if you've gone in Willow lately, they even have on the sign, if you're late, this is what you've missed. And so, really that welcoming, asking teachers to reach out, which really you know, research would tell you that has the greatest impact, that's where the students have the strongest relationship. So, they're trying all of those things, and they are seeing the the growth, it's just not as fast. Thank you. And Thank you for all your work every day. Thank you. Other questions? Mr. Skare. Uh first of all, I think you guys deserve great recognition for this. Um graduation rates are strong and more encouraging, I think, is the fact that there's a positive trend in attendance, and that's great because um you know, attendance is just basic, it follows student success. So, I think that's great, and I think comparisons with other districts are instructive and benchmarking ourselves against our peers is essential. Um and I think, you know, there's there's other signs of encouraging news in in the early grade performance shows promising movement, I would say, overall. Uh our proficiency in both math and reading trended up from 2024 to 2025 a little bit, but it trended up, which is a good thing. Um so, I'm really excited about our progress. And our own I didn't know you were going to be here, John. Our own Mounds View principal captured this well when he noted that his school is holding its own against the best schools in the metro. Do you remember saying that or something close to that? I do. And I stand by Thank you. I think such comparisons are useful, not because, you know, they flattered John, but because um they clarify where we stand, where we need to go. On that score, we do have challenges. I mean, in both math and reading proficiency, we trail significantly with our joining districts. You all know this. Um between Centennial, Mounds View, and Mahtomedi, Cen- for 2025, Cen- Centennial's 24% better in math, 18% better in reading. Mahtomedi is 46% better in math, 30% better in reading. These are comparisons that matter to the point of one of the the speakers, but that's not the end of the story, right? It's not the end of the story. Positive trends are a good sign. We're pointed in the right direction, so I'm hopeful our staff, you know, it seems like we're all up to the task of continuous improvement, keeping that trend line to improve. And I but I think our community should demand better results, better accountability, and um hopefully the message was received here by this board uh on accountability for that. The other footnote that I just want to make is, you know, K-12 education is really up against some significant challenges with social media, you know, tied into cognitive development. I'm sure you're aware that the two cases uh were won in California and in New Mexico, demonstrating that um social media um such as Facebook is damaging to cognitive development in our children, and we're up against that, and we're going to need to adapt to that. Just one last question for um our high school principal, which is I'm interested, I talked to him ahead of time, so he's not going to be surprised. Um the correlation between attendance and disci- discipline, is there a positive correlation with that? Yeah, uh I did have a chance to dig into our DERS data. Um so, that's our discipline incident report. Yeah, that's what we were we have to report um exclusionary discipline to the state throughout the year, and it yeah, that's what it So, it's it's interesting. We implemented a cell phone policy last year, and so um we had a 160 cell phone referrals that if you removed because those that that cell phone policy didn't exist in the past, we had a significant decrease in um discipline incidents. Uh it's actually a 46% decrease in our first year as a unified high school. So, our attendance rates um were almost a 7% increase and our discipline incident um referrals were down 46%. I do think um the two things are related um when it comes to like certain areas of the building, but we had far less incidents occur in our hallways and in our bathrooms. Um we had um less physical altercations and far less chemical use from one year to the next. Um some of that is due to the new spaces. Some of that is due to um just the the number of um supervising adults within the building, but a lot of it is is because students were in class. All right. Thank you. Other questions? Ms. Beloit? Uh when do when is the full implementation of the the new math standards, new math standards? I don't know the date off the top of my head, but we're implementing right now. Next year, elementary will implement a new curriculum. Middle school is also next year and high schools will be a year after that. So, this coming fall? Yeah. And do we have a feeling on how the teachers at both levels are feeling about it? They're piloting two and three curriculum. We have a lot of ideas of how they're feeling and those committees will make those decisions soon. I've we have done learning walks. I've been in and so um it's been really fun to see the curriculum and it'll I'll be interested in their choice of their choices. Is are the standards have when we when we go from one standard to the next. Do you see a big jump in or not a jump is probably not the right word for it, but is there um are there a lot of differences that then the teachers need to roll out through the curriculum? Um cuz you have to learn. I mean there's pages and pages and pages and pages of it when it comes out, but Yeah, so I can give a general answer then these guys probably can give a more specific, but what I know is sometimes when standards change like we just implemented science. It is a almost a or literacy is a great also completely different way to teach than teachers have educated in terms of the science of reading or or um science Jen and my team will be super glad that I know this phenomena-based instruction. And so it really has changed in that way of how units are designed. So sometimes that can happen, other times they're more closely aligned. I do not know specifically about the math difference. I do. Yeah, so in elementary we even though we're you know, we didn't know what curriculum we're going to be using next year, we have taken this year um in our communities of practice. So that is our grade level meetings that are on the PD days, professional development days um to work on mathematical practices. So and those align with the new standards. So it doesn't matter what curriculum you use cuz the curriculum's really the resource to help you know, get to the standards work. Um but the mathematical practices, that is looking at how it's going to be taught differently. So there's a great graphic that um we'll pull up at some point, but it shows where students learn certain ideas like spatial reasoning geometry like where it was in the old standards and it was very compartmentalized. In the new standards, it's like everything all the time. So it's interwoven and it really focuses on discovery and allowing students to problem solve the different ways that you can answer questions with some you know, baseline instruction, but there's a lot of discovery for students. And that is a different way of looking at it because it's not I'm going to teach you this unit and that standard's done and that we're done. That will continue on throughout the rest of the year, um which is amazing. And so, our pilot teachers, I've been in those rooms quite a bit. Um both of the curriculums seem to be working well and um but both really do focus on students critically thinking in a way that they maybe were not asked to in previous um you know, uh math curriculum. I would echo that. It's very similar. At middle school, they're in the process right now of reviewing three curriculum and what I've noticed in class when I go into math classes, um students are learning still the procedures, but they're also really have a conceptual understanding. Teachers are asking them, "How do you know? Why do you know? Can you explain it? Can you identify, you know, where the problem is?" So, there's more conversations around math, um which is helping kids then to hang on to that math. I've also noticed them they really come back to the math, as well as um working on some fluency pieces. So, it's do you understand it procedurally and conceptually and do you know it really well, so you're not always sort of drudging through it. Um and at middle school, we like elementary, we have prioritized collaboration time for teachers across the two middle school buildings. So, they have time once a week, as well as they've had time on professional development days to be able to talk about what are we doing in class, what is what's working, who is it working for, um talking about assessments and data. And And I would just say um educators are really excited about the new math standards, you know, the learning the mathematical practices in this new way of teaching um has been really exciting for them and the people who are piloting are seeing really great results with the students and students are more engaged and more excited. And so, there is people are excited for decision day and that would be when they decide what what math curriculum we're going to use, because they are very excited to implement something next year. Is there a way to describe briefly why the standards change? You're asking really hard Yeah, I don't know that question, but if I I'm going to go for it. I I don't know. I wasn't on the standards committee, but what I do know is along with the literacy standards, it's really taking away this idea that you can just compartmentalize learning and that it has to be it has to be fluid and it has to be connected to something so a student can actually remember it and you know, I just any preconceptions they might have about it, right? So It's going to provide a background information, some core instruction, it's going to latch on to something that the student knows about and if they don't know about it, it's going to give them baseline knowledge so they can actually utilize the skills as opposed to like I'm going to just do spelling or I'm going to just do division and then once I teach you this one little thing, now we're done. It just is a constant fluid um approach. I would I would add also then the application part of it all. One of the thing one of the exciting things about education right now, I sometimes pull up my cell phone because this was born the same year I think our last year high school seniors. So we're literally uh developing students to live in a world that doesn't exist and part of that then is not just a great math, reading and writing, but how are you going to apply that in new situations, in different situations and in unique situations. So it's a super exciting part to be in education and you know, why we continue to look forward how our standards change, our curriculums change because our students are changing and engaging in a super awesome world. One for me when I think about it, so those of us who've been in education long enough, standards really came in 1999-2000 and it was really to streamline the expectations we have around learning and they're made, it's a robust process on how standards are you know, created with voices from educators and public comment and then eventually voted on at the legislature, but as you think about continuous improvement, we're constantly learning more about how students learn. Um science of reading is a great example. Really, how do how do you learn to read? And now that we know better, of course, we really need to do that for our students. And so, I think it's constantly getting better at what we know about kids. And then, as we see learning, we want them to learn at high standards. And so, some of us kindergarten standards and what's expected at kindergarten is is very different than it was quite a few years ago. Our our kindergarteners learn to read, and it's amazing when you're in classrooms, but that is different because we know that that that they can, and it is developmentally appropriate, where maybe we didn't and I I don't know the exact number of years ago, but standards have been a conversation for 26 plus years now for education. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Ellison. Yeah, I mean, I can answer that question a little bit about standards. So, it's in statute um that all of the main disciplines and have to be revised on a schedule. And a lot of times it's 7 years. In some places it's 10, but what's really interesting is that every state has their own process for developing standards. Um I know social studies the best. Social studies in Kansas, there are only five social studies standards. Just five. In South Dakota, there's like 200. And so, at at the time that's required by the the legislature, then like Dr. Gillespie said, there's a committee that's convened, and it always includes educators, it includes admin and leadership, it includes parents, it includes community members, and it includes a lot of times scholars from that field, because the other thing that changes is the field. Um and so, we want to make sure that the standards that are being implemented reflect what's happening in these academic fields. And so, um what what's really I think important about what how standards are done in Minnesota is that teachers and and parents and community members have always been involved in the process of writing these standards which then go to public comment which happens in a number of different ways. There's meetings across the state so that people can comment on the on the standards and then they have to be eventually approved by the state legislature before they can go into effect and then there's an implementation process. So it's not like hey new standards in June good luck in September. It's it's a process which means that not only do you have to learn the new standards as an educator then as a district you have to go out and you have to find curriculum that meets those standards and sometimes curriculum doesn't move at the same pace as the standards. So um this is all just to say that um you know every state does it differently. That's how we do it in Minnesota. Um a lot of it is directed by state statute and it's a lot of work for every single person involved in making sure that our students meet those standards. Sorry, I get really excited about standards. Thank you. Um Miss Miss >> I don't have any questions. Just a first I'm very uh grateful for the report that came out to show all the hard work that you all have been doing for years uh ever since I have been on the board um and so it is coming to fruition now. And we knew this was um a marathon not a sprint, right? Like we are in this for the long haul and it's going to take time because there are a lot of things that we are addressing that are often out of our control as an example. So we have uh statewide like 32% chronic absenteeism in the state. Of those students who are chronically absent, uh 32% are special education students. 28% are often English learner students. And then we can break it down by 20% being our black students, 33.4% being our Hispanic. Um and it just goes on from there, right? And like if I would have gotten into like the economic part of it, I'm sure that would be a whole 'nother uh scenario. So, when we often get compared to our surrounding uh school districts, I think our graduation rate is um a great example to show what we are doing in our school district. Because our school district has 32 to 33% of its students that qualify for free and reduced lunch rates. And that is I'm sure low because many parents probably aren't filling it out anymore because their kids get free lunch at school now. So, we aren't getting the full data anymore. In Centennial, they have 19.7% students on free and reduced lunch. And in Mahtomedi, it's not an exact science, so they are like at 9 to 15% uh free and reduced lunch. So, you can't compare. We have three counties in our school district. We have 10 cities in our school district. Centennial has one county, five cities. Mahtomedi, I grew up in Mahtomedi. It is a very small community that is affluent. I was not one of those students, and I barely graduated high school because of the things I brought to school with me every day. Ever since COVID, students kind of and families got this um we can do online learning and maybe you aren't going to go to school today anxiety in kids went up. Anxiety in families went up. Right now, the cost of living is out of control. People can't afford to buy groceries, let alone um make sure their kids are getting to school in the morning. There are a lot of circumstances that are out of our district's staff ability to control outside of what is happening in our buildings. But the work that you guys are doing in the buildings is reflected in the data that is coming out, and I am just honored and proud to be a board member in a district that is doing this, and we are not um giving up. We know that we're getting to an end goal of meeting all of that all the goals that we have set, which are out there. And attendance is a huge one, and looking at the attendance graph, like it was sad to see the attendance graphs, but it isn't just in our school. It's across the country and across our state, and it is a lot more factors than what we can deal with, but hearing things like you guys know we have teachers who are going to homes and trying to talk to the families, and how can we support you? How can we help you get your student to school? What are the things that you need that we can help provide, and then partnering with the counties, and as somebody who works in child protection, I know a lot of reasons why kids aren't coming to school, and it has nothing to do with staff at the school or what the school is able to control. So, again, like those graduation rates, thank you for all the hard work you've done over the years, cuz it is it is coming to light now, and I'm grateful for it. And yes, we do have a long way to go, and I'm sorry, but testing is a touchy subject with me because testing isn't the same for every student, and tests aren't the end-all be-all of how we decide whether or not a student is capable of being successful later in life. Because if that was true, I wouldn't be here. I wouldn't have graduated college as an adult while I worked, while I was a mom, while I was doing life with uh with honors when I graduated high school with a 2.02 GPA because I had things that prevented me from learning in school the way that I should have been able to. So, again, thank you because that's that's just my two cents. thank you. Thank you. Um we have quite a few things I Can I just speak, please? We have quite a few things left on the agenda and every board member has an opportunity to speak to this. I'm wondering if we can move on. No. Well, I just like Can I be recognized? Can we Couple of people can we wrap it up real quick, please? >> just like to respond to uh uh board member Thompson's I mean, it seems like when we have good results, then we compare to other schools. But, if our results aren't where they need to be as compared with other schools, then we have to rationalize those. I don't think that's fair. So. >> never been what I'm doing up here. Sounds like it. Could I just We've got to kind of we can wrap it up. Uh we speak Are we speaking cuz I I think we want to continue to focus on what's in front of us, so after as students and what our students bring to school every day with them and that is what I am talking about and the data that I don't doesn't matter if the data is good or bad, the students are still coming to school with those same impacts every day. So, everybody's had an opportunity to speak, so I I think I'd like to move on. I just want to say thank you for all the time and you've had and to create these systems where people kids feel welcome and Ms. Nelson, you can let your staff and students know that every day when I drive to work, I'm going to remember to sparkle. Thank you. And I want to thank the board for your allowing us to continue with our agenda. I appreciate it. Next up, we're on C4 American Indian Parent Advisory Committee Resolution of concurrence or non-concurrence. Mr. Shavers. Good evening, Chair Orcutt, members of the board, and Dr. Kazlow-Check. Thank you again for having us. Um I have two individuals with me as well. Uh Tonya Flowers, who is our American Indian parent or American Indian Education Coordinator, and Ms. DeLong, who is our APEX Chair. Um so I every year we have to come before you and uh discuss whether or not our APEX voted um concurrent or non-concurrent. And I am happy to say that this year we have been voted concurrent with meeting the needs of our students, American Indian students. And really, it's from all of the things you've heard in that last session that we just had um about the impact that the building principals and staff members are having with students throughout um the academic day. So really, that's student experience. Um so with that, uh it is an informational piece just for you to be aware of as well, but I wanted to make sure that you had opportunities to ask questions if you have anything you would like to ask these two individuals. Do we have any questions? I I do have one. I'm looking at our data, are we doing a better job of graduating those their students? And and and and if we're not, what can we do that better? I You can ask her. You can Yeah, I anybody there. Um This is important to us, so we just talked about graduation rates, so I'd love to hear. Well, thank you all for your time and attention tonight. Um my name is Danielle DeLong, and I've been a parent here within the White Bear School District since 2010. I'm uh proud parent of two graduates, uh one of 2021 and another in 2024, and my youngest is now a senior, class of 2026. That being said, in the time that I've been here, we've had our tax levy and we've supported the growth and and of our schools. And in addition to that, White Bear Lakes started their Indian restarted their Indian education program. And that was in 2010 when my children started joining the district. Um since then, I've seen nothing but great things come from the district in benefiting not just my children, but all the children um within the schools. I think the work that we're doing towards equity is showing in our graduation rates that we just saw in the in this data. Um I I know there's a lot of systemic and institutional changes that still need to happen, but when I think about what my ancestors experienced and what I experienced and what my children are experiencing, there's a world of difference and I'm grateful for that. Thank you. Are there questions? Yes, Ms. Traub-O'Hearn. I've been up here for a few years now and I know that it's been child we've not always voted in support of this. Right, so what's the difference? What what can you tell us that is going well or not? Uh well, I can say that um the hiring of Ms. Flowers it was also amazing um as well. We're really getting into a lot of different aspects with that. So, um she's involved in elementary programming, right? Actually, you know what? I'm going to have her speak to what she's doing instead of me doing it. Thank you, Brenton. Um I believe that in my four months, which has been it hasn't been very long, but my four months here um I've been steadily trying to make some changes to the program and uh incorporate elementary schools uh much more into the program um before uh I took the position um there was a lot of uh focus on secondary education. Um I have been making strides to get into elementaries um at least once a month. I believe that it starts um in empowering American Indian students in elementaries. I think getting them young and believing in themselves and seeing somebody that looks like them and practices the same traditions as them. Um it is proven that they they will do better in school and believe in themselves. So, I have been making strides to get into elementary schools. I think that's been a big part of it. And also we've been changing up some of the way we do lessons and the way we practice our culture in the high school and we've made some college visits and um some college readiness um um things as well. So, I think all of those things are contributing. Um we have a very transparent and open relationship with our parent committee um and I think that they have shown that with our vote of concurrence and they they believe in the work that we're doing. So, I'm grateful for our parent committee and and uh for Danielle DeLong. She'll be leaving us this year, which uh we're all very sad to see um but grateful for our parent committee as well. Hope I have answered your question. >> Yes, thank you. Thanks for supporting every child in our district every day. And again, too, I know it's what she's saying, but it's also with our administrators making time and space for that to happen within their buildings as well. I have to say that was a huge change for for all uh building principals and um yeah, I I I have to agree with that. I've had an overwhelming um positive result in meeting with building principals and uh exploring Indian education in elementary schools as as more often uh and as a more of an influence in in the schools. And so, I'm grateful for our building principals as well in their support. And if I could just jump in, I'm I I don't want to over over say too much or for our time, but um I have a mic in front of me and I'm going to take this opportunity to thank the school board because I know many of you I've seen you throughout the years and I want to say thank you for sending your school board members to be part of our parent committee, to sit down and hear and list actually listen and take these things back to the district and make these changes that have been long overdue and asked. And I just want to say thank you to the principals, Dr. Goletzbi, Coach K, better known in our household as Coach K. But all of you I I sincerely I don't want to just speak on behalf of me, but on behalf of our parents that have um worked hard on behalf of our students and our children. So, I appreciate your time, your effort, and and this guy's been doing great as well. Thank you. Any other questions? Yes, Ms. Thompson. >> I don't have a question, just thank you for being here and um you know, we have been through a lot of changes in the APAC over the years and so, um I think that now with Ms. Flowers on uh the APAC and being here in our district to help engage I just, you know, it takes time for each person to like get in and you've only been here for 4 months, but you've already done a lot in your time here and I just look forward to seeing where you take the APAC from here. Always opportunity for growth. And we need parent volunteers. Scott. I see you. Uh May what's coming up May 8th? Maybe you want to put a plug in for that. >> thank you. I would love to speak about that. Um we've been working on some family engagements in Indian Ed and um so, huge announcement, we are planning a huge district-wide pow wow for May 8th. Um it's a Friday night from 5:00 to 9:00. Everyone is invited. We would love to have you all there to support our American Indian students. We will also be honoring five of our um graduating seniors that are in Indian Ed and have been very, very vocal and very uh very much in Indian Ed every every week. Um They're wonderful students. They engage in their culture and their language um and they're very excited to um have this honoring. I I I worked in an Okanagan for a number of years and it looked much different there. I I shared with students that when we did um senior honoring, it was a formal plated dinner and I would say some words about the students and give them their gifts and our students said, "No, no, no, no, no, no. We would like to have a full-blown powwow." And I said, "If If you want to do a powwow, that's what we'll do." So, that's what we're doing to recognize our students and um we're very excited about it. Students are very excited about it. So, please everyone come. It's right here um at the baseball fields at um the district office here. Um 5:00 to 9:00, everything's free except the food trucks if you'd like to engage in that, but um very excited about that. Very excited to celebrate our our graduating American Indian seniors. So, thank you. Thank you. Any other questions? All right. Well, thank you for coming and we appreciate you. Thank you. All right. We're going to head on to our discussion items. Discussion item D1, update on sale of 2026A facility maintenance bonds. Mr. Walden and Ms. Johnson. Hi. Good evening, Chair Arcan and members of the board, Dr. Kaspar check, Mr. Reese. Um we're happy present tonight the results of the bond sale today on the series 2026A facilities maintenance bonds. The sale is an important step in supporting the facilities plan that was approved by the school board and the commissioner. With us tonight is Shelby McQuay who you met last month when she presented on the pre-sale report. And in addition to being a parent of White Bear students, she's our financial advisor and managing director for Ehlers Incorporated. So let Shelby tell us about today's sale. Mr. Chair, members of the board, Dr. Kazmerchack, the sale went well today. So this morning before we went in at 9:30 when bids were due, the we had 14 bidders signed up. So lots of interest in the in the bonds today for White Bear Lake Area Schools. When the bids closed at 9:30 this morning, 10 bidders ultimately submitted the bids. The low bidder was Jefferies out of New York with a low bid of 3.04. We were anticipating 3.25 as in our pre-sale and then we subsequently revised that pre-sale to remove the refunding portion as that no longer worked given current yields. That that revision actually given market volatility went up to 3.05 and though we came in at 3.04 today with the bids, the yields were not such that we could reincorporate the refunding at this time. So this this is a principal amount of 6 17.68 million dollars for the facilities maintenance portion only. The funds will close on May 7th and everything else was really as we anticipated with uh exception of the um deposit to the construction fund coming in a little bit better than we anticipated. That will allow future bonds to be reduced as well as we con- continue to restructure the long-term facilities maintenance plan. So, um some of the attachments include the bid tab which shows the low bidder of Jefferies, the cover bid Huntington out of Chicago, and then uh the high bid was Fidelity at 3.25. Uh the next uh two pages of schedules are the uh facilities maintenance bond sources and uses as well as the uh net debt service schedule, and then of course the image on the back page showing the um the level debt structure over time as we balance out the mix of bonds and uh levy with the existing debt. Also included here is the rating report from S&P with every rating or excuse me, with every issuance and at regular occurrences, the um the rating agency will keep you um your rating up to date. They did assign an A um an A+ rating which was down from the double A minus uh just uh as part of this issuance citing uh the lower than um anticipated fund balance uh and recurrence of that over time. So, um nonetheless, there was an uh lots of interest and demand in the bonds today which helped um mitigate any um uh volatility that we've seen in the market overall. So, I'm happy to answer any questions on this or uh the resolution that is your action item tonight. All right. Yeah, yeah, Mr. Skar. So, um we're voting to approve this? Uh Mr. >> What are we actually voting? Uh yeah, Mr. Mr. Chair and members of the board, um Dr. Skar or Mr. Skar, you're voting to um approve award this sale to Jefferies, which is the low bidder um on the bonds today. So, part of the intent resolution at the March meeting uh incorporated the um the parameters I I suppose of the sale that uh would uh require you to award to the low bidder. It will do that in E1 on the agenda. Pardon me. We'll do it on E1. >> Right. I just have some questions. >> wanted to make sure you know when when it's coming. So, um first of all, thanks for calling me a doctor. I played I played one on TV. Um on this on this bond you said that the credit our credit rating dipped one level down, and that was because of the fund balance. Do correct our fund balance. Uh they take into account a number of factors, and one of the primary factors that they raised as part of the change in the rating was the fund balance. So, when we don't maintain the fund balance, the our costs go up to borrow, correct? The rating is uh one factor as part of uh all of this. If there was no demand for the bonds, I don't know that that a rating would sustain even a triple A rating would sustain the Right. Okay. Thank you. One other uh another question, can we get a bond schedule I'm sure we have one, but can we get a bond schedule that is like readable to a layperson, not like a finance person, that just shows maybe we have it I haven't seen it, but just all the all of our outstanding bonds, when they're due, and the my understanding is some of the bonds are renewable or that we can we can just go ahead and um renew those bonds or I I don't know, but can we have like a bond schedule that shows every bond when it's going to mature out. Sorry, the type of bond, that type of thing, the interest rate on it, that type of thing. Something simple that a layperson can read. Uh yeah, there's going to be a pretty complicated report no matter what cuz they just are complicated. But uh are you referring to bonds and levy and levies? Just bonds at this point. Just bonds. >> have bonds that renew automatically. It's not >> They're good. >> Yeah. Then we can do a separate one with levies and determine which ones of those automatically renew. I think that would be helpful and something that would be uh readable by a layperson. And I would be happy to work with the staff to put something together like that. Um since I'm quasi familiar with displaying financial information to the public, I'd be happy to help. I think that would be good cuz it gives us an el kind of an outlook the for the future where our costs are. We heard a lot at the truth and taxation meeting about uh spending concerns. So, thank you. All right. Other Yes, Ms. Balogh. I don't know if this is what you're referring to but the long-term Excuse me. Long-term facility maintenance um schedule um comes out every year July and is predicted out. I don't even remember how many years but um goes out that lists each individual project. It's not the bond per se that it's coming from but it is the long-term um facility maintenance so you can see where those dollars are planning to go for the at least that part of the bond. Well, I appreciate that but I think we tend to make things too complicated for the public to understand. So, to the extent that we can simplify things rather than complicate things for the public to understand where our spending profiles going to be in the next 10 to 20 years, I think it would be helpful. And you know, just make it simple. Okay, I'm sorry. Well, are you finished? Yeah. Okay. Other questions? All right, we will see you soon. Thank you. We're going to move on to discussion item D2, the first reading of school board policies 201, 202, 203, 214, 215, 415, and 712. Uh these policies will be approved on the May 11th agenda or upcoming after that agenda for our second reading. If there's a question, please refer to the policy number and the page in the packet so we can look at it. Mr. Scar. Um I can't recall which board members are on the policy committee. I never got which board members are on the policy committee. Mr. Drake. Chris and Kathleen. Okay. I don't think I think it's probably posted on the website, but I I haven't I haven't I haven't seen that and the meetings are closed. Um I'd like to just a quick question not germane to a particular policy, but um I'd like to understand how the change to the consent agenda from the policy committee was We're out of order. Right now, we're looking at >> Is that because it's a difficult question? No, it's because we're looking at it's not for you. It's Robert's Rules, sir. We have policies 201, 202, 203, 214, 215, 415, and 712. If we could make keep our comments to those policies. >> And these policies will back. Any other questions? Thank you. We are going to move on then to E1, action to ratify award of the 2026A facility bond maintenance bonds. Thank you, Chair Ken, members of the board. A few minutes ago, you you heard from Shelby McQueen regarding the 2026A general obligation facilities maintenance bond. The low bidder at today's sale was Jefferies LLC providing the winning bid with the true interest cost of 3.04. The proceeds will fund facilities and site maintenance projects in the district's approved 10-year facilities plan. The recommendation is to approve the sale of the 2026A general obligation facilities maintenance bonds as presented. Okay, we hear the recommendation is to approve the sale of the 2026 general obligation facility maintenance bonds as presented. Can I get a motion to do so? So moved. Uh Ms. Thompson, can I get a second? >> Second. Second, I'm going to pick Ms. Beloy at the same time first. Uh we're open for discussion. Yes, Mr. Scarp. Quick question. What happens if the board decided not to approve these? Would we have like would Jefferies have recourse with us if we approved decided I just want to understand what the consequence would be. I'm not saying that So your bonds went on the market this morning and if the those bonds wouldn't be awarded tonight, the underwriters would take note and it may make it more difficult to sell bonds the the time you take bonds out to the competitive >> Thank >> you. I appreciate that. Other questions? I just have a point of order I'm going to ask the board here because I know when we do this, I see that we have it a voice vote and not a roll call vote. Is that because we've already approved them? Yes. Mr. Chair, any vote can be a roll call vote if you so Okay. Because of with it money involved, I'm I with your permission, I'm going to go ahead and make this a roll call vote. Is there any further discussion? Okay, I'm going to ask the clerk to call the roll. I'm sorry to throw that on you. Okay. Thompson. I. Arcan. I. Beloy. I. Ellison. >> I. Scar. I. Striffler. I. I. Okay, it passes. Thank you for allowing me to go down that road. Appreciate it. Next on the agenda, we have action on the fiscal year 2024-25 federal single audit. Thank you, Chair Arcan. Tonight we're presenting the results of the federal single audit for the fiscal year ending June 30th, 2025. Um the audit was conducted by LB Carlson with the purpose of ensuring that we're using federal funds according to our federal guidelines. If there were headline for this audit, it would be positive that the district receive an unmodified opinion. This is really the best possible result meaning our financial statements and our compliance with federal programs are accurate and reliable and that the district has met all compliance requirements that could have a direct effect on major federal um programs. So while our overall uh compliance is strong, the audit identified one internal control we can improve on. That was a finding related to the timeline and documentation for monitoring list of vendors who are suspended and debarred from being paid with federal child nutrition funds. Essentially, districts are required to check the federal list of vendors who are either suspended or debarred from doing business with being paid with federal funds. And we always monitor that list semi-annual. There's a slight change in how this issue was interpreted for compliance this year that affected us in in in as much as um it uh the compliance is related to checking the list before the school year starts. We checked in the fall and the spring. And the compliance is changed to Compliance didn't change the way that the audit MDE and the auditor enforced it had changed. And so um And so we'll change our protocols to match that and that's to change check the debarment and uh um suspension and debarment list before the school year begins. We take all findings seriously. We reviewed our corrective action plan with our auditor. It's been approved by the commissioner. And so it's already in place. um So in summary, our audit reports shows our accounting for federal funds are in good standing. We have already corrected a procedural gap identified by the audit. And our recommendation is that the board approve the audit as presented. All right, we've heard the recommendation to approve the audit as presented. Can I get a motion? Accept as presented. >> I'm sorry, thank you. Accept as presented. Um can I get a motion? So moved. Olsen, can I ask for a second? Second. Second, okay. We have the motion on the floor. I'll put it for questions. Yes, Mr. Baloy. So mine isn't really a a question since I already know the answer, but I do want to express my I guess frustration with the fact that it's a finding for something that MDE has not announced. I mean, nothing came out that said this is the way that we're changing this and this would have been in beginning of the the school year. So, just want to point that out because it's a very big frustration point to me to dock somebody who is following procedures as they were stated and now that you are not following them because they changed, but you weren't alerted that they changed. Then you get a finding. So, just want to express my frustration. There. Okay, Mr. Skar. So, one question that I have is um the you know, we do two audits. One's the mandated by the state, right? Which was presented during a work session where there's no benefit of public forum. Yet, this one is being presented today in the regular public session with a with with the benefit of a public forum. Can you explain why we're doing this in a regular session and why we're not doing the other audit in a regular session and does the statute require both audits to be done in a public session where there's a public forum? Yeah, I don't know the answer to that specifically um it's timing of when they were ready and no, there's no requirement to do it when there's public forum. Okay, thank you. >> think are all our meetings open to the public? Yes. Yeah, I mean, okay, just checking. Mhm. And this audit was particularly late because the uh federal Department of um um Office of Management and Budget No, the Federal Department of Education. The Federal Department of Education was late to put out the compliance supplement. And so, um, they extended the deadline for auditors to perform their federal audit. So, that deadline was moved to March 31st. Understood. So, I want to go to page, I think it's now 174, which is the summary of audit results. So, the auditor that we have does a summary of audit results. It's kind of like a checklist. So, the first one is on the financial statement, so that's the state required one. And it says, "Material weaknesses identified, yes." And we talked about that one. That was the double payment of 538,000. So, I and I I don't think that that is one. This is only for the federal programs. Yeah, I know. I just want to make a point. >> Okay. I just okay, so I just want to make sure we knew that this wasn't on this report, wasn't to that audit. Am I correct? This is for >> No, but I'm going to get to it. >> Okay, thanks. >> So, uh, but it's in the agenda package. Uh, the dis- And when when the auditors have a finding under the GAO rules, Government Accounting Office or the yellow book, they have a structured way of how you're supposed to present a material finding like this. So, the effect, I'll talk about it. So, the district paid the same invoice twice. The condition may have resulted in a material misstatement to the district's financial statements if not detected by the auditor. So, if we would have found it, if our systems and processes would have found it, there would have been no finding. There wouldn't have been because our systems worked. It found the problem and we fixed it. So, now I'd like to go to the federal audit, the federal awards audit. Significant deficiency identified, yes. Uh, does the auditee qualify as a low-risk auditee? No. So, I want to highlight that. We don't qualify as a low-risk auditee, the school district being the auditee. It's a simple question that they asked, simple uh, check uh, check that or a box that they check. Now, when I go back to the findings, we do roughly $6 million in federal awards. This particular one because I think it's instructive to talk a little bit about the highlights of this one. Significant deficiency in internal controls over compliance, US Department of Agriculture pass-through, Minnesota Department of Education child nutrition cluster. Does this have anything to do with the Feeding Our Future stuff that's going on at Minnesota? Okay, good. Um, the other thing is the um, I want to talk about the recommendation real quick is uh, the controls. These controls also include steps to ensure any vendor with which the district contracts for goods or services exceeding 25,000 is not listed as a suspended or debarred on the federal excluded parties list system website. So, according to the auditor our district for whatever reason wasn't doing a good job on selecting vendors for our federal nutrition awards. Is that what that be? >> That's inaccurate. That's not accurate? >> That's not correct. Okay, so can you tell me in lay terms according to the auditor because I'm reading it right here. That's kind of what that's what I took away from. Yeah, so >> Can you explain it? The feds published a list of vendors who are not permitted to do business with federal with federal funds and districts are responsible to look at that list and make sure that the vendors that they select are not on that list. And we and we've been Yeah, it was really about timing of checking the list. So for years and years we had checked that list twice a year, fall and spring. And going forward our auditor's expectation is that we check that list prior to issuing any payments to anyone vendor. That requirement was new to us that it be done prior to issuing any payment to them. And so we simply didn't know that that's the way that they were going to be looking at it anymore. So we didn't implement that change prior to last fiscal year. We've implemented that change now and we've been assured that the changes that we've made have walked through what those changes are with our auditor and he said, "Yep, if you do all of those changes, you won't have this finding again next year." Was a payment made to a to a company that was debarred? No, the payments that were made to the companies in this in this finding were companies that we've done business with before and they are not on that list. They simply hadn't been checked prior to reaching that threshold. So did did the auditor check that or were you just stating that as a fact? >> No, we checked it just not prior to the timeline. It just seems to me that they this was a non-statistically valid sample size that they used. They picked four. >> they said and it says that in the report this is just for a while. Yep. They picked four, two out of the four they found a problem with. So I I thought a 50% hit rate on that was pretty high. In our federal funds we simply don't pay a lot of vendors more than $25,000 there's not there's not a lot of vendors that we make those significant payments to. So they don't have to test a lot of them. Yeah, and I I would like to just talk about this a little bit if you indulge me cuz I think it's important. You know, we had this report from KSDP on April 3rd. >> No. Yeah. No. Yes. Point of order. This is an oversight problem that I think we should talk about. >> Okay, but let's not bring anything else. Let's focus in on this, please. >> This is focused in on this. It's germane to the topic. Okay. I would like to call the question. Okay. Call the question. Do we have a second? Second. Okay, all in favor call the question say I. I. Opposed same sign. No. Okay, the question has been called. Um So, can we explain that to the public what that means? >> I would love to, Mr. Chair. >> Okay, please. We have the agenda where we need to stick to what is written on the agenda. And tangential information that is not related to the specific federal audit that we are talking about does not apply for something that we can discuss. We have opportunities to discuss these other issues in different settings, in different agenda items. And we had an opportunity to discuss the consent agenda when it was on the agenda, which was twice. Once for the first reading and once for the second reading. And what was demonstrated at this board meeting is that when when a second is required such as adding a an item to the agenda, someone can second, we can have a discussion across perspectives, and we can make a decision, which is exactly what we discussed at the consent agenda. So, in order to have a a meeting that is efficient, as you if you looked at the policies that if you looked at the policies that are in first reading, it lists in order what we follow. Number one, statutes. Number two, our own policies, and number three, Robert's Rules of Order. So, I would ask Mr. Scar, as we all try to do, is we stick to the agenda item at hand. Okay, we have the question has been called, which means discussion has been stopped. We asked for a clarification and received it. Chair, why was the discussion stopped? >> Because we called the question. I wasn't able to I'm sorry, we called the question. The question has called it approved. Well, this is a you know, this is just a clever technique to shut down discussion. That's what it is. >> the Robert's Rules of Order. >> Yeah, I understand. All right, so moving forward, being heard. action is a federal audit. We have a motion has been seconded and the question has been called. I'd like to call a roll call vote to approve to accept the audit. I'd like the clerk to call the uh call the vote. Thompson. I. Arkin. I. Beloyed. I. Ellison. I. Scar. No. Strifler G. I. Okay, motion's carried. Thank you. We're going to go on now to operational item E3, action on amendments to drainage and ease uh utility easement. Mr. Waller. Thank you, Chair Arkin, members of the board. Uh back in February, the board approved a land swap with the city of Venice Heights. It was to trade a pathway easement for a vacant lot next to the Venice Heights Elementary School. To finalize the land swap and ensure clean property titles for both parties, our legal counsel has prepared two technical amendments to easements that were originally recorded in 1982. These minutes are included in the board packet and will require board approval. The first update, number 725010, fixes the surveying language for a lot on on lot number five and the second 725011 clarifies the city's right to maintain a 20-foot sewer line across lots four, five, and six. Both documents require the city to fix any of our property should they disturb them during work. The recommended recommended action is that administration recommends that the board approve the described amendment to drainage and utility easement number 725010 and the amendment to drainage and utility easement number 725011. You've heard the recommended action. Can I get a motion to approve? So moved. So moved and second? Second. Second? I'm sorry. Strike Did you get the who called it? Okay. Is there any further discussion? Who was the second? Dr. Arcan. That's why I realized I didn't say it, so I wanted to make sure you had it. All right, so we have the motion there. Any discussion? Okay, hearing none, this will be a roll call vote. I'll ask the clerk to call the roll. Thompson. Aye. Arcan. Aye. Beloyed. Aye. Allison. >> Aye. Stark. Aye. Strikefoot GI. All right, motion carries. We now go on to operational item E4, action on school board policies 211, 212, and 809. Can I get a motion to approve those policies? So moved. By Thompson, a second? Second. Second by Beloyed, discussion? Hearing there's no discussion I'm sorry, Dr. Arcan, we also have 599. That's going to come separately. Okay, got it. Thank you. So, hearing that, uh this will be a voice vote. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, same sign. Okay, motion carries. Uh now, we're going to uh pull up action on school board policy 599. Chair Arkin members of the board, um this is a little bit different than our normal procedure. Principal Reed and I are here to talk about policy 599, which is academic recognition. We're asking that it gets approved in one um action uh instead of the two two reads because of the timing of the upcoming MCA test. Um I just Principal Reed will be able to give some more specifics, but I just wanted to kind of talk through. We've we've heard a lot of um the debates around our MCA tests, and we absolutely do not discredit their value. It also is really hard when there is an option for families to opt out of the test because when students opt out, which this isn't always commonly known, it counts against us as a student not meeting standards. At the high school in particular, if you remember last year, I talked with our middle school students and our high school students. They really talked about how um it was hard to see the value in this test. And we have a significant number of opt-outs. 40% of our juniors opted out of the um math and 20% of our sophomores opted out of 10th grade reading and and uh 10th grade science. No one student's academic success boils down to a test. We know that and we agree with that. What happens is is when the really those two data points are inaccurate and we're unable to make conclusions around those data points. And so, the other piece is that test is used for national rankings in the way that our tests So, it is it's a very complex issue. And so, I really commend the high school team on trying to figure out how can we really have this be an accurate measurement so we can lean in. And how do you balance that? Because we also all know all of the of valid things that were brought up in terms of um families and the students and their individual needs. We also heard people really using many times when I ask for clarity um and I didn't yet get that opportunity, but people are talking about our MCA results. And so, in terms of when they're being really critical on our academic achievement. And so, thinking through all of those things, we're here to have a discussion on what we're hoping that an idea that we have around possibly really giving more um importance to a student's academics while not over penalizing our students cuz we also identify kids are on a wide spectrum. So, where have you been, Principal Reed? On the MCA. Well, we um continue to try to encourage families and students to um take the test seriously to help us measure um how we're doing. And we we we're constantly um measuring our success um with multiple metrics. We know this year um is the first year that we've assessed our students with the A reading exam, and our results on the A reading test, now it is a a shorter reading assessment um have been quite good compared to our MCA results. And so, um I think by um encouraging more of our students to engage in the the test um like Allison said, the 20% that opted out uh as sophomores, we think we're going to see a significant increase in how our overall school performs in MCA reading and science at the sophomore level. Um we also think by um motivating more of our junior students to engage and take the test seriously, we'll see higher results with our 11th grade students on the math MCA. So, we've introduced some language to our academic lettering policy um that would add uh a threshold to um what we currently measure for academic success. The policy reads right now that students would have to have a certain GPA in order to qualify for an academic letter their senior year. The policy change would um require that students also perform at grade level in math for the class of 2027 and in math, reading, and science for the class of 2028 and beyond. I think part of um I just lost my thought. It'll come back to me. Okay. Um I think we can call this for the motion then we can open up for discussion. Uh the recommended action is to approve the school board policy 599 academic recognition as recommended by the school board policy committee and the cabinet. Can I get a motion to approve? To approve. The the policy. Don't I already have a motion? We'll have discussion once we get a mo- There's nothing to discuss till we get a motion on the table. And then second then we can discuss. >> Yes. Can I get a motion to approve the policy 599? So moved. So moved. Do I hear a second? Second. Second by Mr. O'Geal. Now we can open it up and have the discussion before we vote. Any questions? Yes. So on the on the opt-out that you were talking about, I get that. I mean, that's a hurdle. We got to live with it, but really other dis- I kind of think we normalize our numbers because other districts complain about that as well, right? So I don't know if 40% are if our opt-out rates are higher than surrounding districts or not or if that's been correlated with proficiency or not. I think we need before we can can say that that's a contributing factor, we need to do a little bit uh more homework on that, I think. 40% of our students don't take it. 40% count as not proficient. So, that statistically would have an impact on those >> No, I'm asking about when we compare it to other districts like Centennial or Mira Costa, is their opt-out percentage as high as ours? Do we know that? I haven't looked into that. I think I think before we use that as kind of a reason that we should understand that the surround what the surrounding districts and who who we compete with, which is Mira Costa and Centennial, what their numbers are. Mr. Skarmeta, I'm not using that as the sole reason. What I'm saying is is we want accurate numbers of how our students are doing and we can't we don't have that. I'm not comparing us at all. I understand why we would. Right now, I'm not making excuses for our results. I want it to be accurate and if it really is as low as it is right now, we have a lot more work to do. We don't have correlating other points because the 40% of students often are students in the highest level math classes. We know the kids that are opting out. So, what this is is to help us have our own accurate data. It's not to make an excuse that we don't have work to do. >> know what? Thank you for a straightforward response. I understand we're on the same wavelength on that. Thank you. Um the other question I think one of the public um speaker during the forum, I think her name was Jamie, talked about this. And you know, when I was thinking about it and is is there a way uh that that we could for this academic recognition to to do like a three or four factor test that you would say it's part of its grades, part of its attendance, part of it is getting a maybe a recommendation from uh you know, a principal or something and then the test scores and if you meet three out of the four of those, then you can get a letter. I'm a little I'm I'm sensitive to that. I don't know enough about it, but I'd kind of would like to have uh maybe a discussion. So, I would recommend that we uh we're not in a rush with this thing. Maybe we table this for the next meeting for for a discussion. Can I get a motion to table? I I mean, I would second that, I guess. Can Can we have >> But, I don't know. Ask Robert. I think we need to have discussion first. >> A point of order, I think if we table it, that's tonight. We can't table to the next. That's I think when we table it, has to actually occur in the same meeting. But, It's It's fine. So, it's fine. I understand. So, any We have further discussion, Ms. Draves Oji. >> So, this is, as I'm understanding it, an incentive to get kids to take the test because our results are skewed because we don't have students taking the test because of various reasons. Um are we able to provide accommodations for those that need those accommodations, whether it's through a 504 or Yep, and there's three different three three different types of tests, so some of them are the modified versions of them. So, yeah. Okay. So, um yeah, depending on what the IEP states or the IEP team um submits for accommodations for testing, we we would meet those accommodations as well as um there's two alternate tests that um could be offered to some of our special ed students as well. Um there's also, you know, I think with every um uh individual um story, there's reason um for a case manager to come forward or for um an administrator um or a school counselor to make a request that we consider um some sort of alternate consideration for a student that um maybe is new to country, that takes the exam, transfers in, and didn't take the exam in their previous school building, um um an ML student that is still learning the English language. Um I think there's lots of um reasons to to look again um for students that may reach the GPA threshold but not reach the MCA threshold. I can't guarantee um that we'll be able to provide a letter to every student who uh has a question about their performance on the MCA exam. But we know that there may have to be an exception made. Um so we would have a process for that. I just feel like um our school profile uh and the way people talk about uh how White Bear Lake High School performs is often relation to what they see on an MCA exam. Um I know as a principal I would like to use data that we learn from the exam in making curricular decisions um in making staffing decisions. Right now it's not a valid um set of of uh data uh because the majority of our students, not the majority, but 40% of our juniors opted out, 20% of our sophomores opted out of the exam. And of the students who take the exam, I'm not convinced um that they take it as seriously or or try to do as well as they might on a ACT or a any reading type exam. So um every school district um you know that we're compared to is looking for ways to improve the number of students that participate on the MCA exam. I've heard from many principals who are considering um giving the students a day off to moving them up in the order for a parking pass the following year. Um there's there's a lot of incentives that that principals are trying in order to to help engage students in this particular exam. Um if we don't find a way to to help our students take the test more seriously or or increase our participation on the exam. Um I think we really need to look at the results of that exam much differently. The other point I want to um to make that I missed I couldn't think of in a second ago was this isn't the only thing the high school team's doing, really doing education for all of our students' families to understand the impact of when people choose to opt out, um creating really a concentrated testing atmosphere. So it's one of many things that we're trying um and I just want to make make sure you're aware of that cuz you don't always get all of those details as well. Okay. Ms. Ellison. Um I pre- I preface this by saying, you know, I respect the work that you both do and you you do incredible things for the community, but um I I opt out all my kids from all of the MCAs and have for years. Um and have a sophomore that has a 3.6 GPA which means that he would not be able to letter because it was my choice to opt him out. So because the parents have to sign a document, right? They do. That is part of the process. >> Yeah. So I mean so it's the the parents making these decisions to not have their students take this test. And so and I I see the the outreach that's happening and I I see um you know, the information shared with families and I appreciate what you're doing cuz you're right. The numbers are totally skewed. I didn't realize that it was quite that high of people opting out and we all have our reasons for doing so. Um I'm a little anxious about a parental decision to opt out of a standardized test then reflecting on a student's ability to letter. That that makes me a little nervous. Um I mean, if if this is what needs to happen so that my kid can letter, I'll make him take the test, you know? But again, it's it's I think all of those factors it feels and I know that this is not how it's meant. This is certainly not the the intent. It feels a little bit like a punishment. So, I I understand that the motivation. I understand we have to get those numbers up. So, what about folks like me who fully understand the education system and I don't have my kids take that test? Yeah, I think I mean, you're identifying the complexity of it. Of course, our our goal is not to punish our kids. It's also super hard to listen continuously about a certain portion of our population saying how terrible we are based on one test. And so, we want to have it be more accurate and it's not. And so, um that you know, that that is the the question and I think um I we can get that data and I I'm curious you know, I have my what I've heard is not all districts have that same opt-out culture that we maybe do depending on the age. The kids were super honest in terms of the ACT and all this stuff that occurs for them. But at the same time, it is now 50% of our national ranking is our MCA results. And if our if 40% that 40% who are excelling the most, which is you know, there's there's gray in there, but that is the overwhelming majority, like we need help to have that data be accurate cuz otherwise, we will continuously not be able to meet the expectations and it isn't to make an excuse for if we need we are continuously it's we want it to to be accurate and it is not right now. Mhm. Mhm. Okay. Yeah, I I fully understand. And I mean, I hear those same complaints as well about our MCA test. Um it it it just it's just strikes me. I'm I'm just struggling with this as a method of of acknowledging the problem and how can we how can we express what you have just expressed to us to parents? Because a lot of parents, I think, probably do opt out their kids because they're like, "We hate standardized tests." Or "My kid doesn't test well, and I just don't want him to do it." And all these other reasons. How can we help parents not sign that form? I don't know. And I I I know all the work that you all do. Um This one is hard for me. Right. Ms. Thompson. Yeah, I I also see this as a punishment. Of Of the 40% of students who don't take the test, where do they Do we know where they rank? Like, would they fall in the category of lettering without this? Or would they not? So, then we're just adding on another thing to students who might not test well. And to me, this is a systems issue, not a people's issue. The The testing itself is the issue. And And I understand that we get the negative feedback because our kids aren't taking the test or the results of the test. To me, that says, "Get rid of the test and find a different way to figure out how what students are learning and how they're learning," which are a lot of the things that we're doing with the MTSS and the bar and all the other pieces and the other ways that you guys are learning to to test and see where the kids fall. Um to me, this is I I just um I work in courts and often times people try to to do some And I'm not saying this is what you guys are trying to do. I think you come at it with a good intention of trying to figure out how we can uh get students to engage in this test because it's important currently. Um but I don't Yeah, I I just I can't um this is one that I just I I can't support this one cuz I know not all students test the same way and not all students are like I think we just did a thing where we um revised the way our kids are going to test, right? So now we have an option for them to go sit somewhere quietly or to to test in a different way. Lily took her ACTs and she has a thing where if people are chewing or or if you're eating, our daughter cannot sit at the table and listen to us eat dinner cuz it is a thing that she it she tries really hard, but she can't do it. And while she was testing, somebody was chewing on gum, somebody was chewing on She literally could not focus while she was taking the test and she's super stressed out about how she's going to do on that test because she had to sit in that environment and test in that way, which is not friendly to all the, you know, to It's not equitable, right? So to me, this is just another I just I don't I would want more information on who the 40% of students are that aren't testing. Where do they fall? Would this impact them or who who will this impact? Cuz just listening to the one parent tonight speak about their child who is on an IEP, like I don't I just I feel like it's um yeah, I'm I'm just I'm not a fan of this I just I can't support this one. That's my idea. Ms. Beloit. Oh, I'll make this quick since we're running out of time here. I think we've got a confluence of things happening and it's obviously really difficult. But for the high school kids, you've got the pre-ACT that they take in 10th grade or is it ninth? Both. Ninth and 10th. Both. So, they've got the the pre-ACT, then the ACT, then if they take the ACT again, or if they're taking the SAT. So, most of the high school students, if they're planning on going to college at least, are focused on that. That's their priority. The MCA just isn't a priority for those. So, to me it's how do how do we how do we develop a culture? How do we put a carrot in front of those students to take that? And I I just I I I don't That's the issue to me. Mr. Scar. >> Just one last thought. I mean, kudos to you guys for coming up. You We have a problem. You guys came up with the solution. You presented it here. So, don't take I would not to I would just say don't take that as a negative. I mean, you raised a something that we should be concerned about. And we need to figure we need to figure out uh how to solve it. So, is it to triage the nose to the parents to get them on the hook, put more pressure on the parents so that they opt their kids in? I mean, this might can't We probably can't do this, but how about like a gas card for $20 that you You can take up a collection from the from the board for that if they take it. I mean, but the fact that you're thinking about it and you came up with a solution proposed solution, I think is great. So, thank you. Okay. So, Byron. Sorry, this is a timely matter though. This is why it is bringing it here so that it can apply for this year's. So, if it comes back to us next board meeting, which I know we don't usually approve policies at work study, is that still too late? Yeah, it it wouldn't feel right in terms of communication. We've communicated that we were bringing it tonight. And, you know, families really have engaged differently with rust just by that letter around and not in a negative way, but in a what other ways are there for my student to take it? You know, we have heard from concerns which are we've been working through, but we understand that, you know, we're trying to think outside the box. No, that is not how we lead to penalize kids. And so, I have believe that you're hearing that. And this is a really complex problem for us, so we understand if Yeah. We just we'll have to keep talking about it and leaning in if if this isn't, you know, we are doing other things and hopefully that helps engage and then we see an increase of people testing, but if this weren't to pass, we we get that part of the governance and that's why we're here. Okay. That is my question to comment. I will just say it's been used multiple times in the setting tonight that we don't have the right the same scores. And so, it's I can And yet, you're trying to find a solution to get accurate data and we're not supportive. Okay, um I'm going to go ahead we have the motion to approve the school board policy 599 and due to the importance of this, I'm going to shift this to a um roll call vote so we know where we sit. Yes. I make a motion to table this for the next meeting. >> We cannot table to the next meeting. We can only table within They can bring it back, but we can't we found out I can only table to the end of this meeting. Thank you, chair. So, um I'm going to go ahead and ask the clerk to call the roll. Thompson. No. Arcan. I, yes. Beloid. No. Allison. No. Scar? No. Strife OGI? Okay, the motion failed. Thank you for your time. All right, we are now to the board forum and we're going to be quickly we can get through this. Okay, it's 8:00. We've hit our times uh stopping time. So, does any board member have anything for board forum that they're doing? Yes, be quick. Uh I just wanted to say I also went and saw the Dear Evan Hansen play uh this weekend and holy I mean, wow. I thought I was at the at the Orpheum or like our students and the talent and the staff and everything that went into that. It was kudos to everybody involved. Excellent, excellent show. And for much less money. All right, thank you. Anybody else for the forum that you're doing in that you're board member? Uh yes. I would just uh shout out to the community education recreation team led by Mr. Mauer here. Uh we had a meeting. It was just a lot of good energy and so forth and we have so many activities for our kids and you don't even have to be part of the district. It's great. But I just want to say I was going to bring this up, but I want to put a marker in because on one of the page Tim, you're not responsible for this. So, uh understanding the role of the board. We need to talk about this. So, I plan on I would like to have on the agenda to talk about that. >> Okay. Can I get an agreement to put that on the agenda? >> we have a uh another staff development session first. Let's get through that. I'd rather have it in a public session. Okay. Uh anybody else? All right, I will entertain a motion to adjourn. Mr. Chairman, do you adjourn? Do I get a second? Second. All in favor say I. I. Opposed same sign. Who was the second? Who was the second? If you need your assignment signed, we can sign it for you.