- I now call this meetingof the School Board of Independent SchoolDistrict 624 to order. Will the clerk please call the role. - Streiff Oji.- Here. - Thompson.- Here. - Arcand.- Here. - Beloyed.- Here. - Ellison, here. Skaar.- Here. - If we could pleasestand and face the flag. The Pledge of Allegiance. - [All] 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. Can I get a motion to approve? - So move. - So move by Ms. Beloyed,can I get a second? - Second. - Second by Streiff Oji. Is there any discussion? - Yes.- Okay. You want for this agenda? You want for the consent agenda? - Consent agenda.- So we'll grab that next. - Okay, thank you. - All right, this will be a voice vote. All in favor say aye. - [Board Members] Aye. - Opposed, same sign. Okay, the motion passes. We have an agenda. At this time, we're gonnahave an introduction of our student representatives. Dr. Kazmierczak. - All right, thank you, ChairArcand, members of the board. So, we're pleased to welcomeour student representatives for this school year. We have Tom Reese, 12th grade student at WhiteBear Lake Area High School. He'll serve as a student representative. Tom is active in studentcouncil, Nordic skiing, and the link crew. And then, we also have Lily Johnson. She's here. If you maybe give a wave,everybody's met you, yeah. She's an 11th grade student at White Bear Lake Area High School, and she will serve as thealternate student rep this year. Lily is active instudent council, theater, Mariners Choir, Dungeonsand Dragons League, and crochet club and karate. She also enjoys writing, readingand learning new languages. So, welcome to both of you. And I think we're gonnatake a photo, is that right? Okay. - [Photographer] So, I lied, you all have two photos to take. (people chattering) - You want us all to come up? - Yeah, if you come up to the front, and then we'll get our in there as well. Board members will go on either side. Leave behind. (chuckles) There we go. Okay. In a bit more please, Chris. Oh, sorry. Oh, there we go. Oh. (chuckles) (board members chattering) Okay, look here please. One, two, and three. (camera shutter clicks) We'll take a few. Perfect. Thank you very much.- Thank you. - Sorry.- That's all right. - Okay, well, welcome. Thank you, we're glad you're here. We also have before us a consent agenda. This can retains avariety of business items that come to us monthly,including donations. And once again, we wannasay we are truly grateful for the support shown everymonth to our staff and students. Thank you. We have it for us that consent agenda. Can we get a motion? - [Thompson] So moved. - By Ms. Thompson. And a second? - Second.- Second by Ms. Beloyed. Any discussion? Yes, Mr. Skaar. - I'd like to move the payment of invoices to the regular business agenda. - Okay, so you wanna pull it off? - No, just put it in a regular agenda however you wanna put it,it doesn't matter to me. - Because I think if we're gonna pull it, we can do the consent agenda, and then immediately afterthat talk about the invoices. - That's okay. - And that means you'd be pulling it off, does not require a vote then. - Pulling it off doesn't require a vote? - No. - No, I read the rules before the meeting. Pulling something off the consent agenda to put it on the regular agenda,according to Robert's rules does not require a second, any board member canpull something from the- - Yep, that's what I was saying. - Okay. - So, we can just goahead and do that without. - Okay. - So what I'd like to do then, knowing that's there, can I get, because we're gonna change the agenda, or we're gonna change the con, give me a minute. We are gonna change the consent agenda. We're gonna pull off the check registry or the invoice payments.- Mm-hmm. - So then, can we get someone to amend that motion to accept it? - We don't need an amendment, we're just gonna voteon it as is with the- - I did not. Okay, so we're gonna vote onthis with the invoices pulled, this will be a roll call vote. So, can the clerk call the roll? - Streiff Oji?- Aye. - Thompson.- Aye. - Arcand.- Aye. - Beloyed.- Aye. - Ellison, aye. Skaar.- Aye. - Okay, so now what we're gonna do is we're gonna look at the check registry. Can I get a motion toapprove the invoices, and then we'll have discussion. Okay. - So moved.- So, moved by Thompson. A second? - Second.- Second by Streiff Oji. Now, we're open for discussion. Mr. Skaar, you havesome discussion points? - Yes, thank you.- Okay. - By the way, I just had questions on some of the items onthe invoice register. We had a number of invoicespaid to various universities, Bethel University, CenturyCollege, University of Minnesota, I can go on and on. And they are fairly substantialwhen you add 'em all. - [Speaker] Those are the scholarships that were awarded to students as for a scholarship night.- Oh. That's great. I have another question,it's line item 148080. It's a check for 11,695to a Konstantin Vasyakin. What is that about? - It's for enrichment,youth enrichment classes. He just happens to be the owner of a group that we use to offer someof our youth enrichment. - Okay, good, thank you.- Mm-hmm. - Then, I have one otherquestion related to item 148242, Hazelden Betty FordFoundation for $105,000. What was that for? - [Speaker] Yep, that's who wepay for our BARR programming. - Pardon me?- BARR, BARR. Building assets removing risk. - Reducing risk.- Reducing risk, yep. - Okay.- It's a program within our schools. - Okay, thank you.- Mm-hmm. - That's all thequestions I have for that. - [Speaker] Okay. - My other suggestion, whichI've suggested to staff. - [Arcand] Can I just interrupt? So, this is a time we're discussing the accepting the invoices. So, is this a question about the invoices that we're gonna accept,or is this others? - Yes, this is a question on- - [Arcand] Okay. - On this register, which we're- - [Arcand] We wanna make sure we're phrasing your name.- We're proving. - [Arcand] Yep. - So, one of the things is, is that it has these letterson the side, R, C, A, and you gave me a description of those at the last board meetingand I wrote 'em down. But I'm old and my memory's not that good, so I have to go back and look at that. It would be much easier ifyou put down in the bottom, like a legend thattells us what those are. Is that possible to do? - Yes, that is somethingthat would be possible. It would need to be something that the whole boardwould want us to include. And if that would be the case,we'd be happy to do that. - Okay. The other one is to justadd a classification on the far right to describe what that is, what each item is. Otherwise, I'll likelyhave questions every month if we don't have somekind of a description. And as I said before, as a CPA and somebody that'spresented these things, you have to look towardswho's using the report. It's the public and it's us. So, we need to make iteasier for the public and the board to decipherthis invoice register. - Yep, understood, yep. I would say, again, if that would be thewish of the whole board, that's something we'd be happy to include. - [Skaar] It requires an improvement. - [Arcand] Approval. - No, an improvement to this report, which is a simple, logical,rational, reasonable way to make this report better for the public. And that requires board approval for that. Is that what you're telling me, that staff can't generate improvements? - The board would act on recommendations to make changes like this. So, if it's the will of the board, we certainly would do that. - [Skaar] Well then, I would make a motion to make those two changes. - Well, we have a motionon the table right now to accept or not accept theregistry the way it's presented. So, are you asking to amend, and we can't change it for now. - No, we can't. So, I would ask that to beas a separate agenda item to talk about this. - We've already accepted,approved the agenda. This is just the consent agenda. So, that's where with that. So, do you have any other questions about the payment ofinvoices of the checks? - No.- Okay. - Other than improving it.- Mm-hm. Now, do we have any other questions? I just wanna say that as a board, we must determine what is required to effectively fulfillour role as governance. And so, if the board feels that they cannot fulfilltheir role as governance, then we can bring that forward. Otherwise then, if you'recomfortable with what we have. Yes. - Can I. - You may. - Is a description anywhereelse, like on the website, and the finance documents, is there anywhere elsethat information is. - Not at like on a per invoice level, it's something that could be generated, but it's not somethingthat's out there anywhere. - How many different classificationsshow up on that report? - I think it wouldprobably be 50 to 100 pages to include that level of detail in the board packet.- But A, C. - Oh, that classificationwould be pretty simple. If we were to provide thebreakdown or more description that Mr. Skaar is asking for, that would really enhancethe length of the report. - [Beloyed] Can you giveme a couple examples of those classifications? - Yeah, so the one that comes to mind that's really obviousis Amazon, for example, Amazon, we get an invoicefor every single shipment. So, we may make one purchase that comes in seven different shipments. And so, each one of those would show up as a separate line item. And then, each of thosepayments may show up as a different like budget code. So, it's Mrs. Johnson's suppliesand Ms. Beloyed's supplies. And so, that's the kind ofdata that would be presented. We try to be prettydetailed in our descriptions in our finance software. So, yeah, it would show the supply, it would show the name of the consultant. Well, there's a coupleof different varieties that we could pull. - Are there any othersubcategories that you have? A. A could have 500 differentclassifications under it based on what it is, correct? - Yes.- Probably not 500. - Yep. - Is there anothersubclassification that is smaller that could go under A,so that we're not talking about 2,000 pages worth of meeting notes? - I'd have to dig in and just kind of see that's not like a canned report, that I'm aware of aboutour finance afterwards. Certainly, I think somethingthat we could create. - I'm assuming this is just a program and we put it together andit runs and we print it out. I didn't count how many pages this was, but if we went to all the classifications, how many pages would that make this. - Without actually running it, I don't wanna misspeak and say, but it would be significantly larger. - [Beloyed] So, right now,it's 90, would we say over 200? - Potentially. Just because this isone line item per check and it's really notuncommon for each check to have multiple budget codes. So, I'd have to run it, I don't wanna. - Is there a possibilitybefore anybody makes a decision on this that we could seean example report before? - [Speaker] Yeah, and I thinkmaybe something we would run by our executive finance committee. - Okay, all right, thank you. - [Arcand] Okay, thank you. Ms. Thompson. - If anybody in the communitywanted to ask any questions about what is on our financereport, they're welcome to call and talk as we know with anybody that they had a question about. So, if they wanted toknow what item 148248 is, they could call up and say, "Hey, can you explain whatwe spent this money on?" - Yes.- Okay. Thank you. - [Arcand] I just ask, wouldthat require a data request or is that a simple question? - If they just called it. - Pretty simple.- It was pretty simple. I would be able to just answer. - Okay.- Yep. - [Kazmierczak] Depends on the scope of that.- Yep, correct. - [Kazmierczak] If it was asimple one like that, it'd be. - [Arcand] Mr. Skaar,you had a question too. - Well, you know, there'sother ways to simplify this. I mean, you could just put everything that's whatever is over 10,000. We could stratify it based on that, that would be a lot less. And then, you could putthe description on there. So anything less than 10,000,we don't review or approve. We rely on the controls that you have within your department. We can take this offline if you wanna have a discussion about how to simplify this reportto make it more meaningful and not put the onus on thepublic to call the district, but put the onus on us to be clear in our reporting to the public. I'd be happy to do that. - [Arcand] Yeah, Ms. Thompson, - Just a follow up. How many times has anyone in the public called and asked about? - I've never received a call. - You used to be in our financedepartment, Dr. Kazmierczak. - [Kazmierczak] Yeah, I don't recall any- - As a board members,we're all able to call and ask any number of questions about anything that's inour packet that we received. - [Kazmierczak] From time to time, board member will do that, yep. - Yeah, I mean, I could seeadding the table at the end to what R, C, A, that might be somethingthat's simple and doable. Those are questions I had to ask what those letters stood for, with the ones that I couldn'tfigure out, some are obvious. Okay. No further questions. - Okay. I would just say that us asking and communicating withstaff outside of the public, I don't think isnecessarily a good practice. So, I'm thinking that,the questions that I have maybe other people have, theydon't have the time to call. Why shouldn't we make thisconvenient for the public to understand our finances? That's all I'm getting at.- Okay. - And I would be happy towork with staff and the board to try to simplify this tomake it more meaningful for us and for the public. - I think it's important thatwe follow our governance, and so this is something we can have here that we let the financedepartment bring forward. That's my opinion. We want it out in publicif we're gonna do that. So, what I heard was maybethey would run a sample report so we could first see and move that way. But the question on hand, I go back to, we have the invoices and check registry where you're trying to approve. So, I wanna bring it back to the question. Is there any other questions or comments? Okay. This will be a roll call vote. I'll ask the clerk to call the roll. - [Ellison] Streiff Oji. - I'm sorry, what are we voting on now? - Approving-- Approving the register- - The register that we pulledoff the consent agenda. - The invoices-- As it stands. - As it stands.- Yes. - Okay. - Streiff Oji.- Aye. - Thompson.- Aye. - Arcand.- Aye. - Beloyed.- Aye. - Ellison, aye. Skaar.- Aye. - Okay, and then we canlook at future media to see how you're gonna put it on theagenda, so I'll look at that. - You will?- We'll look. See if we can get it in. - Can I get a commitment that we'll put it onthe agenda to discuss? - Well, we're gonna waitand see what they bring. - Okay. All right. - Okay, so now, it'stime for public forum, but we have zero requests to speak. So now, we're gonna go downto C1, student recognition. Dr. Kazmierczak. - All right, thank you, ChairArcand, members of the board. Tonight, we proudlycelebrate the achievements of fishing team members who participated in the Minnesota Junior Bass Nation High School Championship. Congratulations to each of youfor state level recognition. We also extend our sinceregratitude to the dedicated staff and supportive family members who played a vital role in this success. In recognition of their accomplishments, students have received acertificate, a Bear pin, and a letter acknowledgingtheir achievement. Now, please join us in watching a video highlighting their accomplishments. And this is a shorter onethan what we've seen lately, but go, Bears, nonetheless. (board members laugh) (gentle music) (upbeat music) - [Arcand] Well, thatwas awesome, thank you. They can always come inmy boat and fish with me so I can catch some of those. - [Kazmierczak] Teach you therope, teach you the ropes. - We're gonna move on toC2, superintendent's report. Dr. Kazmierczak.- All right, thank you. All right, so in addition toour regular communication, we invite our community to follow us on our district Facebookand Instagram pages. Every Friday, we will post a video update of The Week in 62.4 Seconds. And weekday mornings, right at6:24 am, we will share facts on the district's Facebookand Instagram pages. Videos can also be found onthe district's YouTube channel. Otter Lake Elementaryand Mariner Middle School are among just 13 schoolsstatewide to be recognized as 2025-26 Minnesota Schools of Excellence by the Minnesota ElementarySchool Principals Association. Whiter Bear Lake AreaSchools is the only district in Minnesota to have morethan one school earned this prestigious honor this year. We are incredibly proud of the hard work, the Otter and Marinerstaff members have put in to innovate and lead theirschools toward student success. Terrific things arehappening in both buildings and our students arebenefiting from the investments of our staff, families,and the entire community. Two of our elementaryschools are celebrating new playgrounds with ribboncutting ceremonies this week. Otter Lake Elementarycommunity dinner ribbon cutting and celebration event ishappening from 5:30 to 7:00 on Thursday, September 11th. And Birch Lake Elementaryribbon cutting will take place at 4:00 pm as part of theBounce Back to School Event on Friday, September 12th. The event is hosted in collaborationwith the Birch Lake PTA and the White Bear LakeChamber of Commerce. The playgrounds were built withan emphasis on inclusiveness of all abilities and we'redesigned with student input. We look forward to the structures being enjoyed for many years to come. Homecoming will kick offon Sunday, September 21st with a Bear Bike Ride anda Bounce House Carnival. It's a funny event for allages, so bring the whole family. The homecoming parade is Friday,September 26th at 4:30 pm in downtown White Bear Lake, followed by the football gameversus Forest Lake at 7:00 pm. The complete list of homecoming activities can be found on the district website. And join us at Central Middle School to tour completed construction projects, including the new gymnasiumedition, expanded cafeteria, renovated learning commons, and more. A community open houseevent will take place from 4:30 to 6:30 pm onWednesday, September 24th. And September is the MinnesotaSchool Board's Associations, School Board Recognition Month, Guiding Light for Student Success. To recognize school boardmembers for the commitment to Minnesota's Public School students. Board members, we'vecreated this year's version of our Bearshey's bar tocommemorate and honor you. This is our traditional.- Yes. - Yeah, at this board meeting.- Thank you. - Thank you for yourcommitment to the success of our students and our community. And the ingredients,thoughtfulness, accountable, open, representative voice,good-willed, conscientious, fiscally responsible,supportive, and proud. So I'm gonna hand these down. Tom, there's one for you here too. All right, now Marissa, were you gonna do another picture or not? Not on this. No, I don't think. (people laughing) I think we're good. All right, thanks for all you do. - Okay, thank you. We appreciate the support. Now, we're gonna go to an exciting time. We're gonna go to openingschool report, Dr. Kazmierczak. - All right, I'll kick it off. So, we've enjoyed welcoming students back for the 2025-26 academic year. Elementary and secondarystudents started last week, early childhood, starting this week. Throughout the district, therewere many exciting smiles as students returned toschool after summer vacation. And for many students, they're in White Bearfor the very first time, so welcome to those students as well. And tonight, membersof our leadership team will provide an update onthe work done this summer to help students, staff, and families get off to a good start. So, up first is teaching andlearning with Dr. Gillespie. - Chair, members of the board,thanks for having us tonight. We get to share all the workthat happens over the summer to make sure we're readyfor another school year. Really the key to the workthat we do in our teaching and learning departmentsis we partner very closely and collaborate with our principals to make sure not only are our staff ready for the upcoming schoolyear, but also our students. And so, I'm gonna highlight the work that our staff has done over the summer, and then also some opportunities that students have taken advantage of, to start the year with a lot of momentum. We do a lot of leadershipdevelopment over the summer, that actually starts in June. We prepare for the beginningof the school year, as you know, throughout the spring. But in June, our leaderstook two days to really dive into what was the data showing us. How do we start preparingand really thinking about launching the school year in August. And that was an enhanced version of what we've done in other school years. And so, we keep doubling down on this, what's our instructional leadership? How is that influence? As I've mentioned before toyou, principals are second, depending on the research, sometimes first, in terms oftheir influence on students, because our teachersabsolutely have an influence on student achievement principles because they influence the teachers in each one of our buildings. And so, we worked oninstructional leadership, database decision making. Over the summer, a lot of curriculum workhappens with our instructors. We worked, and I'll talk alittle bit more specifically. We also had our InstructionalLeadership Institute, which we started a fewyears ago, enhancing that. We're in August, solely principals andhave two days in June, and then there's two days inAugust where each principal, we bring 'em together at North Star and they dive in withtheir teams of leaders and educators to really specifically look at each one of their schools, what are their continuousimprovement goals. That launch is a process for them. They work then withtheir leadership teams, turning in their schoolimprovement plans to us by the end of September. And so, we're really proud of the work that's been done there. Hosting it at North Star as you know, it's a beautiful space, butit also allows for our schools to do cross collaborations. So, we have elementaryschools sharing their goals. We're able to quickly get, if there's transition goals that come up for our kids coming fromfifth to sixth grade, and then teaching andlearning staff is there to support the principals. And then, finally, we have professionaldevelopment all summer. A big focus is our continuedimplementation of the READ Act and our literacy professional development. And then again, I've mentioned, curriculum implementation and development. Two areas of professionallearning that I wanna highlight, this year will be the year thatwe do our literacy training with our paraprofessionals. And so, in August, we had150 of our paraprofessionals come together for a day of learning. And that was the firsthalf of their learning, the second half will comethis coming school year. But really the focus of theREAD Act is any of our paras that support instructionwith our students. And so, the instructionsdirected by the teachers, but they also need to haveprofessional development around the science of reading. White Bear continues to be a leader in terms of the timelineand implementation of that. I'm really proud of ourstaff, thankful for the paras, that's a lot to come into right away, but it's really importantfor our students. The other part is our middle school English language artscurriculum planning continues, and that's been reallyexciting seeing both of our middle schools havean opportunity to align and really think about what'sthat guaranteed experience that we wanna have for our students, regardless of what middleschool they might attend in sixth, seventh, and eighth grade. We welcomed close to 70 new educators, we do that the week before workshop week. And so, August is extremely busy. The theme this yearwas Proud to be a Bear. It was really exciting. Our new teachers spend timewith their mentor, teachers, instructional coaches in their buildings, and then we bring them together for a half day on thesecond day to talk about what it means to bepart of White Bear Lake. They hear from each one ofour different departments in the district and get achance to meet each other. And so, it's a really exciting time, and lots of positive energystarting their time with us. Then as I mentioned, our students have been reallybusy this summer as well. I asked Brian Peloquin,our activities director who will come throughoutthe year and update you. But our numbers, we have 850plus students participating in student activities in the fall, which is an increase fromwhat we saw last year. We had 347 students participate in summer strength and conditioning. Our progress towards graduation. So, over the summer, we offercredit recovery opportunities for our high school students. We had four additional summer graduates, and then 200 plus students participate. And it's really importantthat we get them back on winning streaks is howwe would talk about it. If they failed, life happensto all of us as we know, help them recover those credits, and so they can start theyear close to being on track. So, it's exciting that we had that manystudents participate. Then, our career pathways. We've mentioned this a few times, we had 15 metro-area students participate in the Minnesota Trades Academy. White Bear continues tohave the highest number of students participating in that. We had five high school studentswork at Chromebook Parts and I wanted to make surethey worked in production, repair, and house roles tomeet local industry needs. As you've heard, but this iswhen Derek received the award, our Automotive Career Pathway Program was named 2025 AutomotiveSecondary Program of the Year. So, that's very exciting. And then, we also received adonation from Luther Cadillac and White Bear Subaru ofa 2018 Subaru Forester for our Automotive Career Pathway. So, just really thankful andexciting times in those areas. I wanna make sure I didn'tlook at anything, I didn't. And then lastly, I wanted to highlight and give a huge shout out toour small but mighty team, is how our tech department described them. These young students were partof the Tech Depot this summer and they worked to prepare and deliver 1500 student Chromebooks and 200 staff Chromebooks, managing the entire processfrom unboxing to deployment. They also ensured that all return devices were efficiently processedand prepared for repurposing. They're dynamic. We're very grateful for them. That's a lot of work thathappens over the summer. So, that was my highlight. - [Arcand] My question is, do we wanna take questions at the end? We can do it at the end. What's that?- However you wanna do it. - [Arcand] Okay. We'll grab it at the end if that's okay.- Okay. - All right. Good evening, Chair Arkand,members of the board. For the operations update. We provided a constructionupdate to the board in August. And so, this is just a very short version of what you saw in August. You see, we completed the Mariner Middle School,phase 2 HVAC improvements, and that's actually the end ofthe HVAC improvement projects at Mariner Middle School. A complex project, and we're really pleasedto have that done, and the ceiling's all closed up at Mariner before the kids arrive. Central Middle School, the phase 2 building renovationis complete, cafeteria, and the kitchen were a bigpart of that this summer as well as HVAC. And I didn't put on the slide, but also the renovation ofthe old district offices. Sunrise Park, the building we're in now,we completed phase two. So, the senior center, theprofessional development suites, gymnastics, all of those are completed. And it's been a lot offun to see our seniors in the building, making goodmusic and lots of good energy, and as well as our gymnastshave been filling the gym just about every night. So, a lot of excitementaround Sunrise Park. And then, as Dr. Kazmierczak mentioned, the inclusive playground completion at Birch Lake and Otter Lake. The big project underwaystill is Sunrise Park, we'll complete the early childhood and transition educationprojects by spring, and have those spacesready for use in the fall. We have a couple solar projects that will be rolling out later this fall at Vadnais Heights Elementaryand the high school. Those solar projects were possible in part because we were able toget a really generous grant through the Solar for Schools Program. You can see the SunrisePark renderings on top and you can see how those entrances to early childhood andtransition education will pop a little bit. So, it's clear where to enter just as we have on thedistrict service center side. And you can see the rest of the building once you get past that construction wall, there's a lot ofconstruction still happening. For safety and security, this is definitely heightened awareness and concern around safetyand security in schools. And our hearts are with theAnnunciation Catholic community as they grieve. Projects and improvementsin security are ongoing. And as we complete the projects such as Central Middle School recently, we complete the securityupgrades with them, and so much of Central's was in place before this summer phase of construction. And then, as we completed likethe kitchen and cafeteria, we add those new securityfeatures as well. Emergency drill in management,we have a new digital system to manage tracking emergency drills. And so, this is acommunication improvement, just helps us with theefficacy of those drills. And we're rolling out a digitalpackage communication app that we're starting at the high school, and that's been rolledout with administrators, and our student supervisors, initially, as we start the school year, and would be bringingteachers and staff on board at the high school over the next month, then we'll be rollingit out to middle school and elementary schools. And this will provide reallyimproved communication. Teachers and staff will havethe ability to report anything that they have concernsright through that app. It'll include our first responders. And so, we're pleased to berolling that out as well. Last spring, we added some videos to our safety and security webpage. So, if you go to theAbout and Safety Security, you'll find the standardresponse protocols. Those are really consideredbest practice in schools. The standard response protocols are from the I Love You Guys Foundation, and they provide that common language for all people who are concerned and involved in a schoolcommunity to utilize when considering lockingdown a school for any reason. And so, encourage you to look at the safety andsecurity webpage for that. Nutrition services. They're entering the third year of the free school meals program, but there's some prettycrazy numbers there. They've served almost half amillion breakfast last year, and over a million lunches. Remember that that's acrew of about 80 people in our nutrition services staff that are putting outabout 9,000 meals a day. So, a pretty incredible effort. So, I congratulate Bridget Lehn and her entire team inthe nutrition services, what they do to provide ourkids, really great meals, and with a pretty positiveattitude while they're doing it. They're the recipientsof the Bronze Berry Award and that recognizes nutritionservices departments who have a lot of creativity and how they utilizelocally grown foods raised by Minnesota farmers. On the photos on there, you can see one of those locally grown foods that big, I don't even know how to describe it. Tank of chicken, wild ricesoup that they're making there. And then, the meal on the bottom right, she tells me, honey hot wings,salad, biscuit, and a banana. And one of the favoritelunches in our schools. Nutrition services departmenthas been awarded two grants for electric school buses. And so, they're continuing towork on preparing for that. One from the MPCA, and then two buses fromthe Department of Commerce. We're pleased that while we have a bus drivercontinuing nationally, and in Minnesota inWhite Bear Lake schools, we are fully staffed withour drivers and aids. That doesn't mean we willalways be fully staffed, and so we continue to lookfor really passionate people to work in that area. Yeah, it's cut off a littlebit on the bottom there, but our contractors and our drivers will drive over 1.8 million miles, bringing kids to andfrom school this year, and they'll have overhalf a million bus stops. And so, that requires a lot ofsafety, commitment to safety. You probably know this, but our director oftransportation is better known around the district as Safety Dave. And so, they have aterrific record of safety in our transportation department and we expect that to continue this year. And that's it. We'll turn it over to Mr.Mons in Human Resources. - Hello, everybody. As Tim was saying, often weare staffed for the moment and then still looking. My department took on thesomewhat herculean task along with all of our hiring managers of bringing on 152 newemployees this year, and 67 of whom areeducators in our system. And that's a ton of work to make sure that we get really excellent people in front of all of our stakeholders. So, I'm deeply appreciativefor all of that. The summer is definitely not the time in the human resourcesdepartment where we take a break, that tends to be ourbusiest time of the year as we make those transitionsand wrap up for staffing, but we are very pleased tonote that we are fully staffed. At the same time, we're always lookingfor quality candidates that are excited to join our team, and this moment is no different for that. We will absolutely have ongoingopenings through the year, and we make lots of efforts to go out and reach our community, and will continue to lookfor opportunities to do that. One thing that I will noteis, we've really, I think, through the school culturepositive news that's out there, we're in a much better place staffing wise than a lot of our neighboring districts, again, for which I'mdeeply appreciative of. So, that's really thework that we've been doing as we have made our way through the summer and geared up for the year. - All right, good evening,chair, members of the board. Thanks for having us here tonight to share the opening school report updates for our departments. We're kicking off mydepartments right away with a slight name change. If you guys have noticed or if you've seen in our recent catalog thatjust came out into homes as part of our strategicemergence planning process last year, two of ourmain areas of focus are that we're around identity and culture, which we're tasked to divide, or to create newly developedcore values for our department. So, through a processthroughout during the year, we develop new corevalues for our department, which are care, connect and create, and then a really strong focus on joy in many different areas. But we diverted that into atagline at the bottom there, which we've also seenin our catalog as well, where the communityeducation and recreation, Discover Your Passion, Define Your Joy. And I have to give kudos to Dan Schmidt, principle at North Star,as he did a mic drop at one of our advisor councilmeetings for that tagline. But everyone loved it and it stuck. And following developing this core values, we went through a cohesivebranding standards process, and to create a new brandand new marketing materials and stuff to create thosecohesive branding standards across our departments, or programs all across our departments. So, what I'm just showinghere are a quick overview here is some new logos that you'll be seeing and probably have seen on the website. So, the name change from Community Servicesto Community Education. Again, following that process, our whole team was involved in that, really felt that hasbeen our name since 1955. As you can see, we kind of put that into that brand of established, the department's beenestablished since 1955, kind of honoring that history. But really felt that shiftingthat shift from services to education really reflectsthe heart of who we are, and connects our work to the broader field of community ed across the state as well. And you should see a slight, the logo on the leftthat resembles a T-shirt that some people have beenknown to wear around the area. So again, kind of fitting that history into a new logo and a new brand, but honoring that historyof where we've come from, and where we are, and where we're going. So we are all very,very excited about that. So, a core logo on the left, and then you'll see individual badge logos that we call on the rightthroughout the presentation, which every one of ourprogram areas are able to use to help promote their programsand find that unified source. So, what we really wanted was anybody that received anythingfrom early childhood to senior programming sees our stuff and they know it's community, right? So, super excited to kickour year off this year, and then as we lean in more into our strategic planpriorities for this year, that'll be grounded around communicationand staff development. So, looking forward to movingthat forward this year. As Dr. K mentioned earlier on his update, early childhood startedtoday, we were very excited to see our preschoolersjoin us for the school year. The numbers you see on the screen for ECFE and pre-K have been adjusted a slight bit. We're at 131 and 282. ECFE is up 19 studentsfrom this time last year, and then we're up 18 students from this time last year in preschool. Again, I believe you are all well aware, but we have full day andhalf day program options across the district atall of our eight sites, which includes six ofour elementary buildings, and then our NormandyPark Education Center, as well as our partnershipwith Tamarack Nature Center. We continue to have amaintain focus on alignment with our elementary buildingsand preparing our students to get ready for elementary school. We have a new leader, our new assistant directorof early childhood, Jennifer Chappuis startedwith us in the fall. It was really hit the ground running. Things are going great. She hit up four or five buildings today, and I hit up the other ones. But strong start to the year, and looking forward to day two tomorrow. And another partnership thatwe're continuing to work on is with our WashingtonCounty Head Start Program in the north end of the community in Hugo as they complete theirlicensing requirements and get approval. Once that approval is done, we'll be looking to partner with them and our ECFE team on some outreach and family events andactivities to bring awareness to the Hugo Early ChildhoodCenter up in Hugo, the former Hugo Elementary building. As we continue our facilitiesplan of trans, (stammers) ugh, transitioning that spaceto an early childhood center. Out of school time, whichincludes extended day, I think the big focus right there is in that little shadedregion for this fall. We're currently at 1,010contracts to start the year, which is amazing. Big increase from where we were last fall, but the biggest highlight onthere is the current wait list, current wait list of 33 kids. And a majority of thosehave all been people that have submitted contractswithin the last two weeks. So, that's a huge, huge appreciation and recognition for all thework and outta school time, all the work they've doneto build partnerships across our buildings andworking on finding staff to create that, thatis a significant shift as you see from the last two years. Couldn't be prouder of allthe work that they're doing, the passion they're putting into it. It's just been great. So, another big shift inthat has been the partnership with our Future BearEducators at the high school. So, I think you guys remembersharing about that last year. So, when they start,they're able to start, I think this week ornext week after training, they have to have theirfirst couple days of classes as part of that programand that partnership. But once they begin programming, we do expect to alleviatethat wait list pretty quickly. So, it's a huge, huge partnershipand we're super excited. The high school folks have been fantastic. Matt mentioned numbersfrom human resources, and again, we couldn't do itwithout HR having our backs and processing people, onboarding people, bringing them on board. So, it's been a huge lift. So, I wanna take timeto recognize our team and human resources aswell, they've been amazing. As we get going, their focus is gonna beincreasing non-school day and summer registrations,and then continuing to offer before and after schoolprogramming and partnership with our after schoolcommunity learning grant. We're in year two. This grant we are awarded from MDE to provide additionalopportunities to our title schools in the south end of the district. Just some highlights from there listed. So, we are actively working with students that are in extended day, and then working in collaborationwith our school psychs and social workers toidentify other students who might be in need of someenrichment opportunities that would qualify forsome free experiences. So, we do that in collaboration with them and partnering with community vendors. We offer opportunities betweenthat 2:15 to 2:30 time, and then additional enrichment by our team for that remaining timeuntil five o'clock. Students that participate in this program, that will end at 5:00. And then, we do have atransportation partnership with our community friendsat NewTrax that we have kids that may need a ride homeare able to get a ride home from those four sites after school. And their goal is to continueto expand that offering. It's a three-year grant, so they would like to see anadditional 83 kids recruited to participate in thatprogram after school by the end of this school year. So again, wonderfulopportunities happening. It's nice to haveopportunities in buildings that in the past, on thatside we've seen a lot of cancellations due to notgetting minimum numbers. With the grant in place, we're able to offer thesewithout worrying about minimums. It's cost is covered, they'recoming in, which is great because it allows that foundation to grow, and that word of mouth builds up across, friends tell their friends, friends tell their parents,and they participate, and then, hopefully, weget increased numbers. So, just some examplesof enrichment topics that are included, aroundcooking, art, engineering, theater, improv, yoga fitnessand many, many more areas. So, that's also in collaborationwith our youth enrichment. So, we've seen an increaseof 150 students enrollment over our summer programs, which you saw a couple slides back. Our middle school flex program numbers were down a little bitfrom the year before, but our enrichment numbers have increased. So, we think it's a nicelittle trade off of families just looking for differentflexible options, providing their kids different options and opportunities throughout the summer, and still participatingwithin our program offerings. They did do an intentional reduction of core offerings for the fall. You see it's 20 less courses but only, what is it, eight less sections. Mainly part of the week, we offered a lot last falland ended up having to cancel. So, what they did kind ofreflected, we have a new person that filled our youth enrichment rule too. It just kind of reflectedon starting the fall of what went well last year, and let's start with thoseand try to get those filled, so we have less cancellations happening to start the school year here. We continue to explore additionalpartnerships constantly to create differentopportunities and new activities and things for ourstudents to participate in. So, we're always looking for new vendors, and working, especially withvendors to offer some music and cooking classes, especiallyat our middle school level. And I think another great thing too, towards the end of last year, and even a little bit over the summer, we've had our own teachers reaching out, asking if they can provide different enrichmentopportunities after school, which we love. We're working with aspecific teacher with us, we're able to offer that at alower cost for families too, since we're not paying a vendor, like an outside business coming in, so we highly encourage and are excited to work with our teachers to offer differentopportunities around areas that they like to workfocus on with outdoors, cooking, whatever it may be. So, if they're listening,which I'm sure they all are, (board members laughing) we'd love to have them reach out to us and look for different opportunities, we continue to offer thekids throughout the year. Our youth rec and middle school athletics are off and running. These programs, especiallyin a flag football, soccer, I mean, it's just insanethe amount of kids that we're serving to come out. Between flag football, recvolleyball, rec soccer, we got over 900 kids participating in our programs right now. We have in collaboration with some other surrounding communities, we have a new girls flag football league for grades three through eight. So, we'll be looking tohave those teams play against other surrounding communities of the girls flagfootball, which is awesome. It's nice to see thatthose opportunities grow and the popularity of flagfootball grow around the area. Of course, we couldn'tdo any of our rec sports without our parent volunteers and adult volunteers that help coach. So, Matt's working with overaround 90 some parent coaches that make this go. So, a huge thank you tothem and we hope to continue that high volume ofvolunteers in the future, it's a huge, huge help. Middle school sports, again, we're off and runningfor the fall, so it's busy, and we're also runningsome ultimate frisbee as an intramural option at this time. And just Matt made me sure to mention that rec basketball'sright around the corner so information for thatwill be coming out soon. And then, going into our adultprograms and facility use, again, Wayne mentioned thisin his report last week. Over at the senior center,we had our grand reopening of our new space and itwas a hopping place to be with little kind of exhibitvendor tables of our clubs and different activities that they can do as part of our senior center program. I saw Mr. Wald talking to ahandful of people a couple times or over there for a long while too. They had your attention, but it was great, we had a lot of people overthere volunteering, helping out, and a lot of staff from districtcenter came down to support and check in, and seewhat everything was about. But we've seen a lot of newpeople coming through too, which has been great. I think the move, Marissa helping with sharingthe update of the new space, it's kind of caught a lot of people's eye. We had some people thatlive right across the street that popped over last week and just said, "Well, you guys moved across the street," so we figured we might as well walk over and see what you're doing. So, welcome everybody, welcome all. We hope to see more coming through. We're at about 241 membersat the senior center. We're averaging about35 to 50 visitors a day on a non-foot care day. (chuckles) So, traffic doubles and wehave our foot care come in, which is a huge programand glad to offer it. Yeah, so they're workingto continue to advocate for our new space and make people know what's available to them. We'll continue our TGIFmeals, our holiday meals, our craft corner events, and partnering with localservice organizations to help kind of gain awarenessand gain some new membership and let people know thatwe're here to help 'em out. Our Meals on Wheels is running strong, we're averaging around 1500 meals a month coming out of our kitchen. They're heated, packed and delivered, again daily by a team of volunteers. So again, it comes backto people in the community that wanna make sure they'rehelping their neighbors and helping people out. So, if anybody here is interested or anybody listening interested and wanting to be a MealsOn Wheels volunteer driver, don't hesitate to reach out. We're always in need of people that wanna help deliver meals. And adult enrichmentcontinues to be strong. We're starting to use morespace at the high school with growing enrichmentclasses and activities as the buildings have settled in there, excited to use our newspaces to expand offerings and new class options forour adults that are looking to find hobbies and exploredifferent interests. So, we're really excitedto use our spaces. It's also been evidentin our facility rentals. We continue to see expandedrentals across the district of people that wanna usecommunity room meeting spaces, and especially our gymsand our field spaces. We have an amazing facilities that we should all be proud of, and we're here because of them, so we're happy that they're using them, and our local associationsand community are benefiting from those new spaces as well. So, it's really been a great thing to see. And then, another big shoutout here on the right, the Hippodrome Ice Arena. We had a new dehumidifier putin the past year allowing us to start putting ice in a little bit early and maintaining thatice a little bit later, which has been great. So, thank you to our partnership with the Local HockeyAssociation to make that happen. And then, our dry flooractivities in the off season, the off ice seasonshave also been expanding with inline leagues, craft shows, home improvement shows are justsome different opportunities and programs that have used that Hippodrome in the off season. But a special recognitioncoming out this year. This will be the 100years of the Hippodrome this coming fall here. So, I'll be working with John Anderson. We haven't come up withfinalized plans yet, but we definitely wannafind a way to recognize and highlight the Hippodrome this year, celebrating a hundredyears, it's a big deal. And then, just anotherupdate, it's out there, but on the About Ussection of our website, you can find all of ourpublications and upcoming events. So, you'll find catalogs,our senior center, the voice publication, ourcommunity bridge publication is part of our communitybridge for our adults with disabilities programs. And then, our preschoolregistration guides, ECFE guides, anything you want to know,find out about our register for authority communityed can be found there. And then, as Wayne also mentioned earlier, our Bear Bike Ridesupporting youth scholarships will be Sunday the 21st as wekind of kick off homecoming. So, we have different options there. You have a nine-mile,25-mile or 50-mile bike ride if you'd like to. And then, we're also openingthis up to all families, the little ones as well, so one mile little funride around the high school and Central Middle School campuses. It can be free to participate, and if you're looking to help contribute towards those youth scholarship funds, we do have different donation options that we ask if people would like to. But it is not a requirement to pay, if you wanna come ride, comeride, we'd love to see you. And that will wrap up right as those other highschool activities begin to kick off homecoming, so we're excited to be apart of that day on Sunday. So, thank you.- Thank you. - And for my portion ofthe meeting or this report, I'll just do a quick showand tell, I'm Marisa Vette, communications directorfor anybody watching. But hello to all of you, thankyou for having all of us. The first show and tellitem that I'll show here and I know you all havethem at the data as well, our printed calendar. And that is something that Ithink that some districts do, printed calendars. White Bear absolutelydoes printed calendars. And anytime I ask a familymember or a staff member, you know, "Do we go by the wayside?" They say, "No, we do not." I wait for that calendar, and I know Rachel gets calls, we get asked at Market Fest in July when is a calendar coming." So, that's always really fun for us to be able to produce that and work on that during the summertime. The other thing that wecertainly do all the time, but during the summer, we work on doing the Back to School pages of the website, really trying to helppeople have a one stop shop for where they wanna find information. Of course, very detailed information is always at the school site, but trying to helpfamilies really figure out where they're going asthey start the school year. And then, in addition to that page alone, just making sure that theother pages of the websites are up and ready to go as westart the new school year. So, additionally, we always do a beginningof the school letter. So, we send a letter out to our families and our staff membersas well through email, but our families receivethe letter in the mail, and then families also do receivea Spanish version of that. Something that we added this year, because we had the capabilityto do so with ParentSquare, is that we took that information and we sent it out through ParentSquare to all of our familieselectronically as well. And what that did was, it did get it to our families in English, but then it also got the information to all of our families inwhatever language they speak that we have in our parent view system. So, families did get thatinformation mailed home to them, but they electronicallygot it in whatever language they speak at home as well. So, that was something, and we'll talk about ParentSquarelater, quickly as well. But that was something wewere able to add into the mix for this year because of that new solution that we have started to use. All right, we also workedwith the nutrition services. Department, we workedwith them a few years ago, and they just run with it every year. So, that's a full confession. They've done an amazing job with it. But they send a postcardhome to all families so students can work onpunching in their numbers, which we know when we testedit a couple of years ago, that families literally did and students literally didhave fun doing the number. And then, of course, theywere sharing information about the application foreducational benefits as well, which is very importantfor families to have. On at top of mind, as the school year isbeginning to get discounts for, obviously, our school lunchesare free to everybody, but that applicationfor educational benefits is really important forfamilies to get other services and benefits as well. So, Tia and I, we're also able to work on some school videos this summer. So, the Central Middle School screenshot that you can see up thereis coming out very soon. That's being finalized this week, but it's well on its wayto being an invitation to that event that Dr.Kazmierczak talked about. That's happening, coming up on the 24th. We did do a principal welcome video, or a principal introduction video for our new Willow LaneElementary principal, and then the Bear's bus tour on the bottom pointing to the map. That is something that weshowed our new staff members to give them just a glimpse, and obviously, it's availableon our website as well. But to give our new staff members and families a glimpsethroughout the district. Convocation was something that we all came togetherat the end of August. So, our department workedon pulling together students and staff members to rouse the crowd. Thank you all, who wereable to make it for that. The weather did turn out to be beautiful as opposed to last yearwhen it was hotter than hot. So, the weather was perfectand it was a really fun way to start the day. Having the addition of the band, the drum line has always been amazing, but adding those extra bodies in, and having the full bandwas a really, really fun way to kick it off. #BackToSchoolBears, we haven't been savingthe fun for ourselves. Our families have gotten into the mix and done #BackToSchoolBearsphotos as well, so that's been fun. Again, this is a preview on Sunday when you get the e-newsletter, you'll see a collage of photos that have been turned over to us. So, it's been fun to get thecommunity involved as well. And then, additionally, we've been doing ourregular communications. Of course, our e-newsletterthat we send out is now again, on the more regular processwhile we're in the school year, our 62.4 facts that Dr.K also talked about. We do those every day at 6:24 am, and then our weekly videos on Friday, we got to publish our firstone of the school year, and hopefully, you saw allthe students sort of running into school excited, and then showcasing the#BackToSchoolBears photos as well. Some other things thatwe have on the docket. We started in Augustwith our leadership team, some communicationstrainings that we're doing. And then, we'll do trainingsthroughout the year, monthly as well with our principals, and members of our school teams. And then as I mentioned, ParentSquare, that is a communication, tool that we have beenusing district wide, and building wide principalshave been using it last school year, and this school year, ourteachers will be using that to communicate with our families as well. So, that provides familieswith an opportunity. They will get an email, they can have text capabilities as well, and it's back and forth. We've called it sort ofa many things in one, it has taken the place of email systems that we used to use forcommunity newsletters, school messenger that we used to do for school closing days, snowdays, we can use it for that. And then again, at this classroom level, we can use it for that as well. And something that's reallyneat about this program is that it has back and forthtranslation capabilities. So, I might send you something in English, and Chair Arcand, if you speak French, you would receive theinformation in French, you'd write back to me in French, and I would read it again in English, because that's what isin the system for me in knowing what to readand how to communicate. And so, that is really exciting, we'll be using that morerobustly starting or this year, and we're excited to have that capability. That's it for the show and tell. - We have a lot of fasttalkers in our group. (people laughing) Yeah. There's a lot of Vikingfans that might be that. (people laughing) Opening school, opening week enrollment. We run our opening week enrollment to report to the board at 3:00 pm on the first Friday of the school year. So, these are early numbers, and they will lookdifferent at some point. But this is where we'restarting and we'll just compare to where we were last year at this time. And so, as we look at elementary, we'll look at elementary, secondary, and then we'll look at cohort changes. At the elementary level, Birch Lake is up 20 studentsgraduated a small class. But we see have seencohort growth improvement at Birch Lake in every grade level from last year's kindergartners through this year's fourth grade, so they're attracting students there. Matoska, or excuse me,North Star, Oneka, Otter, all seeing growth, and that reflects theincreasing enrollment on the north end of our school district. We're seeing a drop atLakeaires and Lincoln, both of those schools enrolledsmaller elementary classes. And as we look at kindergarten, or excuse me, birth rate data, that's to be expected at Lincoln, we underperform that birth rate data, which can happen sometimeswithin elementary schools, you can see a 20 studentjump in a kindergarten class. We see that often in Otter Lake. Usually, Lincoln has await list in kindergarten, this year, we just saw a really small kindergartenclass report to Lincoln. And then, at Willow Lane, we saw really pretty slow enrollment throughout the summeruntil the last few weeks. And then, we really sawpretty intense registration at Willow Lane. So, Willow Lane's up a bit. At the secondary level, we're seeing a plus 22at the middle school. We're seeing some good gainsat the middle school level over this time last year. However, I'll caution youabout secondary numbers that families tend are more apt not to withdraw their students when they move or enroll in a different school. And so, we're taking those first two weeks of the school year and really cleaning up thosesecondary numbers to determine, well, how many students didn't let us know that they weren't coming back. And that was the case last year. We saw it in sixth gradelast year significantly. And so, I would just warnyou not to fall in love or to hate any of our secondary numbers. High schools that the numbers is down 55. If you look at 6-12 total, we're down 68 studentsfrom this time last year, and then with a plus 22 at the K-5 level, and the K-12 total atthe bottom is minus 46. We thought we would see abit of a downtick this year 'cause we were graduatinga larger senior class, bringing in a smaller ninth grade class. Really, the ninth grade class has performed better than expected. And we'll kind of get somecontext in these numbers as we look at cohorts. So, you follow thecohorts from year to year, you can see in kindergartenwe enrolled 557. And first grade, we have 564 first graders that cohort as kindergartners were at 546. So, this year's kindergartenclasses a tick bigger, but that really goodgrowth in first grade, and then second gradefrom 600 to 628 is great. I just wanna point out, that cohort of 628 second gradwas 591 as kindergartners. So, we really are seeing some good growth in the early grades. And you see that all theway through fourth grade, pretty significant cohort growth. Fifth grade kinda leveled off. Sixth grade, I said we had a smaller fifth grade class entering, but it's a large sixth gradeclass so that's interesting. We'll see how those numbers pan out here over the next few weeks. Sometimes people have enrolled their kids in multiple schools, trying to figure it out over the summer, and then forget to tell the school that they're not attending. So, we'll keep watching those numbers at the secondary level. Yeah, that ninth grade beingat plus 41 was a surprise. 12th grade, we always see alarge cohort jump in 12th grade, and that's because we count in our transition education numbers into the 12th grade class. So, if you take 49 is whatwe have at tech out of that, then you see the 12th gradecohort increased by 35, and we see some significant changes as students are finishingup that senior year. We get a lot of new students and some open enrollments in 12th grade, mostly at the area learning center, but we see some growth in 12th grade. When we look at just then tech out of it, and just look at the cohort growth, we're at up 138 studentsin grades one through 12. So, that's an encouraging number for us. Like I said, we'll feel moreconfident in the numbers as we get through these first few weeks and see where our secondary numbers are. We don't expect to seechanges at the elementary, those are pretty solid numbers. Okay, and that's it. - A lot of work is goingon this somewhere in fall. Do we have any questions about any of the presentationstuff that we covered? - I do.- Yes. - Of this presentation or all of them? - We were doing all youanywhere of those that we had. - Okay. So, with the operations,thank you for that update. And I agree with you onthe nutritional staff being happy and engaging. I walked through thecafeteria in the high school, and felt like welcoming, andI almost ordered something but I didn't because I shouldn't have. Didn't need to. - I mentioned to our nutrition staff how friendly they're to the kids, and I hear from them all the time. We have the nicest kidsin White Bear Lake. - Really, that's nice,that's good to hear. Question on the electric buses. Have we baked into our budget the infrastructure to charge those? - Yeah, that's included in the grants. - [Skaar] Okay. - Yeah.- Good. And then, on safety and security, and maybe this is forthe other board members. I was thinking, it maybe a good idea for us to have a securityassessment by facilities in a executive session or closed session. I've done a number of assessmentsand done security systems on facilities including K-12and critical infrastructure. So, I'd be interested in that if you think it'ssomething that we should do in executive session,it may be a good idea. The other one was on the facilities. And you're not gonna be surprised by this, because I've mentioned ita couple of times before, but the budget versus actual, we did such a great jobon being transparent on the front end of where themoney was going by facility, it was very detailed, very transparent. And now that the chickenshave come to roost, I think it'd be helpful to getwhat the actuals are compared to what the final budget was by facility. And I know the projects,everything's gonna be completed. At the end of December is acompletion date for everything? - Yeah, it'll be spring, the punch list continue, andthen there's final billing. So, it's quite a whileafter a project is complete before that budget is really sound. - [Skaar] Right. - We can say that this project is done. - Yeah. So, I think that would behelpful at the end to do that. So, maybe January, February or something like thatwould be the timeframe. - [Speaker] That might be a little early. - Okay. - [Speaker] It might be probably next fall before we'd really havewhat those numbers are. - Okay. That seems a little late, butI trust you on the timing. And then, on HR. Can I ask a question on that? - Yeah, sure.- Okay. I don't know if you need to get up but this is just a quick question. I saw those new people at theconvocation, it was a lot, and that's a lot of staffing work. So, kudos to you and yourstaff for recruiting. And then, as I got tothink about it, I thought, well, do we have a high turnover rate? Do we know what our turnover rate is for just overall or by teacher? - Yeah, our turnover rateis generally right under 5% is kind of what that tends to look like. - [Skaar] Is that voluntary or total? - That's total. So, that's including our retirements, our resignations, et cetera. - Okay, that's good. 5% is good, probably what's the average with the school districtsacross the metro-area? - [Matt] I don't have a sense of that. - Okay. That's all I had, thank you. - [Matt] Yep, you're welcome. - [Arcand] You want more? - Well, just on the community, sorry, but on the community ed one, I just wanted to sayon that, it was on 59. This is really kind of animportant nugget that I saw, which should not get unnoticed, which is our wait list was390 and it's gone down to 33. So that's a reductionin the wait list by 90%. That's impressive. And our numbers are upabout 30% from 753 to 1010. Don't quote me on 30%, Iwas doing that on my head, and I'm thinking aboutthe Vikings maybe losing. No, they won't. Listen, I got a badhistory with Monday night at the Bears with the Vikings, I don't wanna get into it. Anyways, and that's a nuggetthat we can take to say, hey, the investments thatwe made in the facilities translated into real benefits, which is reduction in the wait list and also increase in capacity. So, I think that that'san important nugget that shouldn't get overlooked, thank you. - [Arcand] All right, Ms. Streiff Oji. - Yes, I had a questionalso for community ed. Mr. (indistinct) quick question for you. I also was gonna say goodjob with things being way up, enrollment up and wait list down. I had a question. - [Matt] It's the group,it's the dean, but thank you. - You and your team, and to everybody, just so much goodhappening in this district, and I really appreciatethe work of everyone. My question was about the senior center. I heard 241 members of the senior center. Do they pay a fee or do they register, and what do they get for that? - [Maurer] Yep, so it'san annual fee of $35. - Okay. - For the year just to become a member, and then they will get accessto the clubs and activities that go on during the day. So, if they wanna be a partof wood carver, cribbage, any of the clubs ordifferent activities we have just gives them access to come in and participate in those groups. - [Streiff Oji] And that all takes place in the senior center.- Yep, all here. Yep.- Thank you. - So, feel free to stop byany time, they love visitors. They love to show what they're doing. - [Streiff Oji] Nice. - And I think another note too is part of our seniorconsortium with Ramsey County, we have additional resources that we can, if there's anybody that'sin need of something, whether it be housing help or any kind of differentresources that we don't provide, but obviously, we have a connection to help them find thepeople they need to talk to if they need any of those supports. - Nice, thank you.- Yeah, you're welcome. - [Arcand] Can I just askfor some clarity real quick? How many trips aroundthe sun do I have to make to be part of the club? - You can join tomorrow if you want. - [Arcand] Am I old enough? - Yeah.- Okay. So, I don't know.- Yep. (people laughing) - [Kazmierczak] What is the age, Tim? Some of us might havejust hit a milestone. - [Maurer] I thinkofficially it might be 55. - Oh, yeah. (people laughing) - [Arcand] But I think I need you- - [Maurer] We don't discriminate on the- - I meet that, I'll just say. Ms. Ellison. - Yeah, thank you. I just wanna start by saying kudos. I mean, this is atremendous amount of work. For anybody who thinks that educators don't work in the summer, I feel like this is theproof that that is false. So, thank you for your professionalism and expertise in your work. And I'm not sure if this is a question for Mr. Maurer or Dr. Gillespie. I love that the Future Bear Educators are the ones really helpingto alleviate the wait list. One of those is my kid and she loves it. It's really an incredibletransition for students who are interested in the education world to get to have this real life experience. And I guess my question is, 'cause when we also havethe students in the summer who are working with theChromebooks, what are they called? What do you call 'em, the tech? - The Tech Depot. - Yes, Tech Depot. Are those kids from the IT career pathway? - [Maurer] I think itwas a question for Susan. - For Susan, okay. (people laughing) No. Well, okay, because this is like amulti-pronged question here. So, for Susan that, butthen are there other ways that we are integrating ourcareer pathways students into the district? - So, currently, they'renot necessarily part of the career pathway orthey don't need to be, but as they continue to develop, there's actually thehigh school's planning to offer a Tech Depot as a course so they can learn more of that. Then, we intend to fully support them and have them work for usin the summer and continue. And even during the school year actually to help us maintain all ofthose devices during the year. - [Ellison] It's just so hands on. These students are digitalnatives and they know what to do. - Absolutely.- Wonderful, thank you. - Yeah, and I can just addwith the Future Bear Educators, which is our courses for students that maybe wanna go intothe career of education. They can be AVID Cross-Age, so they can tutor thefreshmen, sophomore students in our AVID courses, which is a college andcareer readiness courses. And they also get paid forthat experience as well. - Yeah, it's amazing. I would be interested to hearabout other career pathways as we move forward that we mightintegrate into the workings of this district. I mean, this is the reason that my daughter decidedshe wanted to be a teacher is because of the career pathway. So, I appreciate that. And then, my other question, or I guess just more of a comment is that Dr. Kazmierczak and I have talked about this for years aboutmiddle school sports, and the difficulty ofmiddle school sports. There's not, oh sorry, thank you. (board members laughing) That if you wanna participatein middle school sports, you often have to be part of a club or an association which is so expensive. And so, I'm thrilled to see that we have soccer nowin the middle school, and ultimate frisbee, basketball. I mean, it's the ability for students to be able to play thesesports in middle school as well as getting to do thingsthat are already available like the musical, andmusic, I think sets them up in such a better way and their families who might not otherwisebe able to afford it for high school. So, I'm really glad to seethat that's the path we're on and I would love to see thegrowth of that in the future. Baseball in middle schooland softball, please. - [Arcand] Thank you, any other questions? Yes, Ms. Thompson. - I don't have any questions'cause I've been asked already, but I just have to givea kudos to the new logos because I mean, I saw them both, and right away they caught my eye. And they just look nice andfresh, and it's awesome. And then the wait list waslike, I was so excited. I think I might've likeyelled out loud a little bit 'cause I know we've struggled with that. And when you have alot of parents waiting, like in that fall, where we had 390, it's a lot of calling and frustration. So, to be able to make thatgo down to 33 this year from 175 last year, Imean, kudos to everybody who worked on that andmaking sure we had the staff to support all of ourfamilies and our community, I mean, that's just fantastic to see. - [Arcand] Right. Anything else? Yes, Ms. Beloyed. - Just a question, maybe a comment. So, if the teachers, if our students are lookingto go into teaching, do we have any burgeoning people that could fix our school buses, or maybe whether if they're 16, they can drive the buseswhen we're short people? Just kidding. I think everyone has done an amazing, (people laughing) everyone's done an amazing job. I'm cautiously optimisticabout the enrollment, especially given the ECFE numbers. I mean, clearly, we'redoing something right. There's a lot of familiesthat don't have anywhere to get childcare for their kids, which is obvious by the factthat we've got over a thousand taking advantage of our program. So, I think it's great that we offer it, but it also tells sort of a bigger tale that the school districtisn't just the classroom, and it isn't just the teachers,it's a whole community wide, the responsibilities are huge. I mean, we offer some medical services at the different levels. We not like "medical, medical," but I have a cold, I go in and they can. Social services, we bring those people in. I mean, it runs the gamut andit's a very, very large job. And I just wanna saythank you to all of you because I know how muchwork you guys put in, especially over the summerto prepare for the year. So, thank you. - All right, anything else? Well, thank you, everybody. The best thing is whenyou get your dessert and you get the whipped cream on the top, this is gonna be thewhipped cream on the top. We're gonna be able tosee the welcome video. - [Kids] Go, Bears! - [Group] Go, Bears! - [Group] Go, Bears! - [Group] Go, Bears! - Go, Bears!(people laughing) - [Team] Go, Bears! - [Students] Go, Bears! - [Crowd] Go, Bears! (gentle music) - All right, thank you. We have no discussion items tonight, so we'll go right to operations E1. We're gonna have action onthe school board policies 414, and 516.5. As a reminder, we do theseall in a group together, so can I get a motion to approvethe school board policies? - So moved.- Okay, Ms. Thompson. Can I get a second?- Second. - Second by Ms. Beloyed, any discussion? Okay, hearing none, thiswill be a voice vote. All in favor say aye. - [Board Members] Aye. - Opposed, same sign. Okay, the motion carries.(gavel thuds) Now, it's time for board forum. We use this time to kindof talk about things that are coming up in the district or things that we'redoing in the district. Yes, Ms. Ellison. - Something that I got a noticeabout is the mom of a senior that I didn't know thatwe'd participated in before is the pilot programwith automatic acceptance to universities in the State of Minnesota. It's tremendous. Not all high schools in the state do it, there's a list you can find onthe website of high schools, including White Bearthat allow their students who qualify for certain universities in the State of Minnesotato be automatically accepted at the university. Yeah, okay. So, this is something I didn't know about. And so, the pressure that thisalleviates for our students who are trying to figureout their next step and to see if collegemight be the step for them is something that Ididn't even know we did, and it's wonderful. So, I just wanna saythat that's out there, students will get notificationin the next couple of weeks about the schools that theycan get into immediately. And paying for it, of course,is a whole different issue. But I think that's gonnarelieve so much stress for our parents of seniors. So, thank you.- Thank you. Yes, Ms. Streiff Oji. - So, I wanted to share a production that is coming up here in White Bear Lake at the White Bear Lake High School Theater for performing arts. It's called The Penguin Project, and it's about empowering children with special needs through theater. It was established in 2004,I think, there's 64 chapters. This chapter in White BearLake is only the second one in the State of Minnesota. It's a national program. It provides a supportiveenvironment for children with disabilities to exploretheir creative talents. It's also demonstrated that participation in the performing artstest therapeutic value by enhancing social interaction,communication skills, self-confidence and self-esteem. It's also proven to be a place where kids are able tocreate a social network that they may not haveaccess to otherwise, there are mentors that supportthose that need it on stage so they're actually apart of the production. So, kids that serve asmentors have opportunities to build relationshipsthat are ongoing over time and friendships that theymay not otherwise have. And the performance is going to be at the White Bear Lake High School, September 11th throughthe 13th at 7:00 pm, and September 14th at 2:00 pm. And I encourage y'all to go. I took my granddaughter toone of these performances and it was pretty amazing to see, and made me want to getinvolved with that as well. And I know the school district has supported in variousways, so thank you. - [Arcand] All right, Ms. Thompson. Oh, I was pointing that.- Okay, I thought you had. Ms. Beloyed.- I'm sorry. - We've kind of alreadygone over most of the stuff since it's the beginning of the year, so I wanted to put out there that September is Hunger Action Month, which also affects quitea few of our students within the schools. So, White Bear Lake haspantry, Hugo has a pantry, donations of goods are great,donations of cash are better. That way they can put the money to what they need it for specifically. So, think about that this month, and I believe, since myson was the first year, I'll just give myself alittle pat on the back since I was the one thatbrought this to Dr. K, (laughs) for a very selfish reason. But I believe what happens is every senior will receive an email and they have to opt in to the process. It was amazing for my son. It took so much pressure off of him just making that kind of decision, like who I wanted to apply to. And he didn't have to worryabout it until he already knew if he sent them something, andthey were going to say yes. So, it was an amazing thing for him. So, I'm glad you brought that up. So, I encourage all the parents, do it. And you're still gonna have to apply, but it does make the wholeprocess a whole lot easier. - Okay, thank you. I just have one thing tobring up the, oh, sorry- (Ellison speaks indistinctly) Yeah.- Oh, thank you. I was looking at the Minnesota report card that just came out recently, and our numbers went upin all the key categories. Percent of meetingstandards for math went up, percent of meeting standardsfor reading went up, and our attendance also went up. So, those are trends. You don't look necessarilyat the raw numbers, you look at the trend andthe trend is going up. We still have a lot ofwork to do, I know we do, and I know we'll continue to work on it, but I think that that's agood sign, the trends are up. The other thing I wantedto just mention is, I started using AI, and it's great. It is amazing what it can do, and it's gonna have profoundimpacts on K-12 education. This is what alpha schools claims, it can increase the speed oflearning, speed of teaching, speed of curriculum development, those are three very important things. And we're not gonna stop it, so we're gonna have to adapt to it. So, I would think, again, I know I'm giving youa lot of work here, Scott, on adding things to the agenda, but I think that one is onethat we ought to discuss at an open meeting just toget an assessment from staff, how they view AI, and maybeeven parents and students in terms of how they'reusing it, thank you. - [Arcand] Okay. - All right. - I'm just gonna talk today about Friday, the Ramsey County legal local government is having an educational program again, it'll be this Friday, February, February, whoo,September 12th from 8:00 to 9:00, it's a Zoom. And the speakers this Friday is gonna be CitizensAgainst Sex Trafficking, they're called CAST. And this is a veryeye-opening for many of us, I think, you don't realizeeverything that's going on. And so, this is a great session. Anybody from the White Bear Lake Schools can sign up and join. If you need information, let me know. I also know that if you can't make it, most of the time we video it. And so, for the Zoom session,and so if that's the case, we can send you therecorded version of it. But I encourage everybody,school counselors, or anybody, psychologists, anybody, because I think this is aneyeopener from many things, we never really realizedwhat was going on. So, I invited everybodyfrom our school district to attend that on Friday. And if you need information, let me know, I can get you the meetinginvite information. And with that, I havethat, is there any others? Well, we've come to that point. We're at the adjournment. Can I get a motion to adjourn? - [Ellison] Mr. Chair, I move to adjourn. - Okay, Ms. Ellison. Is there a second? - Second. - All in favor say aye. - [Board Members] Aye. - Opposed, same sign. Okay, motion carries.(gavel thuds)