- I have been fielding questions from candidates and community members regarding the ability to campaignfor school board elections and other races while onschool board property, and the board wishes to ensure that there is nouncertainty about the rules. There can be no signs orcampaign materials of any kind in the boardroom orthe district buildings. Campaigning around the district sites must be limited to the public sidewalks adjacent to the public roads, not on sidewalks or near entrancesmaintained by the district for the building and parking lot access. A campaign may rent spacein a district facility following our facility rental guidelines, but in that case mustnot interrupt, disrupt, or impede a district event or program. So just so that we know aswe head into campaign season. Okay. Can we stand for thepledge of allegiance please? - [Attendees] I pledgeallegiance 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. - As we begin, we are gonna go ahead and look at our mission statement. Miss Ellison, will youread the mission statement? - The mission of the WhiteBear Lake Area School District, the community at the forefrontof educational excellence, honoring our legacy andcourageously building the future, is to ensure each student realizes their unique talents and abilities and makes meaningful contributions with local and global impact through a vital system distinguished by: students who design andcreate their own future, a culture that respectsdiverse people and ideas, safe, nurturing, andinspiring experiences, exceptional staff and familiescommitted to student success, abundant and engaged community partners. - All right, thank you. We have before us an agenda.Can I get a motion to approve? - So moved.- Okay, by Ellison. A second? - Second.- Second. - I'll take it.- Yeah, second. Is there any discussion? Yes. - So at the last board meeting, I think the chair directed staff to include a presentationon district safety, given our experience rating is 39% higher than a similarly situated district, and we also actuallywere 25% last year higher than a similarly situated district, so I was wondering if wecould add that to the agenda. I thought it was gonna be on the agenda. - What is your agenda item? - Safety. Our safety record. - Okay. So you want tomake a motion for that? - I can make a motionto add it to the agenda. - Okay, we have a motion to add a discussion onsafety to the agenda. Do we have a second? Do we have a second? Do we have a second? Motion fails. (gavel bangs) All right. - Chair?- Yes, sir. - Also I don't know. The state just passed a new law regarding new anonymouswhistleblowing law, and I thought it would be good to have it added to the agenda, just have a discussion to see if folks had a chance to read it. I read it over. I think it's an importantlaw related to safety. - So do you want to make the... - Make a motion for adiscussion on the new law requiring school districts tohave anonymous whistleblowing around security and threat matters. - Do you have the law onthat, what the number is? - No, I don't have the law on it. - Okay. Is that...? Okay, so we have to addwhistleblowing. Is there a second? - I'll second it, but I'll vote againstit with these reasons, because we're not prepared, and you don't have the number of the law, and we don't have any of the information. So I'll give you a second, but I will be, when wevote, I'll vote against it. - Okay, so we are gonna...- Thank you. - We're gonna have a motion to add the amendment of whistleblowing. Any further discussion? I would just say I'dlike to see the law first before we vote, that was passed. We don't want to vote blind on something, so that would be my only concern. - Chair?- Yes, sir. - Chair, I'm not asking for a vote. I'm just asking to have adiscussion on the whistleblowing. - Yeah, but you brought it up for the law, and though we'd like to beable to see the law first. That's what I was saying. So the motion on the table is to, we have a motion and a secondto add the whistleblowing as a discussion item for tonight's agenda. Any further discussion? Okay, hearing none, all in favor of addingto the agenda say "Aye." - Aye.- All opposed, same sign? - Aye.- Okay, motion fails. (gavel bangs) We still have that motion before us. It's been approved and seconded.Any further discussion? Okay, hearing none, thiswill be a voice vote. All in favor say "Aye." Excuse me. - Aye. - Opposed, same sign. Motion carries. We also have before us a consent agenda. This contains a variety of business items that comes to us monthly,including donations, and we're always trulygrateful of the support that is shown by our community to our staff and our students, so I want to say thank you for those that havecontributed to our district. Can I get a motion toapprove the consent agenda? - So moved.- Okay. I got Thompson. Is there a second? - Second.- Second by Ellison. Any discussion? - For the payment ofinvoices, which is 6b, I have a quick question on that. So I was wondering ifwe could set aside that. - Okay, so we are gonna set aside 6b, the payment of invoices. and you have the right to do that. So can we just amendthe motion to show that, because he has a right to pull it? - So, Chair, point of order. I think we don't have to amend the motion because there doesn't needto be a second and a vote, so we can just approvethe consent agenda... - Approve the consent agenda without 6b. - Correct.- Okay. Any further discussionon the consent agenda? - I would like to make acomment on Mr. Skaar's removal of that part of the agenda. - Okay, this is discussion. Go ahead. - Okay, I believe thatMr. Skaar uses the motion over and over again to create doubt and unfounded uncertaintyabout the district's finances and the people who are inthe finance department. You say it's foraccountability each month. You have been asked to letthe director of finance in advance know what your questions are, either the day of, the hourof, or 10 minutes before, but you refuse to do that. Each month we have over 1,000 invoices on the consent agenda. This way she can be specific about the details of your question. I believe you do this as theatrics to create suspicion ratherthan accountability. I, for one, do not trust your motives. The finance department hasalways been more than happy to answer any questions I have or other members of the school board, but you consistently wantto create a gotcha scenario. - Any further discussion? Yes, Mr. Skaar. - I'd like to respond to that.- Go ahead. - I think anything that'spresented on the board agenda can be questioned. - You have the abilityto do that beforehand. - I have allowed youto speak. May I speak? - You can.- Thank you. Anything presented on the boardto the board on the agenda can be questioned. I provided several alternatives to staff on how to provide this information in a more meaningful way to the public and not in a random manner. The fact that staff doesn't know what we are supposed toapprove is troubling, especially given the fact that staff presented adouble payment of $545,000 for IT services in 2025that the board approved. The board was culpable inthis serious financial error. Again, I provided suggestions to make these reports moremeaningful for the public instead of a random list of invoices. No action. I can't approve items on the agenda that staff cannot explain andin a random format, period. - Okay. Thank you. And I'm just gonna say what I heard was one of the things weask when you have questions, if you can reach out ahead of time so that we're to workwith the superintendent with the questions too, so that he can give you answers prior to the board meeting if possible. That's what we've beentrying to work through. - Chair?- Yes, sir. - I offered staff to reach out to me, to reach out to me, thatI would talk to them. - But if you have a question, you should be reachingout to the superintendent. The procedure is... - Reach out specificallyfor your questions. - The procedure is that we,when you have a question, we work through the superintendent, and 'cause he's our employee, and then they work with the people when you have that question and then give you that information. That's how we're trying to do it. So that's all I'm saying,is if you have questions, it helps them prepare. - May we move on to my questions, please? - Okay. Do you call in a vote?- Pardon me? - Are you trying to call a vote? 'Cause we're still in discussion. - Yeah, to call into question. - Okay. Any other... I can just ask, does anybodyhave any further discussion? Okay, so can I get a motion to approve 6b of the consent agenda? 'Cause we can't discusswhat we don't have. - But we have the motionon the table to... - Oh, yes.- Okay. So we have a motion on the table to approve the consent agenda. - Okay, have we voted? Oh, sorry. - We have not voted on that. So we have that motion on the table. - We should vote on that first. - We'll vote on that first. And then... - Thank you. - 6b we can...- All right. So right now we have theconsent agenda without 6b. This will be a roll call vote. I'll ask the clerk to call a roll. - Arcand?- Aye. - Daniels? Aye. Ellison?- Aye. - Skaar?- Aye. - Thompson?- Aye. (gavel bangs) - Motion passes. Now, let's try it again. Can I get a motion to approve6b of the consent agenda? - So moved.- Can I get a second? - Second.- Second by Daniels. Moved by Ellison, second by Daniels. Now we can have the discussion. 6b. Any discussion? Mr. Skaar? - So when I looked atthe invoice register, I just noticed a lot ofcredits, payroll credits, substantial amount, probably afew hundred thousand dollars. Do we know what those were?I thought those were unusual. - On what page and what were the credits? - It was page 28 of 80. Those were with the... That was for the, actually used the term"Internal Revenue Service." It's actually Department of the Treasury. But and then there were some other ones with Department ofRevenue, which was page 30. I just thought they were unusual. I hadn't seen those before, Tim. - Yeah, and I can't respond to that. Ms. Johnson reviewed this document, and she is not able to be here today. She had something come up. But there are payrollissues to be addressed at year end closeout, and I suspect that is justbalancing out year end closeout, the people's final pay period,paychecks and so forth. - Year end, our year endis June 30th, correct? - Yes. Right.- Okay. - Right, but there's, youknow, people submit time sheets and things need to get ironed out, make sure that everything's accurate. - [Mr. Skaar] Okay. - But like I said, Ms. Johnsonwould, you know, be more apt to be able to answer that than me. - Thank you. - Other discussion? Yes, Ms. Thompson. - Mr. Wald, is it unusual for us to have these kinds of things at our year end in our board packet? - No, it's not unusual, especially as we're doingretro pay for employees, you know, as we're finishingup our last bargaining units and getting the retro payfigured out from the year. So some of those, there's a lot of cleanup just to make sure everythingironed out perfectly. - And in an organizationsuch as the school district, we have roughly how many employees? - Well, over a period of a year, we're in the 1,400 employee range. - Thank you. No further questions. - Thank you. Any other questions? Yes, Mr. Skaar. - [Mr. Skaar] I can just make a comment that I've worked at organizations that have far more employeesthan the school district, and I haven't seen thosetypes of unusual true... I'm assuming that they're true-ups. So if they have...- That's quite an assumption. I wouldn't say that. - Okay. That's fine. Well, then if they happen every year, I would assume that staffwould know what these were. - Sure. Right. If we would've had that question earlier, we could have provideda clear answer to you. - [Mr. Skaar] If you couldhave reached out to me, I would have answered. I would have told you that. - [Ms. Thompson] Would they know you had a question about that? Don't read your mind. - [Mr. Skaar] I offered. If they wanted to reach out to me, they could reach out tome, and I'll ask questions. They don't have questions. - All right. Ms. Thompson? - I don't even know what to say. It's just absolutely absurd. I guess I would like to know, Mr. Skaar, the other organizations that you're always bringingup that you worked at, that you see all of this info. So when you worked at every organization that you've ever told us you worked at, you are in every singleaspect of that company, 'cause you seem to always say that you know every single thing about every organizationyou've ever worked at. and you compare it constantly to when you ask questionslike this that are... I mean, how are they supposedto have this information for you tonight? And this is absolutelyappropriate amount of money for year end figuring outthings at the year end when they have to do their audits and they have to make sure thateverything closes out right. I mean, I've worked at organizations that are much smaller thanthis and did HR services, and, I mean, this would be very typical for an organization of this size. - Well, can I respond? Thank you. - Yes. - Thank you for your comments, but I've never saidthat I know everything, but I know how to presentfinancial information, and this is not how I wouldpresent it to a board. - Okay. Thank you.- So that's it. - Any other further discussion? - Yeah, I would liketo follow up with that. - Very be quick with that, please. - So if you wouldn't present it this way, how would you present it? You would list every... So in the one line itemthat has $25,016.05 in payroll deductions andemployment contributions, how would you list that betterfor us to all understand it? You would list every employee's name that's involved in that? What is the info you could give that would make it more clear that you wouldn't have tocontact them to ask them what you would like themto present to us tonight so they can be prepared to have that? Like they're just supposed to know off the top of their head. - No, no. Last year I reviewed itwith Scott, the chair, as to this is what I thinkwould be a better way of presenting it, a mucheasier way of presenting it, with less detail and more meaningful, and it had three alternatives. And I don't know if youwant to take up today's time to review it, but, I mean,there's a variety of ways that we could present it thatwould be more meaningful. - I'd just like to focuson the question at hand and make sure we stated that, because we got that approval of 6b. Ms. Ellison? - And I would just say, circle back to the board madea decision several months ago to add an additional bit of information into the check register, because we discussed it as a body and we made that decisionto make that change. We make decisions as a body, which we did, and the decision has been carried out. - Correct.- Okay. Other questions, so we can get going? So what we have is we have a motion to approve 6b of the consent agenda. This will be a roll call vote. I'll ask the clerk to call the roll. - Arcand?- Aye. - Daniels? Aye. Ellison?- Aye. - Skaar?- No. - Thompson?- Aye. - Okay, motion carries. (gavel bangs) All right, now it's time for the public forumportion of the meeting. Public forum allows for upto three minutes per speaker. We had three requests to speak tonight. Within one minute of remaining, an orange card will be held up, with 30 seconds remaining, ayellow card will be held up, and at the end of three minutes, the gavel will be lightlytapped, letting you know to end. School district policyand data privacy laws preclude personal andstudent matters or data from being discussed publicly. Speakers may not campaign for or against a political candidate during any part of thepublic school board meeting. Speakers may not make allegations,charges, or complaints against any student or employee. Speakers will be called to the microphone and recognized one at a time. Only those individualswho have been recognized will be allowed to speak. Members of the audiencemay not engage in conduct that disrupts any partof a school board meeting or that otherwise impedesthe school board's ability to conduct business. Item C1, superintendent's report. Dr. K. - Thank you Chair Arcand,members of the board. All right, we've been busy this summer working on a website refreshthat launched last week. Families and community members can find important districtupdates, exciting highlights, and information about upcoming events at the revived site,which remains ISD624.org. We're excited to welcome students back for the '26-'27 school year. Families can find school supply lists, beginning of the school yearevents, district calendars, and information aboutthe annual family update on the Back to School page of the website. And as we prepare for the new school year, we ask families to take amoment to log in to Parent View and complete the annual family update. This is essential to provide schools with accurate and up-to-dateinformation for every student. Complete the applicationfor educational benefits linked on the Back to Schooland Nutrition Services pages of our website for the opportunity toqualify for discounts on sports and activity fees, advanced placement test registration, college applications, and more. Paper applications can be requested by contacting the NutritionServices department. District students and families are invited to attend a fun informative event from 10:00 AM to 3:00 PMon Saturday, August 22nd at White Bear Lake Area High School. The free event willinclude the opportunity to receive backpacks andsupplies, vaccines and physicals, and assistance with registration forms. There will be activitiesfor the whole family. And finally, we are continuing to welcome new Bears into the fold, including both staffmembers and new families. Find employment opportunitiesand enrollment information on the district's website. We are excited to startthe school year off strong. So that's it. Thank you.- Thank you. All right, we're going togo to informational item C2, district sustainability efforts. Mr. Wald. - Yeah, have a seat. We'llget more chairs up here. - Welcome, all of you here. - We'll move around aswe're presenting, so. Let's start here. Good evening, Chair Arcand,members of the board. Dr. Kazmierczak, Ms. Johnson. We've got a crew here tonight, and we're gonna presentsustainability efforts that the school district, part of the school district'sjourney toward sustainability over the last decade. We're also gonna hear aboutcurricular connections to sustainability, and then we have studentsfrom our Environmental Club who are going to sharethe work they're doing in the Environmental Club. So thank you to ourstudents for being here. I'll introduce ourselves when we speak. So I'll start first. Tim Wald, Assistant Superintendent for Finance and Operations. When we talk about sustainability, there's a lot of reasons sustainability is a valuable effort for us, and it's, you know,going green is important, and we all believe that, but in addition to that, it'sabout preserving resources and saving district financial resources and being responsible with taxpayer money. And before we dig into itwe'll connect and anchor this into the district's strategic plan. When our community developedour current strategic plan, one of the beliefs, and this is all theway down at the bottom, just left of center,is the belief statement that we are stewards of the earth. But our ties to sustainabilityand the strategic plan go much deeper than that, with connections to the value of learning and quality of life, addressing challenges andshared community goals. So everything we're showing you tonight, including facility modernization, to solar arrays, to electric buses, is designed to align ouroperational practices directly with those community core values. Our game plan comes downto a simple formula. That's drive down our carbon footprint while also beingresponsible with our budget. To get there, we're usinga pretty broad toolkit, which includes solar arrays on our roofs, district-wide LED lighting upgrades, moving toward high-efficiency HVAC units, efficient plumbing fixtures, accessing grants to add electricschool buses to our fleet, as well as recycling. More than a decade ago, wereally began this process, and we started with lookingat the low-hanging fruit. What are those efforts that we can make where the return oninvestment is pretty quick? At that time, there were rebates available when installing LED lighting, and so that was really our first effort. LED lighting retrofits in ourhallways, gyms, parking lots, those areas that usea great deal of energy and the return oninvestment is pretty quick when accessing rebates, and we were able to complete all of those in all of our schools, as well as complete LED upgrades in all classrooms across the district. We've also been evaluatingand upgrading HVAC units. The value of modernizing HVACunits is that you're able to keep classroomtemperatures more stable, which has a positiveeffect on student learning, contain mold better in classrooms, or should say limit mold inour classrooms, in our schools, and the systems run more efficient, and so therefore save financial resources. Another early effort was usingour benchmarked water usage and identifying schools that had higher water usage than others. And then we set off toreplace water fixtures with low-flow water fixtures, and we had really amazingsuccess with that. We also automated old irrigation systems. The first effort, our benchmark water usageat three of our elementaries was 19.7 million gallons. Year one we startedwith Lincoln Elementary. We cut that down to 17.5 million gallons, and by year three, withthree schools on board, we had cut that to 13 million, so more than a 30% savings in water usage in those buildings, and we've completed that process in all of our buildings now. Our Nutrition Services department has also adopted a mindsettoward sustainability. If you walk into our highschool, Manitou Campus, ALP, Mariner Middle School, Oneka, you'll see bulk milk dispensers. The savings on the number of milk cartons that we're saving from the landfills, or from recycling even, 184,000 cartons of milk stayout of landfills each year just at these schools. And we still hit, our students drink 834,000cartons of milk every year, and so if we didn't have the bulk milk at those four schools, we'd be over a millionmilk cartons in landfills or in our recycling efforts every year. And so we've cut that by,we're in the almost 20% range, reduction in the number of milk cartons. Where we have bulk milk, annually we're serving11,500 gallons of milk. That's about 1,100 milk cartons a day that are not making their way to use, about 60% less milk waste. We pay for our trash hauling by weight, and so when milk's not goingin the trash, it's heavy, and we're saving moneyjust in trash hauling. In our locally-produced food, we're buying more locallyand regionally-produced food. This also reduces our carbon footprint. A lot less miles that thefood is shipped to us, cutting down on emissions andsupporting our local growers. And just in general,we don't know this 1.3. In schools that haveFarm to School programs, students eat an averageof 1.3 additional servings of fruits and vegetables. We haven't quantified that in our schools, but that's an average withinFarm to School programs, and so we suspect our kidsare having that same benefit. We have received a RamseyCounty waste reduction grant, recycling grant, that helpsus with milk carton recycling, so we separate milk cartons and make sure those get recycled. We're able to buy more reusableservice ware in our schools so we've got less trash that way, and sorting organics in the school so that the food goes tothe food-to-hogs program. Again, the benefit is food weighs a lot when it's in trash cans, and the weight of hauling all that trash results in some savings. Right, most of what I sharedso far is about reducing use. Now we'll move on to solar, focusing on generating clean energy. This slide contains a screenshot directly from the operationspage on our website. You can see at the bottom of the page, all of the sites where wehave solar installations. Some buildings have multiplesolar installations. The last one, White BearLake Area High School, just went live on Friday. So that's our largest array, and it's just startingto generate energy now. If you were to clickon any of these links, and again, this is live on our website, clicking on the links allowsanyone in our community to track the liveproduction of solar energy at each of our sites that have it. And so when you click on those, you get a page that looks like this, and it tells you currently how muchenergy is being produced, how much energy hasbeen produced that day. This screenshot was takenon July 29th at 3:57 PM. We think we were right in apretty hot streak right then. But we've had a lot ofsunny days this summer. Energy for the month and thenthe lifetime energy collected by that array at Mariner Middle School. This is one of two solar arraysat Mariner Middle School. It also creates someequivalents in the upper right that show the lifetimeproduction of these panels and what it equates to. So 5,811 kilometers driven on sunshine. That would be like, that's 5.8 million kilometersdriven on sunshine. On the bottom left, you seethe kind of sloppy green line that you can get a pretty good sense of when clouds coveredthe sun that afternoon. But it's a fun thingfor any of our students. Teachers can connect this to curriculum and see what's happeningon the roof right now. So year to date, we're at1.55 megawatts collected. Lifetime total is 7.14. So these panels are attheir most efficient, collecting the most energy,during that heat of the day when energy is the mostdrain on our energy resources are occurring throughout Minnesota. And so it's a good time tobe generating electricity. And we've, like I said, generated 7.1 gigawatt hours to date. Equivalencies of 7.14 gigawatt hours, equivalency of planting 84,400 trees, of not burning 2.5 million pounds of coal, powering 287 million smartphones, and enough power to power 785average size homes for a year. So it's a significant amountof energy being generated. So how can the district afford to put that many solar panels on the roof and how much money has been spent on that? The answer is nothing. So by working with a third party through power purchase agreements, we're able to utilize tax incentives that the district couldn'totherwise capture. So where there aregrants, we can get grants, and we did get grants for two buildings, for Vadnais and the high school. But power purchase agreements allow us to utilize tax incentives. Our partner, iDEAL Energies, finances and installs thepanels, maintains them. In return, we buy 80%of the power generated, and we get the remaining20% completely free. And that's for a period of time. It depends on what the incentives were at the time that we installed the panels. They're all a little bit different, but some as little as 13 years,some in the 17-year range. The panels, they believe, have a lifespan of about 30 to 35 years. So once that agreement matures, then the district collects100% of the panels. And it's a low risk for us. iDEAL Energies handlesmaintenance, any glitches. If a panel's not producing, they're on it, 'cause they're monitoring the panels. They benefit from thepanels being functional, and they handle repairs. The value of the energythat we've collected so far within the district is $186,000. And like I said, we have$0 invested in solar. Moving from solar toelectric school buses. As in many of thesesustainability efforts, there have been grantsthat we've sought out, and we keep a close eye ongrants related to sustainability to see if there are ways that we can reduce our carbon footprint and do it in the leastexpensive way possible. So we're diversifying our fleet by adding three electric school buses. We've secured 1.2 million,just about, in grants. So we'll have 125,000into these three buses, which is less than thecost of one diesel bus. And we've submitted a third grant that we should befinding out about anytime that would be our fourthelectric school bus. The value of diversifyingour fleet like this is electric school buses are healthier for our students and our community. We're all exposed to less exhaust with electric school buses. The RIDE buses that we're purchasing use the safest battery on the market, the lithium iron phosphate battery. It's non-toxic, 100% recyclable, far more stable and impact-resistant than other battery types, and they come with a 12-year warranty, which is about 50% longer thanother electric school buses. Electric school buses are quieter, so another form of pollution,I guess, is noise pollution, and they're quieter rollingthrough our neighborhoods. They're quieter on the bus. Our students will have a quieter ride. Our bus drivers, for better or worse, will hear more of what's beingsaid on the bus, I guess. I guess I haven't asked them if that's something theywant to know, but... And the maintenance part of it, diesel buses have over 2,000moving parts in the powertrain, and the electric school bus has about 20. That along with regenerative braking, no oil filters or oilchanges, reduces the cost of operating electricschool buses significantly. Okay, so throughout this process and really over the last couple years Janel Van Arragon's been working with teachers and our curriculum on how to make sure we have connections to our curriculum toward sustainability. I'll turn it over to you. - Okay. Sounds good. So the efforts that Mr. Wald talked about are real-world examples ofsustainability for our students, and offer an opportunity to integrate sustainabilityconcepts into our curriculum, both at the elementaryand the secondary levels. So the slide that you seehere is an elementary example of a sustainability lesson. So it's a fifth grade uniton electrical systems, and students start by usingthe materials at the right to make a fan spin. So they make a small electrical system using those materials, and they study how each part functions, and then they connect whatthey've built in the classroom to a larger electrical systemlike you see on the left. So we ask them, "How wouldour classroom model change if we scaled it up to the solar panels on our own school's roof?" And so they can take the concepts of this smaller electrical system and apply it to a large electrical system that they see in their community. So students answer the question, and they're asked to supporttheir answer with evidence. So here is a secondary exampleof a sustainability lesson. And what students do isthey start by looking at the graphic on the right. Those are the five main culpritsof global carbon emissions. And what they're focusing onin this lab is the top one, the keeping warm and cool. And what students do is theyexperiment with materials that cool without the use of electricity. So that allows our highschoolers to see firsthand how innovation directly reducesglobal carbon emissions. So the principles that thehigh schoolers study in the lab mirror the exact energy-saving goals that are driving all of our district to sustainability efforts, like the high-efficiency HVAC systems, then the rooftop solarpanels, for example. So how have these sustainability lessons impacted student learning? Well, educators have observedseveral behaviors in students during these sustainability lessons. They've noticed that students are askinginsightful questions regarding alternativeforms of renewable energy. Students are critically thinkingabout future technologies. They're highly engaged, and students are seeing value in exploring real-world global challenges and responses to these challenges, which are directly related to the district's sustainability efforts that you heard about here tonight. So now we're gonna hear from some students who are members of our environmental club. Lindsey Lammers is theadvisor of this club, and they're going to tellabout the sustainability work that they're doing. - Hi, I'm Zoe. I'm one of the EnvironmentalClub leaders at our school. Us leaders want to talk a little bit about what we want to do next year and what we've done previouslyin the past that has worked. So the majority of our clubrelies on funds and fundraising. So last year we've triedto do a lot of merch sales to support, to promote our cluband put our name out there. We've also done bake salesduring the school day, but since we aren't ableto do that this year, we are thinking about doing them at different after school activities such as orientation nights,shows, sports games, et cetera. Some other fundraisingideas that we've had that we want to try out this year are movie nights, coffeeshop drink sponsors, concessions, walkathons, raffles. We're still in like the thinking process on what we want to do,how to continue that, but overall we're reallyexcited to develop those. - I'll go next. I'm Luca Ackerman. And this past year, one ofour main goals as a club was to have the high school recycle more. We noticed that a lotof our recycling bins, like we have them all across the building, but they were all justemptied into the garbage bins at the end of the day, because we were recyclinglike coffee cans, energy cans, and paper all in the same ones, and coffee cups have iceleft over in them a lot, and energy drinks can havelike liquid left over in them, and the second that that getsin contact with the paper, that contaminates the entire batch, and you either have to sort through it or just throw it all away, and we don't have the resources to necessarily sortthrough every single bin that we have at the high school, because we have a lot of recycling bins. So one thing that we didwas we set out a larger bin in each of the studiosto recycle only cans, because then you don't have the risk of any paper getting ruinedand then contaminating that. So we ran a like raffle where students could get raffletickets from their teachers for recycling their drinkcans and their cups, and then they would put thatinto a raffle and get a prize. Our prize was a 12-packof Bubbl'r energy drinks. But we noticed thatthis worked fairly well, and about six of our nine bins were filled to the brim with cans. And this coming year the club plans to go on the announcements once more often to give students more information about how to properly recycle, and then also continue todo these recycling campaigns to try to ingrain it in students that you recycle cans here,you recycle paper here. Our ultimate goal would beto have like separate bins so that they can be recycled properly, or just have students recycling better so that we can recycleeverything that we have. - Yeah. I'll go next. Hello. I am Rita Kazibal. I am going to be one of the leaders of Environmental Club this year. I would like to start myportion of the presentation by acknowledging that we are on the land of the Wabanaki and Anishinaabe People. I think it's important,especially in Environmental Club, for us to recognize thatwe are learning and growing and living on land thatdoes not belong to us. So I am going to talk aboutthe pollinator garden. We started this about two years ago using the outdoor classroom space that we have at the high school. We used some seeds fromstudents that they brought in and members of the club, and so we planted some local wildflowers, and after planting them inthe spring we saw them bloom. We saw butterflies coming in,we saw more bees coming in. I think there was arabbit that came in too, so that was really cool tosee our efforts pay off. Planting and creating it ourselves really brought the club together and allowed other membersto take more initiative in planting and weeding and just helping it cometogether in a way that worked. In the future, we might like to expand and add more places wherewe can plant more things to see even more pollinators and animals coming into that space, and potentially even engaging students who aren't part of the clubin the garden and planting it and learning about whatkind of plants we have there and what kind of animalscome in when we have that. Thank you. - I am Eva Seagroves. I will be a leader of theclub next year as well, and I wanted to talk a bit about kind of some of ourfuture goals for next year. One of the big ones iswe want to kind of... One of our things last year was wanting to likeestablish a sustainability or environmental science career pathway, and we talked with Katie Olson about that, and there are like a fewobstacles in the way of that that we still have to work through, but one thing that we can do as a club is we're going to kind of just like, we already have existingenvironmental-centered classes, and just letting studentsknow about these classes, that they're like options and that they're centeredaround environmental science, can be important in like a first step of building this career pathway. And we can use resources like going on the ROAR announcements and sending out student interest surveys. And one of the main classes that we are working onkind of reestablishing is AP Environmental Science, which I know a lot of peoplein our club were excited about, but it was not running, mostly because of likea lack of like knowledge amongst the student body about this class. And yeah, we're thinking about doing student interest surveys to kind of get theseclasses to be known about, so hopefully they will run. Thank you. - [Chair Arcand] Anyquestions? Yes, Ms. Daniels. - Yeah. I love all your fundraising ideas. Those are fabulous, and I hope that you can raisefunds for your organization. And thank you for your work, because we all worryabout the environment, and your efforts really mean a lot to us and the members of the community. And then I just thought, well, you're going to do a bake sale. The Extravaganza that we talked about during the superintendent's report, lots of families come tothat, tons of families, and that might be one of the locations, which is August 22nd at the high school, where you could maybe raise funds. And I'd love to see your merch. Somebody talked about merch.Are they T-shirts or...? - [Zoe] We sell hoodies,T-shirts, tote bags. - Okay, and it sayswhat? Environmental Club? - [Zoe] We have our logo,which is a Bears logo, but it has some liketrees around it. Yeah. - [Ms. Daniels] Oh, great. Okay. Thanks a lot for coming. - Other questions orcomments? Ms. Thompson? - Yeah, this is great. First, Mr. Wald, the presentation and all the things that we're doing to help protect theenvironment is so wonderful, and then to see the fouryoung leaders here today, 'cause the planet isgoing to be yours, right, like, and it is something thatwe should be worried about, and so this is all wonderful. Every little bit we can do tohelp protect the environment is always great to hear about. Some ideas that I had on sales, just to give you some tips on fundraising, since you have a pollinator garden and you said there are seeds in there, maybe you could plant those seeds and then the plants would grow and you could sell those in the community. And we have a wealth ofgardeners in this community who would, I am sure, love to be involved in helping you organize aplant sale in the spring, and I'm sure we could get people to donate plants from their own garden. There's a lot of mastergardeners that live in our area, and they would, I'm sure, be overjoyed to help support you withyour environmental club. In the past, when I worked on the PTA, we did some fundraisers, and we got rain barrels donated to us by companies that make rain barrels, and then had a group of kids put like their hand prints all over 'em. I'm sure you guys could come up with it, and then silent auctionedthat off into the community with like a little sidegarden of some herbs or something to go with it. Just a couple ideas for youto think about raising funds, 'cause what you're doing isgreat, so thank you very much. - Okay. Mr. Skaar? - I was just going to saythat water savings of seven, I think it was about seven million gallons of water over time,that's really impressive. I think a lot of folksdon't look at water so hard, and that's important when you'relooking at sustainability. So kudos to you guys on that. But as far as the low flows,you talked about low flow. Do you remember the "Seinfeld" episode where they have low-flow shower heads? Do you guys get any complaintsfrom the low flow? No? The other thing I wanted to mention, and I guess I got to apologize to Angela, because I'm knowledgeable on this, but as far as powersystems go, when we put... So, and this is I think if weget high schoolers interested in power system operations, our region in Minnesota in particular really has been the home of innovation when it comes to power system innovation. Our system here in the Upper Midwest has actually beenduplicated in Scandinavia and in South Africa in termsof being how reliable it is. But one of the things that I think, and maybe this takes itup a little too high, is with solar and wind,these are lighter machines which creates less inertia on the system, so that makes our system, Idon't want to say less reliable, but it's more susceptibleto frequency excursions and problems, power problems. So anything that we can do to get high schoolers like yourselves interested in power systems. We have University of Minnesota,University of Wisconsin, system operations inBismarck, North Dakota, where you can be trainedas a system operator, and also high voltagelinemen through the IBW. I just wanted to put a plug in for that. So thank you for the presentation. - Any other?- Oh, go ahead. - Just a real quickcomment and a question. Students, thank you for coming. It takes a lot of courage to get up and present to the school board, so I appreciate that you're all here. My question is, have you worked at all with the middle schoolsor elementary schools? I know that a lot of theelementary schools have gardens, and so it might be an interesting outreach as you continue to grow to think about ways you mightwork with Mariner and Central, and then any of the elementaries that have gardens and the rainbarrels and things like that. And that most of the buildings... Is it all the buildings, Mr. Wald, that have the solar panels? - [Mr. Wald] No, we still have, I think, four buildings that don't. - Okay, so yeah, Imean, even the buildings that have the solar panels, because, you know, especially if you go and talk with the littles, they love you. They love the big kids, and so it would be areally marvelous thing for you to be able toshare this enthusiasm and your knowledge with the middle school and elementary schools. So I don't know, have you...? I asked a question in thereand I didn't let you answer. Do you do any work with the younger kids? - [Zoe] We're not currently,but we're thinking about it. We have it like in thecirculation of ideas. - [Ms. Ellison] Yeah,that's wonderful. Thank you. - Yes. Oh, go ahead. - It is great seeing otherstudents here at these meetings 'cause that is very rare, andI'm very glad you guys came. Also, as a fellow clubleader for a different club, it's really interesting hearing how you guys think about like spreading theword about your club, and I think that's really cool. - Ms. Daniels. - This might be a Kevin ora Tim or Janel question. So with our artificial turf,we don't have to water it. I mean, so are we saving waterby having artificial turf? I mean, 'cause we don'thave to do any watering for all those fields thatwe used to water, right? So we must be saving.- Quite a bit actually. - Because I remember allthe sprinklers going off on Price field and Louricasand all the different places. That's why kids went through the schools, so this is, you know, just something I justwant to comment on, so. - Okay, thank you. Any others? I just have one quickquestion out of curiosity. With the school buses,the electric school buses, does that then keep a levelamount of cost for the power, that that's not impactedas the market goes up, the cost of a barrel, crude goes up, and can fluctuate yourexpense of diesel fuel? Will the electric stay constant? - Yeah, that's a great question. So the electric busesaren't free to run, right, 'cause electricity costs money, and electricity is acontinually rising resource, and so the great thing about them is we can charge those overnight, so at the cheapest time to charge them. But yeah, the cost ofgas won't impact them. It'll just be how that connectsto the cost of electricity. - [Chair Arcand] The cost ofelectricity will stay current and won't fluctuate with the market. - Right. Not with the gas market, yeah. - Yeah, but I was curious. Thank you. And for the students, thank you for taking time out of August, especially when school starts very soon. And this part of your summer, so we appreciate you coming in. - Remember when we were teens, and like we didn't even really know the word "sustainability," but really all we talked about back then was just pollution, right? Like, "Just don't pollute.""Don't be a litterbug." - [Mr. Skaar] Give a hoot? - And listen to ourhigh school kids today, and wow, you guys know so muchmore than we did at that age. Impressive. Yeah, thank you. - Thank you.- Thank you. - Thank you.- Thank you. - All right. Okay, we're gonna go onto informational item C3, summary of superintendent's evaluation. So I have a statementhere that I can read. "On July 13th, 2026, the School Board of Independent School District number 624 of White Bear Lake AreaSchools met in closed session to evaluate the performance of Dr. Wayne Kazmierczak, Superintendent. The following is a summary ofthe School Board's conclusion regarding the evaluation. The School Board acts as a body, not through individual members, but as a result of theSchool Board's conclusions reflects the view of amajority of board members. Conclusion number one, Dr. Kazmierczak is meeting expectations. The board has concludedthat Dr. Kazmierczak is meeting the board'sexpectations in all areas. He is meeting 100% ofthe board's expectation in the area of policy leadership. Conclusion number two, Dr. Kazmierczakdemonstrates many strengths. The board concluded that Dr. Kazmierczakgreatest areas of strength are in the following areas. Student achievement andinstructional leadership, include improving student achievement through MTSS, literacy initiatives, career pathways, and strategic planning. Financial stewardship, including exceptional financialmanagement, budgeting, and long-range fiscal planning that has maintained thedistrict's stability while completing major facility projects. Facility planning and implementation, including effective implementation of the district'slong-term facilities plan and successful completion ofbuilding our future projects. Cabinet leaders, includingbuilding a collaborative, stable, and highly effective leadership team. Policy development and governance, professionalism, integrity, transparency, and respectful relationships with staff, students,families and community, and commitment to thecontinuous improvements through data-informed decision-making and strategic planning. Conclusion number three is Dr. Kazmierczak has identifiedappropriate priorities. The board concluded that Dr. Kazmierczakshould continue to focus on the following prioritiesfor the 2026-'27 school year. Continue to strengthen MTSSand student support systems. Continue to expand community partnership and family engagement. Continue to preparestudents for future success through responsible implementation of artificial intelligence,career pathways, and innovation. Continue sound fiscal management and long-term facility planning. And then finally, conclusion four, the board has a high level of confidence in Dr. Kazmierczak's leadership, his work as a district superintendent, and his continued advancement of the district's strategic plan. The board recognizes and valuesDr. Kazmierczak's integrity, financial expertise, strategic vision, collaborative leadership style, and commitment toimproving student outcomes. Under Dr. Kazmierczak's leadership, the district is well positioned to continue implementingit's strategic plan while building on recentsuccesses in academic facilities, fiscal management, andcommunity engagement." So that's what we have. Thank you. All right, with that,we are gonna roll on. We have no discussion items tonight, so we're gonna go to operational item E1. Mr. Mons? - All right, good evening,members of the school board and Dr. Kazmierczak. Tonight we have made our way through all of ourcollectively bargained groups and have reached agreementswith all of them. What I'm bringing before you tonight is just some of the cleanup after we're done with that process. We make sure that we'realso paying attention to all of our non-affiliated employees, and so we take the parameters established by the school board and the trends that we experience during our bargaining process, and then make sure thatwe're also taking care of those employees that aren't representedthrough collective bargaining. And we also went through the process of decoupling our coachingand our coaches and advisors from our teachers' schedulefor the first time, and we have moved to see, you know, that same kind of increase, because they are just our employees that we see with allof our other employees applied to our coachesand advisors as well. So that's what I'mbringing to the board today for your approval. - So it looks like the recommended action is to approve the proposedhourly and stipend amounts for non-affiliated employeesfor the 2026-'27 fiscal year. Can I get a motion to approve? - So moved. - By Daniels. Can I see a second? - Second.- Second by Thompson. Discussion? Yes, Ms. Ellison. - Yeah, I just have a question. So I'm looking through the board packet, and I'm looking for the... So I see the recommended action, the proposed hourly and stipend amounts. You don't share the specific amounts? - Correct.- Okay. I just wanted to make sure thatI wasn't missing something. - [Mr. Mons] Yes. Those then becomeavailable on our website. - Okay. - Any others? Hearing none,this will be a roll call vote. Will the clerk please call the roll? - Arcand?- Aye. - Daniels? Aye. Ellison?- Aye. - Skaar?- Aye. - Thompson?- Aye. - Motion carries. Thank you very much.- Thank you. - We're going to move onto operational item E2, action on School BoardPolicies 210 and 509. As always, we takethese as a full package. So can I get a motion to approve? - So moved.- By Ellison. A second?- Second. - Second by Daniels. Discussion? Hearing none, this will be a voice vote. All in favor say "Aye." - Aye. - Opposed, same sign. Motion carried.(gavel bangs) Okay, we've now gotten to board forum. Now it's time for board forum. The board forum is an opportunity for board members to updatethe school board and the public on the committee work inwhich they have been engaged in the official capacity of board members and create awareness of upcoming districtand partnership events. Are there any board members that would like to sharefrom their committee work? Ms. Daniels? - Yes. I volunteered theother day at the Closet, which I've been involvedin for a number of years, and we put together lots of... We had lots and lots of donations, so thank you for the community members who have donated beautiful clothes to the Closet that is locatedright here in this building, and families can sign up with their social workers,psychologists, nurses, or excuse me, principals of the building to make an appointment to come in and shop free of chargefor their families. And then we also had sucha large number of donations that we put together lots of clothes to take to the Family Extravaganza on August 22nd at the high school, as Dr. Kazmierczak mentioned, where we're giving backpacksand other school supplies away. So there'll be lots ofclothes for families on tables that they can come and lookat and kind of dig through and find some that mightfit their children, or their teens might want or tolerate. We just, we tried to be reallycareful about what we picked, and, you know, we've evenhad teenagers come in, and say, "Would you wearthis or would you not?" Because for people my age, we don't know what that is anymore. But at any rate, I hope you'll come to theCloset if you have a need, and I hope that familieswill come to the Extravaganza on August 22nd. Thank you. - I have a quick questionabout the Closet. Do we know, is it on thewebsite when it's open? - Yeah. It's on the website. And we cleaned it all upand got it all organized, and got it all ready, and hung up new thingsand packaged new things, and it's ready to go. - Okay, other community work? Yes. - I have the opportunity to attend, every month I attend a meeting for the Northeast Metro 916Intermediate School District. They are a school district that partners with otherdistricts surrounding us, and they provide services that our school is not able to provide, to SPED students whoare on levels that are, I think, level four and level five. They also provide school services to students who have auditory problems, just a wealth of opportunities for students who havedifferent disabilities, and then they also havecareer pathway programs that they offer in their district as well. They have an ALC school, and they provided summerschool this summer. But one thing that I wasvery excited to share, and I don't have the dates,but I will send this to Lisa, or I left my other notebook athome that I wrote it down in, but they were able to get a grant that helped them trainsome of their SPED staff, their social workers andtheir mental health supports on DBT, which is dialectical, I always say that wrong,behavioral therapy. So basically it helpsstudents learn mindfulness, just ways to de-stress themselves if they're becoming dysregulated. It's emotional behavioral learning skills. And they had enough funds in this grant that they are offering itto the member districts to help train some of our staff as well, which is just wonderfulopportunity for our district and the partnering districts, and it saves us moneybecause it is paid for by 916 through the grant thatthey were able to receive. So just wanted to share that, because I think it's very exciting. And their trainings are comingup at the end of August, so I will make sure I get Lisa that email as soon as possible. And I know they are communicating that with the member districts as well, but just wanted to share, 'cause mental health is so important, so any way we can support ourstudents, it's a good thing. - I just have one question. When you talk level four,level five, can we clarify for some people that don'tknow what that means? - I bet Ms. Daniels is evenbetter at it than I am. - A level four program would be a program that's not in a generaleducation building, so the students are in a building with other special education students. So there isn't an opportunity really to mainstream students in that situation, but they're students that need an intense level of programming for a variety of reasons, so. - Okay, I just needthe clarity. Thank you. - Students that are on likethe autism spectrum disorder. - Yeah.- Yeah. - I just know sometimes wethrow out these acronyms and these numbers and wedon't explain what they are, so I wanted to make sure thatwe could be clear about it. - They have very specializedtraining facilities and staff. - Yeah.- Okay. - They do an amazing... It's great work thatthey're doing over there. - Thank you. Any other committee work? Mr. Skaar? - Just that Ramsey Countycollaborative that... - The local government?- Right. Just since we're talking about water, they're doing an inter-agency awareness of road salt impact on water quality, so I'm sure that we use road salt as well. It has a huge impact on water quality, so they're looking at alternatives to the road salt that they use today. So, the other thing, I don't know. I mean, the district sponsored me to go to that school safety. If you wanted I can... - Give us a quick overview?- Yeah. So I attended a workshop on school safety which had some presentations. The first one was regardinga serious safety incident at Stewartville, which is a small districtsouth of Rochester. Superintendent provideda detailed timeline, definition of rules between law enforcementand district staff, and lessons learned, what they did well, whatthey could improve on. One of the things that they talked about from a district standpoint is, you know, stay in your swim lane. You know, the district staffprovided communication, caring, and there were three Cs. I'm getting old, so I lost it. But anyways, the story atthe end was the capstone. So I don't know if you've heard this, but I thought it was a great story. So Captain CharlesPlumb was a Navy aviator who flew 75 missions over Vietnam. He was shot down, captured,spent six years in a POW camp. One day when Plumb and his wife were sitting in a restaurant, a man from another tablecame up to him and said, "You're Plumb. You flew jet fighters in Vietnam from the aircraft carrier, Kitty Hawk. You were shot down." And he looked stunned. He said, "How in theworld did you know that?" "I packed your parachute." So Plumb was, you know, very grateful and happy that it workedbecause it saved his life. So the moral of the story, kind of the moral is, "Whopacks your parachute?" Everyone has somebody whoprovides what they need to make it through the day. You know, in our district,we've got custodians, teachers, paraprofessionals, cafeteria staff, and others in each schoolwatching out for kids. They kind of pack our parachutesfor the kids every day, and say a kind word from timeto time that makes their day. - All right, so the onlything I request I have for you is when they come next winter and the Ramsey County legallocal governments reminds us where we can get a free chicken grit for our sidewalks at home, 'cause I know we had that last year where you could pick up afree bag of chicken grit for your... It's in place of salt. So if you watch it, youmight hear it again there. - I don't have the cloutthat you have, Scott. - They'll tell you what you can go get. You tell me, I'll pick you abag of chicken grit up too. All right, hearing that, canI get a motion to adjourn? - Mr. Chair, move to adjourn. - Okay, second?- Second. - All in favor say "Aye."- Aye. - All opposed, samesign. We are adjourned. Thank you everybody for coming. Have a great night.(gavel bangs)