- I'll call this meeting of the School Board Independent School District 624 to order. I'll ask the clerk to call the roll. - Skaar.- Here. - Streiff Oji.- Here. - Thompson.- Here. - Arcand.- Here. - Beloyed.- Here. - Daniels.Here. - All right. Our first item tonight is B.1. Mr. Wall, the fiscal year2023-24 annual audit report. - Thank you. Annually, the district contracts with our public auditing firm of Malloy, Montague, Karnowski,Radosevich & Co., MMKR, to complete the annual audit for the school districtfinances for the previous year. Throughout the spring, well, throughout mostly the summer and fall, auditors from MMKR workwith the accounting staff, White Bear Lake Finance Department, and our director of finance, Andy Johnson, leads that team workingwith the auditors to prepare for the annual audit. Tonight, we have Jim Eichten, who is a managing partner at MMKR, and he's been with us for a lot of years in White Bear Lake, andwe welcome you, Jim, to another school board meeting. - All right. Thank you. - Jim will present theannual audit report. - All right. Well, thanks for theintroduction, Superintendent, members of the board. My name is Jim Eichten. I'm gonna jump right intosome clarifying items of that presentation. Some of you are aware ofthis, but as of January 1st, which is 20 days ago, my firm of MMKR did actuallymerge with a different firm. We are a firm called LBCarlson as of that date. All of my auditors and partners are moved to that particular firm, so we don't anticipate anychanges in the way we operate and the way we do things, but it is important to understand I'm representing MMKR becauseI did issue this report under MMKR, even thoughI'm really LB Carlson at this particular moment. I think... Here we go. Am I good to go? There it is. So, I do have a PowerPoint presentation, so I'm gonna quickly go through the PowerPoint presentation that will probably reference some of the other documentationthat I have here. So, it is a requirement, as mentioned, that the district have an annual financialstatement prepared, that particular annualfinancial statement requirement. The district takes toanother level and prepares what's called an AnnualComprehensive Financial Report, an ACFR, which issubmitted for recognition by certificate of review programs. That particular document,if you haven't looked at it, is about 152 pages long. There's a lot of data inthat particular report that really is prepared by the district and is recognized forcertificate of excellence in financial reporting. As part of the particular audit, we do implement any sort of new standards that are required to be implemented. This particular year, wedid implement a standard on group capital assets, which I'll touch on a little bit during a later presentation. And then, so for purposes of this audit, we are also required to, as part of our particular requirements, audit the internal controls over the district's financial reporting. That would include many various aspects, but mostly things likepayroll and cash receipts, cash disbursements, those types of things. Okay. So my audit results are alsosummarized in a document that's called the management report, and I believe the documentwas provided to you. That particular management report does go through the audit resultsfor purposes of, really, purposes of reviewing amuch less lengthy document and getting an idea on howthe audit results went. And I'm gonna go throughthat particular document, not in full, but touch onthe highlights as it relates to the audit. So in that document, I did provide a summaryof the audit results. And as I mentioned, the Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, we did issue what's calledan unmodified opinion. That was a clean opinion on that particular financial statement, the opinion you were looking for going in. We did implement thatgroup audit standard. As mentioned, it did impact the district's financial results and slightly added some capital assets, specifically those that were purchased in a group setting, which is what the standardrequired us to implement. I did mention the internal controls over financial reporting. We did have one audit adjustment this year that is reported as a finding, specifically related to the recording of, I will call it, construction in process. As you all are aware, there is a significant volumeof transactions happening in this particular environment, given the amount ofconstruction happening, in the accounting specifically related to capital asset record keeping and the continuing accountingfor construction process was reevaluated, if you will, this year. We did find some adjustmentsthat got recorded as part of the audit particular process. I think it's important to understand that the finding specifically relates to what I would callfinancial reporting finding. The day-to-day aspects of payment of bills and the reviewing ofinvoices and the payment and overviewing of contractswas not the finding that we have here. That was all found to beadequate and appropriate. In this case, it mostly, if not all of it, related to the accountingand the wrapping up of the audit in terms of how that relates to capital assets andthe recording of those. That's a significantdifferentiation when I look at that particular finding. The audit results of this particular page, I did mention or previously mentioned, we do audit your compliancewith Minnesota laws and regulations as part of this audit. It's required by theOffice of State Auditor. They provide us with a list of all thelaws they want us to audit. The list changes depending on their needs and what they find at their audits that are causing findingsat school districts. We did not have any findings to report in that particular space. As part of the audit, we also audit yourschedule of expenditures of federal awards, what's called a SEFA. The district does receivea significant amount of federal awards and as a result, the federal governmentrequires us to complete what's called a single audit. The total federal awards thisyear is about $7.6 million. You can see we also audityour internal controls over those particular grants. We also audit the compliance with those particulargrants which are described as major programs. We don't audit every programin that federal space. There's a rotating process going on. And so depending on the major program, we test the compliance of each individual major programs really on a rotating basisbased on federal rules. In that particular summary of those three particular areas, we didn't have any findings to report. Continuing on, it is an important element of a particular finding of an audit to follow up any prior year findings. I'll describe it this way. We are here to audit andbecause of that, we find things. It's a learning experience. It's part of the processto learn and find things and improve on them. We don't actually haveeverything that we found in this process. Some of the things that we learned as part of this process were justcommunicated to staff. They weren't significantenough to actually put in a report but there'sa lot of things we find and ask about that are just, hey, maybe the best practicehere is to do it this way. For those findings, particularly the one on construction process,there is a finding written. There's a corrective action plan. And as a board, you should be focused onthat particular element of the finding. What are we gonna do about this? How are we gonna correct itso that the auditor doesn't have this finding again next year? So that particular findingcorrective action plan, you'll see in some of thedata that you've received. We've talked about it asfar as in our exit meeting about how we're gonna go about improving that particular accountingso that it doesn't happen. There was some turnover in district staff in that space during our audit year which is probably primarilythe reason for some of that finding. But that being said, howare we gonna correct it? There is a corrective action plan. When I look at last year, there were two findings and both of those findings were eliminated. The result that we wouldhope for as a board. Yep, we had those findings,we made a corrective action. Here we are presenting the next year and they've been corrected. They're listed up there. They related to collateral on the district's bank accountsas well as advertisement for bids in one particularcontract last year. So I'm going to continuein my presentation. Hopefully I don't go toofast, which I just did. There we go. So my management report does then go into what I would call the second part of the audit results specifically related to the district's financialresults collectively. And the report goesover almost every fund, if not every fund, but it really startswith some comparable data from the state. This particular graphics presentation, which is on page six of my report, shows statewide operatingfund balances as a percentage of expenditures using MDE's formula, not the district'sformula, the MDE's formula. Very important distinction. You can see on that particular graph, fund balances statewide have been about 20% for almost a decade. That's a number that hasbeen very consistent. Prior to the pandemic, you can see that thatnumber was very solid. Until we got to the pandemic, actually, fund balances went up statewide, mostly related to changes in operations. Spending patterns were much different. More funding becameavailable for federal grants, those types of things. Once we got post-pandemic, you can see in the yellowgraph started to go down as federal money became less available, student populations declined a bit, and just the change inoperations made that occur. We anticipate, at least I do anticipateby the number of audits that I do, that yellowline is gonna continue to go down when we get here next year. You'll see that. The district's fund balancesthere, you can see, are in red. Most of the early years relateto very planful spending of some additional resources that came from the OldPrep Trust Fund back in probably, what year was it? 2014, '14? Yes, one year off that graph. And since 2014, there'sbeen a consistent spend down that is very planful tothe point where we got to 2019, 2020. For 2024, the year that I audited, you can see that there wasan increase in fund balance as a percentage of expenditures on the statewide level, after a couple of declining years, the past two years. And I'll get to these morespecific general fund data in a later graph. This particular graph's on page seven of my report shows revenues per student. It does show information forthe district on the right, and then it shows statewidemetro area averages as well. What that's stating there is in 2024, the district spent $22,206per student, excuse me, they have revenue of $22,206 per student in that particular year. Some of the things that stand out in that particular revenue category, there was some significantincreases in state funding. You can see at the state line for both the basic formulaallowance, which increased this past year, but also inspecial education formulas and special educationprogramming shows up. You can see the impact the bond issues have had on debt service fund showing up in that the bottom line there. You can see the debt service fundrevenues being increased over last year based on new bond issues. Revenues in the food service fund actually increasedpretty significantly. Most of that, if not all of it, relates to the additionalstate funding that came to you for free meals, youknow, free meal program. You can really see it showingup in that particular area. Lastly, the federal linehas been going down. Most of the pandemic relatedfunding that came out of that particular timeframe has declined as you use them and theyjust don't replenish. Many districts are struggling with that as federal funds have gone away, some of their financial impactis hitting them pretty hard. So you can see some ofthe trend lines there. On the expenditure side, you can see, this is expenditures per student again. So in total, in the governmental funds of the district, you're spending about $21,633 per student, which is reflected inthis particular graph. Some of the areas that stood out, you can see that regularinstruction is a pretty big or large category there. $6,799 in regular instruction. There was some increasesin that particular category for curriculum purchases. One-time curriculum purchases are in that particular category. Special education is also increasing due to just continued increased costs, both for salaries, benefits,purchase services are also in there when you're utilizingother staffing methodologies. And then lastly, the debt service fund, the bottom there stands out in terms of the additional debtservice funding, excuse me, expenditures that are happeningfor the bond referendum and the like. Continuing on, the generalfund financial position is on page nine, which is this particular page gets into the individual fund analysis. This graph shows the general fund financialposition utilizing cash as, excuse me, cash and fundbalance as indication of equity position where you're standing from an equity position. And then expenditures reallyjust trying to reflect how the changing size of the operation, if you're getting bigger or smaller, which you're seeing a slight increase over the timeframe noted,but pretty slight overall. At the end of the year, the district's fund balance didincrease about $2.6 million. That particular fund balance increase was roughly $931,000 above whatwas projected for the year. So very close toexpectations, the operations that your district is runninga general fund that is, what was it, $142 millionoperation in total. And it's a pretty sizableorganization when you think about it just for that one fund. And you came in, your end of the year, you came in within $930,000 ofthose budgeted expectations. There was a balance there. Revenues were higherthan projections as well as expenditures werehigher than projection, but the net was about$900,000 for the year. This particular graph,which is on the next page is probably the most important part of this presentation, showingsome benchmarking in terms of decision making onthe part of the board. At the end of the year, the district's fundbalances as a percentage of expenditures using thedistrict's calculations ended the year at 7.5%. It was an increase from5.9% the year before. Why is that important? Well, the district does have afund balance policy in place. The board has adopted such a policy. The policy strives to maintaina minimum unassigned fund balance of 8%. That's important. That's a very important benchmark that, I see some shaking of heads. That's a place that youshould focus your attention as a board member, both from just astandpoint of understanding what that policy is all about, but also at the end of the year, utilizing that percentage and say, well, either we need to adopt a change in our budget going forwardor just understanding where we are from a baseline perspective. So at the end of the year,the unassigned fund balance, like I said, is at 7.5%, just slightly below thatparticular policy that you have in place. Somebody asked me, well, now what? What are we gonna do once weknow that fund balance policy? Well, that's up to the superintendent and the business officeto make some understanding how that impacts the overallbudget going forward. That's not my job, I'm here toreflect on the audit results. Most of the administrationwill bring that forth to you in future meetings ifthey haven't already, maybe even at the last one. Continuing on, we do have somereflected information here as well on general fundrevenues and expenditures. The next one's expenditures. The general fund revenues, as mentioned, were over budget by about $3.8 million. There are three categoriesthat stand out to me. Other revenues wereconservatively budgeted. There were some otherrevenues from billings to other districts that impactedthat particular revenues. Tax collections were better than expected. Typically, you see thatbecause there's usually a built-in contingency in collections. You never know howcollections are gonna be on a tax perspective. And then overall, statesources were over budget based on just approved funding from those two particular categories,including transportation. On the expenditure side, we did have expendituresover budget this year by about $3.3 million. Three categories, again, stand out. Supplies and materialsspecifically related to a one-time curriculum purchasethat I already referenced. That was the district takingadvantage of the pricing for particular curriculummaterials that weren't an original budget butfelt like it was important to buy that just to takeadvantage of the pricing in that particular area. Salaries were overbudget by about $800,000. Most of that, whichwas actually very close to budget given the size ofthat particular category. And then lastly, purchase services for things like student tuition, billing and transportationwere more than budgeted this past year. But all in all, like I said, the overall budget wasvery close to expectations, when you get to within a million dollars net, you're doing a good job of doing those budgetexpectations and holding the audit true to someof those expectations. I will continue on and Iwill follow up with questions that people have when I get done. This particular page is 14, shows the other governmentalfunds of the district. Food service fund as shown here, did increase to a fundbalance of about $3 million. Most districts' food servicefunds financial results were better than expected,giving the new funding that's coming from the state. You're no different inthat particular case. You're seeing food servicefund increasing fund balance this past year and you'reat about 46% fund balance as a percentage of expenditures, which is a good place to be when it comes to the food service fund. You can see the communityservice fund I would suggest is not where it needs to be. Nobody wants to see a deficit fund balance in the community service fund. It was better thanexpected by about $150,000. So it could have been worse. There was some increased participation for school aged care as well as youth enrichment programsthat helped that fund. We did talk at the exitconference, if you will, or some of the things thatare ongoing and happening to improve that particularfund and turn that around so that we have some fundbalance going forward. But at the end of the year, it sits at about adeficit of about $322,000. Let's see how I go here. Now I'm just pressing buttonsto press buttons. All right. Continuing on my presentation, the district does have a very healthy fund an internal service fund, which is really a self-insurance fund. The district is self-insuredfor health benefits and an internal servicefund is utilized to fund that particular program. In 2024, you can see thatthe fund did increase by about $800,000. As you can see in revenues, it's about $15 million of revenues in that particular fundfor health benefits. At the end of the year, that particular fund is atabout 33% of operations. I believe the experts in this particular area would be hoping for something closer to 50%. And I know that you're working to improve that particular area, as youcan see in the improvement for this particular, this past year. Other funds the district has, you have a capital projectbuilding construction fund. This past year, there wasabout $71 million of spending in that particular onefund or utilization. Why I bring that number to the forefront is mainly related to myobservations of the work that's happening in the business office. you don't take a districtoffice and move from a spending of zero really generally,that's probably exaggerating, but from zero to $771million and not expect it to be impact. There's a lot of work thatgoes into processing all of that particular work. And to process that, it takes personnel and resources and sometimes you just don't have it and other times you do, but it does have an impact on the district and is something that should be recognized because it's probablygonna go away eventually. Right? Continuing on, you havethe debt service fund as mentioned, I mentioned that there is a self-benefits dental plan, which is sitting ingood financial position. And the district also has what'scalled the OPEB trust fund. That particular trust fund was issued some time agowhere bonds were issued to finance the OPEB trustobligations of the district. At the end of the year, the district has about $31million sitting in trust for future obligations in the OPEB area. I think that's the end of my presentation. So in summary, I was able toissue an unmodified opinion as mentioned on that financial report. We implemented the capitalasset accounting standard this particular year. We issued a certificate ofachievement for excellence in financial reporting,which will take some time to receive from the organization. We did have the one finding, which ultimately will hopefullybe corrected in the future. You're seeing improving generalfund financial position. I did mention the importance of the district's fundbalance policy as a guideline for decision making onthe part of administration and the board. I did analyze all the otherfunds as I went through, talked a little bit about the significance of the construction activity. And then lastly, I just wannareflect on the audit process. The audit process for us starts in June and really ends probably in December. It's a long process, especiallyat a district of this size. It takes a lot of effort by auditors aswell as administration. And my words there are very two point. This district is verydedicated to this process. Rarely do I not get theinformation that I need. And if I'm not gettingthe information I need, I'm well aware why Ihaven't received it yet because somebody's working on it. So it's a very healthy process, healthy from two fronts, healthyfor me as an auditor, but healthy for the district as well. There are people that arededicated to this process and making sure it goes rightand is effective as well. So with that, I'll open itup to questions that you have for me on the audit results. - I know Ms. Beloyed, you had a question? - What would you say is one of the, in all the times you've been doing this, a red flag for anybodywhen they're looking through the financials tosay that something is off? What would be one of the... - Talking about now or forever? - Forever. And anytime you're lookingat budgets this large, what are the red flags tolook for if something is off? - Yeah, generally we get, we as a firm immediatelyget concerned with turnover. Turnover and personnelis a huge challenge. And I'll just probably talk about the last maybe three years to four years, post-pandemic probably. Very tight available resources outside of, in the finance world,both in the audit world, but also in the business manager world. Whenever somebody leavesthe district or leaves a hole, it's very hardto replace that person. And your district hasbeen, I will say, you know, at times impacted by that. There was a opening andthere's a controller position at one time, if I remember, it was a couple years ago, roughly. And you can see it, you can almost see it, you can feel it almost inthe district when you talk to the personnel here. They're just, things slow down, things aren't moving asquickly as they should. And so whenever you see openpositions at a district, you should be aware of itand help, or, you know, help to understand what's happening. This year there was, like I mentioned, basically the construction account. Is that right? - Yeah.- Yeah. There was an openingin that particular area and somebody else had to take over. Well, transition means things slow down, there's a change in understanding, and it leads to thingsthat are cause for concern. Are they red flags? Probably not in this case, but they can be.- Were there any, this audit was completed on time, correct? - Yes, it was. Yeah, it was submitted... - [Board Member] Is that a redflag to look for if audits go beyond their due by dates? - A red flag, no, but it is something to be concerned about, you know, in terms of trying toget them back on track and get them done timely, for sure. But I wouldn't define it as a red flag. Sometimes there's just thingsthat happen that cause it and it has nothing to do with, you know,something concerning. - [Board Member] Okay,other questions? Mr. Skaar? - Thank you. So are schools subjectto partner rotation? - In particular on an audit?- Right. - They're not.- They're not? So how long have you beenpartner on this audit for White Bear School? - I've been the partner for some time. I probably came in, in asevere financial crisis, whatever that was. We talked about it. Remember that? Ted Blaesing era, for sure. I'd have to get... - So there's no partner rotation required for school districts for an audit company? - [Jim] There are not. If requested, we certainly adapt for that. - Is it something they merged with? Do they have partnerrotation requirements? - They do.- Okay. Maybe before, I wantedto circle back a little, maybe on the nature of thefindings from this year as well as last year. But I've got something on the board. Can I go through that? That's okay? It won't take that long ? - How many questions?- Pardon? - You just got a few questions? If we could keep it brief, yes. - Well if you go to page 26 out of 260, this is the annual comprehensive report. It says the district has adopted a four way equitydecision making protocol, only those three questionsthere in the paragraph under that it says in comparison with other school districts that state districts rankshigh as educational programs and it scholastic ability of graduates, which I think is great, but are we grounded in anykind of a statistic with that? I don't mind if it's bold, but I just thought maybe there should be something grounded in that. - And I'm wondering if those are questions about the audit or those are questions... That's what I'm thinking is. - We want, you know,this is to the public. So we want it to be accurate. We want it to be grounded in,you know, accuracy, right? - Yeah. I just wanna make surethat we're questioning about the audit, not somethingthat's above and beyond. - Well, this is embeddedin the audit report. That annual comprehensive report. So I wanna also on page, I think it's on the same page, 26, it talks about the effortdrop in enrollment caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. District enrollment has stabilized. But then if you go backdown to page 27, it says, the bond funding will be used to address projected enrollment growth throughout the district. So I think that language there, if you can clean that up a little bit. So it kind of is saying, you know, what you're saying isdeclined, stabilized. And then at the otherend, you're saying, hey, the bond funding was used to,you know, for an increase. So that would leave a question in my mind. If I could have a review of that. - [Board Member] Can I get a clarification on what that means? - So I think when we're talking about the projected enrollment growth, we're thinking more about long term projectedenrollment growth. And that's certainly was the, we certainly did projectenrollment growth when we went for the bond. So I think that's kind of whythat's in there in that way. - [Board Member] Right. Well, I would suggest eitherremove it or explain why. - Understood. - The bond, we projectedthis and now we're at this. So we either have to explainit or I would suggest it- - These are just friendly suggestions. I would say on page 28, 260, it says, as demonstrated by the state of the state's schedule, including the financial section,the district continues to need its responsibility ofsound financial management. And I would just say, you know, that's great to self-proclaim that. But I think you could say, it needs responsibilityfor financial management, and we believe our procedures are sound, something like that. If you go to page 50 of 260. No, we can skip that one. 54... I think, this, you have theaddress is the old address for the school district. You should drop or update that... - No, that was the addressof the time of the audit. So that's the... - Oh, but it says, if you have questions, you're supposed to follow that. So that's just a little bit confusing. I wanted to ask you about thatdebt. It's on page 178, 260. It has to do with the debtlimit based upon the market. How does that, you guys calculate that or is that somethingthat the district calculates? - The district would calculate that... - And then you look at that... - We look at it to validatethat the calculation is done correctly. Sure. (indistinct) - The debt limit is in statute. - Yeah.- Right. The district doesn't reallycome up with the debt limit. It's in statute. - Other one had to do with that OPEB where we had assets, Ithink, of $37 million, but we have obligationsof like $78 million. So we're upside down on the funding, but that's probably typical, I'm thinking. Is that true? - You're talking aboutthe OPEB trust fund? - Yeah, we have assets of $37 million, but our obligations arelike $78 or $80 million. I think it's on page 229 of the book. Let's go with that. It'syour note number eight. In the finance. - So the OPEB trust fund,right, based on right now, the total OPEB liability is $13 million, where the assets are $31 million. So you're not upside down.You're actually good. - There's another one left.- Right. - [Board Member] Lemme just,was that in note eight? - That was in note eight. Yes. - Mr. Skaar, whileyou're looking for that, can I open it up to other Board Members? - And then it's back... - Any other questions? - I just had one, justfor my clarification. One slide talked about the unrestrictedoperating on fund balance and that's 9.6, and what's the difference between that and theunassigned, which is 7.5, which is the one we followedour deal with our policy. So what was slide eight on? - Yes.- Slide 10. - I just wanted-- Great question. Yeah, so the slide that we'reutilizing was, that was 9.6 is the state of Minnesota's calculation. So the state of MinnesotaDepartment of Education uses the calculation of fund balances, the percentage of expendituresfor their own internal use. Most notably, they use it for statutory operating debt calculations. So when districts fallbelow zero and get to two and a half percent, Ithink is the number now, you're considered instatutory operating debt. So you're far from that. But that's their calculation utilizing the Departmentof Education's calculation. The calculations that are on page 10 are district calculations. And the using your ownfund balance policy. So we're taking certainfund balance categories and comparing them to certainexpenditures to come up with a district calculation. So they differ. You might ask yourself, doesevery district do it that way? They do. They all... Every district has theirown fund balance policy and their own calculationsthat fit their district. And so there are twodifferent calculations on pretty much everydistrict that I work with. Great question. - Other questions? Okay, Mr. Skaar, have you found your... - Yeah, no issues. I just read it wrong. Sorry about that. - No problem. - Getting back to thematerial weakness, you know, since there's a lot ofcapital transactions, what was the nature of that? Was it a classification issue? - So what we're doing withthe construction process is when you're counting for capital assets in this particular financialreport, first of all, capital expenditures, whenpaid, are expensed in the fund. So they get expensed in the fund. They get recorded as an expenditure. In the financial report, we convert that particular expenditure into a capital asset accounting, into capital asset using, really trying to get simple here, but they have a separateset of financials called the entity wide financialstatements that account for capital assets. Right? So in the capital assetrecord keeping, we are, the district is calculatingconstruction in process. So you do that becauseanytime there's a contract that goes or a contractor or a project that goes multiple years, you don't wanna capitalizethat particular contract until it's complete. Correct? So any contract that's multiple years, they calculate or use aspreadsheet to summarize all the construction process. Right? That particularspreadsheet, when we analyze the beginning balance,which would have been kind of a roll forward from last year and we started comparing themto the accounting records, we noticed ones that weren't consistent. Didn't seem, they were off basedon this year's spreadsheet. So last year's spreadsheetdidn't necessarily mimic this year's spreadsheet. So we did some analysisto determine where we are. What contracts got off? Why is last year'sdifferent than this year's? And we came up with some adjustments. So we made those adjustments. - So the internal controlweakness was related to reporting, not actuallyscoring the numbers and reviewing thenumbers, things like that, or the invoices? - It had nothing to do with payments outto contractors at all. It had to do with internal accounting. - Did the auditors look atthe change order process? - [Jim] We did not. I mean... - So on the prior year finding with the, where you didn't post the, did anybody complain aboutit or was it just a finding that you found? No complaints? So there's no harm really? Right. All right. That's it. - Thank you. Thank you very much- - Thank you.- Some of us are always excited to have you come here for this information. I know this side of the table is. I appreciate you taking your time. - [Jim] Thank you. Thank you. - Yeah. And I also just wannaunderscore what Mr. Eichten said about the heavy lifting finance office with that construction, just managing the construction fundand the pressure on us to just stay on top of all that. It's really been a heavylift and really kudos to Andy Johnson, who supervisesall that very closely. Does a great job. Thanks for your time. As well as Sarah Andre, who is our controller andnew to public accounting. So she came from the corporate world and then moving into public education and public accountingis a really heavy lift. She's doing great work.Big learning curve. And then Stephanie Wendelalso... (indistinct) Thank you all.- Thank you. - All right. Thank you for coming. - Thank you. - We're gonna go on nowto discussion item B.2. Dr. Kazmierczak. - All right. I'd like to welcome PeterLeatherman. Wanna come up here. Peter conducted a community survey forus back in December. And he's here to sharethe results with us. So... Peter, take it away. Good to see you. - It's a pleasure to behere with you this evening. In my 31st year I've heard hundreds of those auditors reports and I still don't understandeducation funding. (laughs) God bless you. I'mwaiting for it to pop up. - [Board Member] You're all right. - Perfect. All right. To review with everybody, what we undertook with the district, we spoke with 400 randomly selected residents across the community. And then within that sample,there's a percent of parents. We had 30% parents. So you have approximately 120parents in that 400 sample. So I called an additional 280parents. I pulled that 120. Put that together. So now we have a sample to lookat parents that's also 400. 400 samples projectableto within plus or minus 5% in 95 out of 100 cases. Once again, the margin oferror is determined by the size of the sample, not thepercent of the population. So a 400 in White BearLake School District, a 400 in Ramsey County or400 in the state of Minnesota is plus or minus 5%. Interviews were conducted last year before the holidays between the 3rd and 19th. Average interview time was 12 minutes. People were thrilled wewere past the election and nobody was voter IDing them. So they were more than happy to talk. Refusal rate was only 6%. And to put up somedemographics, we always start... Cell phone only 59%. 8%, they still exist out there, our landline only households and then the remaining third have bothlandlines and cell phones. Continuing with the demographics and the demographics are,of course, two purposes. First off, we wanna validate the sample on key demographics, whether households with children, households with seniors, homeowners versus renters,those sorts of factors. But then we can look at statistically significantdifferences between groups. The typical resident haslived in the school district for about 12 years. You have 41% that are 10 years or less. Well, you have 36% thathave been in the district for over 20 years. You have a large groupof settlers and newbies, we call them. Part of it is obviously thegrowth on the north side of the school district. 15% indicate that they havea preschooler or an infant. 30% have a child attending the White Bear Lake Area School District. And 68% are empty nesters. Once again, empty nesterdoes not imply an age. It's lack of presence of a child. So it could have a 24 year old in here. For the purpose of the survey,it's there, an empty nester. So your core constituency is about a third of the population. 45% have a relative attending the White Bear Lake Area School District. 17% are renters. Self-assessed home value. 29% at under 250K. 27% at 250K to 350K. And then 26% are over $350,000 homes. Continuing with the demographics. The typical resident'sabout 46 years old with 25% 18 to 34 year olds and34% over the age of 55. Just short of a majority of folks are college graduates, thatincludes postgraduates, at 48%. 22% are high school graduates or less. And 30% have some college experience. The key factor for districts over the past two yearslooking at funding requests is the financial situationof the household. The financially stressed inyour district is the same that we have in the fourth quarter of '24, right at about 45%. It has come down thehigh since the pandemic was in the first quarter of '23 where we had almost 60% across the state of Minnesota indicating theywere financially stressed. So it has backed down.You're right at the norm. But to give you a historical indicator, before the pandemicthe norm was about 26%. So we're still about 20 points higher. - [Board Member] Can yousay that again? I'm sorry. - The norm before thepandemic was about 26%. So we're still about 20 points higher than what we were historicallybefore the pandemic. And part of it is, you know, the pandemic, even in '20 and '21, we didn't get the increasein financially stressed. The recession of 2008-2009, we got to about 65% financially stressed. By the winter of 2020, we were only at about40% financially stressed. It was really odd. And when you own yourown first survey company, we do internal surveys, wewent on and asked people. And folks were telling us, okay, yes, my income might have been impacted, but my expenses have been impacted. You weren't able to go on vacation. You weren't able to go to restaurants, all those sorts of things. So it didn't impact peopleuntil things went back to normal, where their incomewas no longer keeping up with their expenses once all of that discretionary spendingwas back in play for folks. And then finally, womenoutnumbered men by four points. And then you can see thegeographic distribution. City of White Bear Lake, 35%. Hugo, 20%. 18% each in Vandals andWhite Bear Township. And then 10% in theremainder of the district. So before I go on, I always ask any questionson methodology, demographics? - [Board Member] Go ahead, Mr. Skaar. - Where did you get youruniverse to sample from? - It's a database with everyvoter or every resident in the community. And then I just pull arandom sample off of that. - Oh, so it's not somethingfrom the district? - No.- You get it off? Okay. - Correct. Yep. - How are they, who comesup with the questions? - [Peter] It's developedwith the school district. - Okay. Thank you.- You're welcome. All right. Survey says, for thepurpose of the presentation, I put some data on frombefore the pandemic. Now, keep in mind, it's an apples to oranges comparisonpre-pandemic versus post-pandemic. But we can see some trendsthat we see everywhere. The overall quality ofeducation of the public schools, you can see, is at 86% this time. It was 81% back in '22. It's actually, it's notstatistically significant, but things are movingin the right direction. What we have seen consistentlyacross the state since '23 is a drop on the quality of education. The norm before the pandemicwas what you were at in 2019. You can see 90%. We'renow down to an 80% norm. Okay? And the shift is not onlygone from excellent to good, but from good to only fair. You don't have that in play here. You actually have the excellentrating going up from 20% to 25%, which is a movein the right direction. That's where districts took ahistorical hit post-pandemic. The excellent ratingcurrently is 11%, is the norm. So you're two and a half times the norm on the excellent rating. You don't have the shiftfrom good to only fair that a lot of districts have. So the challenge, thediscussion in the district is how do you get people, you don't have to change people's minds, that it's only fair and move 'em to good. The key is gonna be more ofhow do we make go from good to excellent again. Now a couple open-ended questions. They can ask us anything... And we code them into categories. First off, what do folks like most? Teachers at the top of the list, 25%. If we combine some categories, though, if we look at variety ofprograms and broad curriculum. So we have 21% reactingto what is being taught in the classroom. And then we combine good academics, excellent academics at 22%, the quality. You basically have a statisticaltie between those three. Who's teaching, what they're teaching, and the quality of the teaching. Now, some districts vary. Some are very, the focus is on curriculum. Some it's on the academicquality, other it's personnel. Your folks historicallyhave always been kind of equally distributed betweenthose three categories. If we ask what they like most, we always follow up withthe most serious issue. What leads the list?20% say lack of funding. That's becoming the constant of pi. Somewhere between 18% and22% across the state now are saying it's lack of funding. You have two other issuesthat hit double digits. High taxes at 12%, lackof discipline at 10%. The lack of discipline is typically somewhere around 8% to 10%. The high taxes, you're on the lower side. That has grown with propertytax hostility since '23, where the norm is a topof the mind response is between 15% and 20% typically. So you're a little bit lower on that. We're gonna go into taxesa little more in depth in a few charts. What other things come into play? Large class sizes, poorspending, declining quality, scattered are idiosyncraticresponses that are 1% or less that don't fit into any category. We just collapse them down. The key at the bottom of thischart though is the nothing. The 22%. These folks think there areno problems in this district. It's utopia. That is aboutfour times the norm right now. The norm right now is dropped to 6%. Before the pandemic, it was 11%. I just say before thepandemic all the time. Before the pandemicthough, it was 11% or 12%. It's been cut in half. So you do have... And these folks are positive throughout. Whether we're looking at financial management,governance, administration, the quality, these are your boosters. So you do have a verylarge cell of boosters in the school district in comparison to most metro school districts. We talked about thisshift over in the quality of education, but how abouta historic comparison? And for this question weground it in comparison to three years ago. Because it's not fair to tellthem to ask to think back to five years ago before the pandemic. Do they think things areimproving, getting better, stay the same or getting worse? Well, residents, it's38% to 13% that things are getting better. Amongst parents, it's 37% to 9%. So by a three to one anda four to one margin, you do have folks telling us that there are actually though things are moving in the right direction. They're getting better. Thenorm right now is two to one. And there are some districts and over the past two years where you have more people saying worse than better. You do have a sense ofmomentum that things are improving coming out. How does the district do onmeeting the learning needs of all students? Most, only some, or very few. You're back to a majoritysaying you're meeting the learning needs of all students. And that's a real stringentstandard to be held to. 53%. Now, that has dropped down to about 44% over the past three to four years. So a very good rating. Now we followed up, Ididn't put it in the chart, but we followed up withthose that said most or some and asked, is there a type of student whose learningneeds are not being met? And you have the same array that districts have right now, andthat is the struggling, the underachiever and the average student is where the concern is at. How concerned are they about learning loss during the pandemic? You have 50% that areindicating they're either very or somewhat concerned. 48% not too or not at all. Pretty much what we'refinding right now is the split on the perception oflearning loss of coming out of the pandemic. If we look at intensity, it's about 50% higher of not at all concerned versusvery concerned currently. What's the most important indicator of a high quality education? For this in the next few charts, we're gonna look at your overall communityversus the parents. And there is a lot of unitybetween the results of both. Oftentimes there's adifference between parents and the community as a whole,but especially on this one. What's the most important? Abroad curriculum serving all. Followed by college graduates going on for further education,reasonable numbers in classrooms, standardized test scores, and then technology atthe bottom as a priority. Now, on standardized test scores, this has come back over thepast three to four years. Quite frankly, it has to do with, it's the only touch pointinto a school district, especially for a non parent,to judge a school district. Coming out of the years of George W. Bush and No Child Left Behind, people got testing exhaustion. And so it was not seen as a good measure. It's back though in the mixas something that people are looking at when they lookat the quality of education in the school district. But you can see therereally is a symbiosis here at the top four of what your community and your parents value. That's what they value. How do they rate thedistrict on those indicators? Well, number one was thebroad curriculum serving all, 77% favorable, amongstparents, 85% favorable. College grads going onfor further education, 79% and 87% favorable. Reasonable number in classrooms has the highest unfavorability. Now, reasonable number is inthe eye of the beholder. Okay? Oftentimes in some districts, especially when we'relooking at facilities for class size issues, we give them specific numbers to react to. So if you hear 25, is that toohigh, about the right amount? This one is just what's reasonable. What's reasonable toone person who grew up in small town Minnesota isvery different than somebody who grew up in Maple Grovefor reasonable class size. And that's why there'ssuch variation on this. But you can see parents are more satisfied than the community as a whole. Standardized test scores, 78% and 74%. The highest level is the least important. The state of the art technology. So overall, it's very positiveon all those indicators. General open ended question. Are they concerned about curriculum? A lot of discussion about curriculum over the past three years. Basically, you're what we findin the seven county metro. About 75% have no concerns.25% do have concerns. So the community, 72% sayno, amongst parents, 74%. Following up with those thatsaid they have a concern, you can see too liberal andgender identity tie and then we go to LGBTQIA plus, DEI and then various scattered categories. But on this one, you're rightat the norm that we see. Some specific perceptions thatwe've tested historically. First off, does thedistrict spend taxpayers' money effectively and efficiently? Unchanged from '22, 76%agree with the statement. Norm on that right now is about 59%. So you're about 17, 18 points higher than the norm on spending taxpayers' moneyeffectively and efficiently. Do you ask for a tax increaseonly as a last resort? A little bit of a drop on this one. You've had funding requestsover the past few years, but still 69% agree with that. The bottom question for districts looking at potential fundingrequests is really important and that is the schoolsare a good investment and I would support a property tax increase toprotect that investment. The key on this is the no, because we're not tellingthem if it's an operating levy or a bond referendum, if it's $50 a month or $50 a year, the no arejust against everything. And so that's the core oppositionin the school district. You can see that's at 25%. Over the past 18 months,the norm has been about 30%, core no, it's gone up over the course of the last few years, which is why we've had so manyunsuccessful funding requests from school districts. So you're on the low endof what we would see. Once again, this doesn't mean that people could be thrilled for aproperty tax increase. The lower the number, the more willingness there isto have a discussion about it. Continuing with statements,the schools are a good value for the investment. Absolutely, unchanged. 89%. Does the district do a goodjob of involving the community? Unchanged. And this is unique because this took a hit with the pandemic. It was hard to involve thecommunity for two years, in, you know, virtual or what have you. And you could see even in'22 it was very high at 78%. You're at 79% right now. Have you spent past referendumfunds responsibly? 75%. Do they trust the district todo what's right for children? Back to where we were before the pandemic. '22, things had settled down. If you'd have done thissurvey in '20 or '21 had been very differentbecause people were arguing about masks or virtual versus in person, all of those things. But you've settled in at abetter than seven to one ratio on the trust issue, which is the norm on thisright now is about four to one. And then the satisfactionwith the decision making. Here you can see thepandemic effect back in '22. Still coming out the trustand the decision making. But you've gone back now to 75% satisfied with the decision making. If we do so look at somejob performance ratings, the school board, 69% to 25%. Norm on school boardright now is 58% to 40%. On the administration, 71% to 25%. On the administration it's always a ratio that we're looking at. It's almost three to one. The norm on the districtadministration is two to one. And then the closer you get to the kids, the higher the ratings. And we see that 75% onprincipals and teachers at 88%. The 88% of teachers is very strong. Teachers have taken a hit inratings over the pandemic. The norm being before 90%,we're down to about 80%. So that 88% is verystrong rating of teachers in your school district. I mentioned property taxes as a top of the mind most serious issue and that it was on the lower side. This question asks folks to think first about your total taxes andthen your school taxes. On total taxes, 49% think they're high. You're one of the few districts that's actually below 50%saying my taxes are high. This has gone up, like I mentioned. With the new assessmentin the spring of '23, everybody was thrilled. Nobody realized what that would do to their tax statement November of '23. And the norm went on propertyon my taxes are high to 60%. It came down a little bit, but now since November 15th of this year it's going back up again. So you are on the low end at 49%. Now on school taxes itactually drops to 44%. So this tells us that if they have animus on property taxes, it's notfocused at the school district. That's great news. Bad news is you're reallythe only show in town that has to go to the publicfor a funding request. You know I always joke, you know, back when I started doing this in the '90s we always asked who do you blame? And then cities andcounties got really mad and so we don't ask it that way anymore. We ask it this way, so it will tell us wherethe concern is focused at. It's not focused at you. So it's a tax sensitive environment, not a tax hostile environment. Is the district adequately funded? This is really interesting right now because we are gettingvery different results between the seven county metroand the rest of Minnesota. For the most part of '23 and'24 it was 45% yes 45% no and 10% don't know. What we're seeing now is a drop in the seven countymetro and you have that. You only have 41% sayingyou're adequately funded. Where the out state normis almost 60% saying, yes, we are adequately funded. So I'm not quite sure what's going on. We're gonna do another internalsurvey that we'll share with school districts just to get a feel of what's happening around the state. But there is this bifurcationright now on the perception of the adequacy of funding on the schools. People are confused. They've heard the governor talk about the wonderful things that were done. They've heard the legislaturedo their victory laps. And then they seedistricts making cuts all over the place and they don'tknow what to think right now. Overall assessment of financial management then, 64% favorable. Norm on this right now is 52%. So as we look at a wholewith all the battery of questions we've askedaround finances and spending, the district does have strongcredibility when it comes to financial managementwith the community. If they heard the district was gonna ask for a property taxincrease, are they for all, against all or are they persuadable? You actually have 3% morecore support than core yes. So that's the highest that Ihave over the last 18 months. Where the norm over the last18 months was minus three. 3% more opposition than core support. But obviously with thesenumbers the vast majority are in the persuadable category. And that's where decisionswill have to be made on funding requests in the future. On our let's make a deal question, what would be a reasonable tax increase to provide additional fundingfor the school district? Well, 24% say nothing. And we always want thatnumber to be under 35%. So you're well under that number. Once again this doesn't mean they support anything and everything. It means they're willingto have a conversation. 19% come in at $5. 23% come in at $10. And then we have 23% at $15 a month. The median, if we take out the nothing, they're not gonna support anything. The typical residence atabout 12 bucks a month or 150 bucks a year. For those that have heard me present for bond referendums out here or operating levies you know that number is not set in stone. It's based on, you know, it's not only, this is the tolerance but then what is the funding gonna be used for? That can that could increasea dollar amount support but it can also decreasedepending on what's included in the funding. Switching over to just theparent sample and getting a gauge on what parents are thinking. We went through a series of descriptions and asked do they agree or disagree with the statements about the White Bear LakeArea School District. And on this one I'll make this simple. There's vast agreement. The highest level of agreement you have with the statement is the district has excellent teachers at 95%. The lowest, excuse me, the lowest amount of agreementis preparing students for life and students succeedingat high levels at 86%. So very few parents aredisagreeing with these statements. The opportunity for districts is to make parents feelstrongly agreement on it. Because there's a lot of soft agreement on this because it's a four part. They can strongly agree, agree, disagree, or strongly disagree. So once again, the challenge and it's a challenge everywhere is to bring more enthusiasm and to make people feel more intensely about what's happening in these schools. Of those descriptions, which is the most important description for the White Bear LakeArea School District is preparing students for life. Followed by using effectiveteaching practices, students succeeding at high levels, support student needs andpartnering with families. The red is what is the least important. And you can see the pandemichas left a sour taste in everybody's mouth. You're not unique on technology. That is the least important option for the description about the White Bear Lake Area schools especially for parents. They don't wanna hearabout technology unless it's in the classroom. What's the reason they sent their child to the school district? So they could tell us anything. We collapse them down into categories. You only have two itemsthat hit double digits. So there's not really likeone brand, shall we say, that's in the decision making, close to home and the good teachers. If we combine kind of the location responselike my kids go here because we live here, youhave close to home at 18%, live in the district at 9% and family and friends attend at 6%. So about a third are making a decisionbasically on convenience. That's a little bit lower. Most districts are inthe 40% to 45% range. So you have more people making a decision on a value outside of justa demographic, shall we say. So good teachers. The programming. And then we also have downthe list the curriculum. About 10% basing it on that. The quality of the education,whether it's high quality, the achievement stats, the reputation, the strong academics,about 15% in that category. So, you know, once again, if you think back to what they like most, this kind of reflects it overall too on what parents are valuing. All three equally. Who's teaching, what they're teaching, and how well are they teaching it. A rating on characteristicsof the district. Once again, they can say excellent, good, only fair, or poor. I've collapsed the excellentand good into the green and the only fair, or poor into the red. You can see it's 76% or higherfavorable across the board. With a high on the qualityteaching staff at 94%. You actually have fourother items that hit 90%. Extracurricular sportsopportunities, the variety of course offerings, music, theater, arts, and access to technology. You then have a group in the high 80s: academic achievement, basic academic coursework,character development, responsiveness to student needs, and access to the pre-k program. Then the state national testscores, overall college prep, community serviceopportunities, student behavior, and personalized education. What we're seeing acrossthe metro and across the state, your bottom two are the bottom two pretty much everywhere. There is a desire on thepersonalized education piece. It's seen as a way, if youhave concerns on class sizes, to overcome those concerns. So the kid isn't just anumber. So the desire for more. But that 22% unfavorableis about 10 points lower than we're seeing elsewhere. On the student behavior,you're about 15 points lower. Well, it is the second lowest rated. We're seeing somewherebetween 35% and 40%. There has been a concern about discipline and behavior, especiallyin the seven county metro. Some statements about the district. Vast agreement, from 87% to 97%. They feel welcome,accepted, the teachers care, they feel respected, theyget help when provided, the district does a good job of informing, meeting individual learning needs, they challenge theirstudent, the school is safe, they support learning at home, and the one that's most difficult is thecommunicate about progress. That's typically around20% because there's just a certain group of parents,my wife being one of them, who will never besatisfied with the amount of information they get aboutthe child living at our house. Start school before Labor Day. This is a fun question always. Someday I'll never have to ask this again, just like I'll never haveto ask about chickens for city surveys. 50% support school startingbefore Labor Day, 39% oppose. These are parents. It's a statistical tie,basically, with 12% are unsure. Look at intensity.Surprisingly, this is waned. This was more intense about 10 years ago, where it was like mom, apple pie, and school starting after Labor Day. For parents, it's kindof that strong opposition has started to wane, but it hasn't transferred over to support at this point in time. And then finally, communication. Where are folks getting their information? This one looking at the community, blue, parents, green, amongst the community, it's the website and thenewsletter at 43% combined. And then follow the wordof mouth, local newspaper, social media, email. You can see parents are an entirely differentworld for communication. 32% indicate email, 31% the website. Almost two-thirds ofparents are relying on one of those two sources as theirprimary source of information. Now, how do they preferto receive information? If we look at thisprint versus electronic, do they wanna holdsomething in their hands? 31% say the mail newsletter and11% say the local newspaper. So you have over 40% thatwant something traditional to be handheld. Very specific demographicover the age of 55. Parents have completelymade the transition. So between the email, thewebsite, social media, and an e-newsletter, you have over 75% of parents preferringsomething electronic. If we flesh it out alittle bit more and ask, do they get a lot ofinformation, some information, not too much or not at all, what's the rate on this chartis the a lot and the sum. And so for the community,it's the website, district mailings, but thatgoes to first place if we add in the secondary of some. But what goes into secondplace if you add the secondary is the informal discussionswith friends and neighbors. The grapevine is alive and lush. You are unique because on this chart, the most credible source, where are folks getting their information? You had 11% indicatingthat it was word of mouth. The norm on that rightnow has gone up to 20% over the past 18 months. As newspapers like inSouthwest Metro disappear or newspapers don't coverschool districts like they used to, there's a very specific, the grapevine has grown specificallyamongst people like me, old guys over the age of 50. We used to read thenewspaper, it's not there, not gonna go to thewebsite, not gonna look at social media, we're gonnaget together for breakfast and gossip about what's going on. The word of mouth used traditionally was parents revolving around ECFE pre-K athletic associations. It's expanded. You don't have that as a primary. You still have a viable newspaper.Unlike other communities. That has helped mitigate that. But you can see theimpact of the grapevine and amongst parents also. And district employees forparents are a critical piece of the information network that they have, taking it all the way up to third place. So I think across theboard, from what I've seen, with districts makingcomparisons to two years ago, three years ago, the district's moving in the right direction. The challenge for the district, and it's a good positionto be in because a lot of districts are in theposition now where they're going to have to change people's minds. That something they disagree with or they rate unfavorably, they can agree with or rate favorably. You're not in that position. You have the challengeof how do you increase the enthusiasm, theintensity of the agreement of the ratings. So I'd be happy to answerany questions you have. - [Board Member] Thank you.Do we have any questions? - Excuse me.- Mr. Skaar? - I have a question. One thing that Wayne told me in our financial comprehensive report is the close knitcommunity that we have here in the White Bear area of Hugo. And I'm wondering how much of that influences the,you know, statistics. But I don't know how you measure that. But I got to believe that if you're a close knit community, you're gonna have a lot more pride and a lot more touch pointswith the community schools than you would where you havea higher transient population. - It's a great question. You're absolutely right. I mean, this community, this entire area is a smalltown in a suburban oasis. It always has been. I did a survey for the cityof White Bear Lake last year on housing and this incredibledesire that people want to stay here. Whether it's when theymove out or they wanna have housing available for their kids. So that does bring that connection in. So in that sense, it is more small town than asuburban oasis, shall we say. But we're seeing declineson it everywhere. It really doesn't matterwhether, you know, there are a few other unique communities in the metro area that Iwould call the small town in the metro area versusjust straight suburban. And even those communitieshave seen declines. - Declines in the results?- Yeah. Yeah. - Thank you.- All right. - Any other questions? Ms. Thompson. - Well, I was just gonnasay it's very interesting. I just love hearing your reports because they're alwaysjust fascinating to me. All the questions and theinformation is very helpful. - [Peter] Thank you. - I was gonna prettymuch say the same thing. Just seeing the data come in, it just shows that thingsin the district are going the way that we had hoped they would go. And the work that we've done and the work that is happening here isprobably seen in the community. So I always appreciate this one and seeing the numbers this year. And then hearing I cantouch on the comparison between us and other areasis promising and helpful. So I appreciate it. - You're welcome. And I would love to have theseresults for other clients I'm gonna go talk tothat are actually looking at a bond referendum or operatinglevy like tomorrow night. Not gonna be as positive.They're actually going. So I mean, it really doesspeak well of what's happened. Absolutely. - Thanks very much.- You're welcome. - Other questions? Yes. - I just have a comment and that is to thank ourdistrict for these results and to see how we arekind of bouncing back. Is there work to do? Absolutely. But these are very promisingand I appreciate the work that goes into it becauseI know it's not easy on district staff, our principals, our teachers. I love seeing that as we getcloser to those that touch the kids, we get that higher rating. So I just wanna thankthose that are working in this district to make this happen. Because it's not been easy. - I mean, they're expanding. In '21 and '22 in many districts, it was actually the communitywas more positive parents. So you don't have that in, now yourparents are, you know, and that's important. That's the constituency. Andthat also helps build momentum. If your key constituencyis talking about it, that helps intensify feelings. - Oh, I was just, you kind ofreflecting what Chris said. I just hope the teachers seehow favorably they can rate it. I hope they get a chance. I mean, I know it'sgonna be on the website, it's in our minutes. - Tiffany's probablyalready sent an email. (people laughing) - I just don't think they hear enough, just how important they'reto families in the community and that their work is appreciated and the sacrifices and, you know, all the things that do thatare unseen by most people. But parents see it and so it's so great. - Okay. And I just wanna saythank you and I know one of the things, I'm oneof those that we never, we won't leave. My family's been here forever.It's just this is our home. We've enjoyed the community. We supported the school,we've been in the school for all my family. A lot of us have come through. So we're really tied tothis community, this school. And I think that helpsthe positivity because it's our home and it's our school. And we have pride. Go Bears. Thank you. - It's not transient, shall we say, that if I don't like it,I'll just go elsewhere. You wanna stay here andfix it. Yeah, absolutely. - Right.- Super. A pleasure. - Thank you very much. - Next on the agenda is B.3, Lincoln Elementary update. Dr. Gillespie. - I will introduce Brian Morris, principal of Lincoln Elementary and then Christine Belford whois the instructional coach. They're here to share moreabout their great work. - Thank you, Dr. Gillespie, Dr. Kazmierczak, Board Members. My name is Brian Morris. I'm the principal at Lincoln Elementary. Lincoln Elementary, three short blocks through the snow that way. And this is Christine Belkor. She is our instructional coach at Lincoln and at Vadnais HeightsElementary and a key component in our success. But just, I'm in charge of clicking. Okay. So just to give you a quick snapshot, take a look at the crests. We are Lincoln Elementary. One of the things that I'm gonna talk about is our house system. I am a member of Quantum,House of Respect. Mrs. Belford is in house...- Compasio. - Compasio, House of Empathy. And we'll talk about that a bit lately, but it's one of thecomponents of our school. It's one of the ways that we are working towards meeting our strategic goals at Lincoln. As a lot of you know, Lincoln is a vibrant neighborhood school. We're close to downtown, close proximity to White Bear Lake, BaldEagle, Otter and Birch. We're known for our commitment to student achievement,our welcoming atmosphere and active parent involvementand just a passion to partner with familiesas we prepare children to reach their hopes and dreams. We have about, well, exactly right now. 470 students served by 56 staff members. And that's all staff. We have 20 class homeroomsat Lincoln, 17 in K-5. So that's pretty much three classrooms at every grade level andthen three classrooms in the explorations program. Those are multi-age classesof our district wide gifted and talented program. And we'll talk about thata little bit more later. The specialist rotationthat we offer are PE, music, art and Spanish. We also have a small but very strong special service cluster, providing emotional andbehavior support for students. And like I said, the explorations programfor highly gifted students. Like I said, about threeclassrooms at every grade level. And I know that the staff members, it is just incredible, not only our teachers, but our skilled and supportive staff in nutrition, playground,cafeteria, our paraprofessionals, our custodians, our professionals and student support services. It's a real team, a real student focused, family focused team thatI am incredibly proud of. Christine was giving me a hard time about rocking it old school with paper. Paper. It's pretty professional up here. Slowing me down. Okay. I'm just quickly... I mean, you can read it. You've got the board notes, but our mission and our objectives and our strategic tactics... Those are mission objectives and tactics that we updated two years ago. I really want to pointthem out because some of the programs or the workthat we're doing is really, two components are reallyfocused on showing you how we are working towardsour strategic tactics. The highlighted, things we'regonna highlight tonight. One is tiered academic support. So how do we support our kids? How do we work towards that personalized learning experience? Another is our house system. That is our main tool inthe tactic of creating a connected culture within our school. And then third, we're gonna take a look at the explorations program that is a district wide programthat is housed at Lincoln. And also, again, our books.I was behind a click. There we go. Notice that within our firsttactic that will nurture the whole child through apersonalized learning experience. That's where you see ourtiered academic support. Right? That's where you see howwe address equitable access to learning, differentiated learning and high academic standards. At the beginning of this school year, at the beginning of every school year, all of our schools createacademic goals, equity goals, family engagement goalsand social emotional goals for our student. Just to give you a flavor of sort of how we're reachingtowards our academic goal, what we're going throughright now at Lincoln... Our Lincoln academicgoals for all students are that from fall tospring, Fastbridge screening. So Fastbridge is a standardizedtest system that we use for screening kidsfall, winter and spring. From fall to spring, beginning of the yearto the end of the year, 90% of all Lincoln studentswill either increase a risk level band or remain in low risk or make sufficient progresstowards their IEP goals. And again, it's measured by these tools that are aReading and early reading for the younger grades, aMathand early math for the older. - [Board Member] Mr.Morris, just for a few, can you explain what a risk level band is? - [Brian] Yes. - You found it.- I'm on it. So when we think about risk level, it's the risk of not performing at, not meeting grade level standards. So if I am high risk of not meeting grade level standards, that's where we don't want to be. Right? High risk means there's agood chance that at the end of this school year, I'm not gonna meet grade level standards. If we are at low risk, that means there's a small chance I might not make grade level standards, might not perform atgrade level standards, but it's a pretty low probability. So we want kids to be in thatlow risk category. All right? And again, if you think about, so back to sort of whatthis academic goal means. And I gotta get it explainednow because when we look at the next slide, it'sgonna be even more confusing. We want our kids in low risk, we call it the low risk band, or youcan think of it as a bucket. We want our bucket ofstudents to be in low risk, or they also have agrouping called advanced that's above that. And we want our kidsto be moving up, right? If a student begins theschool year, high risk, so a student is veryprobable of not performing at grade level by theend of the school year, there's a big differencebetween being at high risk and at low risk. But we want that student moving up. Like student growth is a pre-Kto 12 and beyond process. And we want them always growing and we want accelerated growth. If a student is just growingsort of the same year to year, they're gonnastay in a band, right? A risk band. If they are having increased growth, they're gonna be movingup in those risk bands. So we want 90% of ourstudents to either move up in a risk band, in other words, become lower risk forperforming below grade level. Or if they're alreadyat low risk or advanced, we want them to stay there, right? We don't want themdropping down. All right. So think of that. Think of that idea of swoopingup from left to right. When you take a look at the next slide,this graph, all right? Green is low risk. Blue is advanced. This year, and this is just asnapshot of our fourth grade. When we talk about our goals, we think about every grade level. Snapshot of our fourth grade students. We began the year with 76%of our fourth grade students in reading at low risk or advanced. So in the green or the blue, where we want them to be at least. All right? So, excuse me,76% are starting there. By the end of the school year, we want 90% either there orat least having moved up, having, went the wrongdirection with my hands, having moved up from red toyellow or from yellow to green. All right? So maintaining low risk ormoving up in the risk bands. Like I said, we do screeningthree times per year. We just completed ourwinter screening a week ago. And just again, looking atfourth grade and reading, we began the year with76% of our fourth graders in the low risk slash advanced,at our winter check in, 82% have moved up in their risk band orremained in low in advance. And like I said, ourgoal is 90% by spring. I love this graph, even though it's superconfusing because it shows you where kids are going. All right? If you look ifyou start at the red, okay? We started the year in fourth grade with three students down in the red. Two of them remain in the red. One of them swooped upfrom red across the yellow and into the green. That's super impressivethat that student was able to accomplish that. If we look at our yellow,right, that's the sum risk. That's sort of a medium range. We had 10 students that started there. Of those 10, three movedup, which was great. Of those 10, two moved down into the red, which is not what we wanna see. That's not the directionour kids should be going. If you look at our green, we started out with 17 in thegreen, 17 in the low risk. Three moved up into that blue in advance. We did have one movedown from the low risk into the sum risk. So down from the green into the yellow. But overall, our kids aremoving in the right direction. And like I said, by spring, we're shooting for 90% being there. So that's just a snapshot. Just to give you numbers,math is similar but different. We started out with 69% inthe low risk and advanced. They are moving up. But right now in winter, we've got 78% in math infourth grade that have moved up or remained in those riskbands that we want them in. All right. So that's my sort of snapshot of how we progressivelymeasure over the course of the school year howour kids are growing. The next part is what dowe do about it? Right? Christine is our big whatdo we do about it person. I got to click the slide. Here we go. - I'm the action girl.- She's the action girl. - [Christine] Having tiered instructions, not unique to Lincoln... Did you have a question? - I was wondering on theFastbridge of the session, is it, I can't remember theterminology of the word. Is it the same set ofquestions across the board or does it go up and downbased off of the answers that the students are giving? - It goes up and downbased off the answers. So it adjusts.- Really determining it all. - It's determining sort of where you are. So if you get the first problem wrong, it's gonna say, well, let's try maybe somethinga little bit easier and see how she does on that. If you get the firstproblem right, let's see... And that's a simplified version of it. But it'll, you know, let's challenge her more tosee where she's really at. So it really narrows in on that. Yep. - Thanks. - [Christine] So having a tiered plan isn't unique to Lincoln, but it's something we really are focusing on this year because wewant to hit that goal of having all of our students show growth. And so just just to kind ofgo over what the tiers mean, a tier one is all of our students, no matter who you areor what your needs are, we consider everyone tierone and everyone gets what we call our core instruction. And then some students we call tier two. And there are some students that they need some additionalsmall group instruction in order to show some progress. And then we have a fewstudents who need tier three, which are some additionalmore intensive instruction. And so what we're doingthis year at Lincoln is we just finished up allthis Fastbridge testing with the data guy Ijust went over with you. And last week during our PD day, all the grade levels didsome data driven dialogue and they looked at their grade level data and they figured out whichstudents were tier two, some risk, not reaching the year end grade level standards, and which students weretier three high risk or not reaching the yearend grade level standards. And so then this week, we are going to meet as grade level teams and we are going to lookat now some diagnostic data that they have given theirstudents to figure out why they're not reading at the level we would expect them to read. We're gonna analyze allthis data about each of these individual studentsand come up with a plan for instruction so thatwe can get these students to make this progress with the school that we have as a collectivegroup of staff for them. And so we're gonna progress monitor and every six weeks we'regonna come back as a group and just keep talking about these kids and not letting anyone forget about them because they are important. And we're gonna make surewe work together to get them to get the goal. - Awesome. Thank you. And yeah, and Christineis really the person who organizes, especiallynot so much the identifying who needs support, but the whatto do about it part, right? She is our specialistin coaching the staff and to supporting the kids with differentiatedpersonalized instruction. All right. So again, these tiered systems, this data review is donesimilarly in all of our schools. I just thought, A,little bit of a deep dive into what's going on right now and B, it's what's in our heads right now. So it's easiest to presentabout the thing that's most, the biggest thing thatwe're doing at the moment. The next part that I wanted to... So that's an example of one of the ways that we're working towards our tactic one. Our tactic two is to createa connected community within our school. And we are doing a lot of work with that through whatwe call our house system. Our house system is based on a system... A man named Roy Clark hadcreated this idea at a school... I forget what the school is. But we have a teacher whohad traveled to this school, Roy Clark, where they havereally looked at a way to make everybody feel like they belong, not just to a large school, like 270 kids, is a lot of kids, not just to a classroom, but to belong to a largergroup within the school, and within that largergroup, a smaller group. So we are organized into houses. And like I said, there are five of them. And, you know, like I said, at its core is to createa connected culture. Our overall goal is to increase and strengthen student adultrelationships and student to student relationships sortof across all grade levels. If you think about a studentin an elementary school, like the number one adult forthat student is the teacher. And then you have, you know, I have connection with allthe kids in the school, but I'm like a second tier guy, right? I'm the principal. I have a lower level thanthe teacher with all of them. But some students havethe reading specialist is another teacherthat's big in their life. Every student in theschool has the PE teacher, the music teacher, the art teacher, the Spanish teacher as beingan adult in their life. When we create the houses, now these children alsohave the other adults in their house. So I have, you know, I spend more time withkids in quantum than I do with kids across the building. And within each of thesehouses, we have a house family. So I have a house familythat's, what, next slide. We'll go back to this one.The giant house family selfie. My face is bigger than everybody else's, but they are more important than me. I was just holding the camera. But that's just a snapshot of my... And Leah Armstrong. She'sa fifth grade teacher. Our house family within Quantum. That house family has done... We do a service family service project or growth activity every quarter. We also have a whole schoolhouse assembly every quarter. But just this idea... So this snapshot was last year. Each of our families madethose cool knot blankets for Serenity, for the senior center. We've also packed snack bagsfor kids at other schools. This year we also, for Serenity, we created sort of a holidaygift candle for adults at Serenity and one otheradult care facility. But just that idea that these kids are building theserelationships both vertically with students across grade level. They're having more adults that are like their adult trusted adult contact. We think is gonna reallybring that connected culture to Lincoln that we hope to gain. And then the third piecethat I wanted to speak to was the Explorations program. I don't have this in my notes. The Explorations program has been part of White Bear schoolsfor 10 years, I think. Since 2015. It's a program for highly gifted students from every school and someopen enrollment students. This year and last year as well we have three mixed grade classrooms. Right now I think we have 74 kids across the three classrooms. The Explorations program hasan accelerated curriculum. So for instance in math, everybody is at least one grade level up. We have instruction that istailored to the gifted learner. A lot of our learning, especially around literacyand social studies are around themed explorations. We have things like ExplorationAcademy where students have opportunities to exploreareas of their interest. We have a monthly maker space. This next slide just ourExplorations program does a lot of their learning andespecially history learning in White Bear. So you will see them goingto farmers market on Fridays when the weather is nice. You will see them heretraveling to City Hall to learn about city government. You will see them travelingto the History Center or the Historic Housein downtown White Bear to learn more about, youknow, not just their passions, but also sort of their place, learning more about thecommunity and their place in the community. And that's what I think isreally one of the strengths of the Explorations program, and it feeds nicely off the fact that we are so close to downtown. But like I said, it is a district wise sortof a school within a school. We do provide bus servicefor students from anywhere within the district and it's a great program to serve a portion of our student populationthat really needs to be pushed in ways that sometimes could be difficult in your general classroom. That is it. Questions that... Thank you for listening.Questions that people have? - The Explorations program, are they also part of the house system? - Yes. Yep. - I know that at leastfrom my understanding the Explorations programused to be invited into... So parents can either opt in or opt out. - Correct. - Do you know what the factorsare? What they're looking at? What those letters are sent out to? - You mean like how wedecide who we invite? It's based on a anassessment called the CogAT. The cognitive, cognitive assessment test. I think that's what it stands for. So we administer allsecond graders in CogAT. So it's everyone gets screened. So this is, it's a program that is not just you knowteacher recommendation by any means, right? So everyone is screenedusing the CogAT and then a second component, ourhouse achievement component is how students in secondgrade have achieved on their aReading and aMath so that Fastbridge assessment, and then the third is the LISI. And I don't know what LISI stands for but it's a teacherassessment or a teacher survey in how self-directed a student might be, sort of outside of thebox creative thinking, things along those lines. So take those three components put them in to a formula, right, and then we essentiallyinvite about the top 5% of students that are in those categories using those three tools. Usually we invite about40 to 45 students to start in third grade and in 20 to 25 decide that that's the rightchoice for their kids. And yeah, it's a very strongprogram that's been strong for years we've had youknow it has in the past sort of flopped back and forthbetween two classrooms and three. We've been at three fortwo years now and I hope that's where we stay, about,you know, kids in the, 70 to 80 kids would be great. - One other thing with... I love the informationon growth because I think that tells a much better storythan when people normally are just, the 56%, you know, at grade level and Ithink the growth tells a much more intricate story. What I would like to see is what I think would beeven more helpful would be to follow the cohorts through. Because just seeing one snapshot of you here really doesn'ttell you anything other than just that one year. It would be really helpfulto see that same group over a series of years. Does the risk, high risk go up? Does it keep continuing togo down for a couple years for the same cohort? I think that's information that would be really helpful as well. - Yeah, and that's what I mean- - And I know you guys are looking at it. - Right, and my goal isjust to give you sort of a snapshot of what the work looks like. But yeah, and that issomething we look at like and students take a Fastbridge assessmentevery year from kindergarten through fifth grade sothat we can identify what their needs are inreal time in any given year and how are they growingover that you know that entire six year spanof elementary school. - I mean it's a great thing because you can do interventionsreal time as opposed to a lot of standardizedtests where you don't know until after the fact. So there's nothing you can dountil basically a year later. - Yeah. - Jen and I will bring somemore overall data to all of you and I can'tremember the exact meeting but we're working onthat with the screening and trying really hardto get better and better and making sure that we're looking good. We'll make a note and do what we can do. - Ms. Streiff Oji. - So, one, I love thatyour mission statement says that you nurture the mind,body and hearts of your kids. So thank you for that. Can you share just how youdetermine your interventions? Is that determined at the district level? How is that training done? Like... - So at the district actuallywe've been doing a lot of work on kind ofaligning our interventions and making sure, and doingsome learning on what type of interventions areappropriate, especially... Do you know that we have a new literacy? Yes. And so we've also done allthis learning with letters. And we know that our studentsneed an aligned experience and have been a partof a really great team where we have taken a lookat our new literacy and all of this learning we've done with letters. And we are coming up with, as a district, an intervention plan forthese Tier 2 and Tier 3, so that our students aregoing to get learning that when they leave their classroom, it's not going to be newlearning because we know that they're going to learn best when, oh, I've been doing somethingvery similar in my classroom with my teacher. And so we are, we have a really great teamworking on that and those are the things I'm usingwith the teachers that I work with so that they can get ahead start on those things. I'm really excited for it. - I just wanna say LETRS is, for people that maybe don't know, studentoutcomes looking at LETRS. - LETRS is, that approach-- Nice. - It's not spelled right-- It's not spelled right. Yeah.- It's not. But it's a-- It's a cute name. - You're not looking at LETRS. You're looking at the strategiesyou use to teach reading as designed by Read Act and many other great researchthings that we, anyway, that wasn't a question. That was a comment. But I was gonna ask youa question, Christina. When you're looking at allthe data driven discussions and drilling it down toindividualized students, which parents really appreciate having individualized instruction for their children, especiallystruggling with children, how is that impacting whenyou finally feel that you need to make a referral with special education? I'm guessing that you're referring to kids that are the right kids thatmight need more instruction in that area, that qualify for those kinds of special services. So you're working withkids a lot before they get to that point, right? So maybe the kids are theright kids that qualify for special education. I just thought you should comment on that, being a former special education teacher. - So actually, so thisyear is when we've really had all these tools in place, the curriculum resources and some of these other diagnostic tools. And this fall, westarted really using them and we had some referralsand we're like, let's wait, let's see the progress that we make. And two of these students, they moved up and showedus that they're not having these concerns anymore, because what we've done is showing that they'remaking the progress. - [Board Member] So yougive the right instruction and they're basically maybe not having- - They're not showing the need any more. - [Board Member] Learning disability or some other other categoryof special education. - Right. Right. They just needed the right instruction. They're not showing a disabilityin those two situations. So the work we didshowed that intervention was appropriate and it wasn'tnecessary for a referral. - Thank you.- Thank you. - Okay, go ahead. - This actually might bea question for the house. I'm just wondering in terms of the teachertraining for the LETRS... It obviously seems to be working in the cases that they'vebeen presented with. How have we made sure that it's been... How have we made sure thefidelity of the program is across all schools and all teachers? I mean, it goes up and downbased on who buys into it, who's got their own way of doing things. - We're working really hard on that. So LETRS is the professional development in the science of reading. And so really, it's a two-year process. 95% of our K-5 teachers have completed it. So this would be their first year that they're not also doingLETRS training, you know, really is the sole focus forprofessional development. - Is there an assessment? I mean, that two-year process, that's kind of my issuewith the fidelity of it, is because you're going throughtwo years worth of training. How do we know at the endof that two years training, two years of training,that they know their stuff? - Yeah. I get the question. The two years is really intense learning. I mean, teachers almost have a process because they haven't learned this way of teaching literacy inteacher education programs, of like almost morning. Like, this is how I taughtfour, how do I grow in that? So that's the focus. Meanwhile, we alsoadopted a new curriculum. And so between all of that, we have an instructional leadership group, our district instructionalleadership group with elementary, whichincludes teacher leaders, principals, instructional coaches. And they talk about how are we observing and really looking at that fidelity. And so they're working, I'm not gonna remember the statistics, but they're really workingon how are we making sure that this is happening. Not just hoping that thishappens, but diving into it. And so they talk aboutwe're doing walk-throughs. I have walked throughmany classrooms with that. And so you're reallypartnering with teachers and educators to say,where is it difficult? How are we aligning the curriculum? And so we're knee deep in that right now. And really, that's our focus. How do you go to deepimplementation so that we have, we take out the variability? A huge thing that's helpingour educators is looking at that data. So when we look across the board, we look at different schools, we look at different grade levels, but people just say, what's going on for firstgrade, second grade? How do we come together? Because maybe we're seeingfaster growth in one area. And so all of that is, whenyou think of system change, we have been very aggressive. And people have leanedin and we have people, I'm so proud of the work that we've done, but you're in the middle. So you're asking the questionthat we too are asking, and then how do you partnertogether around that? - [Board Member] So are the teachers, are they working together by grade level within the schools they like, like obviously they normally do, but are they also looking across? - Yes, I feel like I'mstealing all the thunder, Jen is a huge part of all of this. But the principals who are here... I want to hear that thisis like a huge team effort. But yes, we have elementarycommunities of practice that meet every singleprofessional development day, and each grade levelacross our whole district, every single grade comes together, and that's led through professionaldevelopment around curriculum implementation with a principaland an instructional coach. And so when you think about, it's really, it's amazing just whatthey do on those days, and diving in, and people are, that was a need that people identified. Not only do we need time in our buildings, but we need to do vertical. So yes. - Thank you.- Thank you. - Thanks, Jen.- One more question. - Very quick, Brian.- Yes. I just wondered how do you find the timefor the houses to meet? I mean, when do you carve out time on the busy school day forhouses across grade levels? - That's an excellent question. And it's a hard balance, right? So here's a tactic that isgoing to build a culture of learning and sort of collaboration within our school, this... But that's not somethingthat's easily measured, that's not something you're going to see on our MDE report cardand all that, right? And so here's something thatwe feel is very important, that is going to affect academics, affect our students' long term growth, hopefully well beyond our school. But we have to find time for it. So that balance between,yes, this is super important, but no, we can't do it every day. So that's, like I said, we have one all schoolassembly per quarter. That's about 30 minutes and one 30 to 40 minute house familymeeting per quarter. So, yeah, and it's really hard. And that's, you know, whenwe have conversations, there are some staff thatwould like more of it. And sometimes we haveto push back on that. But really, and it's also doing things that we've been doing in the past, but now in the context of houses. So, for instance, we don'thave a student council anymore. We have heads of houses thatare sort of our student, sort of student leaderswithin the building. I know that we've got a, February is Black HistoryMonth and it's also... - I love to read month.- I love to read month. And our reading tallies all have to do with reading enough toearn a star that goes on the outside of your house family door. Right? Something that's happeningoutside of class, but it's building that communitywith inside the school. But that is a hard thing. Like we cannot go whole hog into something that might take away toomuch more academic time. So, it's a balance. - All right. Oh, sorry.- Just saying. I'm Dan Skaar. I'm the new Board Member. I just want to introducemyself and say thank you for the meaningful report. I understood this actually.So that was a good thing. (people laughing)- It's a win. - The other thing is... I noticed that you useLatin for your crests. Does that mean you want to become like a Latin immersion school? Probably don't get a lot of people left... - No. And we do know enough Latin to say that really is, or is that, I don't know. Is that just like fake Latin? And I don't know the answer... - It is real Latin.- Okay. Well, then yes. We are White Bear's newLatin immersion school. (people laughing) But yeah, no, I got a few Latin phrasesand none of 'em are good. Well, thank you. - Thank you for coming by. All right, next on our agenda is B.4. Dr. Gillespie, you wanna introduce? - Yeah, as John's coming up here, I will introduce John Leininger, who's the principal atMatoska International School. I'd just like to give ourelementary principals a shout out. They've been at work since7 o'clock this morning. So thank you for being here today. - Absolutely, thank you for having me. Thanks for sticking around. I don't know if I'm last, but I kind of wanna just say everything that Mr. Morris said, like ditto, because I just, call it good. I appreciate you havingme, taking the time. I'm John Leininger, principalat Matoska International. It's nice to meet you, Mr. Skaar. Thank you for that introduction.I've seen you around. It's nice to hear. So there isa lot to share about Matoska. I'm really excited about it. I am not gonna be ableto get to everything about Matoska, but I'm sureI'm gonna enthrall you, and you'll be able to stay,and we can talk afterwards. But we'll get this through so the people who have families can get home. Do I push the down arrow on here? - No, no. There you go.- Okay, a little delay. - Arrow right. Arrow right.- Arrow right? Gotcha. Ah, there we are. Matoska. So this is our mission statement. I'm not going to read through it, but our mission statement comes out of the strategic planning process, which was done a few yearsago and then redone as well. And it's something thatI really appreciated about that process. It wasn't a top-down approach. It was about our familiesand communities articulating what they wanted in their schools, our teachers saying thisis what's important. And as we saw in ourprevious presentation, our families are highly involved. Our families really want to be involved. They care about their schools.They love their schools. They love their teachers. And so as part of this process, we work with our, you know, the Matoska families, our PTO members, members in the community, not necessarily even part ofthe PTO, and our teachers, and we say, what is it about the school that you attend, thatyou want and hope for. I should probably take a small step back. You know, for some people whoare not familiar, Matoska, we are in the south end of the school districtnear Century College. We're primarily a choice school, so families in White Bear Lakeget to choose to come to us. We have a small attendancearea, as we used to say, like, if you can throw baseball in a backyard, we wanna make sure thatyou are able to come to us. So we're excited that we candraw those families right in our neighborhood, but as well, most of our families chooseto come here and join us at Matoska International. And so our families said that, you know, learning is important. They said that having adevelopmentally appropriate teaching and learning, usingresearch-based strategies, our families said it wasimportant to recognize and evaluate and havea deeper understanding of each child's culturaland personal identities. Our families said that wewanted a commitment to establish and nurture strong relationships within our learning communities. Our families said theywanted to provide safe, supportive environmentthrough equitable practices, and our families said that we wanted to encourage students and staff agency through meaningful interactions. So from there, then we developedour strategic objectives. And I think of note here, you'll notice they're bullet pointed. They're not numbered. They'renot in an order of importance. They're not as one is more important. These are things thatour teachers and families in community said. All of these things are important. But we know that we want each child to feel welcome, safe, andappreciated for who they are. It was important that 100% of our students demonstrateindividualized growth in their learning. 100% of the students areprepared for future learning. And then each studentmakes a positive impact within the school and broader community. And a little bit as I waslistening to Mr. Morris and Lincoln, it's really about growth. It's really about getting each child to that next step, findingout what are their needs, what are their hopes and dreams, what do they need in mathematics, what are they need in reading, and then helping us getthem to that next level. So many of things that that they talked about are very similar withour our intervention program and how we identify the students, we identify what their needs are, and then how we can meet those students where they're at and get them to the next. As I sometimes say, like I have two childrenof my own at home. One of them was an earlywalker, one was a late walker, one of them is not exceptionally gifted, one of them is notdevelopmentally delayed. We know children grow inleaps and bursts and spurts. And our job is to findout where are you at, what is that next stepthat you need to get to your next learning. So we set some goals aroundthose strategic objectives. We know that we are in aconstant state of improvement. I hear a lot, and for better or for worse, and I apologize, but thepandemic was a point in time that was really difficult. We had many students came, many of them did exceptionally well, many of those families andstudents, they struggled. And so we were all over the place. We are in that process ofbuilding back in our data, and I'll share some ofthe data in a minute. We're showing really goodsuccess in that growth. So we decided that we needed to spread our academic goalsand that Fastbridge reading, as you heard Mr. Morris talk about, into two parts becausewe knew we needed to get to our 80%, that we neededto make sure that our goal was challenging, but alsoreasonably attainable. So in the first yearwe're going to get to 74%. We'll be at that low risk, as Mr. Morris talked aboutin our Fastbridge reading. And then 80% by the next year. We also want to collect and are collecting and analyzing data that to the extent that students feel safe, valued, engaged, and connected at school. We know one of the bestindicators to a child's success is being connected, engaged in school. And one of those things ishave we asked our children, are you connected? Are you engaged? Let's talk to the peoplewho are actually here, talk to our clients and ask, you know, are you engaged in school? Then we also know thatthat relationship is huge and that relates directlyto that engagement, which is our relationshipwith our families and our historically marginalized families are so important to learning. And we saw that againwith our slide before, like our families trust us. We need to keep them engaged. We need to keep our families engaged. Not all of our families are always engaged and it's a part of our jobis to reach out and say, hey, we wanna help your child learn. We want you to feel welcome. We want you to knowwhat's going on at school. Let us help you help yourchildren get to school to get that academic achievement,to make it, you know, make yourself propel forward. So the primary focus, we havebeen in that LETRS training. We are part of that smallpercentage that is in year two. So our teachers are in that second year of that LETRS training. Again, it's a very intensive program. Teachers say it's a lot ofwork, but it's really rewarding. It's fun to see teachers learning. They are educators at theirhearts. They love to learn. They love to know more. What's also exciting is when you hear things like, you know, our world is changing. What we know about learning is changing. We shouldn't be stuckat some point in time. We need to, as we constantlylearn about new ways to teach, new ways to engagekids and how our brains are working, it's justincredibly valuable. So our teachers, while theyknow it's a lot of work, they are highly engaged in itand are appreciative of it. And then we are also in that, our second year of the CKLA Amplify, our new literacy curriculum. What's exciting about that is our, last year was our first year. It was a really good year. With any first year, there is a lot of learning that goes on. Now, it's like, okay, as we are going through our units, we're going through our knowledge units,we're just like, okay, I remember this. I get this. I can figure this out. And our teachers, it'sreally, it's hard to explain, but that learning curve is super exciting. How it's like, the wheels arejust moving in wonderful ways. So, by the numbers, I promisedyou some numbers, like, you know, how are we doing? So, when we talked about that FAST, the Fastbridge specifically, the FAST, there's a number of different sections within the Fastbridgesuite, the CBM benchmark. When we looked at ournumbers through the course of the year last year,every grade level increased, moving from, you know, movinginto that lower risk category. Everybody is growing. Every grade level ismoving the right direction. And not only moving the correct direction on every grade level, on average, 11.2% increase at each level. So, we are not just maintaining, but we are growing on average about 11.2%, moving towards that goal. So, more kids are learning, are getting into that lowrisk at a very high rate. So, when I think about ourgoals that we were talking about before, we really shouldbe able to achieve that, but we will see. In our student survey, 99.4% feel that theirteachers care about them. 96.1% feel connected to their classmates. 89.6% feel comfortable talkingto an adult about things that bother them. Again, trying to build thatrelationship and connection. Relationships and connections are gonna really help our students achieve in their reading, writing, and math. But we need them engaged in school. And then as well, you know, the family and parentengagement has been important. And each team held this yeara family engagement event. And that was, I had alot of hopes for that, and it exceeded that. And one of the things thatwe think about with schools is that as I talked a lotabout those relationships, but having relationships withfamilies is really important. And we noticed in ourprevious presentation, there was some conversationsabout behavior, right? Concerns about behavior. And one of the beliefs andone of the things that we know is that if we have a good relationship with our parents, when wehave a problem or challenge, and we call them up, and you have a positive relationship, that parent is gonna be like, on it. Let me help you out becauseI know that the school is there to help my child out. My teacher wants my child tolearn. I'm gonna help out. So we're gonna build thispositive, connected relationship. So all of those things we're seeing as we build those relationships is improving our student'sacademic achievement. They all go together.So what's in our future? We're not doing Latin immersion, although that would be really cool. But we are doing ourSpanish dual immersion. We are excited to know that we had a board presentation earlier. We are well on our way todoing that. There is a lot. One of the things I've beenin White Bear for quite a while, and I was at a recentconversation with Mr. Wald is like, you know, one of the things I've always loved about White Bear Lake, because I've been here a long time, and if you know me as apersonality, I'm a risk taker. I will go anywhere, do anything. People are like, why are youstill in White Bear Lake? Because every turn, WhiteBear Lake has provided a challenge and opportunityto learn, to grow, to excel. So just when I'm thinking, well, I'm just poached outof here in five years, they're like, immersion! I'm like, awesome! Let's do it. Let's figure this out. So I'm excited. So we're bringing immersionto Matoska, to Otter Lake, and to Matoska. You know, the enrollment started. Gangbusters, I don'tknow how to describe it, 75 students are already enrolled at Matoska International,both for our English and our Spanish. They're about half and half. But if you think about that, we are 75, which is about 75% of our facility, and it's like we are justat the end of January. We are doing really well.We're bringing students in. When we talk about bringing immersion, it's really important... We first talk about a greatkindergarten experience. And as I've toured families for English, as I've toured families for Spanish, the common denominator really is we want a great experience for our kindergartener. It's like, absolutely. And so our Spanish trackand our English track, that's gonna be our first andforemost as we move forward. The other thing we talked about, you know, at Matoska is like, we are one school, like WhiteBear Lake, we're one school. So it's not gonna be us and them. It's not the Spanish orthe English. It's Matoska. It is White Bear Lake. And it just so happens that we are getting ourinstruction and curriculum based on the language that thosefamilies choose and want to have for their children. We are happy to serve thefamilies. This is what you want. We can provide this for you. So where we're at, ourdesign team, thanks to Jen, is working hard, and Ayan is over there in the background. We have to make sure to recognize the work that she's doing, working on the curriculum, alignment, scope and sequence, trainings,professional development. Our administration teamis working on staffing. And one of the things that I really enjoy, and it has been funabout the staffing part, because if you've heard much about immersion schools, staffing is one of those things that really come up. And what we're findingout is people want to come to White Bear Lake. People wanna work in White Bear Lake. It's a testament to whowe are as a community, to our schools, when educators are saying, I wanna go work there. Solots to be proud of there. All right, so this is whereI get to be a risk taker. A few, in our immersion presentation, not long ago before the holidays, my colleague at the high school shared awesome morning announcementsthat they do videotape and their high schoolstudents put 'em together. It's pretty polished. We dovideo announcements at Matoska. I get to do them. And I'm gonnaget a chance to share one. But I have to put a couplelittle asterisks there, because this is not ahigh budget production. I do 172 of them, andthey've gotta get done. And the kids always say,I see your mouth moving, because we do puppet shows. It's like, yeah, it's me with the puppets. But the evolution is kind of fun, because I'm not surehow many of you remember from elementary school,do anybody remember the principal's morning announcements? It was just never the highlight. Right? My wife talks about remembering hearing that she had a library bookgoing on back in the day. I say, well, we don't do that. No one's listening to the principal. So okay, we're going tothen get the principal on the screen. We're gonna come to the 21st century. It is still the principal doing this. And so as part of some of our curriculum, we had puppets in oursecond step curriculum, there are puppets, and thenwe've added puppets to it. And now Principal JohnLeininger gets to share part of their curriculum message from our second step curriculum,and we bring in puppets. So I'm going to finish... Bear with me with, a threeminute morning announcement. The B quality. Matoska students and staff, this is Principal John Leininger with your morning announcements. It is Monday. We are ready for a great weekand we are looking forward to getting a lot done. As we usually do on Monday,we think about our week ahead. We can think about whatwe're going to be learning. All the great things that wecan do to engage our learning. So I want everyone to bethinking about not only what you're gonna be learning, but like what are the bestways that you can do that. So much of it is about listening, following directions, engaging in your learning,which means eyes watching, ears listening, all of those things that we know help us learn. Speaking of good things here at Matoska, we have bear paws here. Good things happening. Want to give a shout out here to Luca. Luca was a leader whenhe helped out the sub. Hey, thanks for being a leader and thanks for being a helper. We love those helpers. We have a shout out hereto Ramsey in kindergarten. Waiting for a friend to go out to recess. Hey, way to be a great, compassionatefriend, like, you know, friends are awesome andwe treat our friends well. That is really wonderful. And lastly, we are a shoutout here to Prince Jaden in first grade who had a super day, helping classmates,being an awesome leader, and caring for others. Nicely done, Jaden. We areso proud of all of you. That concludes ourannouncements for today. So we want to say thanks.We'll see you all in the hall. - Oh, we've been talking so much about our feelings and emotions. - Yeah, these are reallyimportant to talk about. - I have a funny question. Like I sometimes don't understand like what's the difference betweenbeing sad and being worried? - Oh that's really a tough one. Like sad and worried are a lot alike. - Yeah, they sure are. - But it's not that hard to understand. Like just think about that pizza. - Oh, I don't wanna think about the pizza. It was just, love the pizza flop. - Yeah, the pizza flop.You were pretty sad. - Oh, I was so sad. I mean, the pizza floppedand it was on the ground and I was wanting to eat itlike, oh, I just was sad. I lost my pizza.- Yeah, that's sad. But when you're worriedis when you're thinking about something that mighthappen in the future. - Like I'm gonna dropmy pizza again? Oh, no. - Yeah, that's when you're worried that you're gonna drop your pizza again. But that's okay. You can make a plan. - A plan? - Yeah, you can make a plan. So like next time you have pizza, you can like carry yourpizza with two hands. - Oh, plan. I'll carrymy pizza with two hands. - And then you can set it onthe table and sit carefully so it won't fall off. - I'll sit at the table withtwo hands facing forward and then it won't fall down. Oh, that's helpful. Now I don't have to beworried about my pizza flop. - Yeah, it's sometimes tricky, but always make a plan if you're worried. And if you need help, you can ask your teacher orfriends or parents or anyone who help you make a plan. - Oh, good idea. Make a plan. - Bye.- Bye. (people laughing)(people clapping) - Thank you for allowingme to be a risk taker. Thank you for lettingme share about Matoska. I'm happy to have-- Do we have any quick questions? Because I know that wehave to stop at eight or we have to make avote if we go past eight. So... - Do your fifth gradersenjoy those as much as the kindergarteners? - Yeah. - We have a variety aswell and then we also, in our Bear Paws, we happen to draw some of those things, but we alsodraw for academic things, kids that are learning something. We say, what are you learning? So we want to acknowledge that, hey, they learned their math. Other questions? - I just wanted to saykudos on your 11% increase, 11 plus percent increaseon your Fastbridge results. What else I was going to point out? Just the way that you'rehonoring every student through your mission andyour daily interactions and also the importance ofsocial emotional learning and helping kids learn how tocope with everyday situations. So, your participationmatters. Good to see you. Thanks for everything that you're doing. Can I say one more thing? LETRS. LETRS training. I just wanna make sure, because I've pointed this out before, but I wanna make surethat this, I say it again, that the statute, I think, was that folks startedgetting trained this year. And 95% of our teachers are done. So that's a big, huge deal. We are way ahead of manydistricts across the metro and across the state. So thank you. And I know youhave a lot to do with that. - Thank you. - I just wanna saythank you for your years of enthusiasm, years of enthusiasm, and all the things that you've taken on. We should send you to themetro for school for you time. (people laughing) - To teach everyone. - You have a classroom. - Any final words? Thank you for coming. - Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for helping us out. - So if chocolate bars arecoming up for sales again, let me know. - They are. As of today,actually, your timing is good. - I'll reach out. - We'll be giving you a call. - Okay. Thank you.- Thank you. - Okay. We have one more agenda item. We have C.1. Mr. Wald. - Thank you, Chair. Earlier this evening, ormaybe about a lifetime ago, heard from Jim Eichten, thedistrict's auditing firm, MMKR. He presented an auditfor Fiscal Year 23-24. That's the next step in theannual process of the audit is for the school boardto accept the report. And so the recommended actionis for the school board to accept the fiscal yearaudit report as presented. - So in front of us, we have the recommended action to accept the Fiscal Year 23-24 audit report. Somebody would like to make a motion? Ms. Thompson, do you have a second? - Second.- By Streiff Oji. All right. Any discussion? Go ahead.- I probably have to abstain just because it was not my watch, even thoughI have a lot of questions. - Okay. Any other questions? Thatmeans it's a vote for... - This is a roll call.- Roll call? Okay. This is gonna be a roll call, so I'm gonna ask theclerk to call the roll. - Skaar.- Abstained. - Oh, sorry. I didn't know that. Streiff Oji.- Aye. - Thompson.- Aye. - Arcand.- Aye. - Beloyed.- Aye. - Daniels.- Aye. - Motion carries. Thank you. - Thank you. - So we're finally tothe point of the agenda, so would somebody like tomake a motion to adjourn? - Chair, Dr. Arcand, I make a motion. - Ms. Thompson, do we have a second? - I'll second.- Second. All right. This is a voice vote. All in favor of adjournment, say aye. - Aye.- Opposed? Same sign. Okay. We are adjourned.