(gavel bangs) - I'd like to call to orderthis meeting of the School Board of Independent School District 624. I ask the clerk to please call the role. - Newmaster- Present - Streiff Oji.- Here. - Arcand. Here. Beloyed.- Here. - Daniels- Here. - Ellison- Here. Thank you. I would ask everyone to please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. - [All] I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States ofAmerica and to the Republic for which it stands, onenation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice all. - Oh, oops, sorry Kathleen. We have before us an agenda. Could I get a motion to approve? - So moved. - A motion by Ms. Daniels and a second. - Second.- Second by Dr. Newmaster. Any discussion? All in favor, please say aye.- Aye. - Opposed same sign. And we have an agenda. We also have before us a consent agenda, which is the various itemsthat come before us monthly, such as invoices and field trips. But also we are extremelygrateful as always, for the donations from our community to our schools and staff, weappreciate your generosity. I would ask for a motion toapprove the consent agenda. - So moved. - A motion by Ms. Beloyed, and a second? - Second. - Second by Streiff Oji. Any discussion or questions? This will require a roll call vote. I would ask the clerkto please call the roll. - Newmaster.- Aye. - Streiff Oji- Aye. - Arcand. Aye. Beloyed.- Aye. - Daniels.- Aye. - Ellison.- Aye. And the motion passes,we have a consent agenda. It is now time for the publicforum portion of the meeting. There were three requestssubmitted to speak. Each speaker will have three minutes. The clerk will time andthen hold up the orange card when there is one minute left. The yellow card whenthere is 30 seconds left. And the red card whentime is up, at which point I will also hit the gavel and the speaker must stop speaking. Alright, we are gonna move on to our first informational item C1,student recognition. Dr. Kazmierczak. - Right, tonight we celebratestudents who have represented the district in various activities. Members of the boys andgirls track and field teams, and the boys and girls golf teams competed at the state level. Additionally, we hadmembers of the archery team who participated at the national level. Congratulations students. And thank you to thestaff and family members who supported the students along the way. Go Bears. (upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) - Great, thank you. Congratulations to all of our students. Next Informational Item C2,Superintendent's Report. Dr. Kazmierczak. - [Dr. Kazmierczak] Right,thank you Chair Ellison, members of the board. Congratulations to this year's graduates from the Transition Education Center, Area Learning Center and WhiteBear Lake Area High School. Ceremonies Honor thesestudents while other schools and programs throughoutthe district celebrated the end of a successful school year. Well done students. Thank you to our retirees whorepresent more than 800 years of service to the district. Later this week we willhonor our retirees in person with a luncheon on the lawn event. All retirees receive BearAwards and certificates to commemorate their time in the district. Thank you for all of yourservice to White Bear Lake Area Schools and to the community. District representativeswill be back this Summer at Marketfest, whichruns Thursdays, June 13th through the 25th indowntown White Bear Lake. Stop by the district's booth for pencils, bear paw tattoos, and conversation. New this year is anOrange Out on June 27th when the district sponsorsthe event and host a White Bear Lake AreaSchool Spirit Night. We'll fill 4th Street withdistrict booze, activities, and even pop-up employmentfair opportunities. Please bring your friendsand family, wear orange and join us at 6:30 for thescheduled Orange Out photo. And finally, free summermeals are available for kids and teens age 17 and under,there is no enrollment and no cost. The healthy meals are basedon USDA nutrition guidelines, additional information is available on the district's website. - Alright, thank you. Any questions for Dr. Kazmierczak? Alright, thank you. And we'll move into ourfirst discussion Item D1. Overview of Fiscal year2024-25 Preliminary Budget. Mr. Wald and Ms. Johnson. - Thank you Chair Ellison. Thank you son. Members of the board, Dr. Kazmierczak. Let me get this fired up. Tonight we're presenting thatat 24-25 preliminary budget each year when we...really, anytime we present to the school board on the budget, we review the budget cycleand recall that going back to July, October, we begin theaudit for the previous year. So it's June now and in justa few weeks we'll be starting to prepare the audit forend of fiscal year 24. Throughout the fall and into the winter, there are several touchpoints on the budget. And then in January,February, after presenting the audit results, then wepresent a revised budget for the current school year. That budget informs our projected budget, and that's the budget we use for planning the following year. It helps us prepare apreliminary budget and we enter the next school year witha preliminary budget. We presented that to youat the last work session and tonight we'll review it again and ask for board approval juryas an action item tonight. You've seen this chart before, this graph, and it shows the inflationaryeffect on public education. And you can follow the blue line and see where the student formulawould be if it had kept pace with rate of inflation since 2003. And then you can followthe orange line and see what actual school funding has been. And the number 11,206,000 isthe ground that we've lost to inflation over the past 22 years, I guess it would be. And it's had significantimpact on public education, we certainly feel ithere in the White Bear Lake Area schools. So where do our funds come from? And you can see the largestshare of state resources, if you look at the bluesection, state resources at 53%, special education at 18%. You look at 71% of schoolresources coming from the state. Federal is just a verysmall percentage, 2%, and that's been a numberthat's been losing ground over the last decadein last several decades in school funding. Property taxes, 20%,and that would include our capital projects levy, operating levy, long-term facilitiesmaintenance is in there at 5%. And then just nominalamounts, investment earnings and other resources. How our funds are spent. Again, we are a very heavy human resources industry education, and soit makes sense that salaries and benefits would be thelion's share of our expenditures at 70, well, 58 and 21%in employee benefits. So that's 79% of ourexpenditures are in that area of our people. Purchase services, whichwould be special ed tuition at intermediate districts, transportation, supplies and materials,capital expenditures round out the power funds are spent. On this graph, we breakit down more specifically and we can see, really can divide this into three categories. The first being instruction,that being elementary and secondary education at 38%. Vocational educationthose would be teachers with career and techendorsements make up 1%. And then specialeducation, instruction 22%, instructional support is 8%,that would include curriculum and instruction staff,instructional coaches, professional developmentassistant principals would be in that instructional support. Pupil support services is 5%here and that's social workers, counselors, health staff,achievement integration staff. We look at operations next. Transportation sites andbuildings and LTFM combined make up 18% of our expenditures,and then administration district support services,that's our staff in finance, HR, legal, administration, buildingprincipals, school board, assistant superintendent,superintendent were on that administration being 6% of our budget. So that's where revenue comes from, and that's how we spend it. At this point our directorof finance, Andi Johnson, will walk us throughthe next portion here. - Good evening. This evening I will befocusing on the preliminary 24-25 budget, that shaded column. So as Tim had just gone throughthe details of the revenue and expense budget intotal for next school year, we're projecting $142,343,000 of revenues. And then in total 141,524 of expenses, so we're looking at morerevenue than expense for next year of about 818,000. That excess of revenue overexpense then folds down into our fund balances, whichare like our savings accounts. The bulk of our operationsflows through that blue line, the ending fund balance unassigned. Next school year we'reprojecting a total of $11,075,000 in that fund balance, andthe School Board policy is we maintain an 8% fund balance. So you can see that we'rehitting that 8% fund balance goal for next school year at 8.2%. We also show the projectionsfor the 25-26 school year. Those will be firmed upas we know our actual enrollment next year. It's also a budget yearat the legislature, so as we know what our fundingwill look like for that year, those numbers will be firmed up. But right now thatprojects to a total of 8% fund balance as well forthe 25-26 school year. We also present threeother funds for approval. Our nutrition services fund,community services fund and debt service fund. So the nutrition servicesfund, you can see has about $6.5 million of revenue for next year, and then $6.9 million of expenses, so they're projecting a deficit. That's a planned deficitfor next school year. You can see that thatfund balance is sufficient for their operations,and so they're able to do some one-time expenses relatedto kitchen improvements and replacements. The community services fundis projecting $8.4 million of revenue and $8.2 million of expenses. So coming out ahead by about 234,000. As you can imagine, thecommunity services fund struggled with covid when a lot oftheir revenue is driven by enrollment and participation fees. And so they're workingtheir way out of a deficit, we're proud of a planthat we have in place, we're confident we're gonnaget that out of a deficit in the upcoming school year. And then the debt service fundis projecting $30.6 million of revenue and $31.2 million of expense. The debt service fund iswhat we use, it's what covers our bond payments, whichwe think of as like our mortgage payments. So this is revenue that's setby the state of Minnesota, we present our debt payments to them, and then they automatically calculate our revenue accordingly. Each year we levy 105%of our total payments, and then as we grow, that extra 5% grows, and then when we getto a certain threshold, the Department of Ed backsoff our total revenue so that fund balance doesn't get too high. So that's why you see adeficit for next year, it's just because thefund balance is sufficient to cover those upcoming bond payments. So summary of our operating funds. Any questions? - Great, thank you. Any questions for Ms. Johnson or Mr. Wald? - [Dr. Kazmierczak] I have one. - Oh, Dr. Kazmierczak. - [Dr. Kazmierczak] Has anything changed from the work session?- [Andi] No, no. - [Dr. Kazmierczak] Sothese are the same figures that were presented there-- Correct. - [Dr. Kazmierczak]And gone over in depth. Yeah, okay.- Yeah, thank you. - [Chair Ellison] Great. Other questions? Ms. Daniels? - I just wanna complimentthe finance department and all the people thatare spending the money and watching the budgets and everything. Because I know many districts,because there isn't any covid funding anymore, havereally kind of fallen into some very big deficitfunding for upcoming years. And that isn't the case for our district, so I think we've been well managed. And I just wanna point thatout that that's a really great thing and thank you for that. All the people that participated, which means the entire district. And then I just wanted toalso say on that slide, Tim, that you showed where there wassome inflationary difference between the general ed formula allowance. That 11 million DI differencesjust for our district, and that's just as one district. I just wanted to point that out, that isn't statewide, that's just us. And so with all thedistricts, if the general fund was to keep up withinflation, we would've... you know, it's a big,big, big number statewide. - Yeah, that $11.2 milliondelta is really equal to our fund balance. And that fund balance is pretty important for school districts tomaintain 'cause you need it to weather the storm, butwe also get our revenue from the state and from thecounty at different times of the year and it doesn't always match when our expenses are, andso we need to keep cash flow. and that fund balanceas part of maintaining cash flow as well. But yeah, that's equalto our fund balance. - Yeah. Thank you very much. - [Wald] Thank you. - We'll move into ournext discussion, Item D2, which is the first readingof school board policies. The way that this worksis that the school board will see the first round ofpolicies one month and discuss. And then they will come back to us the following month for approval. So the first reading for tonight is 417, 506, 507, 512, 514, 527, 534, 606, 704, and 714. Board members if you have any comments, please note the policythat you're referring to, and the page that it's onso we can follow along. Any comments or questionsabout the policies? Right. Seeing none, I'll just say thank you again to our policy committee forall the work that they do, in combing through allthese policies every month. We'll move into our Operational Items. The first Operational ItemE1 is action on the fiscal year 2024-25 preliminary budgetthat we just heard about. Mr. Wald. - Thank you Chair Ellison,members of the board, Dr. Kazmierczak. You just heard a presentationon the preliminary budget for 24-25 school yearand the recommendation is for the board toaccept it as presented. - [Chair Ellison] You'veheard the recommended action. Could I get a motion to approve? - [Ms. Beloyed] So moved. - [Chair Ellison] A motion by Ms. Beloyed. And a second? - [Ms. Daniels] Second. - Second by Ms. Daniels. Any further questions or discussion? This will require a roll call vote. I'd ask the clerk to please call the roll. - Newmaster.- Aye. - Streiff Oji.- Aye. - Arcand. Aye. Beloyed.- Aye. - Daniels.- Aye. - Ellison.- Aye. And the motion passes. Thank you Mr. Wald. And move into Operational Item E2. Action on workers' compensationagreement for 24-25. Mr. Wald. - Thank you. Each year in June, we bringthe workers' compensation proposal and rates for the following year to the school board for approval. This year we worked with ourinsurance broker Gallagher, again, for our workers'compensation package, and we're seeing an increase. The rate increase is 14%, premium increase is a total of 19%. And so one thing you mightnotice on this is the Experience Mod Rate increase from 0.82 to 1.23. There's a couple reasons. First, the Experience Mod Rate is a number that insurance companies useto calculate or organization's claims experience is inrelation to their payroll, and in relation to other organizations within the same industry. And so the last threeyears have been below 1.0 I.0 would mean you'reat the industry average. And we jumped to 1.23 this year, and there's a couple reasons for it. One is they use a threeyear average of your claims. We had a outlier year falloff on that three year calculation, an outlier lowyear, which was 2019-20, and then we had anoutlier high year roll in. So that 22-23 was an unusually high year, we had one very large claimthat year and that will be with us now for two more years after this. So that's one reason. The other one is that theorganization that calculates mods within each industry from across the state used a different calculation this year. And I probably couldn'texplain it very well, but it uses considerationsof your claims experience as well as payroll andweights those differently. The weighting of that changed this year, and so the claim weighting went up and we're experiencingthat because we have that outlier year that we haveon the books for this year. So we are seeing a jump. One thing I will say is ifyou look through our history of premiums over the last12 years, you see that, or last 10 years, you'll seethat we've actually have done really well with ourworkers' compensation. We've been with RAS since2014, they like us a lot, they've worked very hardto keep our business. Although we are seeingan increase this year, we feel... our brokertells us he is very happy with what the bid came in at this year. So the recommendationthat the board approve the workers' compensationrate or a premium of $511,590 for the 24-25 school year. - [Chair Ellison] You'veheard the recommended action. Could I get a motion to approve? - [Dr. Arcand] So moved - A motion by Dr. Arcand. And a second? - Second.- A second by Dr. Newmaster. Any questions or discussion? Seeing none. This will require a roll call vote. I ask the clerk to please call the roll. - New master.- Aye. - Streiff Oji.- Aye. - Arcand. Aye. Beloyed.- Aye. - Daniels.- Aye. - Ellison.- Aye. And the motion passes. Thank you. Operational Item E3. Action on Property and Liability Insurance for 2024-25. Mr. Wald. - Thank you again. The insurance industry's been tough on us the last couple years asit has been for everyone. If you, again look throughour last dozen years of rates, you can see that we've donereally pretty well the last four or five years as you'veseen natural catastrophes across the country impact rates everywhere across the country. You can see that we'vehad that same experience. We've had some other things. Cyber went up several yearsago in public schools, as schools have beenexperiencing cyber attacks, and so we felt that go up. Our valuation as we'vemade some facilities improvements went up last year. We were told to expect abouta 15% increase this year and we're at 12.4%,which doesn't feel great, but better than 15% I guess. So the recommendation isfor the board to approve the premium for propertyand casualty of $752,114. - [Chair Ellison] You'veheard the recommended action. Could I get a motion to approve? - So moved.- A motion by Dr. Arcand. And a second? - Second. - A second by Ms. Streiff Oji. Any questions or discussion? Seeing none, this willrequire a roll call vote. I ask the clerk to please call the roll. - Newmaster.- Aye. - Streiff Oji.- Aye. - Arcand. Aye. Beloyed.- Aye. - Daniels- Aye. - Ellison.- Aye. And the motion passes. Thank you Mr. Wald. Move into the next Operational Item E4. Action on Tentative Contract2023-25 Fiscal Years with Non-Affiliated andAdministrative Employees. Mr. Mons. - Good evening. This is really just astatement for the next two agenda items, but I'dlike to just start out by saying a very big thankyou to the staff in both the human resources officeand in the finance department for trying to move swiftly at the end of our fiscal year here. And especially to CindyGustafson, our assistant director of human resources, whoput in a ton of time and effort with all ofour groups but especially with these employees to makesure that we had conducted market studies, and that wewere able to move through that process in the sameway that we are with all of our collectively bargained groups. And so first up here is our non-affiliated administrative employees. And I recommend that you approve these, but I'd just like, again,to just speak to the process we use is very similar tothe process we use for all of our collectively bargained groups. In fact, we meet withall of our small, medium, and large size groups thatare in this category as well. And so we try to make surethat nobody's falling behind due to that lack of affiliation. - So the recommended action is to prove the proposed salariesand benefit contributions for non-affiliated andadministrative employees for 23-25. Could I get a motion to approve? - So moved- A motion by Ms. Daniels. And a second? - Second.- Second by Dr. Newmaster. Any questions or discussion? This will require a roll call vote. I ask the clerk to please call the roll. - Newmaster.- Aye. - Streiff Oji.- Aye. - Arcand.Aye. Beloyed- Aye. - Daniels.- Aye. - Ellison.- Aye. Motion passes, thank you. And then Operational Item E5. Action on Tentative Contractwith 2023-25 Fiscal Year with the White Bear LakeArea Schools Cabinet Members. Mr. Mons. - And we use the same process in working with our cabinet members and the rest of our administrative staff. And I recommend in seeking board approval. - You've heard the recommended action for the cabinet membersfor the fiscal year 23-25. Could I get a motion to approve? - So moved.- Motion by Dr. Arcand. And a second? - Second.- A second by Ms. Daniels. Any questions or discussion? Seeing none, this willrequire a roll call vote. I would ask the clerkto please call the roll. - Newmaster.- Aye. - Streiff Oji.- Aye. - Arcand.Aye. Beloyed- Aye. - Daniels.- Aye. - Ellison.- Aye. And the motion passes. Thank you Mr. Mons.- [Mr. Mons] Thank you. - Operational Item E6. Action on School DistrictPopulation Adjustment. Mr. Maurer. - (indistinct) Take the long way. (all laugh) - Good evening, ChairEllison, Members of the board. State funding for communityed for districts across the state of Minnesotaare provided based off total district population. As we get updated numbers from the census, we have the ability to approvethe population increase that will directlyimpact additional revenue that will come into our apartmentbased off those numbers. The recent census populationshows that our population in Wiper Lake has increasedfrom 65,587 to 66,764. And I'm here tonight justto ask that for you guys to approve the updated population provided by the Minnesota State from demographer and accept that increase. - You've heard the recommended action. Could I get a motion to approve? - So moved.- A motion by Ms. Streiff Oji. And a second Dr. Newmaster. Any questions or discussion? Dr. Newmaster? - I just have one question. Do they break it down? We have more people in ourdistrict, but are many of them of age to be students? Do they break it out likethat or is it just a total- - [Mr. Maurer] It's just a total number. Yep.- Okay. - [Mr. Maurer] Total number on the report that I received for that. Yep. - Thank you.- [Mr. Maurer] Yep. - And then just one questionfrom me, Mr. Maurer. So this district population,so this includes all of this, the communities that fallwithin the White Bear district. - [Mr. Maurer] Correct.- Okay. Great, thank you. Any further questions? Alright, we have a motion and a second. All in favor of approval please say aye. - Aye. - Oppose, same sign. And the motion passes. Thank you. Operational Item E7, Action on Resolution. Establishing Dates for FilingAffidavits of Candidacy. Dr. Kazmierczak. - Alright, thank you Chair Ellison. The period for filing affidavitsof candidacy for the office of school board member willbe from July 30th, 2024 to August 13th, 2024. The resolution in yourpacket has been provided by our Elections Attorney PeterMartin of Kennedy & Graven. And this will formallyestablish the filing dates for the 2024 school board election. So the recommended actionis to approve the resolution establishing dates for filingaffidavits of candidacy for the 2024 school board election. - You've heard the recommended action. Could I get a motion to approve? - So moved- A motion by Dr. Arcand. And a second? - Second.- A second by Ms. Daniels. Any questions or discussion? Seeing none. All in favor of approval, please say aye. - Aye. - Opposed same sign. And the motion passes. And our final Operational Item, E8. Action On School Board Policies. These came before us last month and are here before us for approval. The school board policiesare 517, 518, 519 and 705. Usually we approvethese in one fell swoop, so if I could pleaseget a motion to approve. - [Ms. Beloyed] So moved. - A motion by Ms. Beloyed. And a second? - Second. - Second by Ms. Streiff Oji. Any questions or discussion? All in favor of approval, please say aye. - Aye. - Opposed same sign. And the motion passes, thank you. And we move to the lastitem on our agenda, which is Board Forum. Board Forum is anopportunity for board members to talk about what'sgoing on in the district. Things that they areconnecting with in their roles as board members. Does anyone have anythingto share for board forum? Ms. Daniels? - A couple comments. Just wanna congratulate allthe retirees from the district, the paraeducators, custodian,teachers, administrators, our school staff, all thepeople that are retiring, and thank you very much for your service. And the other thing, I was lucky enough to go to four differentgraduation ceremonies this Spring, and they were all just brilliant. And I wanna just congratulateall of our graduates, and we have graduated in ouraudience today, so that's nice, in person graduates, so that's great. And congratulations tohim and all the students that graduated this spring. Very impressive group ofstudents in every way. Thank you. - Dr. Newmaster. - I might say ditto. I think of all thepeople that are retiring, and the people that I've workedwith throughout the decades. And it represents a wholelot of energy and love, and dedication, whatever theposition and joy and sadness. So I think of all thosetimes, and I wish everybody a good retirement. And I also had an experienceat a school on Sunday where we saw Sunrisenow turning into Mariner already started. We went there to havea recital and as usual were welcomed within great facility, but they're already workingon improving the facility. So it was like, thereis not a moment spared between the beginning ofsummer and the beginning of construction. So I am impressed with allthe people that have planned this humongous effort,the wave is continuing, and Mariner is back almost. - [Dr. Kazmierczak] Sorry. - Good Summer to everybody. - [Chair Ellison] Dr. Arcand. - I just just wanna sayit's always been Mariner in my heart since I graduated. I do have something though for members of White Bear Lake schools. On Friday, Ramsey Countylegal local government will be having a legislativesession discussion and wrap up. So many things happen,especially in the very last days and things are pushed through,it's hard to keep track. So Friday morning from7:00 or 8:00 to 9:00, we'll be having peoplecome in to talk about kind of the changes. What was actually approved,what's being pushed through and how does it affectmembers of school districts and of local governments. And so if you're interested, let me know. I can let you know, get you the links to show you how to register. Otherwise, I just wannasay, let's have a safe and fun Summer, and then justremember, either read a book to your children, orhave them read a book. 'Cause I'm just gonna sayonce again, as a parent, some of my fondest memories of my children when they were youngerand reading books to them all the time. And so it's good for them,and it's good for your heart. Thank you. - Ms. Beloyed. - So I just wanted to saythat I had the opportunity to go to a couple differentgraduation parties this weekend. And I had people comeup to me who had taken something through communityeducation had been exposed to the new facilities andI was getting rave reviews for the fields for all of it. Everything that everyone's experienced they've been really,really excited about it. So, lots of good feedback. - I wanna echo what allof my colleagues have said and wish everyone a happy and safe Summer. Congratulations to the graduatesand also to the parents of the graduates. I see you over there, Rachel. (Rachel laughs) Congratulations. That is a long haul to getyour students where they are. So many congratulations. And I also just wanna say a huge thank you to my fellow board members. I appreciate all of youand the thoughtfulness with which you do thistask, and I appreciate that you are alwaysthinking about the equity for four-way decision making protocol in the work that you do. So thank you for yourservice and the integrity with which you do thisjob because it's a lot. So thank you and I hope that you all have an excellent Summer as well. And we will see you on the other side in fiscal year 25 if you can believe it. So with that, I would askfor a motion to adjourn. - I move for an adjournment. - Motion by Dr. Arcand. And a second?- Second. - Second by Ms. Daniels. All in favor, please say aye. - Aye. Opposed same sign. And we are adjourned. (gavel bangs)