- Call to order this Work Study Meeting of the School Board ofIndependent School District 624. I would ask the Clerkto please call the roll - Ellison?- Here. - Streiff Oji?- Here. - Thompson?- Here. - [Scott] Arcand, here. Daniels?- Here. - Alright. Thank you. We'll move into ourfirst discussion item B1, Presentation of Presale Reportrelated to upcoming issuance of Facilities Maintenance Bonds. Mr. Wald. - Thank you, Chair Ellison, Members of the Board, Dr. Kazmierczak. There were two facilities strategies, or two facilities funding strategies, that were identified by theFacilities Committee to improve, excuse me, the facilitiesimprovements identified by the Facilities Committee. The first was voter approved general obligation school building bonds. Those were approved bytaxpayers on November 5th, 2019. And the second werefacilities maintenance bonds for eligible long-termfacilities maintenance projects. Both of these strategies were included in the original tax impactof the 2019 Bond Referendum. At this time, the district is issuing general obligation school building and facilities maintenance bonds. The first step in the process occurred at the August 14th, 2024school board meeting when the board approvedthe resolution of intent to issue GeneralObligation School Building and Facilities MaintenanceBonds, Series 2024A, in the maximum aggregateprincipal amount of $42,835,000. To guide us through thatsale process tonight is Shelby McQuay, who issenior municipal advisor and managing director atEhlers Public Finance Advisors. And Ms. McQuay will walk usthrough the presale report. So thank you for being here tonight. - Thank you. Good evening. Thanks for having me. You've done quite a fewpieces of this already, beginning in August when youapproved that resolution. And we're well into thesale process already with this just being sort of a update of what we expect market conditions to be. And so you have two authorities out there, the facilities maintenance and then the school building bond. We're gonna combine 'emfor just efficiency, in cost of issuance, but also as you getthose bigger block sizes, those bigger amounts ofpayoff of principal each year, you have more interest from the market that they can sort of get into one and have a lot of theirinvestment taken care of. So as an aggregate there's$42,835,000 of authority. I think the big issue or the big pieces here, you're, both are portions of the tax levy. So the LTFM and the school building bonds and all have been kind of coordinated since the passage backin 2019 of that increase. And we've been targetingthat level tax rate over time and fitting in all these other pieces. So though we've issueddifferent parts of the bond over time, it's always beenunder that initial increase that was approved by the voters in 2019. Like all of your other issues, you will be able to call this bond in that they're shorter terms, but we do have a call date in there. So we won't be ending,I guess, the process with all of the issuance ofthe school building bonds. After a series of years we'll be back and possibly refinancingor refunding those if the market is appropriate for that. We've already begun the rating process and had that rating call, and we'll just be receivingthat rating upcoming. And so thank you for the participation of Tim, Andi, and Wadein that rating call. We think we got everythingwe needed over to S&P for them to make their assessment on the district's underlying rating. But you'll also carry thatAAA credit enhanced rating from the state. I think, overall, I just, you know, if you have this in frontof you, or if you don't, I can hold up the imageof the overall debt plan that we're trying to fit everything in. Keeping in mind that thegray is all the existing debt and fitting in all of the other pieces, including some futurefacilities maintenance bonds, in addition to the one incorporated here as part of this issuance inthe remaining $13 million. We do anticipate an interest rate for the, given current market conditions, of 3.39 on the facilities maintenance, and technically speaking 3.38 on the school building bond portion. We're also anticipating a premium, so the market thenwould pay you additional for the purchase of your bonds. And so all of that gets figured in. And then we'll be back on April 8th, which is the day of sale, whenwe'll know the actual results and make sure it fits in with the levy that you approved in September, that was part of the debt levy, and making sure that youhave enough available as part of your project costs. So that's kind of overall. I don't have to go intotoo much more detail, unless you have any specific questions on any part of the issuance or the overall capital facilities plan. - Thank you. Any questions for Ms. McQuay? All right. Thank you so much. - Yeah.- For your work. - The formal actionwould just be the update of the 10 year plans. - [Jessica] Okay. - Yep. That will happen later tonight. - [Jessica] Great. Wonderful. Good, thank you so much.- Thank you. - Thank you.- Thanks, Shelby. - All right. Our next discussion item B2 is a teaching and learning update, instructional leadership and literacy. Ms. Mueller and Mr. Menier. - Sure. - Thank you, Chair Ellison and Members of the Boardand Dr. Kazmierczak. We are excited to come on back and talk again about literacy. I'm Cynthia Mueller, principalon special assignment and district literacy specialist. - [Matt] I'm Matt Menier. I'm the principal ofWillow Lane Elementary. - And what we're goingto go over this evening is actually part of a presentation that Matt and I had the opportunity to do at the Minnesota Elementary School Principals AssociationConference back in February. And then Dr. Alison Gillespie and I also did a version of this at the Minnesota Associationof School Administrators. And so it's really excitingthings for us to share and an opportunity to talk about the work that we continue to do, andespecially from that angle around instructional leadership. But what we're going tostart with is actually some really exciting piecesaround student results. We're gonna go back and forthbetween some district data and then also Willow Lane Elementary data. And then the later portionof our presentation we will just talk about what are all the thingsthat we've been working on in terms of instructionalleadership principles, instructional coaches,and teacher leaders. - Yeah, so as Cynthiaand I presented at MESPA, this is one of the firstslides that we showed and we wanted to kind ofget a gauge of the room. And so we did not put up Willow Lane. They didn't know what this building is, but we wanted to make surethat we were very clear about what the demographicsare of a school like Willow, that is racially identified and isolated, and then begin to have them talk about what some of the outcomes mightbe for a school like this. And so you heard a lot ofthe, you know, same things of lower socioeconomic, and potentially depressed reading scores, so on and so forth. And so as we progressed through that, we then were able to not only show that results can happen in anelementary school like Willow, which we're starting to see,but then as a district as well, like where are we goingand how did we get there? So that was kind ofthe basis of this talk. It really spurned fromsomething that I was a part of and that many of our principals are, and it's a credit tothe district leadership and the school board forsending some of our principals to Minnesota Principals Academy, which I was a part of whenI first started at Willow. I didn't know a lot aboutearly childhood reading and I wanted kids to read to learn. I didn't know much abouthow to learn to read right? And so I had to do a lot homework myself, Minnesota PrincipalsAcademy helped me with that. And it's become a passion area of mine and something that I feel like I've grown in my skillsas a result of that. And so this is a, you know, a lot of help and a lot of work from thedistrict and from Willow. So that was kind of like, we wanted to frame Willow in this thing, but we also wanted to highlightsome of the tremendous work that's been done fromthe district perspective. So the first slide Cynthia can speak to. - Yeah, so we're gonna gothrough a series of data, student outcome data, and we're going to focus on kindergarten. The reason we're going tofocus on kindergarten is, one, this is the, yes, early childhood, it's the very beginning stages, but when we talk about K-5, the beginning stagesof reading development. Our kindergarten teachers werethe first group of educators to complete LETRS training. And then, as you know,this is our first year of implementation of a new curriculum. So we're really startingfrom the ground up and really looking at these results. So this first set of data is around our screening assessment results. This specific subtest iscalled Word Segmenting, which is a measure of phonemic awareness, a highly predictive skillof future reading success. On the left side, thetwo columns you can see, that was last year. And you can see overallas a district, we did, you want to see, obviously, lots of green, which means that those students are considered low riskfor future reading failure. So you can see we were decreasing our risk level for students. Already in the winter,we have already achieved what we did the spring of last year. Even more excitingly, when we talk about multi-tieredsystems to support RTI, oftentimes they're looking for for your core instruction to be effective, 80% of the students shouldbe scoring low risk, or in that green area. And I'm really excited by these results, 'cause I honestly can sayit's one of the first times in my career where I've truly seen that RTI pyramid or MTSS pyramid. - When we show something likethis, and Cynthia and I have, to other districts, other principals, you start to see like... Right? You can just see, like, "That looks like exactlywhat we're looking for." And so to be able to see thisin a, it's been a long time, but it's been a fairlyshort amount of time, right? Our kindergarten teachersare done with LETRS, right? So they've done their learning and we've implemented a new curriculum. And again, curriculum isn't like the end all, be all, of things, but we have a very coordinated,concentrated effort on what we know needs to take place in order for kids to move intheir reading proficiencies. And so, you know, we're gonna keep kind of flipping back and forth between the district and Willow here. And so this is the same metricthat we were looking at. And so I just want to like, again, be clear about what we'relooking at, that here is the, the results that you seeon the left hand side is kindergarten 22-23, right? So at the beginning ofour 22-23 school year, we said that's where we're at. And by the time that wegot to winter of last year, we had students at 50, what was it? 50? Yeah, I need glasses, 57%. And so that's a nice jump from fall to winter last year. But if you look at wherewe are now, we are, you're gonna hear a lot of this, right? We're already to wherewe are in the spring, in the winter, right? So we, I don't know what springis going to bring for us, but I know that we are gonna be higher than 58% low risk students at Willow by the time that we getto our spring assessment. - Yeah. So the next measure again isa subtest in our kindergarten. It's nonsense words. So this is where studentsread words that are nonsense, and it's really a measureof their decoding ability, and it uses nonsense words. So to really kind of separate out does that student alreadyhave that word known by sight. And so again, as you can see,last year, winter to spring, we did decrease the risk level. And then already in thewinter of this school year, we have already met the spring results that we had last year. - Similarly, you're gonna see where our Willow students come to us at the beginning of the school year. So there's, again, 22-23, thebeginning of the school year. We grew them to 39% middle of last year. And we had to do some, we had to to have somepretty hard conversations of, this is still, it's good growth, but it's still unacceptable, right? And we are all on the same page. And so I was proud of thework that my staff did in order to get ourkindergartners last year, now our 1st graders, up to speed. But now if you take alook at what we're seeing in this time this year, like, we far exceeded that by January, right? So we also have to rememberthat as kindergartners, nonsense words are very important because it's the skill that they're going to hit the most hard in 1st grade, right? So if I can hand off kindergartners that are already doingnonsense words type skills, then we don't have towork backward to like, okay, finally in November we can get them to where they, like,by the end of September we can get them to where they should be so that we can continue to progress. - [Cynthia] And so finally,with this set of data, so now this is the earlyreading composite results. So kindergarten and 1st grade students take a series of subtests, and then those subtestscombine to a composite score. The subtests carry different weights, so the nonsense word or wordsegmenting being one of them. But overall, what'sexciting to see in this is that continued decrease inrisk level of our students. It went back a couple of years, and you can see historically, from fall to winter inour composite scores, we'd actually increased risk level. And now this school year weare decreasing risk level. So then for Willow-- [Matt] Mm hm. So one of the things that you see, in the area that's shadedwith the Bears logo, one of the things that'skind of odd, you'd say, "Well, if they startedin the fall of 21-22 and then they go to the winter, like, Matt, why did theynot, like what happened? Why are they, why isthere so much more red than they were at thebeginning of the school year?" Part of the problem or partof the just realization is the skills that theyare tested on in the fall are not necessarily the skills that they're tested onin the winter, right? So it's a whole different set of tests that we're doing on these students. And so that's why, when wetake a look at this composite, what are we actually trying to see here? And so that's why I think, when you take a look atthe middle portion of this, the 41 to 18% last year, and then this year you look at 41, or 44?- 44. - Thank you.- Yep. - [Matt] And we like stayed steady, like think about how much we decreased, you know, that ability over that time, like we stayed steady. That is huge. Because now we can continue to grow them, and again, we'll see whatwe'll see in the spring, but I can guarantee you it'sgoing to look much different than it has in years past. - [Cynthia] Yeah. So now we want to justtalk about and highlight some of the ways thatwe went about this work and achieving these results for students. So really this journey, this really focusedjourney, began back in 2018. Terry Dahlem, I give her alot of credit around this, the former principal at Oneka Elementary. We were in a principal's meeting, and she was just like, we'relooking at our student results and she's like, "Wecan't be okay with this. We can't be okay with this." And we weren't. And so it was really kindof lighting that fire of what are we gonna do increating that sense of urgency? So from there, we really, we created and focused on theinstructional leadership. We really believe in the powerand importance of a principal and their instructional leaders. So we focused our effortsand teams around that. And then in 21 to 24 is where we took an even more focused effort around teacher professional learning and administrative professional learning, as well as our ELA curriculum review. So when we presentedthis to MESPA and MSBA, it was really aroundtalking about our approach. And when Matt and I reflectedon what are all the things that we've done as a system to develop instructional leadership, what was really amazingis to see how much of this is actually grounded as wellin the academic literature around evidence-based practices for instructional leadership. So what Matt and I did isjust kind of put it together in a package that we could present out and talk about with otherleaders across the state. So there were six key piecesfor us in this journey that now we're gonna walk through and give you a littlebit of information about. - [Matt] Mm hm. And so, you know, youcan see the six areas that we are looking into. And so, we're gonna gothrough each one of those very briefly for you. But building that coalitionof what does it look like to have everybody alignedin what they need? And so that really does take the principals to know their stuff. And so I admitted, you know,in my spot of vulnerability, like what is phonemic awareness? I don't know what it is. (people chuckle) So I needed to be-- He does now. - I needed to like educate myself. And so being a part of big and small PD, it was really important for me, or I've sought out opportunitiesto learn more about this. Our instructional coaches are so critical to providing support, doingresearch, teaching lessons, guiding data talks, theyare just instrumental. And then our teachingand learning department has really coalesced around making sure that we have what we need. And so that includes lots ofinstructional leader teams and identifying PLLs in our building to be able to like movethis initiative forward. And then, you know, likewe have to also give credit to the fact that our earlychildhood coordinators have done LETRS learning themselves. And so they've been apart of this as well. And so building that teamand collaboratively learning and then building upour collective efficacy has really been important. At Willow, you know, it'sa lot of the same stuff, but I have had to, I have had to say to our staff, like, we are all reading teachers, our playground teachers are teachers, our cafeteria staff are teachers. And so there's more to itthan just, you know, reading, it is about us making sure that kids have a safe and welcoming andlearning environment. And so we've had to do a lot of planning with our site team, with my support staff. I do believe that BARRbeing a part of this, it has been a helpfulbenefit to our building and the way that we talk about kids. And I believe that kids now are seeing themselves as learners, but that's taken a very coordinated effort from a lot of leaders within my building. And so I don't take a lot of that credit. I just want to make surethat people are aligned to what our vision and what our goal is. - Speaking of vision. So early on in ourbuilding of our coalition, in a sense of urgency,we also really carved out what is it that we want toguarantee for our students? And so this was the development of our elementary literacy vision. And I'm fairly confident thatevery elementary educator- - Can at least paraphrase it. - Yes.(people chuckle) - They can probably mostly say it, but they can for sure paraphrase it. - Mostly say it, yes. It has just been so much apart of what we talk about. And even that wordguarantee has really become a focus of our work, thatwe are guaranteeing this for every one of our students. And so even, go on to the next one, we called out, what do theterms in our vision mean? So again, it's aresponsibility placed on us to our community and to our students. And so this has reallybeen our kind of phrase throughout all of this work. - [Matt] And what Iappreciate about that vision, I'll go back to it, is, thiswas, again, done collectively, not, this wasn't like Cynthia saying, "Okay, well here's what our vision is." It was a very collaborative,it started off here, it finally got to like here, and then the definition of, like we said, to guarantee something. Well what does thatguarantee actually mean? And so I think thatthat was really critical to clearly define that so that when we have talks in the buildings, or at the district level, wecan point back to our vision. It's very clear, it's very definitive. - Mm hm. We've also had to identifyand remove those obstacles or barriers, whichsometimes to each his own, but really collectively as a group, for example, a couple ofthings I want to highlight, instructional schedules, iseven just really being committed to ensuring these are thenumber of instructional minutes students will have in literacy. Another thing, creditto district leadership and our school board, is that prioritizing literacyprofessional development days. We know we had to kind of swapout some student contact days to really focus on LETRSprofessional learning, to fit that in. That was an amazing giftto be able to do that. That was absolutelycritical for us to be able to complete LETRS withalmost 200 educators now. Collaboration is a really key piece. It's, we can't do this on our own. So we were being really intentional about creating structures, and really structures across the district. Every quarter we send out asurvey to elementary educators around our implementationof our new curriculum. And I was reading throughtheir responses today, and one of the things thatreally stood out to me is how much they value thatcross-district collaboration. We're doing it virtually, because that challenge of, youknow, the after school time, but we're making it work virtually, and they're really valuing that, so that they can lean on eachother, learn from each other. Being data driven, soit's great to set goals, but you gotta monitor those goals. So as you saw here, FastBridge, those were the screeners screening data. We anxiously look at thoseresults when they come out during those benchmarking periods. But we're also doing a lotmore progress monitoring, especially of our studentsthat are in those risk levels as they are completinginterventions, progress monitoring, looking at rates of improvement,building our data literacy. And then I know BARR is like he has- - Yeah, I want to just touch on that. So for instance, whatshe was talking about with progress monitoring,that has become a, a very useful and utilizedtool in our building. And so, you know, we metin about late January, we're starting to have six week progress monitoring check-ins, and we've really clearly identified where our tier two andtier three students are. And to see the rate of improvementon words read per minute or what have you, whateverthe metric is, is amazing. Like I could talk to you guys all night. But like we were seeing people, you know, you're supposed to grow at a rate of about 1.2 words per minute per week. We have kids that are reading like seven extra words perweek in the six week time. Like so we are moving kids very quickly. And it's also a result of BARR and how we are talking about kids. We talk about them both froma social and emotional aspect, but then we also talk about them from an academic standpoint. When we come together as educators, we're just more skillful,we're more powerful. We come up with solutionsin a much more timely way for us to be able to thengive the interventions or strategies for those students in order for them to succeed. - And then finally this one says develop your literacy knowledge, again, based on the presentation we are giving to school administrators. It's really important, and this is also a basisin the academic literature, is that as a leader you have to have a solid base of foundationalknowledge around literacy and how someone learns how to read. That's how you can engage in those conversations with educators. You can give them precisefeedback, you can ask questions. Principals make a lot ofdecisions in their building, instructional schedules,professional development time. And so really having thatfoundational knowledge around literacy. So for us, you know, we completed LETRS for Administrators. All of our administratorswent through that. Some of our administrators have completed the full LETRS course as well. We also lean heavily on the What WorksClearinghouse Practice Guides. Those come out of the Institutefor Educational Sciences. And we meet, biweekly, principalsand instructional coaches and teaching and learning, to really talk through this together as instructional leaders, to problem solve together, to get ideas, and support one another. - And most recently we just did a survey for our teachers with CKLA, for instance, and just had them selfassess like, where are you? This should be kind of athree year rollout process, in terms of implementing thecurriculum with fidelity. And I would say that the vastmajority of our educators are already kind of in yeartwo of what they're doing. You know, some areas may still be like we're starting to get things rolling. But I would say that, you know, for the most part we'redoing it with fidelity. We are very mindful of making sure that if we have 120 minutes of curriculum instruction for K through 3, that they're doing 120 minutesof curriculum instruction. It's been a change in practice, and yet you can see thebenefits of what we're seeing. - So with that, we would like to openit up for any questions. - [Jessica] All right, thank you so much. Any questions? Ms. Daniels. - So, as you mentioned, Kthrough 3 has been trained and early childhood coordinators. So will the teachers, the4th and 5th grade teachers, special ed teachers, EL teachers, have they been trained in thator they're going to be or? - Yes. By the end of next year, all of our K-5 educatorswill have completed LETRS. So we have a group thatis in year one right now. It's a two year process. So all of our K-5 classroom teachers, speech language pathologists,special education, cross categorical andcluster, multilingual, teachers.- Intervention. - Intervention. What else am I missing? We do also have some secondary educators, which will also berequired by the READ Act but we were already in the process with our secondary intervention and special education educators. - Yeah. So we basically have our buildingcovered from K through 5, including any sort of interventionists, multilingual, special education teachers. - Oh, media specialists.- Mm hm. - And that will be district-wide,not just at Willow? - That will be district-wide.- Correct. - Matoska, they are one year behind, if I'm remembering correctly. - Some there, except for kindergarten. - Yes. Except for kindergarten. So they are in year one of LETRS, the vast majority of Matoska. They'll be in year two nextyear when most of the district will have completed their LETRS training. - Yeah, at the end of thisyear we'll have 140 educators that have completed LETRS. - Mm hm.- Exciting. - Yeah, it's exciting.- Very exciting. - Yeah. - Can I ask another question?- Yeah. - So when you mentionedthat staff development days were swapped out for student contact days, when we get done trainingin this great effort, which is needed, and we'reso happy it's happening, will some of those daysmaybe be swapped back or is that a future discussion to have? - Yeah.- We know now? - Yeah, we actually revertback next school year. - [Kathleen] Okay. - And so having the,by and large, majority, what that afforded us to was that, so LETRS is four fullfacilitated days, which was how many professional developmentdays in essence we had, and how they were spacedout throughout the year. So what that afforded us is also professional learningcollaboration beyond just LETRS, and then also how do you apply LETRS? And so we will be ableto fit that in next year. It'll be the four dates, but we do revert back tothe previous calendar. - Yeah.- Yeah. - [Kathleen] You know, the 120 minutes? - Yeah.- Yeah. - That each student gets, so if a student qualifies for extra help, whatever tier they'rein, tier three, tier two, whatever, special ed, or you got, is that included in the120 or do they get extra? - So we were very deliberate.That's a great question. We were very deliberate about that because past practice would have kids potentially being pulledout during core instruction. And we know that that'snot what they need, right? And so it is better tohave the student in there for the full 120 minutes, and then we've been able to find a way to, if significant interventionis needed to either push in. So you're seeing a lot more push in as a model in our district,which I'm very excited about. And we know that there's kids that do need to have some pull out services, but that is, the 120 for K through 3, or the 90 for 4 and 5, thatis, you don't touch it. - Mm hm. - [Kathleen] Thanks. Thank you very much - Questions? Ms. Thompson. - Just a comment on, youknow, looking at the data, and I mean, it's just impressive. And I just think of thestudents who must be so thrilled to be learning, right? Like the excitement that theyhave over this knowledge. And even in, you know,where there's not like, like just one exampleis the Word Segmenting for Willow Lane from 22-23Spring to the 23-24 Winter, while the green didn't change that much, the red to yellow changed drastically. So you're moving kids up, no matter what. Even though, you know,we want 'em in the green, at least we see ithappening in all the areas. And it's just, it's really exciting. - Yeah, and you're seeing kindergartners who are not gravitating towards picture books in kindergarten. We have decodable readers, and you see them gravitatingtowards the decodable reader. Like it's not a great,I mean, they're okay. It's not like this beautifulpicture or whatever, but they're, when you can read- - It's exciting.- It's pretty exciting to be able to like putthese things together. Some of those really like,you could just sit there and just kind of watch kidsread, and you're just like- - [Angela] A reward, it's just gotta be. - Yeah. It's been fun tohear from families too. Just talking to a parenta couple of weeks ago and was like, his childis a kindergartner, and was like, "She'sreading the Cheerios box, like absolutely reading the Cheerios box." He's just floored by it. - [Angela] And that's really great. I'm very thankful for all the work and everything that you guys have done to help move this along. It's exciting - Ms. Streiff Oji. - So thank you. Thank you for sharing. The data is very, veryimpressive and super exciting. I'm excited, I'll be excitedto see where we go from here. Some of the things thatI was thinking about, do we know exactly what haschanged other than the time, what exactly has changed withwhat the teachers are doing to move the students along that quickly? And then is it the new curriculum? Is it the science of reading? Has any of that been appliedto the scope and sequence or anything like that? And then I'd be super interested, this is only FastBridge data, correct? - Correct.- Okay. So interested if there'sany other data points and seeing this withthe other grade levels through progress monitoring and maybe just aggregatedalso and see how we're doing. - [Matt] Do you wanna take thefirst part of her question? - Yeah, so the first part around, like what is it that is making the impact? I think it's a combination of things. I definitely attribute itto a very structured focus on this is our instructionaltime devoted to reading. And with that, we first,though, started with building teacher knowledge and skills around what do you do withthose 120 or 90 minutes. And so what teachers are doing is, they're very much explicit and systematic. When we talk about structured literacy, it's very explicit and systematic, which is a shift in teaching, which has come with someother challenges, right? As we shift practices. I think, too, curriculum. Yes, I believe that it has played a role. Our curriculum evaluation or review team, when we have the decision, do we roll out full K-5implementation this first year or should we considerkind of spacing it out? Especially knowing people arestill in the midst of LETRS. It was a resounding, we need to start now because we have this LETRS learning and our current curriculum would take too much work to shift. So teachers feeling like Ialso now have the materials. I need to apply my LETRS learning. I think the work, the instructional leadershipof our principals, it's amazing to hear themin our principal meetings, their conversationsaround phonemic awareness. - Well, and I'll giveyou a little glimpse into when we really started,when I started to get there, like let's talk about phonemic awareness. And there wasn't a ton of that going on. And I don't even, it's not even,there's no blame to be had. We have so many teachers that are like, "But I don't teach reading", right? Like, "I've never beentaught how to teach reading. I'm a teacher, but I don'tknow how to teach reading." And that goes K, pre-K-12 really, right? And so there was thishesitancy of our staff to be able to like say,"You're a reading teacher." But when we dive into that, there's a lot of things to be able to do. LETRS helped with that. And so it started to come up, this, my work with this started to come off with the fact that, let'stalk about phonemic awareness. If sounds are how kids learn how to read, then what are we doingto build that knowledge? And so there was thiscurriculum called Heggerty. And Heggerty is a nicelittle 10 minutes a day, you do sounding out words and blending and all of this stuff. It was a great entry point oflike, it's pretty low stakes, I can do it pretty quickly, and the kids actuallykind of like it, right? So we've kind of now takenthis ability for people like, "Oh, I can do this", toreally like supercharge the way that they are teaching now, sounding out words, teachinghow to blend things, how to segment things. And that's a result of the LETRS learning. So it was everybody trying to do something kind of like as individualand independent contractors, like, "I think this is working, right?" And we know more. With that came some warning last year, I'll be very clear, it cameat the cost of educators who work tirelessly, day in day out, to help kids learn how to read, and then getting mixed results. And then with their learning,through their learning, go like, "Oh, my gosh, I didn't know, I didn't know to do X, Y and Z." Whatever it was, right? And then they're startingto see all the kids that, through the years, that they like, "Oh man, if I just had another three months with you or something." So there was a lot of hardconversations with that. But as, like we've gottenover the hump, into like, okay, well now we're movingin the right direction. Now we know. To your point aboutlike I'd love to be able to see some more data at like 3, 4, 5, it is not gonna look the best. But these kids are nowmatriculating up through our system. But another really, a point that really got me this past year was talking to our 4th gradeteachers and their results, like through FastBridge,were like, it's okay. And one of our teachers, Ann,she stopped me and she said, "But our kids have neverfelt more confident writing." And I would say that that'sa part of some of the time that we've devoted,and also the curriculum that is building in that writing time, and to have kids feelconfident about writing when they didn't at first, that's huge. Because then we know that the encoding, like you need to be ableto encode in order to read, like it just, it goes hand in hand. That was really critical to see. So I can walk awayknowing that my 4th grade is in really good hands, because they are starting to become learners, readers, writers. - Yeah. - I think what's important to point out, everything Matt talkedabout, I was thinking about, is that, you know, that phrase, we talked about collectiveefficacy, right? And it has a high impact. I think that that really hasbeen a key in all of this, is there's been so much of a we, like we are all learning this. Every classroom teacher,special education, intervention, ML, principal,instructional coach, we are all in it learningit at the same time, like helping each other. There's such a collectivemindset right now, and collaboration. I feel that culture shift in that way, 'cause we all have something that we're really grabbing onto together and learning and growing together. - Thank you. Thank you both.- Yeah. - And kudos to Willow as well.- Yeah. - Oh, Dr. Arcand. - The only question I have is, it's really great how you'resharing this with parents and you're bringing them on board so they kind of know what you're doing, because they can be another partner at home when the kids are doing it. How is that happening? - So system wide, we dohave a monthly communication that goes out to parents, and there'll be a specific literacy topic, and it'll be ways that they cansupport their child at home. The other piece weworked on system wide is, so we have a system called EduCLIMBER, which is really our data warehouse, and it has this feature called smartFORMs that we can set up andit pulls student data and puts it in the smartFORM. And then we worked onstructuring to really talk about what does that assessmentresult mean for your child? What are some ways you cansupport your child at home? And then all of our elementary schools went over that with familiesat parent teacher conferences, which I think there wasa little nervousness for educators initially liketo be going over that data. And then what we heard wasoverwhelmingly positive about how having that structured format and really being able to engage in those conversations with families. So that's a couple ofideas, from system wide. - Yeah, well, I would say, you know, that's born out of the READ Act, right? - Yeah. - So we were being very deliberate about, okay, your kid is here, here are the thingsthat you can do at home. But then it's all of thecommunication that we're doing, the tiny bits of homeworkthat we're sending to kids, the decodable readers. As a Title school, some of the ways that we are giving kidsbooks, material, curriculum, and then having parents work with that. So it is something thatwe're communicating with on a regular basis, you know, so we're meeting thespirit of the READ Act, but then it's also the little things that we're doing on a daily basis that are allowing parentsto be a part of that. I do think, to your point,the next big thing is like how are parents informing us what they would like to see, right? And I think we have to havemore of those conversations. - Thank you.- Yeah. - [Jessica] Ms. Daniels. - One more question. It's kind of an opinion question. With all your work, and thenthinking about the READ Act, and thinking about teachertraining and colleges and Matt's sort of commentsabout that some teachers, not all teachers, but someteachers just don't like, they didn't have the right training. So as administrators, people in this role, are you thinking thatcolleges are hearing this, and the state, obviously thelegislators have heard it, and you know, I look back, and when I was first a teacher in 1978, a long time ago, butwe had Orton-Gillingham that we were trained in, whichis, you know, still around, that had some of thosecomponents, but only if you were a special educationteacher did you get that. So just, are they, are collegesgoing to, do you think? - Yeah, well I think there's been some legislative action on that. So I also work with a local university, and I know for their accreditation,PELSB has gone through with a fine tooth comb inall of their coursework. And so I've helped them respond to that. So I know I'm seeingsome action happening. I think just like at momentswhere we have also faced is that shifting ofmindsets and beliefs, right? So if this is the way you've been teaching for years and years andthat you have a sense of that it's been working to some degree, sometimes that's hard to switch. So I think there are also that whole change management piece, but I'm at least seeingsome steps toward action and really clearly layingout that they must align with the science of reading. - I think higher educationneeds to do a better job of listening to teachers. I do. Because I do think that there'sa disconnect a little bit. And depending on what programteachers are coming out of, might have their abilities heightened or kind of setback a little bit. So I know that there's this,a little bit of a disconnect, I feel, like between publiceducation and higher education. It's a good question though. - [Kathleen] Thank you. - All right. Thank you so much for all your work. We much appreciate it. Discussion item B3, Fiscal Year2024-25 Budget Adjustments. Mr. Wald and Ms. Johnson. - Thank you, Chair Ellison, Members of the Board, Dr. Kazmierczak. At the February 12th,2024 School Board Meeting the board approved the revised23-24 school year budget and the projected 24-25 budget. A key budget goal that we haveis to maintain or to get to and then maintain that 8% fund balance, as identified in our Fund Balance Policy. We noted at that time that we would need to identify $1.4 millionin increased revenues and decreased expendituresin order to work toward that Fund Balance Policy in the future. And so we were taskedwith coming to you tonight and identifying how we would do that. Go on to the next one. You've seen this graph. Back one. - I'm trying. - Oh.- Sorry, - It's sticky. (people chuckle)- Sorry. I'm trying. - Oh now it's catching up.- There we go. - All right, you'veseen this graph before, and the blue line represents where the general educationformula allowance would be if it had kept pace withinflation since 2003. And the orange line represents where the actual generalformula allowance has, you know, is or has been over those last 22 years. And you also see what thebudgetary impact would be for us in terms of revenue, $11,206,000. And we've shown you thatnumber over a number of years, and that has significantly increased, that gap has significantly increased over the last five years as we've seen in theyears of higher inflation. But the funding formula hasn't kept pace with that inflation. School districts have facedsignificant challenges during that time. And because of it I've hadto turn, in some cases, to local revenue sources,including operating levies, in order to close that gap. This lack of, or this gap in funding, has had a major, long-termimpact on school district budgets and will continue to. We'll see, over the next several years, the school districts arechallenged long-term by, by the challenge ofthe last several years. And so we've seen districtswith staffing challenges have had to really work hard to get people to come work for them. Oftentimes that's resulted in significantly increased salaries and that's gonna play over year after year and really create somechallenges for school districts. And it's played out in their agreements at the negotiating table. Now the legislatives, thispast legislative session, we saw funding increases of 4% and 2%, which were significantlymore than, the 4% anyways, than what we've seen in many years. However, it still was significantly below the rate of inflation. And so as our expenses go up, in this human industry of education, those expenses andinflation really impacts us. Along with it came new requirements. While many of those requirementswe would agree with, they're not funded fully assome legislators have suggested, they've been partially funded or they've been temporarilyfunded or not funded at all. And so that gap will continue to impact school districtsin really significant areas. This chart, as we've experienced that funding gap, just like other districts in the state, we've been at the table year after year really adjusting theexpenditure side of our budget. And this is a five year history of those, or a total of 12.7 millionover those five years. If you look at the top half of this chart, you see those reductionsthat impacted departments that are really operationalor administrative in nature. About 54% of those cuts we've, or adjustments somewhere,revenue somewhere, are budget reductions. Well 54% in those non-school programs. And then the bottom half, 46%really are those reductions that have had moredirect impact on schools. - I have a question.- Yeah. - [Jessica] Ms. Streiff Oji. - [Christina] Does thatchart show the cuts that have been made to those areas? - Those are reductions, or in some case, finance tools, or shifting funds out of the general fund into other revenue sources. - [Christina] So the 2 millionat the elementary level, we've cut that much? Over, really- - Over five years. - [Christina] Hmm. - And remember that ourelementary and secondary staff is really the core,largest part of our budget. - [Christina] Mm hm. Thank you. - [Tim] It's you. (people chuckle)Okay. So now we'll walk through,we're able to get to that. We talked about 1.4million on the revenue side and the expenditure side, and we're able to get to that. Tonight, and really moreof it on the revenue side as we've dug really deep into our assumptions within our budget. We'll start at the topwith transportation. And so we've analyzed and projected future invoicesfrom our contractors, and we've been able to, or we've identified thatas we've moved some routes away from contractors andkept more routes in-house that we've been ableto reduce expenditures to our contractors, and we just run more efficiently that way. And so, we believe we're gonna see $418,000 in savings in transportation. So keeping more ofthose in-house as we can and avoiding use of third partyproviders as much as we can. Within special education revenue, this is a revised assumption on revenue, and it's based on the mostrecent MDE calculations. The most challenging partof developing the budget is projecting what thatspecial ed revenue is gonna be. And we know that what weproject isn't gonna be right because we don't knowwho's gonna be walking in our doors next year. But, as we get moreprojections from MDE over time we're able to sharpen that a little bit. And so we're projectingan additional $300, $300,000 in special ed revenue for 24-25 than we originally had inour budget in February. Secondary staffing. This is aligning our staffingto project enrollment. We'll see a slight decreasein the numbers of students we're serving in our elementary schools, but we'll also be moreefficient than we are with our split campus high school. And so there's somecourses where we've had to make decisions on runninga small elective course that we offer in both buildings, and now we're gonna,we'll have critical mass where we may be able to run that course but it won't have tobe as small as it was. And so we're just more efficient with a combined campus. We're seeing about $300,000reduction in expenditures at the secondary level. At elementary, we will staffat the same class size ratio that we have for many years, which is 23.5 students perteacher across the district. And that might look a little bit different from building to building. Our smaller schools can be verydifficult to get, you know, really close to that 23.5. Some schools might be a little bit higher, some might be a little bit lower. We've maintain the same targets as well. So we've talked targets, that's a range that we're trying to get at a grade level. And so you look at 2ndgrade, the target is, we want to see thosesections between 22 and 25. It doesn't mean wewon't be lower sometimes or maybe there might bea time when we're higher, but that's the targetwe're trying to stay in. And so as an example across the district we have 26 sections of 2nd grade, and they'll average 22.3students per section. Two schools will actuallybe below the target is what, you know, unless things change. But right now it lookslike we'll have two schools that are slightly below that target, and no schools that'll be above it. We'll have some that'llbe closer to the top of that range in 2nd grade. Some schools have multi-age scenarios in 2nd and 3rd grade or 1stand 2nd where that's able to maintain class sizes belowthat top of that target. And so principals really workhard within their buildings to identify opportunities to be efficient. Savings of 262.5. In buildings and grounds wespent some time analyzing our projected energy expenses, and we adjusted based onthe most current projections for energy costs in our region. And we think we're gonna seesome savings of about $235,000 from original projections. Investment revenue. Market conditions haveimproved pretty well over the last quarter,the last two quarters. And so we're increasing what we think our investment revenuewill be around $100,000, or increasing it $500,000. Clerical staffing. The savings here of 65,000reflects adjustments at both the elementaryand secondary level. At the secondary level, it's not actually a personwhose position is being cut, we had actually approved an addition of a clerical position at the high school and we had built that into our budget that we brought to you on February 12th. Since then, as we've donethis work, we decided that we're not gonna add thatposition at the secondary. So from our budgetperspective, it shows as a cut, but there's not a person in aposition that we're cutting. At the elementary school, we worked with elementary principals to identify what the average clerical staffing perstudent is in their building, just to create a standardacross buildings. And we found some surprises in that, that some buildings were staffed quite a bit higher than others, clerical. So we were able to make somereductions in those buildings and then we identified some buildings that were below what the average was. And so we were able to add someclerical in those buildings. And so what we have now is areduction of about eight hours across the nine elementary buildings. But buildings that were really underserved from a clerical perspective,are now up to that number and others are consistentacross the district. So that's our total of 1,000,681, about, in adjustments, which, you know, exceedswhat we set out to do. So we've been working hard at it. - [Scott] Can I ask a quickquestion, out of curiosity. Chair?- Yeah, Dr. Arcand. - When I look at the secondary, 300,000, I'm making the assumption that you've included Vadnais in that. So are we talking about four full type positions approximately, depending on what you're cutting from? - [Andi] Yeah. - Okay, thank you. - Okay, so then what does this mean for us big picture wise in our budget? So we've included inhere the summary document of our revenues and expenses, and then also included in the packet is the more detailed version. So this is the outlookfor our school district for the next two years basedon these budget adjustments being incorporated into the budget. So if you look at the projected24-25 column, for example, you can see our revenues are now predicted to be at $142 million andthen expenditures at 141. So we are coming out withmore revenues than expenses for next school year of about $587,000. And then again, we always focus on that unassigned fundbalance, so the line in blue. That puts us at about $10.8 million, which brings our fundbalance percentage up to 7.7. So we're seeing that growth from the 7.5% for this current school year to a projected 7.7 for next year. And then with our targetbeing that we maintain the school board policy of 8% fund balance for the 25-26 school year, toget to the 8% fund balance, it would mean budgetadjustments for that school year about $2.5 million. So because we were able toidentify more than the 1.4 that we were talking about last month, there's a little bit benefit there, 'cause we were lookingat about 2.7 last month. So it's better. We do feel that, you know, as we, as operations finalizefor this school year, we're hopeful that that'sgonna be a little bit better. But we do have some workcut out for us in the future if that comes to fruition. - [Jessica] All right,thank you very much. Any questions? - I just, oh, sorry.- Go ahead. - [Angela] Just thankyou again for, you know, having to do all of that. 'Cause I know it's not something that you look forward to having to do, and then thinking of whatwe have looking ahead. Hopefully things can changeand we don't have to, we don't have to look at that number. It can go down. - Ms. Streiff Oji. - So is that for next, that adjustment that wewere just looking at, is that for next-- [Tim] For next school year. - And is there a process for that? How has it been done in the past when you're looking at that much money? Like are you pulling togetherfolks from the community? Are you pulling together staff? How do you make those reductions? How do you, do you startwith administrators? Does it look different every time? I don't know what the process is for... - I would say it looks a littlebit different every time. We start with administrators and really like withinthe leadership team, of where do we see possibilities? It's always best if you really work hard on the revenue side of it and make sure that your revenue projectionsare as good as they can be. And then as we work onreductions, you know, when you sit around a table and ask people where the reduction should be, everyone touches their nose, right? And so... In the past we've approacheddepartment leaders and given them a target to hit. And so when you go back to that slide, you know, where we saw thosereductions across the top half. Those were some reallydifficult decisions, because we're trying to just keep those out of the classroom as much as possible. And so we made some, you know,challenging decisions here. Are there more creative ways we can, or different revenue sources that we can use for different salaries for positions we really need to keep, but we can pay for out ofa different revenue source. - And when do we startmaking those changes, those adjustments, to likeFTEs, or whatever it is, it's coming from, if it's notFTEs, programming or whatever. When does that start tocome up? In the spring? - Well, yeah, we do the,you know, we get our, we really want to workthrough our audit, right? 'Cause we have really solidnumbers after the audit, and that informs a lot of thedecisions that we have to make and look through the datathat we have in the audit of how our money was spent, where we perhaps overspent, underspent, where revenues were high,where they were low, and start making decisions at that point. The last few years ouraudits have been late, so we want to move those audits up, try to get to you in December instead of January with our audits. - [Jessica] Ms. Daniels. - Can you talk a little bitabout the revised assumption, the funding for special ed, the 300,000, is that becausewe have fewer kids or subsidy, I mean, just where, whatdoes that look like? - So the special ed revenue is incredibly difficult to predict. It's entirely based onprior year expenses, and those still aren'tfinalized on MDE's side for fiscal 23 even. And so we took another deepdive on what we did know and found there are some new data points that we were able to do another calc. So based on the most recentdata from the Department of Ed, we felt that our revenuebudget was a little bit under where we thought we would end up. So thought it was prudentto just increase our revenue based on that calculation. So if I ran it again probably next week, it could be different, but this is the mostup-to-date data that we have. - Other questions? All right, thank you very much. So we'll move into ourfirst operational item C1, action on the Fiscal Year24-25 Budget Adjustments that we just heard. Mr. Wald. - [Andi] I'll take this. - Or Ms. Johnson.- Yep. So as we just went overthe budget adjustments and we had time for discussion, the recommended action atthis point is to approve the FY 24-25 BudgetAdjustments as recommended, - You've heard the recommended action. Could I get a motion to approve. - [Kathleen] So moved. - A motion by Ms. Daniels, and a second? - Second.- Second by Ms. Streiff Oji. Any further discussion or questions? This will require a roll call vote. I would ask the clerkto please call the roll. - Ellison?- Aye. - Streiff Oji?- Aye. - Thompson?- Aye. - [Scott] Arcand, aye. Daniels?- Aye. - The motion passes. Thank you. And then operational item C2, approval of Fiscal Year 25 Long-Term Facilities Maintenance 10 Year Plan, in accordance with MinnesotaStatute 2022, Section 123B.595. Ms. Johnson.- Yeah. So as Shelby had mentionedearlier this evening, the action item for this evening related to the upcoming bond issuance is to approve the LTFM plan again. So you've seen this many times. We do this every July. And then any time that we issue facilities maintenance bonds, we have to come to youand update this again based on the current market conditions. So they put together, Ehlers put together, that presale report. Based on that we've updatedthis just a little bit so that it ties out tothe numbers that we, or the revenue thatwe're expected to receive on our upcoming bond issuance. So the recommended actionis that you approve the FY 25 Long-Term FacilityMaintenance 10 Year Plan in accordance with MinnesotaStatutes, Section 123B.595. - You've heard the recommended action. Could I get a motion to approve? - [Angela] So moved. - A motion by Ms. Thompson, and a second? - [Kathleen] Second. - [Jessica] A 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. - Ellison?- Aye. - Streiff Oji?- Aye. - Thompson?- Aye. - [Scott] Arcand, aye. Daniels?- Aye. - And the motion passes. Thank you. With that, I would askfor a motion to adjourn. - [Scott] Chair Ellison,I move for an adjournment. - A motion by Dr. Arcand, and a second? - [Kathleen] Second. - Second by Ms. Daniels All in favor ofadjournment please say aye? - [Members] Aye. - Opposed same sign? We are adjourned. (gavel taps)