(gavel bangs) - I now call the order the school board, Independent School District 624 to order. Roll call. Will the clerkClerk please call the roll? - Streiff Oji.- Here - Thompson.- Here. - Arcand.- Here. - Daniels Here. Ellison.- Here. - Skaar.- Here. - Please stand. If you havea hat, take your hat off. The pledge of allegiance.Gimme me a minute. I got it. - All right. - [Group] I pledge Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. - We have before us an agenda. Can I get a motion to approve? - So moved- By Thompson. Can I get a second?- Second. - That's Streiff Oji.Is there any discussion? This will be a voice vote. All in favor say aye. - [Group] Aye. - Opposed? Save the sign. The motion passes. We also have before us a consent agenda. This contains a variety of business items that come monthly, including donations. We are truly grateful for allthe support shown every month by our staff, for our staff and students. So we wanna thank everybodythat's contributed. Can I get a motion toapprove the consent agenda? - So moved.- So moved. - Okay.- Oh, sorry. - Daniels. Can I get a second? - Second.- By Thompson. Is there any discussion? This will be a roll call vote. Will the clerk please call the rollout? - Streiff Oji.- Aye. - Thompson.- Aye. - Arcand.- Aye. - Daniels, Aye. Ellison.- Aye. - Skaar.- Aye. - Okay, now we're to the public forum. Part of our agenda, wehad zero people requests, so we will not be doing that. We're going on to ourinformational items. C1. Dr. Kazmierczak with student recognition. - Alright, thank you ChairArcand, members of the board. Tonight we proudly celebratethe achievements of members of the high school speech team and middle school students whoparticipated in History Day. Congratulations to each andevery one of you for state and national level accomplishments. We also extend our sinceregratitude to the dedicated staff and support of family members, who played a vital rolein these successes. In recognition of their accomplishments, students have received a certificate and a bear pin plus aletter acknowledging their achievements was mailed to their home. Now please join us inwatching a video highlighting their accomplishments. Go Bears. (pleasant music) (pleasant music continues) (pleasant music continues) (pleasant music continues) - [Chair] All right. Congratulationsto all those in there. I know a lot of hard work went into it. We're gonna go on to information item C2, recognition of student liaison. Dr. Kazmierczak. - Thank you Chair Arcand,members of the board. So on behalf of the WhiteBear Lake Area School Board, I want to commend andrecognize Lydia Kleinhans, our 12th grade student, and then Thomas ReeseThomas is here tonight. He's our junior representativefor their outstanding roles as the 24-25 studentrepresentatives to the school board. So thank you. (group clapping) (members faintly speaking) (group laughing) (members faintly speaking) No, that's okay. (group laughing) I don't want camp for style. So next year Thomas willbe sitting up here with us as we're expanding the upfront, so there's a little more room and he'll be joining us upfront. So thank you Thomas foryour regular attendance. - Okay, thank you. We're now on to C3Super attendance report. Once again, Dr. Kazmierczak. - All right, thank you Chair Arcand and members of the board. Congratulations to MarinerMiddle School language arts teacher, Carla Triggs, who was named the White BearLake Area Educators 2025 Teacher of the Year at arecent recognition ceremony. Also, congratulationsto the other finalists and to all those whowere nominated this year. Willow Lane Elementary, fifthgraders are taking over local restaurant Donatelli's inWhite Bear Lake working as the cooks servers andhosts over the lunch hour. Students will be therefrom 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM again on May 13th and May 20th. Tomorrow's May 13th visitwill be an extra special one as Gabe Kessel, a whitebear high school student and former wrestler who is fighting a rare and aggressive form of brain cancer, will be there with his family. And the students have chosen to donate their Donatelli'stips to Gabe's treatment. This is a full circle moment. When Gabe was in fifth gradeat Willow, he worked a shift during the restaurant takeover, and we confirmed, I have to make sure Gabe is the student second from the left. So, he'll be there tomorrow. So tomorrow might be a great day to go and support that project. Alright, the high schoolvarsity baseball team has an exciting game onthe calendar next week, not only will they be takingon our rival to the West, Mounds View High Schoolon Wednesday May 21st, they will be doing so at Target Field. Tickets can be purchased either through a high schoolbaseball player or coach or you can find more information as a news item on the district's website. And as the school year comesto a close, a variety of end of the year studentcelebrations are taking place throughout the district before the last day of school on June 6th. I'd like to offer a specialcongratulations to those who are reaching important milestones, whether it's graduating fromhigh school, middle school, elementary school,kindergarten, or preschool. I'm excited to celebrate ourArea Learning Center graduates on June 4th and our WhiteBear Lake Area High School graduates on June 5th innew commencement spaces. The high school's PerformingArts Center will house the ALC graduation and the WhiteBear Lake Area High School commencement ceremony will take place outside at the high school stadium. So enjoy the last days of the school year and have a safe and relaxing summer. - Alright, thank you very much. - Yes. - Alright, we're done withdiscussion items number one. We're gonna talk of graduation rate and student attendance update. Dr. Gillespie. - Hello Chair Arcand,members of the board, thank you for having me tonight. I will have some guestsjoin me in just a little bit as part of a panel discussion. So I'll let you guys know when to come up. Tonight, I really wanna take time to talk to you about graduation and student attendance data and really look at in thecontext of celebrations of where we are, what's thecontext around that data. And then as we continue to getbetter, where are the areas that we have to get better and are continually diving into that. Again, I talk about graduationand attendance data. Clarify some of the key metrics. These are metrics that gettalked about across the state and so making sure that people understand what they mean and why they matter. And then again, highlight what's working and where we're growing. So as you may have seen, ourgraduation rate for the class of 24 was just released this past week. Our district rate forthe class of 24 is 91.6%, and we really break that downin three schools that we have. We have our High School, which is 96.5%. Our Area Learning Center, which is 77.5%. And then our Transition Education Center, that data was, we have it internally but it's too small in termsof the number of graduates to report publicly. And so those three factorinto what our school district rates are, which we arehappy that it has increased and that we continue to becompetitive with the state. I think it's really importantto note we get compared, which I understand completely why we would with school districts across our area. And not all school districts offer the same programming that we do. So we're really proud ofour Area Learning Center. We're really proud of ourTransition Education Center. But that isn't the case in all districts, especially our neighbors closest to us and they're our friends and colleagues but Mahtomedi reallydoesn't have those programs. They use those programs with916 where we have our own and we also partner with 916 as you know. Our high school rate is 96.5%, which really keeps us very competitive. We're the second highestin the area high schools and we're really proud of that. Everyone should be proudthat the ninth grade year for these students was2021, the school year. And so that was an interruptedschool year for them. And really we worked reallyhard to make sure we could get as many students to crossthe stage as possible and really make surethat they felt prepared for their next steps,whatever that might be. So celebrations, if we look at specifically the high schoolsgraduating class last year there was 488 students, 17of them were nongraduates, but 11 of those 17 had alreadyplanned with their teams that they would go on to our18 to 22-year-old programming. And so when you look at 11 ofthose 17 graduating according to plan, what we plannedfor 'em and their teams, that's a graduation rate of 98.8% and really something tobe very, very proud of. The other piece is lookingat our Area Learning Center. Many of the students thatgo there, one of the reasons that they go is they have had some sort of blip on the screen interms of completing credits. And so many are credit deficient when they're referred there. And our Area Learning Centerat 77.5% is one of the highest. And it really sets out compared to others that are more traditionally around 50%, which again, not to be critical of them 'cause that is a program thatwe provide for our students, but the fact that we'restill getting our students to graduate in that fouryear rate speaks a lot to the program and the staffand what they're doing. The other piece that we keeplooking in and getting better and really my commitment to you and our commitment is tocontinue to think about what other evidence do we have in terms of how are students doingacademically as we couple that with graduation. And one of the data that wehave, which it's lagging. And so some of this can be kindof frustrating sometimes in terms of how we impact oursystem is from the SLEDS data. And I linked the website there, but they track the percent ofhigh school students needing to take developmentalcoursework in Minnesota colleges during their first two fall terms. And you may or may not be familiar, but when students takedevelopmental coursework, they have to pay for it. But those credits don'tthen impact whatever they might be studying. And so for the class of2018, 19% of our students who enrolled in Minnesota colleges needed to take developmental coursework. And the most recent datathat we have right now is the class of 23 and that's down to 9%. And again, it's been a focusas you know we've talked with you at the board, butwe continue to think about how do we make sure studentshave the skills necessary so they're successfulbeyond their time with us. So who are the 52 studentsthat didn't graduate? We have, that's across the district. We have 21 students who arecurrently enrolled with us, seven who've graduated since the cutoff. And the cutoff for the MinnesotaDepartment of Education is September 15th after the June that you would call four year graduation. And so we're diving in, there's a few that we're asking MDEjust to look at for us 'cause we believe we reportedthem as graduates within that timeframe, but fiveof them for sure graduated after September 15th. Then we have 22 studentsthat we're really looking at where might they be and what happened. And so some in our system areseven students are designated as a 15 day drop, meaning they didn't attendschool 15 consecutive days and then we have to dropthem from our enrollment. Two transferred to other schools and 15 are for unknown reasons. So I'm gonna talk toyou a little bit about those 15 as well. I think it's important to note that a student when theyleave us, them graduating or not graduating countsagainst the district or the high school where theywere there the most time. So you'll see, I'm gonnaclick on a chart in a second. We had a couple studentsleave us in 10th grade. Well that might mean thatthose two solid years were the longest that they wereenrolled in one high school. And so then that comes back to us. So that's one of the reasons that graduation data islagging is all the different calculations that they need to do with districts makingsure their data's correct. And then also at theDepartment of Education. So as we continue to thinkabout that was gonna, it's gonna take me alittle bit here again, we had 52 that have not yet graduated. That's 8.4%. And so I wanted to reallylook at what do we know so far about their stories? And we're still diving inour ALC leadership team and our high school leadership team are really working with me. But of that, what student groups do these students fall into? How long were they with us? What might we find out about the students? And of the 52 students, four students are multilingual learners, three students or excuse me, 36 studentsqualify for educational benefits or what we used to call students and families who qualifyfor free and reduced lunch. 19 students who receive special education. Then you'll see the different ethnicity and race groups thateach student falls into. Then as you think about,okay, 52 students, 21 again are currently enrolled with us, seven have graduated, and then that unknown category with two that we know transferredto another school district, we have 22 that we're still trying to figure out what can we do. It's still not too late to have them come and take part in our classesto get their diplomas. And so really right now what what we know, and like I said, itliterally is hour by hour we're diving into it as wegot this data last week, 10th graders, four ofleft us in 10th grade, seven of them left us in11th grade and then 12, or excuse me, 11 of themleft us in 12th grade. About 16 of the 22 havebeen enrolled with us and came to us as middle school students. And so that's one of theareas I'll talk about at the very end. But diving into how do wesupport students who are new to our system in sixth grade or even at the high school tomake sure that they graduate and feel part of our system. And then if you lookat the credits earned, a total credit right now is, our current schedule isstudents need 22 credits to earn their diploma. So we have eight studentsthat are pretty close, seven who are a little bit closer but a little bit further away. And then we have seven students who really aren't veryclose in terms of credits. And so each student has a different story that we're diving into. And then again, ourcommitment is to partner with Principal Reetz, AssistantPrincipal, Jenni Sjosten, and to really dive in and saywhat can we do across both of our programs to make sure that we help students with graduating? And then I put over herealso, just so you know, 17 students, which I alreadytalked about at the high school, 32 students thatdidn't graduate were part of our ALC and then three students in our Transition Education Center. So shifting to attendance and people might thinkthat's a weird coupling that I'm doing, but part of this is because people are talking about it a lot and making sure that peopleunderstand what it means, but also that you understandthat we're leaning into it and have continuously done that. So regular school attendance is essential for student success and students who attend regularlyperform better academically, are more engaged and are morelikely to graduate on time. So there's one of the connections. The other piece is as wethink about intervening around attendance, theearlier we intervene, that really is the best way wecan improve academic outcomes and reduce future academicstruggles for students. So MDE releases each Augustsomething called consistent attendance or you maybehave seen it called the chronic absenteeism depending on, its shifted titles a little bit. And that data is releasedeach August and it lags. So this August we'll getthe data from the class of the school year of 23-24. And that data is how manystudents, the percentage of students that were inschool 90% of the time. And students have to havebeen enrolled with us for 50% or more. And so it is, right nowour district data is around a little between 70 and 71%of students have attended 90% of the time. I think it's important to know that doesn't mean ourdaily attendance is 70%, that really our dailyattendance is quite high 'cause that's what ourprincipals look at all the time. This helps us track how's that cumulation of absences really impacting our students. And so as we look at it,I just wanna make sure that we understand one,I'm gonna dive in what that looks like for each level, but also that this isjust one point of data and it can be a littlefrustrating for our principals 'cause it's so lagging. It's good for us as a system. But what they see day in, day out and they'll talk about that a bit and our support teams thatthey really are looking who are the kids right in front of me and how do I make sureto positively impact that number and their experience. So consistent attendancedata that the 70 between 70 and 71, it's 70 point something and it's escaping me right now. It's really from the classof the school year 22-23. This August 23-24 will be released and then 24-25 would comeout obviously next August. We do our best to recreatethe calculation internally. But it is another, we're pretty good. We predicted 22-23 andeach number was within 3%. But it does take somecalculations at some, frankly if we can get close, it's just not worth the manpower 'cause it does take that to have to figure out who's been here how long, and we can look at differentways of looking at data, which really is what our data department partners with our principals on. So in this graph, 23-24 is anestimate as is 24-25 to date. And the date was by the end ofMarch that I was able to get. And so really what I'm wantingto show is that each one of our schools have madesignificant improvement. 21-22 was the first timethat data has been publicly released for five years prior to that. And so it was a little bitof a shock for all of us that that was a way that peoplewere tracking attendance. That being said, we worked really hard to increase that across the board. Our elementary saw a reboundfaster than secondary. And you'll see that in a little bit, but then we keep asking more questions. So right now it lookslike maybe this year from 23-24, 24-25 might take a little dip. So what's going on each school, each student, each situation 'cause 90% attendance meansstudents miss no more, if they start missingaround 17 days of school, that's when they drop below 90%. And as you can imagine,if you have a student who maybe gets the flu or something else and then you take a familyvacation, it can be easy for people to accumulatethat number of absences. And it's actually just the way life has collided for our families. Our secondary attendance for middle school and high school took alittle bit longer to rebound, but I'm really excitedabout what we're seeing for, especially for this year. We did have a hunch that the split campus wasn't helping us in terms of attendance. And that really, I thinkthat's one of the reasons that we're seeing suchan increase right now at the high school, ninth and 10th graders have the role models of11th and 12th graders. And 11th and 12th gradersreally get to be at a school that they've already establisheda culture and excitement. South campus was wonderful,but also 11th and 12th graders, if you've had your own, you know, get focused on what's next and sometimes engaging in theculture at the high school, it just doesn't come as easily. And so seeing that change isreally exciting and leaning in and saying, "Okay, butwho are the other students who aren't attending atleast 90% of the time? And how do we partner withfamilies to understand the impact that can have, but alsofind out is there something that we need to do better at school to make kids wanna come to school more?" So what are we doing? Weare working really hard. We've streamlined ourattendance recording procedures across our district. We did that last year. Each one of our buildingshas teaming structure at each building. They examine monthly attendance data as well as discuss individual students. And then we really workhard with our partnership with family and countyresources when barriers to attendance continually persist. One thing that we, excuseme realize is we needed to help families know whendo they send their students to school when they maybe not feeling the best, but can still come to school. Especially since COVID, if you remember, if your kid even had a little tickle, we wanted everyone to stay home. And so how do we reset thisis when you can send students. So our student supportteam created this graphic and it's been shared with families around when do students stay home and when can they come to school. All right, I'm gonna havemy friends join me now. So I have four representativesfrom across our system. Brian Morris, who's theprincipal at Lincoln Elementary. Ryan Clark who's the associate principal at Mariner Middle School. Ally Lohse, licensed socialworker at Central Middle School. And then Russ Reetz,principal at the high school. And I have two questionsthat I wanna prompt them with so that they can sharesome things with you and then they'll be up here to answer any questions that you might have at the end. All right, you guys can decidewho goes first. Welcome. Can you share one strategy or approach your teamhas implemented this year that has positivelyimpacted attendance rates and what made it successful? - I would just say, excuse me. Brian Morris, principal at Lincoln. Across our elementaryschools, we automated parent communicationfor unexcused absences. So tiered levels of unexcused absences. And that has opened up alot of time for us, right? Unexcused absences are what we use for communicating with the county also. That's what the countyrequires that we track, sort of taking that direct communication and decision making piece offour plate really allowed us to focus on more complex barriers. What is keeping our kids at home? What do parents need to hear from us to know that their kidsshould be in school, that every day they missis a missed opportunity to learn and that our school is a safe and respectful environment. So yeah, this year reallyopening up that time for us to focus on the individualsaround attendance has been huge. - At the high school, wereally focused on two things. The first one was ourtheme to start the year, and it was around belonging. So we really encouraged ourstaff to be intentional about how they welcome studentsto their classroom. We armed them withdifferent strategies like four at the door, a top 20 strategy, as well as some relationship building activities early in the trimester, or sorry, in the semester to help our students feel more welcome and comfortable in the classroom. And then we are much more proactive. We have nine studentsupervisor hall monitors that are doing hallwaysweeps, helping students get to school on time. We added a warning bell so students know theyhave one minute to get to their classroom, which helped. We also were reactiveif a student misses two or more classes the previousday, they're met with by a student supportspecialist the following day. And goals are set and parent phone calls are made in an effortto partner with parents of students who are absent. And then students thatwere on our radar for 10 or more absences in a weekwere brought forward to what we call our community connect teams. Those teams meet and collectively talk about different intervention strategies for helping students get to class. So those are the majorinitiatives this year around attendance at the high school. - Greetings. At Mariner, we believe aproblem like attendance is a complex problem, requiresa multifaceted approach. And so I'm gonna talkabout two initiatives. One's kind of a bigger scalethat touches all students, then one's kind of moreof a dive down deeper and talk about specific students. Similar to Lincoln, we'veautomated our attendance letters, which gave us a really predictable cadence to when we communicate with families, allowing the communication to be really proactive and predictable. And when parents understandthe attendance pattern that needs to be interruptedearly on, they can be proactive and they can interrupt someof those attendance barriers before they become fully entrenched. We found that opening upthat line of communication with families, it allowed us to create a partnershipproactively, right? And kind of work together in that collaborative problem solving. Zeroing in on specific students, we also emphasized asense of belonging in fact created a belonging committeecomprised of teachers, counselors, and administratorsthat tried to zoom in on what caused the studentto not feel belonging. And so we leveraged data fromour DESSA social emotional learning screener and wezeroed in on students, who told us through their self-report that they're not feelingconnected at school. And had our counselorsdive deep with students who felt the most disconnected and found some really interesting things. By holding these empathy interviews, we not only validatedthose students' emotions and feelings about notfeeling connected at school, but it really informed someof our practices as we strive to continue to fosterbuilding that that community and that connectedness inmiddle school, which is of paramount importance,especially in middle school. - Thank you for lettingme be here to speak. I was struggling to think ofan answer to this question 'cause I think what you allare pointing out is attendance is a very complex thing and it requires a lot ofdifferent systems at play. So it's not just one personthat's doing the procedures, but we have our counselors,our administration, our attendance clerks, our technology, like all of those thingshave to be in play to have an efficient andeffective attendance system. So Central's worked reallyhard the past couple of years, really post COVID to createa system that's effective and central I think is uniqueand maybe just middle school in general as post highschool where we have our students aren't beingtruant from our classes, roaming the building or things like that, but that they're not coming to school. So we really needed to figure out and partner with ourfamilies of what's happening of why you can't come to school and trying to do that early as well. So looking at their data andbeing able to just kind of plug and play interventions. So if you have this manyabsences, then you're meeting with a counselor or myselfa school social worker and you're doing what we callan attendance success plan. So we're asking the student, what do you need from your teachers to feel more successful in the building? What do you need to do yourself? What are you responsible for? And then what can yourfamily at home help you with? And then we share thatwith their families. Talk a little bit moreabout, "Okay, this is what your child said, what are some things that you maybe would wanna add?" And then letting their teachers know too. So when that student doescome in, they can say, "I'm so happy to see you here today. It sounds like you talkedwith Ms. Lohse about this and here's some things that we can do in theclassroom to help support you." School attendance. The number one factor withthat is school connectedness. So another thing that we'vedone is start an attendance group and then in that group,we're helping the students meet some different studentsupport service roles and different school staff members. So our principals comingto that attendance group, our student supervisors,our health office staff, our lunch supervisors. So then they can come meet these people, have a personal connection with them and then when they're in the building or in the lunchroom, they can say, "Hey Mr. Kelly, I know you." And so just to help themfeel connected at school. So we've found a lot ofsuccess in some of those things and being able to just have that efficient and accountable system. - Thank you. So I hope you're hearing that it really is a multifaceted approach and that each one of our schools is, and levels are taking ownership around how can we impact this. So it's a continuousarea that we talk about. And so I asked each oneof them to think about, just so you know, what's one challenge or area of growth each oneof their teams is focusing on to further improve student attendance or graduation outcomes connecting to that beginningfor anyone could tackle that as graduation isgraduating from our system. But maybe we'll go in reverseorder. Start with you Ally. - Yeah the one I thought of is reframing how families view county involvement. So counties become involved when a student has unexcused absences. And that's a very fear inducing thing. Like being like, "I don't want Washington or Ramsey County to beinvolved with my child" and thinking about like child protection and things like that. But that hasn't been thecase with either counties. They really wanna support the family. Get down to the core of whyare you not coming to school and be responsive and help that student. So maybe it's connecting with therapy servicesif there's some mental health going on. County case management, maybe just needing moreeconomic resources, connecting with medicalassistance, any of those things. The county's been super helpful. So that's one challenge of sometimes coming into thosemeetings we have our like feeling more heightened or defensive when reallythey're here to support. And then one other thingthat I thought of too is thinking about attendance asnot just unexcused or unexcused or excused absences, butit's really just showing up and being in the building nomatter what the reason is, whether you're on vacation,whether you're sick, whether you can't get out of bed, we want our students in the building, that's where they're learning, that's where they'reconnecting with adults, that's where they're getting food, all resources, all of those things. So that's another barrier too of just seeing attendance for what it is. - Looking ahead, Mariner'sfocused on tackling timeliness of school arrival. We have a lot of students who show up late and it's very easy tolook at what is outside of our locuses of control. Some of those barriersthat we don't really have our hands on, right? That feel just outside of our reach. And so we believe there aresome positive gains to be made by improving our familycommunication and engagement. And then also kind ofjust shifting our mindset and shifting our focus towhat we can control, right? The things at school, the connectedness, the warm welcome whena student does arrive. And then continuing toinvest in our community, in the belonging culturethat's currently existing at Mariner to help drive student success. - Sounds familiar. So we're really struggling with attendance first period. Our attendance numbersaren't great sixth period. And right now we'restruggling a little bit around the lunch hour, which is fourth. So we are really looking atwhere are the trouble spots and how can we address, you know, students that are arriving 10 or moreminutes late to first hour. Those count as an absence right now. And many of thosestudents end up showing up or arriving at some time. And so we're doing a lot of reteaching of our expectationsaround first hour arrival, we're moving to a five period day. We did a lot of listening to students. They asked for more timeduring passing time. So we're gonna honor that. They'll have eight minutes instead of six. I do think those twominutes will matter just in what students need to takecare of between class periods in terms of their attendance. And then we're still looking for ways to improve attendance withour juniors and seniors, the students that driveto school every day and specifically those thatdrive later in the day. We have a lot of studentsthat leave for 916 or they're half day PSEO, they might start their day at Century. And so we know we have atargeted audience there that may or may not return when they leave campus or when they're supposed tobe arriving late to campus. So we are considering allof those factors in trying to improve our attendancerates for next year. - And I just think about twothings that we've implemented, I dunno, two things that Ithink do make a difference and that we've been working on. One is really monitoringthat 10% absence, right? That tipping point of chronic absences regardless of reason. I feel like at least Ipersonally have spent a lot of time focused on that. Is it excused? Is it unexcused? But if you're at Disneylandor if you are sick and mom calls in, if you're sick and dad calls in, it doesn't matter. Those are all days that you missed a dayof important learning. So focusing on that 10%, tracking that 10% and reaching out to the parent. At the elementary level, those kids don't have the autonomy that our secondary level kids do. So it is a lot of work with the parents and it's not just harping at parents about calling in absences, right? It's helping the parents understand that your school is a safe place. That your child is wanted there. Even something bad happensat school every so often, I will admit, you know, kid gets an elbow jab inthe line and is upset, and I talk to him or thesocial worker speaks with him. And if we can makecontact with that parent before the child gets home,let them know what happened, let them know how we'veresolved it so that parent knows that "Yeah, there's somethingwhen my child gets home today that I'm gonna hear about. It's not, wasn't a pleasantexperience for my child but these people care about my child. These people have things in place to help the experienceimprove for my child." There's less odds thatthat child is gonna say to mom the next morning or to dad the next morning, "Hey I've got a stomach ache and I don't want to go in," right? So just working with those parents overall around theirattendance regardless of reason and helping them know thatwe care about their kids and their kids are safeand wanted in our school, I think is what's gonna reallyhelp us in the long run. - Thank you very much. So as we move forward,really we have some areas that we're focused on as a whole system. How do we continue to strengthenour internal processes? In particular, I'm lookingat our students who maybe, you know as our schoolsare doing all this, but what's our follow up? Even if we had to drop them because they've had 15non-consecutive days of attendance, how do we stay connectedto those families, make sure kids end up in school and come really wraparound them as a support 'cause school can sometimesafter a while feel like we're being a little scary andthat isn't the intent at all. It really is to makesure kids are successful. I mentioned this already, how are we supporting new students to our system in particularwhen they come new to us in middle andhigh school to make sure that they have the mostresources for success. Looking at those non-graduates, and I'm like I mentionedalready working really real time right now on this class, but how do we do that morecloser to the graduation? So this year class of 2025, when we know who hasn't walked across the stage, what does that look like? So that we are making surethat students stay connected to us as close as possibleto that four year rate, so that they earn their diplomas. Continuously looking at how we communicate with families and engagement. Attendance is one, especiallyat the elementary level. But families do taketheir kids on vacations and you know, we wanna support that and don't wanna be a clearinghouse for it. But it also can be hardsometimes when it is and we're looking at attendance and it is a student who also was sick or had other things going on. And so how do we reallyhave that transparent partnership and communication 'cause we want the same things. We want kids to be successful. And then finally, how arewe aligning our supports across our whole system? And so you've heard each one of the representatives todaytalk about their own teams. We're also looking at our ALC programming and Jenni Sjosten will be here with me and Russ next at the work study session to talk about more about theALC, but also really diving in and doing some program review. It's a wonderful schoolthat's seeing a lot of success and are we really meeting the exact needs that we have in oursystem, and then constantly and continuously lookingat credit recovery options. The high school added an option this year that really helped kids recover some of those credits that they missed. So what questions might you have for me or any one of our panel members? - Hey, do we have anyquestions, Ms. Streiff Oji? - So super exciting, thegraduation rate itself. And also I really appreciatethat you're digging in to the percentage in thekids that are not, you know, you could say it's agreat, it's a great rate, we're doing good and notreally dig into who is it and you're going rightdown to the student level. So I really appreciate that. I love that you use theDESSA data to make decisions, which is exactly what it's supposed to be used for and I'dlove that you're doing that to help kids wanna be at school. Allison, you mentioned something about what programming do we have that or we have programming that kids can continue taking classes if they don't graduate? What is that programming? - So we have two, our students can be in the Area Learning Center until they're 21 yearsold and earning credits, and then we have theTransition Education Center, which houses multiple programs, but it really is forstudents who receive support through special education or an individualized education plan, and they have transition goals and so they forego their diploma and then end up graduatingat the end of that time. And it always has been till 21 at least as long as I can remember. And it was just extended to 22 for students' last legislativesession I believe yeah. - [Streiff Oji] That's all. The other comment I was gonnamake was someone said about making sure they get a warmwelcome when they arrive, and I've heard that also when kids come and they're late, howthey're treated matters with them wanting to be there. So thank you all for your work. Excellent. - [Chair] Alright Ms. Daniels? - Couple of questions. I did appreciate too,all the graduation data and how you're digging intosome of those students, and I would just say all thegraduations are so exciting. The big graduation that weused to have at Aldridge and that we're gonna haveon our field, very exciting, many great, wonderful stories. Everybody has a story, right? And then if you get a chanceto attend an ALC graduation, it's smaller and you either the student is telling you their story or sometime a staff memberis telling you their story and it's just so wonderful to hear, and some kids have hadto overcome lots of life before they graduateand it's very inspiring, and the Transition Education Center graduation is the same way. So if anyone in the community or in the school board gets achance to attend graduation, it's always very exciting. And then I just hadsomething about attendance, and I wondered if the BearCare Clinic has an impact on attendance or kids gettingback to class faster. They have a sore throat, theygo in, they don't have strep and they go back to class,you know, that kind of thing 'cause we used to have, theonly thing we really had was, well if you're gone for three days, you have to prove that you're sick. And now we have that clinic right on site. So that's so exciting. So I just wondered if you could comment. - Yeah, I don't have any concrete numbers but we do see students usingit more specifically since the start of semester too. So I think it took a while forus to kind of gain traction. I do know that studentsare taking advantage of getting immunization or a booster through the Bear Care Clinic. I know that athletes aregetting their physicals done at the Bear care clinic andthese are normally appointments that would have to be made outside of the school day orduring the school day. But not sure how to track it. I do think it's havingan impact on getting our, keeping our students in school and then getting 'em back to class sooner. - Thank you.- Go ahead Mr. Skaar. - You mentioned that Mahtomedi uses 916 for transition in ALC but we offer it here in-house. So I guess my question would be is it because our size school district is larger that we can afford to offer this? Is that the main driver for that? - I don't know if thatwas the original driver. How I see it is we're makingsure that we offer programs that meet the needs for our students and some of our students we've had in Area LearningCenter for as long as I've been here in many,many years prior to that. And so really making sure we can offer those supports for our students. So we partner quite heavily with 916. The closest Area Learning Center that they have is on Centri'S campus. It's called Mahtomedi ALC. And they really focus on 17, 18 year olds who maybe are ready for more independence and it's on a college campus. Well I think we can partnerwith them differently and we have kids herethat we, we're the closest and so how do we keep them in our district and how do we make sure thatwe're meeting their needs too. So in terms of the financial and why we did it, I think it is really to make sure we have programmingsthat we house internally to really make sure we meet the needs of our students and families. - Have we ever thought ofproviding those services to Mahtomedi as opposed to916 as a revenue generator? - Yeah, I don't know the answer to that. We could look into it butnot since I've been here we haven't; I mean, we do have students that can come fromdifferent districts in terms of our Area Learning Center, but I couldn't tell you how many specifically come from Mahtomedi. - Yeah, that might be a way to get our enrollment numbers up. You mentioned SLED and 9% of the students needto take developmental classes, which is where it was before. So it's trending down.Where was it before? - 19%.- 19%. So that's a pretty, that'sa pretty good decrease. And does that 'cause I knowour test scores in math, science, and reading have been declining. Is there a correlation where we would say, well those test scoresare probably gonna go up because now we know it'sgone down from 19% to 9% so we should see test scores go up. - That's for sure our goal. What I think assuming, whenyou say test scores declining, you're talking inspecifically about the MCAs. - [Board Member] Right the report card. - Yep, so the MCAs, it'sinteresting at secondary I actually was justasking students questions because I part of it we're wondering how serious students take those tests and we have quite a few students and families choose to opt out. I'm still working on that data but I will present that publicly here. And so I think we have an opportunity to really look at the ACT scores. We offer the pre ACTin ninth and 10th grade and then 11th grade is the ACT to see what correlation are we seeing there. If we're seeing students who it's dropping for their developmental, Ineed to dive deeper into it. We're working on itright now around the ACT. So I think when I have that,I'll have more evidence to say what is this looking like and how are we feelingabout the test scores 'cause we'll be able tocompare those even back to 2018 when we had a higher rate of students needing developmental courses. - So the fact that parents have to pay for those developmental classes and these are all colleges. This is not trade school, right? - No, some trade schools have it as well. It's whether you're enrolledin a Minnesota college and that's part of the minuscule system. So some of the trade schools are as well. - So do we have any responsibility back to these parents to say, okay, you know, your son or daughter graduated. We didn't meet the expectations. So then do we pay for theirdevelopmental classes? - No 'cause it really wouldbe dependent on the schools. You know, it's really hardto tell what determines that. But for example, Centurywhen students needed to take, we had higher numbers ofstudents looking at literacy, we would say, okay, what's going on and how do we make sure we reduce it? But in terms of, it's majorspecific, school specific on why they're determining whetherstudents have the entrance exam and need to have thedevelopmental courses. - Do any school districtspay the parents back for the developmental classes? - No.- No. When you talked about interventions, like what's the mostimportant intervention that you can do to incentivize students to graduate? - I'm gonna ask you guys what you think. - I think first theconversation with the student. So we do a student interview,then a teacher interview and then a parent interview. Those are the first threesteps into coming up with an intervention planfor that particular student. In some cases we've had successwith credit recovery online, where students can testout of a class, you know, so they are able toacknowledge previous learning and then apply that to a course. They're moving throughcourses much quicker when they can do it asecond time around online. And then we also havestudents that will work through summer school for credit recovery. And then obviously we have students that are doing creditrecovery through our ALC. Those have been greatways of helping students that fall behind early in ninth or 10th grade get caught back up in 11th or 12th grade and graduate on time. - I think the other thing thatis, which we've, you know, talked about at our last workstudy session, as we continue to expand those career pathways,having students see okay, how does what I'm learningin high school connect to what I'm excited about or interested in after school And then allthe different real life experiences we can provide for them. So even that day, I can'tremember what it was called, the 11th graders wherethey all were in the gym. - Junior takeover? - Yes. No, not the junior takeover. It was where we had somany community members and they were like simulating real life. They chose a- - Oh test drive. - Thank you, test drive, to see that and see kids like I had kids come up to me and be like, "I can't affordmy current life on my salary." You know, just stuff like that. So then I think however they'reconnecting in high school to what they're doing right now till later and realizing we know adulthood takes you on many different paths. So how do we prepare them for the twists and turns that'll come? - You know, now I'm gonnaswitch to attendance. Social media can be a double-edgedsword, can work with us and it usually worksagainst us unfortunately. But do you see socialmedia having an impact on attendance, especiallywith middle schoolers and high schoolers? You know, primarily thenegative parts of social media. Does that come up at allas to why people wouldn't, why students wouldn't want to attend because somethinghappened on social media? - I do think it comes up. What I would say is I'venoticed a lot less of that as we've tightened ourcell phone procedures. The middle schools have alwayshad cell phones outta sight but then what Russ and the team have done at the high school, itseems like what gets to me? Which is really the big, big stuff. I've heard way less of that. But you guys would maybe,I'm sure it's still there. - I would say maybe notspecifically social media but I can think about like technology. I have students that whenthey're not coming to school, maybe they're at home thenplaying video games all day or on technology or things like that. And part of my role is, and my student support teamis educating the families of when that student can't be at school or choosing not to come to school, kind of maintaining thoseroutines at home as well 'cause that makes it easier for them to then get up the next dayand make it to school on time 'cause they're not up lateat night on video games or on technology and things like that. - Sure, I mean maybe youshould have him watch the George Carlin bitwhere he has, you know, showing up his 90% of success. Remember that quote? That might help. The other thing maybe can we find parents if their kids don't show? No, you don't have to answer that. We don't have findingauthority. Anyways, thank you. - All right.- Go ahead. I have already asked one. - I don't really have any questions. Just thank you all for allthe work that you've done. I'm very excited to see ourgraduation rates going up and just to kind of comment on some of the social work aspects. As somebody who works inchild protection services, I know why kids don'tcome to school sometimes and saying a kid who stays at home and playing video games, it's probably staying athome playing video games 'cause there's a lot ofother things in the home that are happening that areoutta that child's control and the parents aren't able to control it. Whether they have mentalhealth issues at home, whether there's addictionin the home, poverty, like there's all kinds of things. I see this every day. I am on some of those inanother school district I work or yeah, I work inHennepin County so I don't intertwine my work with this role, but I'm in those meetings where we're talking about attendance, child protection cases that are happening. And while we can do everythingwe can do to provide a safe and welcoming environmentfor those kids to come here, we can't change what'shappening in that home. It would be wonderful if we could, and I work with the familyso we do our best to try to help change those things. But sometimes you just, you can't do that. And mental health month, right? May is a Mental Health Awareness Month and so that is a big playerin a lot of these cases I would imagine in our kids who are in that smaller number that wegave who aren't graduating. And then when you take into consideration what we do at our ALC and our tech school, I mean it's just fantastic work where we allow those kids,they might not be graduating and meeting it into thatnumber but they are graduating. And I think if we couldlike figure out that number and go, well these were the ones who didn't graduate on time, but this is how many of'em we were able to get to graduate at a laterdate would be wonderful. And then I had one more thing but I think it's going awayfrom my mind, menopause. We can go now.- Thank you. - Jessica. But thank you all. - Yeah, so just a couple of small things. One, I love that the pre ACT is available. My ninth grader took it this year. Is that something thatwe've done in the past? - Well I thought it was thefirst year for ninth grade. We've always done 10thgrade. I could be wrong. - I think we did ninth grade before too. Maybe not since COVID, but I did ninth grade whenI was back in yesteryear when I was a principal at North Campus. - It's hugely helpful, because it is able to give him a sense of, okay, here's where I'm at right? So I love that. I'm gladthat we're continuing that. Also the communicationthat is coming outta the middle school, super effective. So I don't know if you'vemade changes from last, just last year alone, but I know when my kid is late to class and so I really appreciatethat it's text messages, it's emails, I know that it's happening. And then the one question Ihave is specifically about connecting students with the counselors and social workers at the school. If kids know that they can go to you and they feel comfortablegoing to social workers and counselors, they're probably more likely to talk about these things. But I feel like sometimes kids don't know or don't think about that step. So what do you do in yourbuildings to encourage students to come talk to folks? - Yeah, I'm really proudof our team at Central. Our counselors, every sixthgrader they get to meet with their school counselor and then in eighth grade as well, they meet with their schoolcounselor to talk about and prepare for high school. And then what you weresaying of kind of like how are we preparing peopleand wanting to graduate? Like our counselors are talking about that too with the kids. And so then when they gointo the classrooms too and are doing lessons saying here's how you can reach yourcounselor, here's how you can, here's all of our student support staff. Here's who the social workeris, the school psych is. So that we're really on the forefront of some extra support for students. - I remember I'd echoa lot of the same ideas and say we host some events that makes students feel really welcome. For example, elementarystudents are visiting their middle schools this week, right? Fifth grade students arecoming to middle schools and part of that is, is an introduction to who their counselor willbe broken down by Alpha. And there's a few otherevents that lead up to the school year, like open house and things like that thatcreate the opportunity, the entrance ramp into arelationship with your counselor. Our counselors are also very involved in our Where Everybody Belongs program. If there was a themefor tonight, belonging, which is a long standing program in our middle schools thathave had tremendous success. And so through that programming, they are engaging withstudents either with like back to school rallies with oursixth grade only first day of school or through someof our advisory curriculum. Thank you for asking. - Thank you.- Alright. Ms. Daniels, that's a questionthat we'll go back to you. - Yeah, do the counseling staff loop in both middle school and high school? So they're with thestudents all three years or all four years in high school, right? So they really get to knowthat student and the families. And that's something I don'tthink you guys mentioned, but I think that was a changewe made a few years back and it really I thinkhas such a great impact 'cause you really do know. And then the other thing,when you have a 15 day drop, that student, if they comeback into the community or come back to live with mom or dad or whatever, whereverthey went and come back, they can like re-enroll right away. - Absolutely. Yep.- So they surface again in our community. So we want them back and wewant them to re-enroll, right? - [Educator] Absolutely. Yep. - All right, Ms. Thompson. - I remembered when it comesto the, I was a student who had to take some of thoseclasses when I went to school 'cause I barely graduated highschool and so I did do it. My parents weren't gonnapay for me to go to college. That wasn't an option. And I think that's not an optionfor a lot of our students. It would be nice but it just isn't how it works all the time. But just because Igraduated, barely graduated and was one of those students who could have been right on the edge, didn't mean that I was afailure to the school system. The school system dideverything they could and they got me to passthat line, which got me that diploma, which allowedme to do so many things 'cause without thatdiploma you have to fight to like if you're gonna getyour GED, I have family members who unfortunately didn't graduate and never got the GED right? And so they just gothrough life with that. Like, "Oh my gosh, if somebodyever actually asks me, I don't have that," right? But I have this job I'vebeen working at for 30 years and I am doing fine in life. I just didn't make it past that line. So I don't wanna thinkthat all of our students who aren't graduatingare somehow a failure to our district because they are 'cause I did go to college eventually and graduated with honorsas an adult working, being on a school likeso there is possibility and it's just sometimes ourlife circumstances don't allow us to be super successfulwhen we're in school and we're younger for sure, but it doesn't mean wedon't have the possibility to get there on our, you know, and a lot of times it was school staff and a teacher who madethe difference in my life. - Yeah and we can, we willshare when we share more data in the fall, we get our sevenyear graduation rate as well. So for some students, and that is extremely high,has been for years, you know, they need a little bit more time for a lot of different reasons. - Yeah and I know it's'cause we have a lot of wonderful staff in ourdistrict, so thank you with Teacher Appreciation Week last week and just in general foreverything you all do. - All right, I just havea couple of questions 'cause I don't know what I had to say. First Mr. Morris, I likehow you talked about it doesn't matter whetherit is excused or unexcused because my question was howdo I get an unexcused excused? Does a parent have to call in? Is there any time when the parent calls in and said, you know, since I didn't want to come, just excuse it. I mean, how does that work? How do you determine excused or unexcused? - It's a hard thing honestly. We do have a list in ourpolicy of excused and unexcused and then as you know,even absences for illness after they hit a certain threshold, we let the families know we really have to require a doctor's note oryou know, we do other support. So we may, a family may be really trying to excuse an absence and wehave to market unexcused, but it is because we're held accountable to making sure we're educating students. And so, like Ally was mentioning, how do we partner those two things? 'cause it can feel like thenwe're not part of the team and then the county can getinvolved and so it's nuanced and they're all really good at it, but there is gray that we work through. - Okay and then my other thoughtwas if you have a student that misses first period every day, how does that work when youcalculate your absentees? I mean, is it overall because maybe they came to six outta seven or five outta six. How do you calculate your attendance rate? - I'll probably have tolook into that for you. But we do period attendance at secondary. So those not attendingfirst period impact us. But how it does, I'll need to double check 'cause I'm, it's a- - Yeah, I was just curious'cause when I talked, I always struggle too toget my students to come, my driving students toshow up to my first period. But I do agree with making that connection and greeting 'em at the door and knowing their names, knowing what's going on in their lives. And maybe you're on a first name basis with their parent and that seems to help. So thank you for all your hard work. I know we're not done yet. I know that you've gotat least another month of things going on, sokeep up the good work and we don't have any questions. Thank you. - [Group] Thank you. - The next thing we haveis discussion item D2, which is the first reading of our school board policy702, 720, 729, and 732. These policies have beenreviewed by the policy committee and they will come backto us on June 9th, 2025 or are another meeting ifneeded for second reading. We constantly have our committee, they're constantlylooking at our policies, making sure they're upto date, making sure that there's nothingthat's changed in the law. And so they come that way. 702 was accounting, 720is vending machines, 729 is Minnesotapost-issuance debt compliance. And 732 was credit card usage. Any discussion, any questions about those - Chair?- Yes Mr. Scott. - Who is the chair of thecommittee that reviews policy? Who was that? - [Chair] Dr. Kazmierczak. - [Kazmierczak] Well Chrisand Angela are the board reps. - Oh, okay.- There's not a, you don't have a chair. - Okay so was there,this kind of gets back to the last board meetingwas these changes, I mean they look fairly minorso I'm thinking they're just to true up to legislative changes and things like that, so. - Yeah MSBA typicallycomes up with updates and then we look at our policies and make modifications based on MSBA and legislative changes or language that we decide we want to change. - So was there anythingin your I looked at it, I didn't see anything material. But I mean does do you, as the, I guess the lead, the leadperson on this committee, do you see anything thatwas material in these? That's worth doubting? - No, I don't think so. I think these were all pretty, most of 'em are prettymundane changes yeah. - Okay. Thank you. - Alright, any other questions? These will come back likea later date to vote on. We're up to now operational items E1. Action, the studenttransportation vendor proposal. Mr. Wald. - Good evening Chair Arcand,members of the board, Dr. Kazmierczak. We're here tonight topresent recommendations for student transportation vendors for 2025-26 school year and beyond. With me tonight is ourdirector of transportation, Mr. Dave Johnson for many, many years. We refer to Dave as Safety Dave. He has a great handle on student safety in the school district,especially as it relates to student transportation and as a thoughtful leader that way. He's been leading ourtransportation department the last year and a half or so. Also with, with us is Tom Watson. Tom was a former Universityof Minnesota Finance Director, Mayor of North Oaks, and he serves as a consultant to school districts ina very specialized area. Student transportation contracts. There's not very many peoplein the state who do this and none who do it as well as Tom. So we're very thankfulto have Tom with us. - [Chair] Is your mic on? - Yeah, I just turned it on. Thanks. - [Chair] Thank you. - I got it before you do. There are several differentclassifications of school buses that school districts use, and so we'll make reference to these class A, B, C, D buses as well as type III. And that can be very confusing. Confusing to people whoaren't living the world of student transportation regularly. So when I started in this role,I really had to like, okay, when you say type C, whatare you referring to? So put those images uphere so you understand. Our class C and D busesare the big yellows that run our regular three tiers, three tier routes in the morning, three tier routes in the afternoon. Sometimes the type C vehiclemight also be equipped with wheelchair lifts and be used forspecialized transportation. We run many vans, the typeIIIs that you see there for specialized transportation as well. And when we presentedto the board in March, we shared that we run ahybrid transportation system. The district runs sometransportation services and contracts out for others. The diversity of that situation works well for the school district. Gives us some local expertisethat we think is valuable as we work with contractors and families and we provide all ourown routing services, so we're not relying onpeople who don't live and work in our community tounderstand those, you know, best practice routing. First Student is our primary vendor, has been for several decades. Metro Transportation Network. You've maybe seen the buses that say MTN on the siderun a smaller number of buses for us. Type III, again we havesome hybrid services, we provide some van transportation, but mostly we contract out with six different providersand they're listed there. All these contracts expire July 30th. And so it's important that we have been negotiating this process andthis RFQ throughout the year. The procurement process wasa very formalized process. Steps one, two, andthree are primarily just defining the parameters,getting the word out to different vendors sowe get the best vendors submitting quotations. We wanted to have, you know,the very best at the table. We contacted some providers directly in case they hadn't seen the posting. We did a public opening ofthe quotes in this room, about half the room fullof different vendors here. I'm curious to how that went. After that we intervieweddirectly with vendors and we're able to get what we think were thebest prices available. And that brings us to tonight we're making recommendation to the school board. At that formal opening in February, we had five full serviceproviders that submitted quotes and we had 21 type III vendors. There are a lot of typeIII vendors out there, and many of 'em wanted work. In terms of the full service, those companies thatprovide the larger buses, there's not very many of 'em out there. And, so we had just five that submitted. Key factors that we considered, you know, really about rates. Can the vendor handle thevolume that is required for a bigger school district like ours? What's their safety record?Are there buses in good shape? We reviewed state records for inspections to see if the vendors wereeven worth talking to, because if their safetyrecord was not good, we just excluded them fromfrom the interview process. Then again, those contractorswe worked with, we had, you know, we had relationships with, and we knew what kind ofperformance level they provided. We knew what their strengthsand weaknesses were and then as well as did theymeet the criteria of the RFQ. So our recommendation for our C/D routes, that's the big yellows,the primary vendor would, we're recommending thatFirst Student Incorporated continue on as our primary vendor. They were the most competitive responsible bidder in the mix. They have a solid record with us. They have a terminalin our school district, which I think perhaps makesthem more competitive in being able to start their buses rightwithin the school district and not have to drive from Fridley or wherever to get thebuses to White Bear Lake. And they, you know,they're a larger company. They have the capacity to handlethe volume that we require. The agreement with FirstStudent is that $454.68 for a route that's increaseover where we're at now. Four and a half hours of route time handles the three tierroutes in the morning, three tier routes in the afternoon. We negotiated a five year agreement, they submitted a four year proposal, we negotiated a fifth year with them and statute allows us to negotiateup to 10 years with them. Neither for student nor the school districtwas really interested in, well we would've been interestedin negotiating up to 10 for the right rate, but they wouldn't havebeen interested in talking about the rate we work. We don't know where theworld will be in five years when it comes to student transportation. So I feel pretty goodabout locking in our prices for five years. With First Student, we pay the fuel cost. So the route, the ratethat you see here is, does not include the cost of fuel. That comes to about $32 aday on average for our buses. First Student is committed to keeping their fleeteight years or newer, which is about the same as our fleet. So that rate of 454.68 is asignificant increase over our 24-25 rate of 416.18 and 9.25%. And this is where we'rereally glad we had Mr. Watson at our side here because the rate, the proposal came in at a 17% increase and you might remember thatfrom the March presentation, and it was through a lotof meetings with them and some significantnegotiating to get to that bring it from 17 down to 9.25%. And then those rates decrease us through the years to a 654. And then we requestedthat we go a fifth rate of a fifth year of 3%,they agreed to do that, and the contract allows usto continue negotiating then in that 29, 30 year, you know, we can negotiate five more years or it might be to our benefit to go for a, you know, for a public bidoffering at that point. For the type III vendors, recommendation is that we go with the vendors listed in this slide. There are, is that sixdifferent, six different vendors. They average $315 perroute on the type IIIs, which is actually slightly lessthan we're paying this year. So this was to our benefitto negotiate though with the type IIIs. And again, thank you Mr. Watson for your skills as a negotiator, because we were able to getsome vendors who were used to charging quite a bit more to drop their rates prettysignificantly for us. Many of these vendors forthe type IIIs have a niche. One thing we looked at was do any of 'em have 10 passenger vehicles? Not very many do. So we have a few thathave 10 passenger vehicles or the universal, welooked at where they start. So oftentimes with the type IIIs, we're making calls trying to get coverage because somebody didn't showup at one of the vendors and so can we get coveragefrom another vendor? And so we need some flexibility. We went with providers thatthe ones we've worked with before we know havebeen really responsive, and the others we gain thatsense through our interview with them and feel like wehave a pretty strong group of vendors here for our type IIIs. It's only a two yearnegotiation with the type IIIs. And so within thatcontract they've all agreed to match the CPI student formula increase, which is great becausetypically vendors are looking for increases that aregreater than what we get as a formula increase from the state and you can't continueto do that for very long. Okay, so it brings us to therecommendation, which is, the recommended action isto approve the agreements with the followingtransportation providers in the 2025, 2026 schoolyear as presented. Type C and D providerFirst Student Incorporated, type III providers,Integrated Transportation, Northline Transportation,Odaa Transportation, Safetree, Treasured, andUniversal Transit Services. - [Chair] Alright, you'veheard the proposal. Can I get a motion to approve those? - So moved.- Okay, Ms. Ellison. Can I get a second? - Second- Second, Vice Streiff Oji. Okay, I'll put it for questions. Mr. Skaar? - Maybe this is to Mr, is it doctor or Mr. Watson? - Mister was my father. (group laughing) - Hey, so what's the, youknow, we have this five year, five year agreement proposed here. How does this compare with other districts of similar size? Is it pretty much the same as other districtssimilarly situated as us? - Good question. Just by comparison, Americanwas listed on that list, their proposal was $590 a day. And so if you add the $32 fuel, we are at 4.75. I only do two districts,work with two districts up in this neck of the woods. One of the competitors to the west. I do Mont Zeus work as well. Both these contractsare virtually identical. And part of what wetried to do in this case with these contracts, these are basically priceagreements is what they are. And the way the languagein the law now was changed four years ago that addedthat 10 year window. It's essentially the leverage we used, and I think that's what thatthat sectional law talks about. The vendor has to agree to aset of prices for that term, whether it's four years,five years, or 10 years. First Student wasn't willing to do that. We said, "Well don't youwanna be in White Bear? I mean you could give us aknock-your-socks-off proposal." Corporate, they tookeverything to corporate, which is in Cincinnatiand corporate came back and said this is the limit. We're not willing to go any further. The fact that they werehere, we were satisfied that the prices were probablyas good as we were gonna get. The big national firmsthat can work on districts that command the kind ofresources that you need to support transportationin this district. There aren't a lot of themanymore in the Twin Cities. Many of the big national firms have bailed out of the Twin Cities. Some of us are trying towork on that a little bit by inviting these contractors to talk now, even though the contracts may not expire for 2, 3, 4 more years. The problem is when we goout in January and December and we're gonna make a decision in May for that next school year,the lead time isn't sufficient for them to, you know, puttheir best face forward, figure out their resources,they gotta look for properties, et cetera, et cetera. They probably gottainvest in a lot of buses and many of 'em can't do that. So I thought we didpretty well with these. And the other thing Iwas gonna say to Tim, and we've talked about thatwe really did take a hard look at which vehicles and the prices involved were serving what services of the district. First Student, forexample, was providing also type III vehicles, vans. They were charging you in theneighborhood of $400 a day. The common rate that we've got on three of these vendors is 315. We got, you have two ofthem that are at 285. So if you quickly heard what I just said, that's about a hundred dollars a day. And as we know, I amsure my friend over here can answer this question,but over the next week, the legislators are gonna consider the governor's proposal, right? And the proposal has to do with transporting special needs children. This is probably as good aswe're gonna get with protecting that because as Tim andI talked many times, we are gonna be going tothe board with an answer, but probably before thelegislature adjourns, well we're mind readers I guess. So we don't know quite what that means. But we took all of the type IIIs away from these high cost vendors. And so the 315 vendorsand the 285 vendors, they are people thathave been in the business for 10 to 20 years, and their locationsand their terminals are pretty much here in the North Metro. So there isn't a lot of deadhead time and so we're getting you, I think a better economic plan with that as well. So I hope that's a long-windedanswer to your question, I hope, but that's okay. - No, it answers, itwas one of the criteria, one of the concerns I would have is as these transportationcompanies exit Minnesota for whatever reason, I don'tknow what the reasons are, you know, that's gonna putupward pressure on prices down the road becausethere's less competition. So that's something maybein six years we'll see. But was there any consideration of looking at the viability of, you know, the financial wherewithal of these? Was that a criteria? I mean that they're well capitalized or not thinly capitalizedthat they have the, they're gonna last fiveyears, they're not gonna exit, you know, in year three. - In their requirements theywere, gave us the assurance that we could speak to theirbankers, their accountants, et cetera, and analyze thatvery answer to that question. We did not take that step, but rather referred to alot of them with respect to experience and where they're working and how that investment'sworking, et cetera, et cetera, across the board on these candidates. And we limited ourself topeople that, let me step back. There's two issues going onin this market right now. There are those providers who are brokering the services. They don't own a bus,they don't own a van. One of the criteria we usedis the district would like to see the provider andthe owner of that provider face-to-face in the district. Not some second, thirdparty that's brokering those arrangements. And I think we did pretty well with that. And the, probably withrespect to the capitalization, I know most of these candidates, there isn't a singleone of these candidates that we haven't, I haven'tdealt with in this market in another district. And so we've looked at them, I know a lot about the school district's response to these folks. Universal Student Transit for example, has been in the business 20 years. Integrated for example, it's on the list. I happen to know a little bit about. It's an organization thatwas formed two years ago, but the principals have beenin this market about 15 years. They also have 10 passenger andspecialized safety vehicles. So children that act out in the vehicle and all those kinds of, so we got a lot of experience and knowledge. Hopefully I try to bringthat to the district and say, here, let me tell youabout these particular folks. Remember we had 21 proposals,we really worked hard with about eight or 10 of them. - Have we ever had one of thesecompanies, maybe in year two or year three say, you know what, we gotta walk away from this. We're gonna walk away from this agreement 'cause it's not good for us and we're not making any money. So they just exit. Can they do that? - They could serve notice as the district could servenotice on them as well that they're not interestedin continuing that. Honest to goodness Ihaven't had that happen. - Okay, good. Thank you.- At all. - Thanks. - Okay, other questions? - I have just a comment and this is just moreof a personal comment. I just want shout out to Safety Dave and the training does withthe drivers and the aides and I have a relative that lives near me, and I often meet this childon the bus and the drivers and the bus aide is aspecial needs student. Phenomenal, just they know the student, they know the family, theyknow the dog, they know me, they know the uncles, theaunts, they know everybody and they're so great. And I just have to say Iappreciate so much the safety and care because it'ssuch an important part of a student's day gettingto school, coming home and for parents to feel that their child, whether it's a general ed student or somebody that has, is more vulnerable to make sure they're delivered safely and they have a ride safely. So thank you all.- Thank you. - Thanks. - Great. Any other questions?- Thank you. - Well we have the motion in front of us. This will be a roll call vote. Will the clerk please call the roll? - Streiff Oji.- Aye. - Thompson.- Aye. - Arcand.- Aye. - Daniels. Aye. Ellison.- Aye. - Skaar.- Aye. - Okay. Motion carries. All right, thank you.- Thanks. - The second item we have today for operational item is E2. We're gonna take actionon school board policies 413, 512, 706, 710, 711, and 712. These came before the boardfor the first reading in April. So we get 'em first. I'm gonna go ahead and askare there any questions? Can I get a motion toaccept these board policies? - So moved.- By Thompson, can I get a second? - Second.- Second by Ellison. Any further discussion? Hearing none, this will be a voice vote. All in favor say aye. - [Group] Aye. - Opposed? Save aside. Motion carries. All right, we're gonna go toboard forum, it's now time, and for any board member thatwould like to share things, and I want to give you anexample, this is a time for us to talk about things that are going on in the buildings or something's happening. For example, I'm just gonnalead with, we are part of Ramsey County Leagueof Local governments, and so anybody from White Bearlike school system, you know, teachers, anybody could participate. Well on May 22nd, we aregonna have a Karaoke night in Shoreview, that In Vino Re vert- - Who do you think it was? - And so you, it startsfrom six and goes to eight. So I'm inviting everybodyto our karaoke night and once again, we're members of Ramsey County Leagueof Local Government. So those are the kind of things we could bring up during the forum. Anybody else have anythingto share? Go ahead. - I was privileged to be apart of the Teacher of the Year interviews and I just wannashout out to all the teachers that were nominated,and it's so inspiring, and I feel so gratefulthat we have the caliber and the love and the dedication of all the teachers in thedistrict, whether they were part of that process or not, it'sjust a really uplifting thing. If any of you get a chance tobe a part of that committee, please do so. You'll just come home andjust feel like the best and was such an honor. And I just wanna congratulateall the graduates coming up and enjoy the summer and besafe and thanks to all the staff and families for a super year. - Okay, Mr. Skaar? - Yes, I just wanted tomake sure everybody knows that we were having our 25thannual White Bear Lake Area Education Foundation GolfTournament on June 16th. It's at Oak Glen Golf Course and your entry fee includes alunch, green fee, golf cart, dinner, drink ticket, and a golf gift. And the board's been generous enough to be a Copper Green sponsor for this. So, and if people canattend that would be great. Again, it's June 16th at Oakland and check-ins at 10:30, teeoff shotgun start at noon. - And I just wanna point out, we used our own individual funds. No school district money was, to sponsor that we all chipped in so I wanted to make sure it was realclear we didn't spend district funds for that. And thank you for all your work. - Thanks for that clarification. - Okay, Ms. Thompson. - Just a point againabout it being, you know, Mental Health Awareness Month. I know that there's alot of people out there who may be struggling. Just take care of yourself and know that you, you know,get some help if you feel that you need it or just talk to somebody. Anybody that you feelcomfortable talking to and sharing can really make a difference. And so I hope everybodyjust continues to take care of themselves and each other. And just be aware, if yousee someone struggling, maybe just ask 'em, you know,if they're having a good day 'cause even just thatcan make a difference in someone's life. - Night of jazz starts in three minutes over at the high school. So if anybody, I'm gonna raceover there to watch my kid, but this time of year there'sso many great concerts happening in the district. So if you have time, go check 'em out. - Alright, everybody had a chance? Alright, well we aregonna go to negotiations. This portion of the meeting may be closed to consider strategyfor labor negotiations, including negotiationstrategies or developments or discussions and review oflabor negotiation proposals conduct pursuant toMinnesota statute 179A.01 to 179A.25. After we're done withthat, we will just go ahead and adjourn so you know, you don't have to wait around for us. So first thing I need forthis is can I get a motion to move into close session? - So moved.- By Daniels, can I get a second? - Second.- Second who? Streiff Oji. All right, we have that in front of us. This will be a voice vote.All in favor say aye. - [Group] Aye. - Opposed? Same sign. Alright, we're gonnamove into closed session. Thank you everybody for coming tonight.