- [Jessica] I'd like to call to order this school board meeting of the School Board ofIndependent School District 624. I would ask the Clerkto please call the roll. - [Scott] Arcand, here. Daniels?- Here. - Ellison?- Here. - Newmaster?- Here. - Streiff Oji?- Here. - Thompson?- Here. - Thank you. I would ask everyone to please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. - [All] I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America and to Republic for which stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. - And we have before asan agenda this evening. Could I get a motion to approve? - So moved.- A motion by Ms. Thompson. And a second?- Second. - A second by Ms. Daniels. Any discussion or questions? All in favor of approval please say aye? - [Members] Aye. - Opposed same sign? And we have an agenda. We also have before a consent agenda, which is the various itemsthat come before us monthly, including donations from our community, and as always, our communityhas been incredibly generous for our students, teachers, and staff. I would ask for motion toapprove the consent agenda? - So moved.- A motion by Ms. Daniels. And a second?- Second. - A second by Ms. Streiff Oji. Any questions or discussion? This will require a roll call vote. I would ask the Clerkto please call the roll. - Arcand, aye. Daniels?- Aye. - Ellison?- Aye. - Newmaster?- Aye. - Streiff Oji?- Aye. - Thompson?- Aye. - And we have a consent agenda. It is now time for the publicforum portion of the meeting. There was one request submitted to speak. Any questions for Ms. Shea? Back to the agenda then. - Thank you, Chair Ellisonand Members of the Board. Today we celebrate students who have represented thedistrict in various activities, including students who represented us in the State History Day, with several studentsqualifying for Nationals. Additionally, we had students recognized by the Minnesota Scholastic Art Awards and Minnesota Association ofAlternative Program STARS. Congratulations, students, and thank you to thestaff and family members who supported students along the way. Go Bears! (upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) - Congratulations to our students. Moving to our secondinformational item, C2, recognition of studentliaisons to the school board. Dr. Kazmierczak. - All right, so we have a tradition at this board meeting every year to honor our student liaison. So the White Bear Lake Area School Board would like to commend and recognize Arianna Vann-Cook, our 12th grade student, and Lydia Kleinhans,our 11th grade student. Lydia wasn't able to be here. Often our liaison students are quite busy. This is one of those nights. Anyway, for their outstanding role as our student representativesto the school board, and we have a small token ofour appreciation for Arianna. - Thank you.- You're welcome. - Oh! (audience chuckles) (audience applauds) - So we expect that tobe in your dorm room. - Yes. For sure. For sure. Thank you. - So, Arianna, we'd be honored if you would share with the board, really quick, before we move ahead, what are you going todo after high school? - I will be attending theUniversity of Minnesota and studying journalism next year. My roommate is actuallystanding over there. And yeah, I'm very excited. - That's fantastic.- Thank you. - Do you want a picture right now? - Yes, let's do the picture right now. (people speaking distantly) - [Photographer] Okay, youguys, here, one two three. I'll take a few. Great. Thank you. - All right. - Congratulations.- Congratulations. - Thank you. - Thank you so much.- Thank you. (people speak distantly) - Thank you, Arianna, for your service. Not all school boardshave student liaisons. I think it's one of the thingsthat makes our board such, it's such a conversation whenyou have student perspective, so thank you so much. And we'll move into ourlast informational item, C3, superintendent's report. - All right, I'll turn it over to Arianna to give the student report first. - [Arianna] Perfect. As we make a way through spring, many exciting activities are coming up for our graduating class of 2024. On May 4th, the upper class (indistinct) 24 carat gold to the prom, which was a huge successfulwith the student body. Seniors are preparing for aschool sponsored senior day this Friday, May 17th. There will a breakfast (indistinct), along with (indistinct)the remainder of the day. Additionally graduation willbe taking place June 7th, celebrating the hard work of our students. Go Bears! - All right. Thank you, Arianna. I will roll right into mine. So congratulations tothe Area Learning Center Language Arts Teacher Michelle Norcross who was named the 2024 WhiteBear Lake Area Educators Teacher of the Year ata ceremony last week. Willow Lane Elementary 5th graders are carrying on the tradition of taking over a localrestaurant, Donatelli's, in White Bear Lake. Students are working as cooks, servers, and hosts over the lunch hour, from 11:00 AM to 12:00 PMon May 14th and May 21st. Stop by to enjoy their service. The district is sponsoringMarketfest on June 27th. White Bear Lake Area Schools'spirit will fill 4th Street with district booths, activities, and will pop-up with(indistinct) Bear opportunities. Please bring your friends and family. Wear orange and join us at 6:30 PM for the scheduled Orange Out photo. For those who are interested in touring the renovated White BearLake Area High School, I would like to mark your calendars for a community open house event from 3:00 to 6:00 PM on August 29th. Additional information will be shared as the event approaches. Wanted to acknowledgethat, (speaks distantly). There are a lot of learning opportunities going on at (indistinct). So as the school year comes to a close, a variety of end of theyear student celebrations are taking place throughout the district over the last days of school (indistinct). I'd like to offer aspecial congratulations to those who are celebratingthe end of an era, those that are graduatingfrom high school, middle school, elementary,kindergarten, and preschool, during the last days of the school year, and have a safe and relaxing summer. - Okay. Thank you so much. Any questions? Thank you so much. So we'll move into ourfirst discussion item, D1, community services and recreationsummer programming report. - Good evening, Chair Ellison, Members of the Board, Dr. Kazmierczak. We are here tonight to just kind of give an overview and an updated report on all the things happeningunder our community services and recreation department this summer. A lot of exciting things. Behind me, that will have individual time to share areas of their program area, are three of my fourleadership coordinators as part of our department. I'll introduce them now and they'll have individual slides that they'll speak to in a minute. But we have Darcy Rodriguez, our coordinator of earlychildhood programs. Nicole Oswald, our coordinator of out of school time programs, and Jon Anderson, our coordinator of adult programs and facility use. And then not with ustonight is Matt Riebow, our youth recreation and middleschool sports coordinator. So we're excited to come up here and share what you guys can expectto see this summer and available for kids and families and everybody of all ages,and primarily summer, but we might sprinkle ina little bit of things that have been going on this spring and things to highlightthat are going on as well. So we'll go through and timefor questions at the end, and we're gonna jump right in. So Darcy, you have the floor. - All right. Well, we are excited again to be offering, for our incoming K students, our Next Step Kindergarten program. This has been a super,well-received program for the last two years. We've spent the last two yearstweaking it just slightly. This year will be, again, ablend of kids who are coming in, through a fee for service model, as well as kids who arequalifying for Targeted Services who have been with usthrough the school year, but we feel could still usesome additional support, particularly in some just academic support and some more work on letters recognitionand also letter sounds. Next Step K is run in tandemwith Targeted Services. I think you'll probablyremember from last year we talked through that changeover, which has been super successful at being able to wrap around our students and provide transportation as well as a free lunch accessibility. We run it in tandem with Targeted Services so that older siblings canalso attend Camp Summer at the same time. And our incoming K studentsare given the opportunity to work on some of thosepre-learning skills around routines, structureof the school day, getting to learn and know a trusted adult, starting to understand how ourkindergarten rooms operate, getting a chance to seewhat those spaces are, get a chance to walkthrough the lunch line, potentially, for the first timeand navigate the cafeteria, meet some of our out of school time staff that's also thereon-site at the same time, and many of our kids useout-of-school time services throughout the year. So it's just a great opportunityfor kids to get a feel for what it's gonna belike in a few months as they head into thekindergarten classrooms. And then our ECFE programwill continue this year to offer playground playgroups. Playground playgroupstake place once a week. We bring together familiesfrom across the district who join up at West Park. It was such a popular programfor the last two years we actually had a waiting list. So we doubled the size ofit this year and wound up having our teachers dotwo sessions back-to-back. Our early childhood teacher comes in, she plans activities,they do a circle time, she brings sand toysand all sorts of things. We're able to accommodate siblings there, which is a great opportunity for families. So families come out, theyplay with all their kids, they get a chance for that structure. They can check in with our teacher who has a background inworking with families who might need some extra support. And so if they're feelingstressed about parenting or other things, they havesomebody that they can resource and touch base with. I did not put a slide in, but I did wanna let you know, too, we continue to do outreach activities over the course of the summer. So that includes our Diaper Closet. We received a generous grant from the White Bear LakeEducational Foundation to be able to help us toprovide diapers to the community as a supplement. As you probably know,it's one of those things that's hard to get through the Food Shelf. They occasionally havethem, but not always. And so we've been able,through that generous grant, to be able to continue to provide that. And we do have familiesstopping in all summer long to be able to access that resource. In addition to that, we workwith our family advocate to be able to do somebridging for families. As you all know, you know, a two to threemonth summer long break is a long break for families who may be in crisis or have some needs. And so we've been workingwith our family advocate to be able to do somecheck-ins with families, be able to continue someof that wraparound support, and continue to connect familieswith community resources as needed over the course of the summer. And then as we bridge into thebeginning of the school year, many of our buildings doback-to-school events. And so we do haveteachers that attend those to both talk with familiesabout opportunities of joining an early childhoodfamily education class, as well as making sure that we've got them enrolled in preschool and we've captured those kiddos who are ready for that experience. So that's some of the great work we have going on over the summer. We look forward to being able to continue to wrap around our familiesas we go into the warmer, more playful months of our community. Want to? Next up, school aged care. - Thank you. I'm Nicole Oswald. I'm the out of school time coordinator. So we're busily preparingfor our summer sites. We have our extended day programs,which is our K-5 program, childcare out of school time during the summer, which is full days. And then our flex program, which is incoming grades 6 through 8. We also have in thosesame buildings this year, along with our Next Step summer program, we have Camp Summer and Summer U, which offers extra practice for students so that they can practicethose academic skills and avoid the slide during thesummer without the practice. And then our youthenrichment is mainly running out of our Lincoln building,just in terms of space. So we will be at Oneka, Lincoln, Otter, and Matoska this summer, and the buildings will be very full. So in extended day we have 130 to 200students per day on site. And that starts June 12th. So it runs June 12thuntil kind of mid August. And we're open from 7:00 to 5:30 daily. So we did have a changein our start and end times based on some attendancedata that we were hoping to kind of condense some ofthose hours and have received some very positive feedbackfrom families as well with that change. In addition, our flex program, we did change those hours last year. We ran it from 8:00 to 4:30 and received some feedback from parents that they wanted to makethat a little bit longer. So we're open from 7:30 to five o'clock and we did end up getting 28 more students enrolled in the program. So that was pretty significant for us and we're really grateful toour parents for that feedback. We don't have any Camp Summer, Summer U registration numbers yet, but invitations and registration for K-5 went out the first week inMay and will be coming out for middle schoolers inthe next couple of weeks. All of our teachers are hired,so that's really exciting. It'll run July 8th toAugust 1st, 8:00 to 1:00. So we're excited to have some fun with all of our students this summer. And then youth enrichment classes. As we've offered in other summers, we have horse riding,coding, sports samplers, archery, food decorating, drawing, STEAM. Those have been really popular. And we added 69 additionalcourse offerings from last summer because we were gettingfull, which was great. Just a little bit of areview from the fall. So since the, as many of youknow, we had some struggles with our wait list going into this fall, and since the beginning of the fall we've accepted 263 contracts. So that's been a reallybig undertaking by my team and really awesome tohave a lot of support in how we're onboarding our assistants. So our summer contractsfor 2023 were 705 contracts and now we're at 711. And one thing that we noticed was that although the number ofkiddos participating stayed around the same for the summer, there is an increase atour site daily levels. So there's actually thesame amount of kids, but they're participatingmore days in the summer. So that was very exciting too. And then flex as well, we had talked about the 28 extra kiddos, so we're excited to have a lot of fun in our middle school program this summer. A little highlight for youth enrichment. So last summer, at the end of 2023, we had 1,005 participants in our programs. And as of 05/07, we'veenrolled 979 kiddos. So that's pretty exciting for,in terms of participation, we're almost to the same pointwhere we ended last year. One highlight from thisfall and the spring, is that we were able to offer an art class in partnership with a community vendor. She had reached out to us andwanted to offer that for free. And we ended up serving about12 students for six weeks, which was a really cool opportunity. And we've been working ona lot of target marketing and that has really been goodgetting our name out there and making sure that our community and our family members and our students know the opportunitiesthat we're able to provide and they're able to registerfor those when they need. - Yep. And just a Freedom Schools update. So this will be our third summer operating Freedom Schools again, this summer in White Bear Lake. We will be at Willow Lane Elementary. Dates are up there along with the time, similar to last year. We have 12 of our team members that are, everyone's hired for thesummer for the program. We're accepting registrations right now. Those went out last week,as Nicole had mentioned. Looking to serve 120 kids this summer. And like I said, lastyear, just due to schedules and stuff with school stillgoing on, we had a hard time getting staff down tothe national training, but this year we're sending 12 people down to be a part of that national training, which is a tremendous experience. They're gonna come back,I think, very energized and ready to go for summer. We did a similar training last year and it is pretty impactful. So I look forward to hearinghow that goes for them when they get back. And kind of where we're atright now with the planning, again, getting them set up for training, getting those things prepped. We have field trips scheduledalready for the summer. Working on our final one right now with the Minnesota Lynx, ifeverything works out as planned. But we're going to Big River Farms, I think I'm saying thatright, Big River Farms. And we're looking tohopefully bring them in in cooperation with ourNutrition Services Department, 'cause we do somepartnership work with them. But getting the kids theexperience of visiting the farm where the food's coming fromand learn more about nutrition, in terms of what they'regetting for meals. And then again, kind of, we'restill in the planning stages, but again, those parent engagement nights, we do five a year where weget to bring parents in, families over a meal, connectthem with community resources, time to interact, face-to-face time, build those connectionswith their families. So very much lookingforward to the summer. Yeah, it's coming sooner than we think and everyone's real excited. Another big win and big thingswe're looking to celebrate. Nicole Oswald, who wasjust up here speaking, did the heavy lifting ofputting together information for an After-School andCommunity Learning Grant, which we applied for through MDE, which supports afterschooland summer learning. And we were lucky enough to getnotification a few weeks ago that we were awarded the grant. We're very excited. The purpose of the grant is to connect schools and communities tooffer culturally affirming and enriching afterschooland summer experiences that meet the needs ofour students and families. The grant's main objectivesare to increase access to comprehensive and culturallyaffirming afterschool and summer learning andenrichment opportunities that meet the academic,social, and emotional needs of historically underserved students. The second objective is topromote engagement and learning and connections to theschools and community and to encourage school attendance and improved academic performance. So we were fortunate to receive, we will receive $1.4 million, to support this work spreadover the next three years, which is a really big deal. We'll have a lot of work ahead of us. We're still in the early stages. We were kind of in thatnotification that we were awarded, but the official, I'mlearning the acronyms, OGAN, the Official Grant AwardNotification had not come out yet. We still had some steps, but we just received that last Thursday. And then Nicole and I willbe attending the orientation for all the grant awardeeson this Wednesday. So a lot of work to be done, but a lot of impactful work and exciting. We're super lucky to be chosen to be able to receive this grantand move that work forward. Moving on to youth rec in middle school. So these are some of thosespring things I was talking about that we would touch on. In addition to ourcompetitive track and field, tennis, and golf sports opportunities we offer for our middle school kids, we also did some increasedintermural work this spring and get more kids involved. So this spring we also havea boys volleyball league, a flag football league,continued ultimate Frisbee, and then soccer as well. The flag football things, we have 81 kids that signedup for flag football. Matt Riebow received a grant, I guess if you wanna call it that, from the Minnesota Vikings. They're doing a really bigpush for women's flag football. So they sent us equipment. We have jerseys for the participants to be a part of that too,that are tailored to us. They say Bears andthey're the right colors, black and orange. But again, just a nice testamentto additional offerings. We're looking to get ourmiddle schools involved to keep them connected to the building and provide opportunities after school. If the numbers are low,we do a lot of connection, bringing Sunrise andCentral students together. Give them that interaction to meet kids from the other school beforethey go to high school where they will beunder one roof together. Activity bus offered to get home. Nobody has to worry abouthow they're gonna get home from activities afterschool, they'll get a ride. So a lot of great positivethings here this spring. So we had 81 kids out for flag football, 41 for ultimate Frisbee. We had 25 boys come outfor boys volleyball. And soccer was kind of a last minute push. We did some work with our new soccer coach that wanted to help us. We reached out to her to see if she would be interested in working with us and we were able to get14 kids to start out now. So it's a decent start, butwe look to build on that and build that momentum and carry that into summer and the fall. And then in terms ofsummer youth rec and camps. Again, you'll see a lot offamiliar things on there that you've seen in the past. I just want to take thisopportunity to remind everybody how lucky we are to have thenumber of parent volunteers that we have to be able to coach our youth and be a part of our youth rec leagues. We could not do that workwithout the volunteers of our adults andparents in the community. So we're very appreciative of them. And just, you can seeit up on the list there, but just a lot of nicevariety of different sports and activity camps that we work with. It's through collaborationand partnerships. We do a lot of camps with ourhigh school varsity coaches, you know, to kind of build that connection so they can meet kids at ayounger age, build, you know, create that connection,love for the sport. And hopefully we see themup through the system as they get older and continue connection with our community partners and local athletic associations for these opportunities as well. And Jon. - Thank you. I'm Jon Anderson, like Tim mentioned. I deal with the experienced Bears, so the older generation. And we try to remind them that we're part of the school district and we provide activitiesand programs for them and good experiences all the way through. So a lot of information up there. I'm not gonna touch on everything. We talked about summer highlights. I'll jump down to the bottom. This Saturday we have ourannual parking lot sale. We have 51 sellers offine curated treasures from garages and basements. So if anybody's interested,please come out. We'd love to see you out there. So we have everybody come out and they take up a parking stall and we'll have bunch of people there trying to find some treasures. We'll also have a summerbarbecue August 9th, and we partner with White Bear Lions who will come out and cook for us. Last year we had over 200 participants come through during that event. Our summers at the SeniorCenter are a little bit slower just because of a lot of people tend to stay away and do their own thing. But we try to get people coming in. Averages, you know, we'reright around 500, 500 plus, throughout each month of the season. And those are daily activities. Those are card players,cribbage, wood carvers. So those are vital to our programs. And those numbers are growing. So it's fun to see those groups growing. And what we're realizing as we're counting peoplecoming through, we're busy. There's a lot of people coming through. Most of the activities happenMonday through Thursday. And then the special events that we do, the community events,the parking lot sale, or open houses, boutiques, all those types of otherprograms that we do, happen on Fridays and Saturdays. So, we try to fill those Fridays and Saturdays up the best we can. Another important piece thatwe do is Meals on Wheels. We average about 45 meals aday serving our community. Anywhere from, you know, throughout the whole WhiteBear Lake School District. So it's a vital program that serves a lot ofneeds here in this area. We are seeing an increasebecause Ramsey County did receive some Title fundingto allow more free meals. So we're trying to promote thatin the Ramsey County areas. Our adult enrichmentprograms this past year were up quite a bit. We had over a thousand participantsfrom the previous years. Not sure why yet. We're tryingto figure out what that is. But I think a lot of it had to do with the cooking classes we were offering. So those seemed to be real popular. And Michelle and I, mystaff person, we toured the new high school'sculinary arts center last week and we're trying to see if we can slide in there a little bit and try not to mess thingsup for them too much. Touching on facilities. Facilities, again, Ihave to thank the board for providing us thesewonderful new facilities. Part of my job is rentingout those facilities, and it's crazy busy. If you haven't seen them, go by at night. They're being used by ourstudents during the day and after school for high school programs. And my job is then tofill 'em up at night. And so we're doing thaton nights and weekends, and soccer, football in the fall. Lacrosse going crazy right now. And other renters that are out there seeing our great new facilities. The track, it has been amazing for us. Just alone in January there's 800 walkers that we caught coming through. So it's been a great, greatfacility for our community and we continue to promote it and try to get more andmore people in here. Another part of my area isadults with disabilities. We work with a consortiumof neighboring communities, and typically we are offeringabout one class a month. And there's a picture of some artists that have been attendingmany of our classes. Michelle also does teach those classes. But Tim's gonna touch onthe additional funding that we're gonna hopefully be receiving and hopefully we can expand that. So thank you. - Yep, so just to wrap it up with the adults with disabilities. Through legislation that waspassed last session, last year, the state approved an increase in the amount we receive per capita for adults with disabilities. So with that increased funding, we're working within ourCommunity Bridge Consortium, which is us and fourother school districts that work to partner on, like we do a lot of ourown events here in-house and we do a lot ofcommunity and field trips and other classes and stuffthat we promote for each other, so people have opportunities outside of, you know, the city of White Bear Lake and the district of White Bear Lake, to go explore, meet newfriends, make new connections. So we're in the middleright now of working on how to use thosefunds to kind of expand to either provide additionalofferings, new offerings, new kind of excursion or field trips. We did get feedback through a survey that people would like tobe able to get out more. So if we can use some ofthose funds for transportation to kind of keep the costs down for them, that'll be a great asset for us to serve that portion of our community that we are serving throughadults with disabilities. And then our adult basic ed program. Right now we have a verystrong family literacy program that we operate under our early childhood window of programs. We had 19 families enrolledover our two sections this year. And topics of the class, they have beginner and advanced English. Topics of those classfor beginner English. They discussed, you know, English for making medicalappointments, work, and family schedules, creatingand interpreting graphs. And then as they progressand get on to more advanced, they start talking aboutthings like career exploration, voting in the US, setting personal goals, and creating and interpretingadditional kind of graphs and data for financial purposes and such. Both groups were able to take a tour of the new White Bear LakeCommunity Food Market, and many parents have beentaking advantage of that resource that's right across the parking lot that's run by the Food Shelf. If you haven't beendown there, I'd suggest that they are liningout the door every day. It's been a fabulous resourcefor us and the community. They've also had visitorsfrom our team show up, as well as the Bear Careclinic, members from The Closet. We had some representativesfrom the Children's Defense Fund with Freedom Schools comeshare some information about how to access child tax credits, making sure they're awareof how to get those, if that's a benefit to them. And the Diaper Closet to connect families with community resources as well. In addition to that, they've supported the parent education portion of the class by pre-teaching vocabulary and facilitating scaffoldedconversations around the parent education topicof the day that they choose. And also, seen in the picturethere, they received a grant from the White Bear Lake Area Foundation to allow parents to have aparent night out painting class with dinner and childcare provided. And that's just a photo oftheir night out together. It was an opportunity forparents to practice self-care, connect with other parents, and practice their Englishand listening skills by following the paintingdirections in English. And currently we havesix different languages from people that attend our class. And it's just wonderful. If you get a chance to pop in, if you're ever interested, let me know, if you'd like to sit in on a class or introduce yourself to them. The connections and the thingsthey talk about in the class to build those relationships,it's a lot of fun. So I would suggest makingthat time if you can. And then just, I just wanted to share, as part of our consortium for ABE. You see our numbers havegone up significantly over the last year and two yearscoming out of the pandemic. So this consists of our Harmony Consortium and partnership withMahtomedi and North St. Paul. So this includes our family lit class, a lot of online classes we offer. The online classes we'veoffered in-house here, as well as in-personclasses that are offered at the Harmony Learning Center as well. But we've seen a large increase. And a lot of our familiesin White Bear too have really, really grabbedonto the online courses. We did some in-person stuff for a while and then we had to pivot ona couple of days, you know, still coming out of the pandemicfor online and people fell, people really lean into that and that really just kind of accommodated their schedules better. They were able to take classes from home and not have to worryabout driving or childcare. They were able to kind of keep busy. But yeah, numbers are going up. And then we recently justhad a beginning conversation in the early stages with Ayan from our Education and Equity Team, around continuing and whatcan we do to explore work that we can offer through ABEto support our ML families and a lot of our newcomerfamilies that are coming in. You know, we provide a lotof supports for students within that program, butstarted that conversation about wanting to reachout and see what we can do to like provide services and resources to the entire family coming in and what can we do to do our part. Yeah. And then just one to share, if you're looking for more information, those are kind of ourmost recent publications that are online right now. So you can find those on our website. You'll find our summer catalog, our ECFE and Preschoolregistration guides, as well as our quarterly, quarterly?- Yep. - Yep. Quarterly version of The Voice, which is our adult and seniorprogram adult catalog as well. And then coming up herejust for some highlights. Upcoming events. Coming up at the end of May, on the 31st, for the second time we're hosting our Bears Explore Outdoors event. If you did not attend last year, I would highly recommendyou come out this year. So we'll be on Bald Eagle Lake over at the RamseyCounty boat launch area, with the park there. So we didn't know whatto expect last year. We thought maybe we'd get 100 people and we had over 400 peopleshow up with families and it was just a wonderful event. So this year we're doubling down. We have over 15 vendorsand community partners coming to have tablesto showcase resources and other activitiesthey have for families. We're partnering with BassTEK, which is a fishing company that's purpose is to kind of expose andprovide opportunities to underserved and marginalized students that may have not had an experience to go fishing anywhereelse, to do that work. So they're coming back to work with us. This summer we worked withthe Minnesota Re-Cycler. like last year, anddouble, I called him in, like right before Thanksgivingthis year and said, "Hey, would you have bikes for us again to donate to kids that wecould raffle off for free?" Last year they gave us 40. He asked this year, "Can you take 80? And can you take 60 ofthem before winter break?" (people chuckle)I'm like, "Sure." You know, we don't wanna say no. So yeah, so we currentlyhave around 80 bikes, 70 to 80 bikes currentlyat the gym up north in Hugo that we'll be bringing down to the lake to raffle off for all ages. We got like the tyke bikes, like don't even have pedals, the strider bikes, as well as the bikesfor students and adults. And last year it was just awesome to see parents come up to us and just say, "You know, the only reasonwe came was to get a bike. My son really needed abike and he won a bike." And I mean that's the whole purpose of why we do those things, right? To provide resources and smiles and bring families and community together. And a huge thank you againto our community partners. We're doing some work. The White Bear Rotary willbe coming there to serve. We're getting food from RedLuna like we did last year. So the Rotary's comingout to help serve the meal to people coming through that day. And then the White Bear Lions Club just approved a grant request. So they're gonna comehelp supply volunteers to help with the bike raffleas well as provide funding so everyone that's coming through will get a White BearLions Club bike light that they can clip ontotheir bike to shine at night so people can see them riding around. So again, super fortunate. May 31st, 5:30 to 7:30, please come down. And then, it's a little in advance, but just wanted to putthis on people's radar. But our Annual Bear Bike Ride that we've done the last four summers now, Trevor Putnam, one of our school psychs, has kind of put this into placecoming out of the pandemic to raise money for youthsports and athletics. We've expanded to makesure that those offerings and scholarship moneyavailable is also good for youth enrichment and other offerings. But we're pivoting this year a little bit and tying it into homecoming. Reached out to Brian Peloquin and asked if we could partner with him and kind of make it one ofthe homecoming activities and run it out of the high school on the Saturday morning after homecoming. So instead of just doing alarge kind of adult, like, we traditionally have done a 10 mile, 25 mile, and a 50 mile ride. Really wanted to make sure that we get our studentsand families more involved. So we'll offer maybe like a, we're just beginning theplanning stages right now, but getting a little kid bike, they could run aroundthe track once or twice and then maybe a shorterfour to six mile course for the younger kids, and then as well as those longer courses for the older adults as well. So it looks to be a fun event and again, very muchin the planning stages, but hopefully it'll be agood tie into homecoming, get people to come out withtheir bikes and their families and participate with us. That's a lot. If you guys have any questions, we're more than happyto answer them for you and provide more information if needed. But if not, we thank youvery much for the time. - [Jessica] Great, thank you very much. Any questions for Mr. Maurer and his team? Seeing none, yeah? - Just, thank you. And this is great to hear(indistinct) the school district and (indistinct). It's so great that the districtoffers all these things, education, recreation programs and all of the great work (indistinct). Thank you for writing the grant at home and securing the MDE funds, that's great. (speaks distantly) And I know Matt's not here,but great team, great work. And thank you so much. - Yeah, well, thank you, guys. We couldn't do a lot of what we do without the support ofyou and the community. So we appreciate it. - And the volunteers too.- And the volunteers. Yep, absolutely.- Very important. - I just want to say thankyou for the intramurals. I think that that's a reallygreat, affordable option for our middle school kids. - It's a stepping stone. - Yeah.- One step. We got a lot more work todo, but we'll get there. - It's a really good option. I'm excited to see how that goes. - Yeah, Matt did a nice job of altering those on different days. So like it's, I thinkthey're around 25 bucks for I think eight sessions,six to eight sessions. But there's a Monday, like Monday, Wednesdaycould be ultimate Frisbee. Tuesday, Thursday could be flag football. So kids could do something all four days. He tried not to offerthem at the same time. 'cause he wanted to make sure that they had those opportunities to have different optionsand explore different things. And even if a kid was atrack and field kid, like, maybe they could get away and still do ultimate Frisbee one dayif they wanted to, right? To kind of provide themthose options. So Yep. Like I said, it's a great first step, but we have a bigger visionfor what we'd like to do there and this is just kind of the first step to that vision of where we'd like to go. - All right.- All right. - Thank you all very much.- Thank you. - And we now move into ournext discussion item, D2, the first reading of theschool board of policies, 517, 518, 519, and 705. These are coming to usfor a first reading, that the board will read these policies and offer any feedback andthey will come back to us for a second reading at theJune 10th meeting for approval. Board members, if you have any comments about any of the policies,please do let us know which policy we're looking at and which page number sowe can all follow along. So any questions orcomments from board members about the policies for the first reading? Great, and again, a huge thankyou to the Policy Committee, it's a lot of work to gothrough all these policies and look with a fine tooth comb. So thank you very much to the cabinet and also the board members. All right, we'll move into ourfirst operational item, D1, action on Nutrition Services prime vendor. Mr. Wald. - Good evening, ChairEllison, Members of the Board, Ms. Vann-Cook. Dr. Kazmierczak. Recently the School OperationsDepartment posted a request for proposals for the schooldistrict's prime food vendor. With us tonight to explainthe process and the bids is Bridget Lehn, our directorof Nutrition Services. - Thank you, Tim. Chair Ellison, Members of the Board. You'll see before you, Ibelieve it is the scoring of four prime vendorswho submitted four bids. So as you might remember, four years ago we did the same thing. We do this every four years, go out for bid for anybodywho might be interested. We purchase all of our foodthrough our prime vendor. And so it's everything fromproduce to frozen foods to our chemicals. We're estimating a $1.8million contract this year with up to three renewals. Again, we did have the four bidders. One of them did not submitall of the materials so they came back as incomplete. Otherwise, all of the pricingcame back very, very close. And it came down really to service. And the number one service that we found with the IFD, our recommended award, is that they were willing to bring in just about any productwe would ask them for. So we feel like we could getthe best quality products for our students. The next closest would require a minimum of 50 cases a month, or we'd have to bring it in-house, which is just not feasible for us. So are there any questions? - So the recommended actionis to approve the award of the prime food vendor toIFD Foodservice Distributor for the period July 1,2024 to June 30, 2025, at an estimated value of $1.8 million, and an option to renew forup to three additional years. So you've heard the recommended action, could I get a motion to approve? - So moved.- A motion by Dr. Arcand. And a second?- Second. - Second by Dr. Newmaster. Any further questions or discussion? This will require a roll call vote. I would ask the Clerkto please call the roll. - Arcand, aye. Daniels?- Aye. - Ellison?- Aye. - Newmaster?- Aye. - Streiff Oji?- Aye. - Thompson?- Aye. - And the motion passes. Thank you. And our next operational item, E2, action on Sunrise Park security package. Mr. Wald. - Yes, thank you. As Sunrise Park Middle School moves to South Campus to becomeMariner Middle School, renovation will begin onthe South Campus building. It'll host Transition EducationCenter, Early Childhood, Senior Program, and District Offices. I'm here to present thebid award recommendation for the new securitysystem at Sunrise Park. The bid process wasdeveloped in collaboration with True North Consulting, the consultant who hassupported the school district in all of our projectsin terms of developing the design and the RFP processfor the security systems. So these are the systems thatinclude video surveillance, electronic access control systems, as well as intrusion detection systems. There were two bidders for this project. True North Consulting hadestimated the cost to be $422,450 LVC bid 427,344, and Systematic Technologies bid 299,883. So this is a significant savings from the projectedexpense, by about $130,000. So the recommendation tonight is that the board accept the overall bid for the Sunrise Parksecurity package as presented to Systematic in the amount of $299,883. - You heard the recommended action. Can I get a motion to approve? - So moved.- A motion by Ms. Daniels. And a second?- Second. - Second by Ms. Streiff Oji. Any questions? Ms. Thompson. - Just one question. Do we have an idea of whythere is such a big difference? - No, you know, Systematic Technologies will already be in the building doing the technology lowvoltage installation. And so maybe they felt like they could, that it was worth it to them to bid a little bit lower, 'causethey had crews there already. Both contractors coveredall the bases on their bids. Both were well qualified. There is often a big difference between the high and the low. - Yeah, that makes sense, if they're already doing something. - This will require a roll call vote. I would ask the Clerkto please call the roll. - Arcand, aye. Daniels?- Aye. - Ellison?- Aye. - Newmaster?- Aye. - Streiff Oji?- Aye. - Thompson?- Aye. - And the motion passes. Thank you. - [Tim] Thank you. - We'll move into ournext operational item, E2, action on tentative agreement,2023-25 Fiscal Years, bus drivers and bus aides,Teamsters Local 320. Mr. Mons. - Good evening. We've got three tentative agreements for you here this evening. We'll take them one at a time. So first up is, as you said,the bus drivers and aides. I'd like to say a thank you to the district's bargaining team for all three of these agenda items, primarily composed of Cindy Gustafson, Andi Johnson, and Tim Wald. It's a lot of time that goes into this and it's greatly appreciatedto get us to this point. This was our first time negotiatingwith Teamsters Local 320 who came in to representour bus drivers and aides, after previously beingrepresented by Local 70. And we had a very positiveround of bargaining. It was greatly appreciated andvery nice to work with them, as well as our stewards and our leaders on the bus driver and aide front. So it was a very positiveround of bargaining. And with that, I make the recommendation, - You heard the recommended action, to approve the 2023-25bus driver and bus aide, Teamsters Local 320, tentative agreement. Could I get a motion to approve? - So moved. - A motion by Ms. Thompson. And a second?- Second. - Second by Dr. Newmaster. Any further questions or discussion? This will require a roll call vote. I would ask the Clerkto please call the roll. - Arcand, aye. Daniels?- Aye. - Ellison?- Aye. - Newmaster?- Aye. - Streiff Oji?- Aye. - Thompson?- Aye. - Motion passes. Thank you. - [Matthew] And next up isour, oh sorry, go. (chuckles) - I'll take it from here, Mr. Mons. - [Matthew] Perfect. - Next operational item, E4,action on tentative agreement, 2023-25 fiscal years, International Union ofOperating Engineers, Local 70 Custodial Unit. - Yes, and so very similarlywith our custodial unit, we had a very positiveround of bargaining. I appreciated the amount of time that that unit put intohaving discussions with us. And with that I willmake the recommendation. - [Jessica] And you'veheard the recommended action for the Custodial Unit. Can I get a motion to approve? - So moved.- A motion by Ms. Streiff Oji. And a second?- Second. - A second by Ms. Thompson. Any further questions or discussion? This will require a roll call vote. I would ask the Clerkto please call the roll. - Arcand, aye. Daniels?- Aye. - Ellison?- Aye. - Newmaster?- Aye. - Streiff Oji?- Aye. - Thompson?- Aye. - And the motion passes. And operational itemE5, tentative agreement, 2023-25 fiscal years, White Bear Lake SchoolNutrition Association. - [Matthew] And with ourNutrition Association, it's a little bit different as they represent themselvesas an association. They're great to work with. Do a really nice jobrepresenting their members and keeping that dialogue open. We've also really appreciatedthat we've continued to move towards an interestbased model of bargaining with that group. So that's been really positive all around. And with that I make the recommendation. - You've heard the recommended action, to approve the NutritionAssociation tentative agreement. Could I get a motion to approve? - So moved.- A motion by Dr. Newmaster. And a second?- Second. - A second by Ms. Daniels. Any questions or discussion? It will require a roll call vote. I would ask the Clerkto please call the roll. - Arcand, aye. Daniels?- Aye. - Ellison?- Aye. - Newmaster?- Aye. - Streiff Oji?- Aye. - Thompson?- Aye. - And the motion passes. - [Matthew] Thank you very much. - And finally, our lastoperational item, E6, action on school board policies 403, 498, 502, 606.5, 801, and 910. These are coming to usfor a second reading. Generally we approvethese in one fell swoop. I'm gonna get a motion on the table. Could I get a motion to approve? - So moved.- A motion by Ms. Streiff Oji. And a second?- Second. - A second by Ms. Daniels. Any questions or discussion? All right, seeing none, all in favor of approval please say aye? - [Members] Aye. - Opposed same sign? And the motion passes. And the last item on theagenda is the board forum. Board forum is anopportunity for board members to talk about things that aregoing on in the community, things that they are connected to as far as their role as board members. So anybody have anything for board forum? Dr. Newmaster. - I just want to againcongratulate (indistinct) for the amazing numberof things we provide. And to also promote our school's massive carnival, which is Friday. It has a book fair andeverything else invested. The last time I attempted to park close, I was a little late, and I think I think Iwas a mile long back. It's well attended, butit's worth the effort. So that's your Friday night agenda if you want a lot of fun and activities. And then I know I'll be at the Normandy event Saturday. That's always a fun one also. So lots of things going on. The weather looks good. And the Minnesota peoplejust have to participate in all the good things that come, graduations (indistinct). And so thanks to everybody. - Ms. Streiff Oji. - I just wanted tocommend anyone connected to the "Descendants" Middle School play. The theater performance was fabulous. It was spectacular. (speaks distantly) It was wonderful. If you've got a chance tosee it, (speaks distantly). - Ms. Daniels. - I want to congratulate all the seniors that are having graduationand also we have students graduating from (speaks distantly). - Ms. Thompson. - I had the pleasure of taking part in our Teacher of theYear interview process, which is just one of myfavorite things to do. I had the pleasure of doing it years ago when we were still in the Covid era, so we had to do it virtually. So this time to do it in person was just really something to see. And reading through theirphilosophies of education just warmed my heart to see all the things that we hear about happening up here, but to actually read ittaking place in the classroom really just brings it home for me. So I was just, to all ofour teachers, thank you. That the year is coming to an end, and I was grateful for everysingle one of our educators, our paras, our, everybody, that makes the schooldistrict run every day. They are greatly appreciated. And for those of you whoget a break this summer, you deserve it. And for those of you who keep on working, thank you for yourdedication to our district. And just (speaks distantly). - Dr. Arcand. A couple of things. One, in case anybody hasnothing to do tonight, there is a night of jazz atthe District Center Auditorium. It starts in a half an hour. So you can go listento the jazz band play, it's a lot of fun, from middle school and high school. And congratulations to our retirees. I know there were quite a fewretirees in the consent agenda and it's been incredible service. There were some folks whohave been here for decades. So thank you to all of the retirees. And I think I'm the last board member with an elementary kid. And so my elementary kid is graduating from elementary school this year. And we've been in elementaryschools here for 11 years. And so I just wanted to say thank you to all of the elementary schools, the staff, the teachers, the leadership. All four of our kidswent through all the way. And it takes a lot ofpeople to educate a kid. And I could not be more grateful that this is where we ended up. So thank you to all of our outgoing folks. And with that, I wouldentertain a motion to adjourn. - Chair Ellison, I movefor an adjournment. - A motion by Dr. Arcand. And a second?- Second. - A second by Ms. Thompson. All in favor ofadjournment please say aye? - [Members] Aye. - Opposed same sign? We are adjourned. (gavel taps)