[Music] Good evening and welcome to our regularly scheduled schoolboard meeting for September 15th. At this time, please rise if you are able and join me in the pledge of allegiance. >> I alian to the flag of the United States of America, >> for it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> All right. Good evening, school board and guests. As usual, the first item on our agenda is the approval of the agenda. We have no additions or deletions to the agenda tonight. Is there a motion to approve the agenda as outlined? >> Second. >> Motion by Robin, seconded by Sakoden. All those in favor of approval of the agenda say I. >> I. >> Those opposed. Motion carries on a 70 vote. Um, our recognition had to be rescheduled, so we don't have any additional recognition tonight. So, I will turn it over to Superintendent Bolson for recognition of students and staff. >> Okay. Thank you, Chair Johnson. I want to start by recognizing our outstanding District 196 employees for getting us off to a great start for the 25 26 school year. Many of them are here tonight, which is great. Our students are excited to be back at school, building relationships with friends and teachers who provide the foundation for success every school year. I've visited close to half of our schools already, uh, and have had many conversations about how well the school year has started. At a future meeting, we will provide a full report on our October enrollment, our hiring, and our new initiatives this year. With construction at 11 sites this summer, our operations team and custodial crews worked extra hard to ensure that our classrooms and kitchens were ready to go. Next, I want to recognize Thomas Lake Elementary School for earning statewide recognition for the Minnesota Department of Education from the Minnesota Department of Education for sustained excellence in implementing positive behavior interventions and supports which is known as PBIS. You may recall last year Thomas Lake principal David Lasted presented to the board about PBIS which is now being implemented in each of our schools. It is an evidence-based framework that helps schools teach and encourage positive behaviors. fostering a welcoming environment uh and support the social, emotional and behavioral needs of all students. We will invite Thomas Lake to a future meeting for recognition uh for being a leader in the state of Minnesota for doing this work. Also, the Association of School Business Officials International ASPO ASBO has again awarded District 196 with a prestigious meritorious budget award, the MBA for this fiscal year. This is the 11th consecutive year that we've received this recognition. Uh it celebrates the district's commitment to clear, transparent, and highquality budget presentations, reinforcing its dedication to responsible financial stewardship. We will bring our budget and finance teams to the board as well for recognition in October. Two more. We also want to recognize 976 district 196 high school students who were recognized by the college board as AP scholars, advanced placement scholars for their performance on AP exams over the last three years. We had a 19% increase in the number of AP scholars over last year. As you heard at our last board meeting in the AP report from Dr. Todd Beach, there are many benefits to taking these rigorous college level courses for students during their high school careers. And lastly, I'd like to express my gratitude and appreciation for you, our school board members. September is schoolboard appreciation month. Because public education is the foundation of our democracy, local school board members are often the most connected elected officials in a community. They represent and engage our community to preserve local control of our public schools. Schoolboard members devote their knowledge, time, and talents as advocates for students and public education. We are fortunate to have an outstanding student- centered school board. Thank you for your willingness to serve in this capacity. And that concludes my comments tonight. Thank you. >> Thank you, Superintendent Bolson. Um that brings us to our special communication special communication request portion of our agenda. We have two speakers signed up for special communication request tonight. Um just a little bit about how special communication uh uh occurs. Up to 10 speakers can sign up to speak at a schoolboard meeting for up to four minutes each. Um, our speakers are reminded not to air um personal uh grievances at a at a uh special communication request uh forum, but a staff member could might follow up with them afterwards. Um, additionally, schoolboard members generally do not respond to our special communication speakers. This is a chance for us to listen and hear what's on your mind. Um, but however, if any specific questions are asked, we might follow up with you. A member from the district administration might follow up with you after when I call our first uh speaker up tonight. Um, go ahead and come up to the podium. You'll introduce yourself and then we'll start the timer. Um, our lovely vice chair will have the timer. Um, you'll get four minutes. Um, when we start the timer, there's a little lights on the podium. The green will start your time. When it turns amber, you'll have 30 seconds less. And when it turns red, we'll ask you to wrap up your comments. All right. Our first speaker I'd like to welcome to the podium is Katherine Briggs. Good evening. I'm Katherine Briggs and I am with the transportation department of this fantastic district. All right. I am here to speak to you regarding the contract negotiations with the transportation unit of this district. As you know, bus drivers and chaperones have been and continue to be in short supply, not only in this district and state, but nationwide. There continues to be a lack of understanding by this district's administration of the role and responsibilities of the members of the transportation department and their value to the district. First, please note we are not part-time employees. We are split shift workers, many working 40 plus hours per week. Please stop labeling us as part-time workers. You do not label non-tenure teachers as part-time. Secondly, the districts surrounding this district are smaller yet pay their transportation employees at a higher rate than this district. As an example, Washington County, their contract provides $25 an hour for the first year and $27 an hour the second year. Those smaller districts are providing their transportation employees paid holidays and acred paid vacation. They provide insurance at rates comparable to this district. With this district being the third largest district in the state, how can those districts compensate their transportation employees better than this district? Since COVID, this district has paid overtime to the administrative staff and mechanics of the transportation department to drive school buses due to the lack of drivers. I suggest, as do my co-workers, that you look into the amounts paid to other companies and administrative staff and mechanics for the transportation of students. With that overtime money, you would have the ability to pay more an hourly wage, which in turn could entice people to make a career out of transportation of students to and from school. And this is a big and our administration, staff, and mechanics would be able to do their job supporting bus drivers and chaperones instead of driving routes. You offer sick time and label it as a benefit, but dictate how and when we use it. And upon retirement, if there is any balance of sick time, you keep twothirds of it. That's not a benefit. Per our contract, you also allow us 10 days off. Should you specify to new hires that of course is 10 days off without pay? And now you want to dictate when and how we use that time. Again, not a benefit. You schedule data days on holiday weekends, shorting our pay periods by two days almost every two weeks. This year we have only five full paychecks for the whole year. Again, we do not have paid holidays as many other districts provide to transportation employees. Further, you have the lowest cost per student in the state for transportation costs. H seems to me that adjustments to the negotiation parameters need to be looked at seriously and I urge the school board to do so prior to our next negotiation meeting. Putting the students first in this district is a noble thing, but at the cost of employees does not work. Employees make your district. Without those dedicated workers, people would not move into this district. People would not want their children enrolled in ISD 196. The parents of all students in this district. Add monies to your levies, your bonds, and your tax base. And I'll bet they're pleased when they get emails that they will have to transport their students because there are not enough drivers to cover routes. Putting children first means you need to put your employees there, too. I urge you to look upon my fellow employees, this union here in the transportation department as the first representatives of this district to parents and students. Without increases in pay and benefits, you will continue to have shortages and will lose your most excellent ambassadors. Thank you for your time. You [Applause] I'd like to welcome our next speaker, Lillian Norland, to the podium. Just as a reminder, Lilian, you can just start by speaking your name and connecting to the district and then we'll start the timer. >> Good evening, Superintendent Bone and board members. My name is Lillian Norland and I am a resident of District 196. Last year I stood before you and shared my negative experience with a District 196 policy. This current policy does not allow private middle school students to try out for public high school sports teams. At that time, I also pointed out that Minnesota State High School school league bylaws allow this participation and that larger Minnesota districts already include private middle school students in their athletic programs. Some even provide transportation so that these students can take part. And yet, despite this evidence, District 196 continues to not re-evaluate this outdated policy. Tonight, I will not focus on the emotional toll this took on me personally, though it was significant. Instead, I'm here to ask directly and clearly, why does this policy exist? From my perspective, there is no sound reason behind this policy. District staff explained that it predates all current employees. Although this board was not responsible for implementing it, you now carry the responsibility to either explain its purpose or to take action to update it by eliminating it. It cannot be because of the size of the district or numbers. Larger districts allow private middle school participation. I have contacted them. On top of that, these larger school districts have more private middle schools than district 196 does. In addition, middle school students in district 196 that are homeschooled are given the opportunity to try out for public high school sports teams. After my last speech, I did receive a kind and encouraging email from someone on this board. I want to thank you for that. In that email, you acknowledged my story and my speaking as impactful. But the only explanation given for maintaining this policy was that leadership is not interested at this time. With the utmost respect, true leadership means listening to the voices of your community and responding when change is needed. This policy, while longstanding, no longer reflects the needs of today. As leaders of one of the largest districts in this state, you have the opportunity to demonstrate vision and courage. I urge you to take action, update this outdated policy, and show what it means to lead with both wisdom and responsiveness. To demonstrate that many others also believe this policy should change, I created an online petition. Our community does not want our student athletes to have to be divided. They are just asking for the opportunity to earn a spot and to continue playing with their friends. I have supplied a packet including the current district 196 policy, the MHSL bylaw that highlights private middle school students are allowed to play, a sample partnership agreement highlighting that students pay for the activity and team fees, and a copy of the signed petition supporting the removal of the current policy. So, tonight I am asking you directly, please send me a follow-up email explaining why this policy is still in place or that you are taking the next steps to remove it. I will continue to return until this policy changes because the students who come after me deserve better. Thank you for your time. [Applause] That is the end of our special communication request portion of the agenda. That brings us to our consent agenda tonight. Board members, we have 25 items on our consent agenda tonight. Those items include the minutes of the August 11th, 2025 special school board meeting. The minutes of the August 112, 2025 regular schoolboard meeting. The minutes of the August 26, 2025 special schoolboard meeting. Gifts, grants, schedules of investments for July 2025 summary of claims for July 2025. Treasures report for June 2025. Permanent fund transfer for fiscal year 2025. Pay rates for substitute temporary and part-time community education employees. Minnesota State University Mano joint powers agreement. Addendum to fiber IU agreement with the city of Apple Valley. Fiber IU agreement with Dakota County. Appointments to the community education advisory council. Appointments to the legislative advisory council. Appointments to the budget advisory council. Personnel request to hire non-licensed administrator. Employment agreement probationary employment agreement additional FTE. Additional services assignment for transition plus coordinator. Eastview High School school activity center. Rosemont High School additions and renovations. Apple Valley High School Activity Center renovations and appointment of election judges. At this time, are there any items on the consent agenda that board members would like to remove? Seeing none, is there a motion to approve the consent agenda as outlined? >> So move. >> Second. >> Motion by Jackie, seconded by Robin. Thank you. >> All those in favor of approving the consent agenda, say I. >> Those opposed. Motion carries on a 70 vote. That brings us to our report section of the night. And I'd like to welcome Jeremy Sorenson and Eric Hansen to the podium to go over our summer programming. Good evening, Superintendent Pulone, Chairperson Johnson, and school board members. Tonight, we are here to provide some highlights and information regarding our summer programming from this past summer. Our summer programs are an important way to support our students learning, engagement, and well-being beyond our traditional school year. Tonight, we'll be sharing participation data, feedback from staff and students, and overall highlights of our programs. This presentation isformational only, and there are no board actions needed tonight. I'd like I'd like to now invite uh Director Sorenson to share information about our summer meals offered uh as well as our information on our elementary summer programs. All right, good evening. My name is Jeremy Sasonson. I'm the director of elementary education. Tonight, we are starting with an update on summer meals program. And on this slide, we've highlighted the strategic priorities that most closely align with this work, well-being and equity. While summer programs connect with all of our priorities, we wanted to emphasize where the alignment is strongest. And you'll see this theme throughout the presentation tonight. Um, this is our second year with free meals for all students during the school year. So, this chart up here is very similar to what we did last year with updated numbers from Spencer Fischer, our head of our nutrition services. Um, we know that food insecurity continues to challenge uh continues to be a challenge for many families and access to consistent and nutritious meals is critical to helping students enter learning environment at their best as their best selves. Our ISD-196 nutrition service department provided free meals throughout the summer months of June, July, and August as designated sites were as at designated sites where students and families could access both breakfast and lunch. This year again, we partnered with Open Door who helped take meals off campus to neighborhood sites serving about 3,000 meals to families who could not travel to our program sites. So, we're going to talk about some meal totals. And first, I'd point out this chart that it's broken into two kind of parts. So the the white part is June alone and we're separating June because that's when we hold all of our ESY programs our students are in. So we've kind of got June and then broken down by grade level. And then the bottom is a total of June, July, and August just for reference. So we're separating out the month of June where we have our summer programming between breakfast and lunch. 50,598 meals were served in June alone. When we add the months of July and August, so looking at the entire summer, 2025, June, July, and August, 67,000 total meals were served. This total is a number of breakfast and lunches served in June, July, and August. We served around 4,000 more meals this year than last year and have continued to have year-over-year growth in the number of meals provided each summer. Um the this growth reflects the greater awareness of the program and the continued need for access to nutritious meals during summer break. Um and Spencer was in here not that long ago, so you know how good the meals were, too. Um we want to say congratulations and thank you to our ISD96 nutrition service department for their outstanding efforts in supporting students and families. It's a really big job to serve that many meals. All right, I'm moving on to elementary summer programming or what we call Camp Propel. At the elementary level, Camp Propel is our primary summer program. It's designed to provide targeted services that support student learning and growth. The program runs Monday through Thursday for two weeks in June, giving students focused opportunities to strengthen skills and stay engaged during the summer. For the second year in a row, elementary camp propel was scheduled at the same time as all other district summer programming, including secondary, to ensure that we could staff programs effectively and efficiently across all sites. For Camp Propel, this year, we had 2,172 students in grades 1 through 5 participating across nine different elementary sites. A handout has been provided with a breakdown of student demographics and individual school participation. Students work in classes of about 15 students and each site included an English language development or ELD specialist to support students with the most emerging English proficiency. Every year we conduct both a staff and a family survey to gather feedback and make appropriate recommendations for potential changes to programming. Highlights this year included the new instructional structure and the materials that were prepared. And then the time of year continues to be an area where we receive the most constructive feedback. um doing it earlier in the year is a big change for us. This is the second year we've done that. Um and that's something that we hear about. Talking about structural change, this year, Camp Propel shifted to a new structure that closely aligns with and leverages our district's assessment framework. Using data from FastBridge, we developed targeted instruction across programming to ensure students receive support in the areas where they need it most. What this looked like is the first half of each day was dedicated to small groupoup targeted instruction following a what I need or a win model um with a strong emphasis on building foundational skills. This closely models the win time that students and staff engage in during the course of the regular school year. In the second half of the day, students engaged in theme-based enrichment activities that culminated in a final project at the end of the nine-day program. This theme, this year's theme was mystery and mastery academy, which gave students opportunities to collaborate, problem solve, and create in engaging and meaningful ways. The theme will continue to rotate on a five-year cycle, ensuring fresh and exciting experiences for students each summer. So, there were puzzles and different kinds of u mystery pieces. Our science curriculum was revolved around discovering mysteries and things like that. And then the final end project was kind of a a makeup escape room for the students in their in their classrooms. So as we move forward, we'll continue to use our assessment framework and data to develop targeted instruction and to start reviewing our enrollment process. In addition to having EL or English language development teachers at each camp repel site, there are some additional summer programs for our multilingual learners that I want to uh touch base on here. Connections for Multilingual Learners is a K12 program focused on relationships, family engagement, and authentic language use where students are paired with a staff member for flexible meetups over the summer, plus two field trips. About 50 students participated with strong positive feedback from staff, students, and parents. And then lastly, the multilingual language academy. This is a secondary program for newcomeumber multilingual learners. So that would mean uh in the US one year or less beginning English 19 middle school and 30 high school newcomers attended receiving 14 days of instruction and high school participants could earn one social studies credit. So with that I'm going to hand it over to Brad Schaefer to talk about middle school and high school. Thank you Jeremy. It's my pleasure to to share with you some highlights from our summer program as it relates to middle school and high school students. Uh for middle school, all six middle schools host students for summer academy which begins in early June and is a three-week school experience for our incoming sixth, 7th, and eighth grade students. There you go. Middle school. Um, this past summer we had a total of 865 students participate in middle school summer academy, an increase of 90 students from the previous summer. Our incoming sixth graders make up over 50% of our students coming to middle school. We have found that having incoming sixth graders in our middle schools in the summer is especially beneficial for the students as they are learning a new building and a system very different than elementary school. One staff member shared, "Grade six students have the opportunity to see the middle school they are attending and experience some of the routines they might be involved in during the school year. In addition, our staff get a chance to meet incoming students and learn more about potential needs for the upcoming year. The school day is about four and a half hours. It is four and a half hours long and is structured like a typical middle school day where the morning consists of four class periods and students travel from class to class. Each period they attend classes like math, English, reading, but also get an opportunity to explore to see some exploratory classes such as art, technical education, physical education, including swimming in the swimming pool which is a highlight. Social emotional learning is also part of the student day. Schools have included middle school counselors in their summer staffing who teach various social skills and meet with students in small social groups. One other exciting program that uh that our middle schoolers um were in this this summer was business innova innovation academy. This year, District 196 had 58 7th and eighth grade students attend an exciting summer program with the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. It is titled Business Innovation Academy, and it is a week-long interactive hands-on summerday camp for rising seventh and eighth graders. The program strives to ignite a passion for learning and provides opportunities to explore higher education and careers in business. Students get to experience business firsthand from Carlson School professors and work together as teams to solve real business problems. Students are selected in partnership with our district's equity and inclusion department and our middle school counselors. There's a picture up here. There's actually a lot of great pictures that were provided uh that you can see that all the students at the Carlson School of Management. Moving on to high school. Two programs I highlight including 9th grade academy include 9th grade academy and credit recovery. Ninth grade academy much like middle school summer academy is a three-week program that focuses on providing students with academic learning in both language arts math but also helps better prepare them for entering high school in the fall. Students receive one high school credit for their participation in 9th grade academy. This year we had a total of 202 students participating across our four high schools compared to 147 students last summer. The second program, high school credit recovery, is geared toward upper classmen who earn high school course credit to keep them on pace toward graduation. This summer, our high schoolers uh our high schools enrolled a total of 770 students who collectively earned 1,854 high school course credits. Lastly, as a reference, I provided a handout that includes a summary of student participation in the programs that I referenced this evening. And that's the one with the orange on both sides. Thank you. Thank you. I'd like to introduce Jen York, who will speak to our special ed. >> Hi, I'm Jen York. In district 196, we also offer extended school year or ESY, summer learning opportunities. ESY is a specialized summer opportunity with a focus on goals and objectives specific to student specialized needs. I'll first speak about K12 ESY. The provided handout provides a breakdown of student participation in ESY. We know that the quality of our programming depends heavily on the staff that teach and it's been a challenge to staff ESY over the last several years. We're excited to share that the majority of our staff this year were internal and this is important because when we have staff that know the environment and needs of our students, this leads to a better overall learning experience. It's always our goal to have as many of our current teachers supporting ESY. In 2005, we updated our K12 structure to have elementary and secondary ESY run just over three weeks in June. Elementary ran two three-hour sessions per day and secondary ran a single 4-hour session. As a result, we were able to decrease the number of required teachers by 21 with 15 of those teachers being from elementary and we needed six fewer external license staff overall. Additionally, we were able to reduce the number of paras by six 56 fewer from elementary and three less from secondary instruction and ESY addresses literacy, math, social emotional learning and a focus on the goals under which the students qualify for ESY. Not only did the structure shift result in a reduction in staffing numbers, it had an impact on physical spaces. In our special education programs, the learning environment is one of four quality indicator areas. As our students in these programs rely on a high degree of support and structure provided by the physical space, structure and organization of the learning environment directly impacts our special ed students ability to safely and consistently engage in learning. In the past, we relied on the use of many general education classrooms in our elementary buildings, which often could not provide the needed sensory and regulation spaces or access to common materials and resources often needed to provide adequate support. In 2005, we were able to support far more of our ESY classrooms in special education classrooms or center-based rooms. Additionally, we further expanded the curriculum supports offered during ESY. Last year, we made a big investment in our special education curriculum, Teachtown Encore, and we developed tools and materials that supported the implementation of this curriculum during ESY. This included curated and structuring materials in a way that fit the structure of our ESY program by providing example schedules, daily lesson overviews and materials, and providing resources for enriching aligned craft and snack activities. On the screen, you'll see an example of a daily lesson overview and the accessible Junth craft that went with that daily lesson, as well as a couple teacher comments from a teacher survey. The structure shifts and supports offered this year not only contributed to a more responsible use of resources, but it resulted in a positive increase in teacher and parent satisfaction data. You can see some teacher responses on the best thing about ESY and a graph of teacher and parer report of ESY being a positive experience over the last several years. This in turn results in increasing the likelihood of our own experienced staff members returning to work ESY and supporting quality programming to meet our special educ our special education requirements of supporting the needs of our ESY eligible students. We also have extended school year at Early Childhood Special Education, Dakota Ridge, and our transition program, Transition Plus. The structure of summer programming at these sites was similar to these programs from previous years. You can see the participation numbers from these sites noted on the slide. On this slide, you'll also see a picture from ESY at Transition Plus. Their students goals center around independent living, employment, or post-secary education and training. This photo shows transition plus students working on an assembly line in our on-site shop during ESY. Through this project, students are practicing essential employment skills, including stamina, verbal communication in the workplace, attention to detail, task completion, quality control, and much more. The project involves packing an order of 1,000 hygiene kits to be distributed to our district's secondary sites this fall. Students began the work during ESY and are completing it this month. Once the kits are packed, students will store them in four different types and ensure secondary sites receive a supply. This partnership is a part of the McKenna Vento grant spotlighting one of the various hands-on activities students engaged in this summer. Additionally, Dakota United We Fly summer camp went extremely well this summer and was attended by many student athletes and alumni of the Dakota United Hawks. On the screen, you will see pictures of the camp at Hope Fieldhouse. This summer, there were three weeks of camp where students played many different games and activities while learning important lessons on improving teamwork, community, and strategies in game play. This past year, the Dakota United Hawks won another three state three state titles, including our first soccer state title in over 10 years, followed up by two adapted softball repeat championships on the CI and PI teams. CI won back-to-back championships and PI won their fifth consecutive championship, including the continuation of an incredible 61game winning streak dating back to the 2018 season. We are grateful for the district's continued support to this program and these student athletes in District 196. Next, we'll hear from Marica about summer programming through community ed. Hi there. I'm Marissa Schro. I'm the youth services coordinator at community education and I'm thrilled to be presenting with you tonight. This summer, community education programs were buzzing with activity and engagement. Overall, participation was up again. While our youth enrichment program saw a small dip, our adult programs grew significantly, something that we don't typically see. Early childhood family education programs also grew. In July, we offered 11 classes serving 20 more families and 30 more children than last year. Families joined free babies classes and sessions for parents of one and two year olds. Topic classes like fostering a play-based childhood, setting limits with confidence, and conscious discipline were offered. Youth programs remain a cornerstone. This summer, we offered 726 courses serving more than 11,200 students. Favorites like Camp Invention, theater, STEM, and sports remained strong. And we also saw new interest in culinary arts, money explorers, and crime scene investigation. One parent of a child in the Money Explorers shared, "My son really enjoyed this class. He normally doesn't like anything related to math, but he thought the class was interesting, and the teacher was fantastic. He was quite sad at the end of the week when the class was over. Aquatics programs continue to thrive. Swim lessons held steady with 1,315 enrollments. Certification courses grew to 75 participants, up from 49 last year. Adult fitness also grew, serving 105 participants, and Open Swim expanded to over 130 community members. Adult basic education remains a vital pathway for learning and advancement and served our highest number ever of summer learners. This summer, 409 students participated in English language, GED, and 21 plus diploma programs. This is up from 43 students from last year. Among younger learners, 68 students under the age of 21 earned 114 credits compared to 84 students earning 168 credits last year. While fewer under 21 students participates, this reflects the success of our high schools in helping students graduate on time and a reduced need for credit recovery following the pandemic years. River Project River Valley Project Explore. Our program for adults with disabilities remained steady at 58 courses but saw growth in enrollment up from 70 up 70 from last summer. Courses included bowling, dancing, swimming, mini golf, and day trips with popular highlights such as the Minnesota Vikings TCO Center Tour, Lake Minnetonka Boat Cruise, and Minnesota Twins and St. Paul Saints games. Adult enrichment also saw strong growth, expanding from 86 courses last year to 111 this year with enrollments increasing by over 200 from last summer. Classes such as fuse glass art, tennis, golf, and yoga at Birch Pond provided adults with opportunities to learn new skills and be build community and community connections in third spaces. Finally, community use of district facilities continues to play a central role in our service. This summer, facilities supported 9,500 hours of community rentals, nearly 900 more than last year. That equals 395 full days of con full days of use condensed into just 80 calendar days. When combined with community education and K12 summer programming, our facilities supported nearly 60,000 hours of activity, equivalent to 2,450 days of use in less than 3 months. All while many sites were under construction or undergoing planned maintenance. Some testimonials about our summer programs from participant surveys from ECF's conscious discipline class. One parent shared, "I can honestly say I'm a much better parent because of ECFB. The program has helped me become more reflective, patient, and intentional on how I engage with my children. I've recommended ECF to other parents and truly believe it should be accessible to all families across the country. The long-term benefits of raising emotionally intelligent, welladjusted children have a ripple effect, not just within families, but across society. I sincerely wish programs like this were more widely supported and recognized as an investment in our collective future. And from a Rubik's Cubing CL camp, our 10-year-old had the best time. I was apprehensive about how cubing camp would keep his attention for four days in a row, but he left each day so excited to come back ne the next day. He raved about the instructors helping and the instructor's help and encouragement. He enthusiastically practiced at home all nights and gained lots of confidence in his ability to solve different cube puzzles. He wanted to know if there's another cub cubing camp this summer. 100% worth the drive. Altogether, these programs demonstrate the impact of community education across every stage of life. Whether it's supporting new parents, advancing academic goals, fostering inclusion, sparking new interests, promoting wellness, or providing spaces for the community to come together. These efforts also direct directly support the district's strategic priorities of well-being, achievement, equity, and resources, and support our mission of educating, developing, and inspiring our students for lifelong success. I'll now pass it on to Janet for the summary of our summer programs. I'm going to go ahead and read the summary. All right. So, in review, um, strengths of our summer programming, as you noticed, we had a larger variety of engagement and opportunities for students. Good turnout of internal staff teaching and attendance was good. And as you know, it's a district priority opportunities. We have a responsibility too of continuous improvement and will be looking more deeply at how the summer offerings impacted student learning. Enhance opportunities for direct instruction and explicit instruction on identified need areas. Ensure the data we are collecting is giving us the information needed to monitor and adjust based on student data. And then next steps, review current programming, timing, structure, etc. Consider necessary modifications and continue to monitor the impact of the new unemployment requirements. We had a successful summer of learning and fun for our students this summer. Thank you for your time and we'll open it up for any questions. >> Excellent. Thank you very much. At this time, are there any questions or comments from the audience? Seeing none, questions or comments from board members. Robin, >> um I have a question. Uh first off, I just want to say way to go community ed. Um the numbers are amazing. But one of the questions I had for you is one of the comment about the Rubik's Cube class indicated they were driving from Prior Lake. So do we know how many students being served by those camps and classes are within district and out of district? >> Oh. We were just looking at that data not too long ago here and it's a very high percentage that are our own um families. I would say it's a small percent probably around 5% that are outside. >> Yeah. I just think it's great that we're drawing students from other districts for our offering. So, thank you for that. And then the other question I have um I've been trying to figure out how to word it because I'm not quite sure it makes sense. Um and it's not regarding community ed um but it's just about the percentage of students we had in our high school credit recovery as along with the middle school credit recovery. Um so if we look at our attendance rates and our graduation rates typically those numbers show higher percentages of white students as compared to other ethnicities are participating. When we look at the numbers that were given here that are broken down by demographics in our credit recovery programs for both middle school and high school or middle school programming and then the high school programming, we show that those percentages are sort of tracking at the same level. A higher percentage with white students and then it kind of decreases with other demographic groups. Um my question is um are we since we're working to create an equal opportunity for all of our students, is there a focus on who we're inviting or how we're inviting students to participate in these so we can create a more level percentage. Does that make sense? >> Yeah, I it's a it's a great question. So um first of all, you know, we use criteria to invite our students in. So for the high school um students who are deficient in credits um we want to invite in um and that's part of that personal connection and family involvement in terms of reaching out and and explicitly inviting we invite in the students language to make sure that there it's accessible and so um but we continue to monitor those numbers. You know we said that the numbers went up for middle school participation this year. Um we believe that the need is always there. It's the accessibility of of coming in being in um an environment that's welcoming and and uh respectful and um gone are the days that we just focus on math and reading in middle school and we're offering other opportunities for students to engage uh in the building uh that they'll attend. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Soden. >> Well, Robin actually asked uh the question I wanted to ask, but I will just follow up with the comment. Just wanted to say thank you for staff uh putting together uh a good excellent summer programs. I always like to get uh feedback after our programs or the school year closes and the graduations things like that just to see it what wonderful work that we do right so one question that I had was pretty much how well I'm going to frame it differently is related to the credit recovery right how successful have are we to basically reach out to students and enroll in them um all the students that need created recovery. So because for example we had 770 something like that right is it only and I should have known this but I'm just asking that is it only students that need creatives to be recovered that can only participate for the summer programs right and then did we have all the students that needed for credit recovery did we get them all or there's still few that we're missing >> either whatever the reason might Yeah. So to answer your first question, it is a credit recovery program. So students that are deficient in credits are the ones that are targeted for this um the summer program um at the high school level. Um did we miss kids? I don't I I would venture to say yes, we compete with students who are working um who have have other commitments um and that is that runs the gamut of reasons. Um but certainly it's intentional about getting students back on track to where we need them to be when they start the fall or to graduate during that summer. >> Okay. And finally, what has the experience been for teachers? I mean, what feedback are we getting from the teachers on summer pro uh on summer programs? Thank you. >> So, I'll let Mr. Schaefer answer, but the middle school teachers are saying they get acclimated and learn and understand who the students are. Um, they get uh engage with students prior to the school year, so those relationships are are developed. So, that those are good things. Same thing at the high school. So, we have our high school staff uh who work in the fall um as as teachers of your typical school day who are able to um you know strike up a relationship and develop relationships with those students early on. So, I don't is there other things to add to that. Red u I would say we haven't formally surveyed the teachers especially in the middle school as to um their experiences at middle school. I will say that um I think the volunteers, the ones that do volunteer to teach, are especially grateful and they love to come in and meet the kids and see the kids. I talked a lot about the sixth grade programs and it's nothing better than seeing the sixth graders come in to see a new school. The great thing we have though is that our teachers and I I I venture to say it's 100% but in all of our six middle schools if we have 57 teachers I think hired this summer I believe almost 100% came from that those middle schools. So we're not getting licensed teachers from other districts to come and teach our kids. We're getting kids teachers from our middle school to teach our middle school kids and and uh and that's the great benefit and and that might be the tellt tale of of their experience and how much they love to be coming in and meeting with our kids. >> Good job. Thank you, >> Katherine. Go ahead. So there's um there's a theme to our questions that we're asking here, but um I love the numbers and seeing all this, but what I don't understand um from just what was given is if we are um like tracking the population, so do the numbers of kids who are enrolled, I'm looking at specifically like beyond just uh credit recovery, but like the Propel and the Summer Academy Um, do the do the demographics of the students who are attending the summer programs match the demographics of the student population? >> So, I think that's a great question. I think that's part of the data that we're missing. I think that's what we can provide to you to make sure we can match it up and look at that. That's a fantastic question. >> Great. Um, and >> can I add to the elementary too? There's there's um it gets really complicated because we have a number one we're looking at the how we invite students using our new assessment framework. Um and then about half the students that we invite come um for one reason or another. Uh families are either gone during that time or those kinds of things. So we have to look at the whole pool of who who we invite and then who's coming. So we'd have to break that out a little bit. But we do have that information if that makes sense. >> Yeah. And then um who do you invite? So, it's it's targeted services. So, there's criteria around academics. And I think with our fast bridge, that's something that when I talked about, we'll review our enrollment for elementary because we're finding that we are inviting some students that are um doing well academically. Um and and then so we want to really find the students that need it so we can focus all of our resources and energy on that. Um but we are inviting students who are um at risk in terms of language arts, math, and those kinds of things at the elementary level. And is that this sorry is that the same for middle school the summer academy that it's a a focused group that we invite? >> Uh yes I can answer that. Um over the years uh we have a set of criteria that involves for the most part assessment scores that range from MAP scores to MCA scores to to BAS scores back to um some assessments that are no longer around. So, we've tweaked those over the years and we've set percentiles across the six middle schools as to who uh we would start with inviting. So, and that would come down to um like I say the percentiles MCA or does not meet or partially meet in an MCA math or an MCA reading. That's an example of the several data points that we'll look at. When you take all those data points and you find the students that are uh by definition should be targeted. This is targeted services. We come up with a quite a few students and then we have to sift a little bit because an assessment score doesn't always mean that they're at risk and so sometimes we have to shift a little bit and some students might not assess well but their grades are really good and that may not be the student we're trying to get to. So with that said, we invite a lot of students and the response is what you see in terms of the demographics. Um um the the good question is how many um I would say going back to um what in what do the invitations look like is a good question. How many students, white students comparatively are invited? I can tell you who came. I can't tell you exactly. I may not have that data as to who who was invited, but that would be an interesting data point too. Yeah, that would be super interesting. And then be able to work with communities to see how do we get more kids from different communities to to attend. That's great. Thank you, Y, >> Hannah. >> So, sorry. So, I have a question. Um, you know, as I think about there's the academic piece and then I think about the social piece. Um, so asking for a friend. Uh let's say there's a student who performs well academically, tests okay um and is is performing well academically but the social aspect might be missing. And so how does that particular student how does that particular does that particular student would miss out on that opportunity uh for a summer program? >> Not necessarily. um we can have individual conversations about student need and some things sometimes things like that surface they surface from a phone call with a parent they surface from a counselor at the school and so not necessarily would they be um not invited or not included >> okay >> um and you know I'm thinking about our middle schools right now too our counselors work um uh at our middle schools and help support um the social emotional learning piece too so it's another thing that's added again you go back 15 years ago it was just a two-hour block of reading 2-hour block of math that's not >> that's not great engagement Uh but adding that piece to it, uh the social emotional piece, um some movement, um orientation of the school, working on the lockers, things like that is something that engages students and working on math and reading. >> So if they had an IEP, that would also help as well. >> Yep. Absolutely. Yep. >> Okay. Thank you, Jackie. >> I'm looking back at you some program um panel that you had up with the strengths, the opportunities, and the next steps and you guys could have done four or five more panels in this realm of what is good that's going on in here. When we talk I love it that we're talking about the win model, what I need and using our assessment data. That's huge because we know who the students are coming in. we know where they can where we can move them from here to here and we have that assessment data to help us. Um Brad, I'd like to talk to you sometime about can we get more than 10 kids from each middle school to go to that Carlson school camp because what an awesome opportunity. I had the privilege of getting to talk to a parent that had a student in that and they were just over the moon. And so someday we don't have to do it now, but someday let's talk about what is the what is it that's holding us back from having 20 kids from every school go there. Um the special ed piece is just perfect as we talk about all of those. What are we doing? What are what are assessment pieces? and then using that ESY for for that just and getting giving us a real sense of what that looks like and what it is with having those curriculum model pieces in there so we can actually see what it is that they're doing and what the teachers are using. Speaking of teachers, I could go back from the beginning and really thank our our teachers for staying and coming and working with our students and giving our students a leg up. So, I'd like to thank all the teachers that do this and community ed. Oh, you've always impact everybody's lives. So, that's that's amazing. You know, let's let's pack more kids in a building and and let's have more bu more more things going on than anybody can. But how how wonderful. Um, the question that I was going to ask is does it look like this I I know you're still in the recovery mode and and what is this going to look like next year and what are we going to what do you see anything right now that I will a calendar look different for next year? Do you see any things that we're go we would be looking at doing differently? >> And maybe that's a question for later on down the road. >> We still are having discussions about this but this is something that we'll have to decide soon. you know, the the legislation hasn't changed, so having it in the front end of the year so that we can offer the appropriate hours and things like that is is is what it looks like right now. >> But in terms of structure, we're going to continue to use our assessments and continue to this is the first year we've done it that way. So, that piece will stay similar >> and that piece is phenomenal because now you actually are moving kids up the moving their needs with their needs. So, thank you so much. >> Other questions or comments? Right. I'd say the other layer to that is teacher feedback as they like it earlier. So if we want our teachers in front of our own kids, I think that's important. Um and just to echo I think Ken you had asked about um teacher satisfaction. I just give kudos to those that are setting up summer programming. It's a heavy lift lift for a short amount of time and the more supports we can have in front of teachers readily available the happier they'll be and the more likely they'll come back. So, I think that's a huge layer to it as well. And my apologies at the end. I didn't have my glasses and didn't think I should wear Jeremy's to read my portion. So, sorry about that. >> You could have worn mine. >> Thank you so much. All right. Next on the agenda, I would like to welcome Janet Switchikowski to the podium to go over our employee experience survey results. So much feedback paper. I got Oh, yeah. >> Good evening, Chair Johnson, members of the board, Superintendent Palsone. I'm pleased to be here tonight uh to publicly share the results of our comprehensive employee experience survey that the district conducted in April of 2025. We believe this is the first time in many years that the district has done a comprehensive employee experience survey, inviting all employee groups to share their experience and their challenges in working with district 196. By way of background, all employees uh I'm sorry, by way of background, the employee survey was conducted in a two-week period in April of 2025. All district employees were invited to participate in the online Qualric survey. And using proper survey administration protocols, employees received at least three notifications via email or text and posters were put up with QR codes in all areas for employees that don't regularly access email or computer. We were pleased that we had about a 70% partition participation rate with a um almost about 3,000 survey responses representing all employee groups in the district. not keeping up with my build here. We also took great care to protect anonymity and in order to solicit open and honest responses. So there is no way that employees could be identified individually in the data. Tools in Qualric also protected the data from ballot stuffing or multiple responses from one employee. To protect anonymity, only two questions were required on the survey. The rest were optional. Work site and employee group were the two required questions. Smaller employee groups such as CFAs, nurses or school principles even were consolidated into larger groups of licensed or non-licensed staff. We were interested in race and ethnicity demographic questions particularly as they might represent a different experience. So demographic questions were optional at the end of the survey. again to protect confidentiality and anonymity in drafting the questions. The questions related to the district's daily desired experiences and our strategic framework and core values. We often also included a few questions from national and state employee engagement surveys so that we would have reliable and credible benchmarks to compare our organization. On each of the comparable measures, district 196 exceeded state and national workplace averages. Likewise, when compared to top K12 workplaces in Minnesota, district 196 met or exceeded the top benchmarks on all but one question, and we'll get to that question later. So, let's dig into some of the results. Overall, District 196 employees are highly engaged, find joy in their jobs, and believe this is a great place to work. This should come as no surprise. In 2023, District 196 was recognized by Forbes magazine as a top workplace. And we know that we enjoy strong employee selection and retention strategies to attract the very best teachers to work with staff to work with our students. 93% are proud to work in district 196. 91% would recommend our schools uh to families with children. 90% find joy in their jobs and 80% or more believe that we live by our core values. Let's dig deeper into those core values. There's a lot of information on this slide. Uh but generally red is not in agreement and green is in agreement. Uh so the left side is the red and orange and then the middle is yellow which is agreement and green is strongly agree for student centered our core value of being student centered 89% of our employees believe we live this value on empathy 86% on employee wellness 79% integrity 84% achievement ment 89% collaboration 83% sense of community and commitment to community 87% and our value of lifelong learning is held by 86%. Other highlights of the employee survey and I won't have every question on the survey tonight. This is an a highle overview. It was an extensive survey, but other highlights, some of the top uh 97% of our employees stated, "In my building, staff demonstrate care for students." 98% believe they have a strong sense of responsibility for student learning and growth and development among the in that uh question was narrowed to instructional staff only. 86% of our schools believe that our schools communicate to students high expectations for student learning and achievement. 88% believe our organization values equity and inclusion. And 79% believe the district is going in the right direction. I wanted to mention that on that right direction question, which is much higher than most workplace averages, if people said they did not believe we were headed in the right direction, they got an additional open-ended question asking where um the concerns were and were able to go through that data at a more in more depth. Areas for growth on the employee survey include showing appreciation for employees at work, which was um supported or agreed to by 73%, and providing opportunities for input and getting feedback, which was at 74%. Only 63% of our employees feel well informed about decisions in the district. a ne a district uh metro K12 average for that question is at 59%. So although we're above the metro area, we've got room to grow. The next couple questions aligned with our MTSS framework and some of the data and assessments that building levels do. It also aligns with our um strategic roadmap. One of the questions, our school's leadership team provides a unified vision for continuous improvement is at 73%. And of course, we know that vision is critical for continuous improvement and being aligned with the district. Our organization values equity and inclusion. This was at 88% for the overall population, but when we disagregated for uh staff of color, it dropped to 77% representing a different perspective and different point of view that we'll need some additional strategies. Of course, you're aware that one of our strategic priorities is in equity and inclusion and in hiring um and staff as well. Um, so that is an area that we've got action teams currently working on. And one of the questions that we don't know is whether that rate is higher or lower than years prior. Uh, because this year is baseline data for us. We'll conduct another survey in April to uh determine if there's been any change. We also asked open-ended questions. What do people like most about working here? and what are some of the greatest challenges? And we want our staff to know that we have heard the challenges um and they align with some of the listening sessions and school visits and feedback that we got through other um advisory groups and working with our bargaining leaders as well. Uh we know that there was a very heavy lift at the elementary school with the number of curricular changes last year and that came through very loud. One of the examples was sometimes the decisions made at the district directly impact our classroom and maybe we didn't have input or consideration of how that actually gets implemented in the classroom. They do feel like the decisions are made with good intention but may not be working out in our school day. And another couple summarized would say elementary curriculum changes and just the sheer amount of change We asked our employees if they would recommend working in district 196 and overwhelmingly that answer is yes at 88%. Some of the um comments that followed that um include this one and I'm going to couldn't fit the full comment on the slide but I would certainly like to read it. it is. I love the community and the joyfilled interactions that I have with students daily. I also love how the district gives a wide variety of learning and extracurricular activities so students are able to walk away with life experience they would not have otherwise had. So in conclusion, I think our employees find great meaning and purpose in their work. At this point, all site supervisors and groups have been received a copy of their site report to inform their goals for this coming year. At the districtwide, we will be focusing on internal communications and employee appreciation. And as I stated, we will run another survey in April of 2026. And with that, I would entertain any questions. >> Thank you very much. At this at this time, are there any questions or comments from the audience? >> Seeing none, questions or comments from the board. >> I have one question. Got it. >> Um I think you covered this, but I might have missed it as you were saying it. On slide six, when we're talking about areas for growth, you had mentioned that our organization values equity and inclusion had an 88% um approval rating. Um, I don't know if I'm using the right terms there, but that when we disagregated the data, it dropped to 77% among our staff of color. Is that one of those questions where if they rated us low, they had an open-ended question that and then are we following up on those answers if we did? That was not a question that had a specific open-ended. Uh, but there are over 4,000 open-ended comments in the survey itself. So, we do have the ability to disagregate the data. um based on specific equity priorities, specific core values that a team might look at and then dig into open-ended comments that might give some insight. >> Thank you. >> Excellent. >> Yes. Um I think this is really very informative. Uh this plus the community survey that we did I believe what three four months ago they have a lot of similarities. For one, uh it's good to know the experience of our staff and I like the fact that most of those numbers are you know although we don't have a baseline and we would love to have 100% but never happens 100% right usually. So, uh, I wanted to see for the most of the experiences that we looked at were all 90, you know, like find the joy and recommended school district, proud to work here and, you know, leave our values. How many of the um, do we know in the demographics what the percentage were? How many of our staff leave in the district? We >> did we did we collect that? >> I'm certain we could pull that data. I do not have that data. >> Okay. >> But that is something that we could look into. >> Yeah. I mean if if it was collected that's good. I'm just kind of curious to see uh we will have some sort of similarities as part of the community and that's you know where the interest is. And then the other thing also is that with the we leave our values I think there was like eight areas uh I mean eight values most of them indicate 80% and out except one was 79% and now I looked at the conclusion of the uh results that we even picking out and looking at uh what can we do internally and I'm happy the district has already come up what to do does it relate to employee appreciation. I mean that's going to be the effects I know in the internal communication. Would that help some of this low numbers to kind of come up to 80 or above? >> Workplace well-being is and wellness is multiaceted. >> Um and so certainly knowing that you're appreciated for your efforts is a key component. So appreciation is one question that would lead to it. uh our strategic priority, our strategic roadmap I believe has a workplace well-being as learning work uh this year. >> So that all of this data will feed into that. >> Thank you. Other questions or comments from the board? Jackie, >> um getting at what Sakoden was talking about, I think we do still do exit interviews for our um people who leave the district, teachers who leave the district. So we would have that information to help inform workplace satisfaction things too. So there that could be thrown in. >> Yes, we do. >> I'm sure that is >> Yes, we do still do the exit survey. >> Excellent. >> Other questions or comments? >> Um just a clarification question off of what Jackie said. Do we do exit interviews for people who just transfer to a different position within the district? Even if they're not leaving, but they're leaving a certain role and moving to another role. Do we ask if they would like one? I don't believe so, but in a future report, we do have a human resources report coming forward, and I'm sure that Joel would be able to address that at that time. >> Thank you. >> Great. Um, only thing I wanted to specifically mention in the data is I've I do a lot of similar reports and I really wanted to call out that 70% participation rate is actually really high. It's fantastic, especially considering our employees might not be in front of a computer all day. In fact, I don't know many of them are. Um, and to still get a really high participation rate like that is excellent, especially for the first survey. I think it really calls to the need and I'm glad that we started doing this. So, thank you. Awesome. All right. Well, Janet, you get to stay up here for our communications report. >> I do. Thank you, Chair Johnson, members of the board, Superintendent Falsami. As I present our district communications report, um I want to give a shout out to so many people, but I'll just name a few at the start. Um and that is our communications team. Ally Garin, our communications coordinator. Jennity Canino, our multilingual specialist. Cliff Dodge, who is hiding in the back, our multilingual our multimedia specialist. Andrea Egan and Anne Flynn, our CL events and clerical support. And Quinn Cobb and all of our partners in technology um because you will hear a lot about technology today. Um so the this is the compilation of implementation of our district's communication plan that was shared with you last November. Um we've implemented a number of major changes over the last year and I won't have time to highlight all of the work tonight. We'll just be focusing on three areas. But there is a team that works behind the scenes to highlight the boundless opportunities available to students and support our schools in communicating their with their um constituents as well. So tonight I'll think speak about those three key priorities. Um but please know that it's only scratching the surface. Our communications goals, there are six of them in the communications plan. Um and they are listed on the screen. to inspire infinite possibilities. Um to build understanding and support for our district's mission, vision, and values, and to maintain high levels of community support for the school district and its initiatives. Next, to promote a reputation of excellence. Our our teachers and our students and our staff are doing amazing work every day and there is a story to be told. And so we certainly want to promote that and empower our employees and district partners to tell their stories as well. Next, to ensure effective communication practices. Most of what I talk about tonight will fall under effective communications practices and positive customer experiences as we work to elevate the daily desired experiences both of our employees and our families and our students. And finally, to position the district as a district of choice for family and staff who value excellence in education. And based on the last report, there's a lot to share there as well. Our strategic our district communications plan aligns with our strategic roadmap. Um we really believe that it is our um mission uh to make sure that everyone else understands the mission, the vision, the core values and our strategic priorities. So our communication supports well-being, achievement, equity, and resources. We believe that in public schools, communications is everyone's responsibility. It is not just a few people at district office. Um, so we have been working over the last year to build capacity to provide better tools to make it easier for everyone to communicate with families, with students, with staff, and with our community and share the outstanding experiences that are happening in our schools every day. Tonight's focus will focus on three areas: communication systems, multilingual strategies, and what I'll call storytelling channels. uh a favorite social media. Um in our stand in our communication systems, we had three priorities for last year. Um one was updating our mass uh notification system, updating our board doc system, updating websites, and updating uh and standardizing some newsletter tools and and general communications tools. Also enhancing two-way communication strategies, the implementation of the two surveys. um that account mentioned and we'll be doing another survey of families this uh November or this fall and then establishing systems so that we can support school communications with more templates and toolkits and readily available uh materials so that teachers and administrators and school leaders can focus on students uh a little bit more and less with some of the processes behind it. As I said, for our communication systems, we replaced our board docs or board book and uh that is now on our website which is more easily searchable and accessible for people that want our board materials. Secondly, we implemented a new always on chatbot and I'll give you some data in that in just a minute that is on the bottom right hand corner of our website and allows people to just ask questions that they'll get an answer to and it is a multilingual communications tool. Um so if a question is um entered in Spanish or Somali or a different language it will reply in the language that has been entered. Um parent square is the biggest lift that we have this year. Um many people have commented on the number of apps that we um ask uh families to use in the district. and we were sitting down with an elementary school and on assessment days we asked parents to go through six different apps. That is fewer than maybe we've had in the past believe it or not. Um we are working to consolidate some of those. Parent Square will replace school messenger talking points class dojo and hopefully eventually signup genius. Um, so those are all tools that one tool now will replace. We are also promoting and continuing to ask parents to download the campus parent portal app. And this year we have moves moved attendance reporting and absent reporting onto the parent portal app, the campus portal app. uh so that we no longer have to download and do data entry on attendances and we are streamlining that process. That was a heavy lift by our tech office and um our secondary and elementary um administration and school offices. So we are encouraging parents to make sure you have the parent square app and the campus parent portal app. And then we are also standardizing again um some of the newsletter tools and eliminating some of the old tools. Our website u multilingual chatbot uh this year fielded since February it was started on February 1st has fielded 24,614 questions and has been able to answer 99% of those questions. When an answer is not available, there is an email opportunity that you can put your question in and our office responds the following day. That has also looking at the questions, we have had the opportunity to train our bot uh in better responses. We've also integrated more tools. So where our search on our website might read our website, our bot will now read the athletic websites, the calendars on the websites and our websites. So it's pulling from multiple sources and we can add more as we need to. Um it has also given us great insight into uh being proactive with our communication strategies because we see very early when people start asking questions. So they started asking about homecoming in August and we want to make sure the homecoming information is on the website. uh they started asking about back to school in June and uh Ally was able to build a fabulous back- to-school series uh that then we pushed out through parent square to anticipate some of those. So we're able to be much more proactive looking at the data that is coming in from the bot. Next I want to address our language access. Um we have uh some key language access tools. We provide interpretation services in person and we have phone interpretation and video interpretation and we are working to make sure that all of our staff know how to use those. So um we provided this year um these little booklets um to all of our staff that outline how they can use Propio uh phone interpretation and video interpretation. And we're following up right before parent teacher conferences. We'll be offering a a Zoom training on that video interpretation for teachers that haven't used it before but might want that tool uh when parents come in that don't speak English. But most importantly, we're telling our staff and in this booklet as well, we're telling our staff that parent square is our first multilingual communications tool. Uh parents can indicate their language, their preferred language and if they direct message a teacher or staff member in their preferred language, that teacher will receive in their inbox, their outlook inbox, that translated message in English. So this the teacher can respond, they can go in then and respond to the message in parent square. And when the parent receives the message, it is translated back to their native language. So that two-way communication um is really critical for us. parent square by the number so far we have 33 uh over 33,000 family contacts more than 45 um 100 staff contacts uh 30,496 student contacts that includes our prek and our ECF uh so that number is larger than our regular K12 enrollment and most excitingly and this is a credit to every school office and our tech team. We are 99.6% contactable for parents that we have a contact that is working for those parents families. Our roll out of parent square it is a very robust system. So, as we're meeting with teachers that are very excited, my mantra these days is we will walk before we run and we will run before we try to get the gold medal. >> So, this is a big program that has lots of opportunities. There's lots of online training available so teachers can take it at their own pace. But at this point, we are just teaching the basics of how to do basic posts and how to do basic direct messaging. So, there can be that two-way uh conversation. We started back in April with the technology data integration and getting our systems to talk to each other pulling from campus looking at how it interacts with schooly and seesaw and campus and skyward. Um it has been a heavy lift on getting data to talk to each other and we are just about there. Our communications team began learning the communications components and building templates so all of our schools could start the school year with a new uh basic newsletter template that was easy to read and digestible. Um, we also leaned heavily on our partners in the English language development program, our swell coaches, uh, our schoolwide English language initiative coaches, our, uh, digital resource teachers, our equity team, our CFAs, our school principles and school office staff were all trained on this system uh, before August um, and have continued to learn. moving out our nutrition services is fully adopting it. Um we have begun using it with transportation um which worked very well these first couple days when we had to change some routes. Um and we will continue to teach teachers. We have told teachers that they don't need to change something that is working for them right now. So in year one if they are communicating well through schooly they're going to keep communicating well through schooly. and when parents email them or text them, they will receive any parent square communication in their inbox. Um, we will continue also to work with coaches. Um, one of our high schools uh offered three training sessions for our coaches so that we can get coaches off of group me or personal group chats or things like that. Uh, and we have great the coaches were so excited about it at that school. they um told the principal, "We need to train all staff um right away in August." So, they're really flying on adoption. We have a number of our schools that are very doing very well. Um we're also now we invited parents and introduced it to parents in July. We're continuing to send those invitations to parents uh to engage, to download the app, to make sure their contact information is available through multiple means, posters, connection days, conferences, and individual outreach. Our uh cultural family advocates have been amazing uh at understanding and learning the system and reaching out to individual families and uh groups as well. Um finally in grades 91 12 we are also rolling out to students and that is student square that will allow our clubs and co-curriculars and activities to come into one platform. So it is a big project and a heavy lift. I would anticipate it may take three years to get all teams and all coaches um onto the system. When parents are on Parent Square, they will find one central tool, quick translations, two-way communication, and they can choose whether they want to receive text, email, or app notifications. We always have the ability in an emergency to override those choices as well. I'm going to shift gears now into some of our storytelling. Uh we know that social media is continues to be a primary source of information whether we love it or hate it. It is a primary source of information for many people. Um so we put an intensive effort uh into our social media activities uh over really we kicked off our social media plan in about January. Um and Facebook we have gained a large number of new following followers about 5% increase but even more important than the followers is that um we have had more than 77,000 visitors to our um page to our accounts um more than 37,000 uh content interactions where they're sharing or commenting or liking and in the month of August alone we had more than 600 100,000 views of Facebook content. Um, so we really feel like we're making inroads in connecting people where they are. Um, also on Instagram is a growing channel for us. Uh, and we've got about 10,500 content interactions. This is growing uh as different uh generations come through the system. Um but we have had again about 800 plus new followers over the last year. Uh 8,000 plus visitors um to our page and our content channels are very strong. What you see on the um images right now are the different interactions that have our our most popular posts. and day one um across the district has uh gotten more uh attention and likes and excitement uh than the video that we had on from day one um reached more than 10,000 people uh by itself. Um so we were very proud there. I also want to talk about our multimedia storytelling because we are really working to integrate all of our channels um and not have silos or isolation. And uh this multimedia story uh that Cliff put together, I wanted to share because his videos uh and the videos that we put out on our channel channels give people a look into our schools when they probably haven't been in a classroom in a number of years. So I'm going to ask Cliff if um in the background of the story um what we wanted to communicate in this story was this is host our health occupation services students and the future of the profession of health um and what does the future look like and I was amazed and shocked with some of the robotics uh and high-tech equipment as we are preparing students for high-tech careers. Can we go ahead and play please? >> I want to do interventional cardiology in my future. The reason that I think HOSA helps with that is not only can you build connections and build skills that can help you get an entry- level job into medicine, but you can also have fun and win awards and compete for your school and even your state. It's also really good to be around other students who share the same interest in medicine and you're really able to build ties with people who want the same thing as you do to help other people for a career. So, we often say that when we talk about our technology levy, um technology is about more than one-to-one devices. Um as we're looking to prepare students for high-tech careers, the equipment in their classrooms needs to be what they will see in the workforce. Um and health care is an increasingly technologydriven um area. and you'll see another one in a few minutes in the area of CTE as well. So with this story, uh Cliff had gone out one day um to talk to our HOSA students. He sent me a transcript and from that transcript we were able to write a story. Chat GPT helped us write a story, convert the transcript into a story, which also converted into six different social media posts, and we are now spreading those words all over with a much smaller amount of time than we could have ever done 10 years ago because there are greater efficiencies coming in every day. And with that, I would entertain any questions. >> Thank you. At this time, are there any questions or comments from the audience? Seeing none, questions or comments from the board? Uh, no. Leah gets to go first this time. >> Uh, so back to um when you were sharing about parent square. >> Yes. >> Try to get back to the slide, but um you had >> Yeah. the the numbers on that 99.6% contactable. Can you explain a little bit what that data point means versus >> registered using, you know, kind of I guess other things that I'm that I'm thinking about that I'm not sure are the same. >> Thank you. Um that is that we have an a working email address or cell phone number per student in our con in our notification system. So, we have at least one working email address or cell phone number for a parent or guardian um in our system. Why that is important is in the case of an emergency, we need to be able to contact and when we use parent square for emergency notifications, uh it goes out uh email, text, and voice. um and app to all of our users. Um so we want to know that we can contact everyone through at least one of those channels. >> Sure. Just to follow up though, it um am I understanding correctly though, Parent Square is sort of secondary to that data point. You're you're really just saying we have an email or a cell phone for 99.6% of our student. >> Yes. But parent square has also helped us achieve that. Um when communication goes out >> uh we immediately see who's not contactable um who got a bounce on those emails and we can follow up. So, particularly when we're looking at a late bus situation, >> it will give us within about three minutes who has been who's got delivered that message >> um and who we don't have a contact with or it has been, you know, the phone wasn't answered, there was no voicemail and that we need to follow up in other ways or know that that parent doesn't know about that uh critical information. >> Sure. >> Last followup. Um but so then do you have a more precise metric of how many people are actually registered or actively using parent square at this point? >> Yes, we are at about depending on building um we are between 30% and 50% on three months into launch. >> Okay. I said that would be my last I can stop. >> You can ask another one. Well, so if it's that low, I guess if it's 30 to 50%, then if we do have an immediate communication need, are we relying on it as first point of contact? >> Yes. So, it's important to understand that parent square is a multi-layered tool. >> Uhhuh. So if parents have registered their account and maybe downloaded the app um they are able to engage two-way. So they might contact a teacher or respond or comment on an email. If an emergency happens and we send out an emergency notification, it goes to their text number andor their email on file whether or not they have registered for the account. Parents don't have to do anything to receive the email communication or the text communication. Now, we've had parents that have called and said, "My, you know, my partner got this email and I did not get this email." And we go in and find out that one of them doesn't have a working email address. So, we can build that. Uh, but parents technically don't have to do anything to receive information from school in the traditional email or text messaging ways. When they want to engage in two-way, they need to authenticate and say, "Yes, this is me. This is my number. It's accurate. Um, and I am associated with this child. >> Perfect. >> Robin, >> um, so I wanted to say or I have a question and then I have a couple comments. The first question is you had said you provided templates and toolkits for schools to make a more cohesive um, communications plan, more brand identity friendly um, things of that nature. Um, has that been well received by schools or have you received any push back? no push back. Um but there is a a a theory of adoption that we are using >> um that if schools have something that's working, we don't need to change just so it looks like the district. >> Um so we have got a number of schools that use some more very well. They can put some more into parent square and that works. They've got a lot of information and their s'mores already built. We don't need them to learn a new system and move everything in year one. Maybe that will be next year. Um the schools that were not yet on some more and maybe we're using Mailchimp or other platforms, we told them you need to come on to Parent Square >> and we provided those templates >> to make it an easier lift. >> Okay. Thank you. Um, and then I wanted to give a little feedback on the attendance through um, the new forms that we're using. I love them as a parent. Um, I know the staff at schools has a huge volume of information they're dealing with on a daily basis in terms of attendance and it can things can fall through the cracks, but now it gives me a little badge, I guess, that says in process or, you know, what have you and it's really very lovely. So, thank you for that. Um, and that was uh let's see. Oh, I loved the translation that a parent who doesn't English isn't their primary language could have the email in their language and when it's sent to a teacher, it translates it to English for the teacher. I thought that was excellent. So, thank you. >> Excellent, >> Anna. Yes, I actually wanted to ask a question about that. So, um, and I don't know the statistics as far as literacy when it comes to, uh, um, our uh, parents or guardians, um, who were English isn't their first language. Um, but it made me think about uh, years ago when I was sitting in a a meeting with um, CFAs and and talking about some of the demographics. Um, is audio available for that translation. So you don't have to necessarily type in your language. You can leave an audio and then it will translate into English and vice versa. >> When we do mass notification alerts, um text to speech will be translated out, >> okay, >> via audio, but it is text to speech. It's a computerized voice. >> Okay. um audio on a is not translated when it is an individual voice. >> Okay. >> If families are concerned, >> okay, >> and we have a translator available, an audio message can be recorded in the native language, >> right? >> Or in the language, the target language u and then be sent >> okay >> with a a text message. So that is something that we're starting to work on and experiment with. >> Okay. >> Um because we know that there are some cultures that are much more verbal. >> Yes. >> Uh language and we would like to do more verbal. Um so we are looking at more particularly for Somali more video translation. >> Yeah. >> Um for a number of our our tools as well. >> And that's what I was thinking about with teacher or you know instructor to to guardian or parent. In that case, we would encourage a short text message. >> Okay. >> That says, "Can I call?" >> Got it. >> And use our Propo1 phone interpreter. >> Okay. >> Um to interpret the the call real time. >> Okay. Thank you. >> The question. >> Oh, and one statement. Sorry. Um I am loving the storytelling. Uh thank you so much. And uh with my minimal communications background um I have seen a huge um uh jump in um in the past few years and I I think that you are um continuing on with what Tony had started but you can see there's been significant a significant jump um and I don't know if you've just taken the baton and and and and just continued down with what Tony started or if there's just, you know, I I don't know. Um, but I definitely am very happy with what I'm seeing and and um I just really appreciate uh I appreciate what I'm seeing and I it looks like too that um our constituents are appreciating as well. So, and I I especially um love the the storytelling component of it and um thank you for identifying the the the priorities as well. That helps me understand what the focus is from the communications perspective. So, thank you. >> I will say that um Tony built an amazingly strong foundation and it is >> very easy to build upon and there are so many outstanding stories. >> Fantastic. Thank you. Um, I just had a couple quick things is one, like you highlighted, any parent that's watching this, go download that parent square app. Um, because the new attendance reporting, I had to do my first one this morning for a late start. It is slick. Took me a fraction of the time. Um, very very easy tool to use. Um, also I really wanted to in in in the age of chat GPT I think a lot of people are becoming more and more comfortable with chat bots and I can see it and I love that addition. I love that it's solving problems and questions. That's a lift for our staff but also I think there's a whole generation of people who just sometimes aren't as comfortable picking up the phone so they just don't ask. But when they see the chat they're like oh I feel comfortable. I don't want to ask when my kid's start time is I should know that. I don't want to be be looked at as a bad parent, but oh, it's a non-judgmental chatbot. Let me just do a quick chat and they get the information they actually need. So, I love that we put that in there. Um, and also I wanted to say I for years I got my I saw my first District 196 notification on LinkedIn. So, I love that we're expanding there as well because a lot of professionals that's their where they go when they're looking for careers and as we want to keep being the employer of choice in um in the area and for our community. I think that's a great um tool to expand on. So, I love seeing the increase in engagement in that tool as well. Thank you. Any other questions or comments? Right. You're finally dismissed. Thank you so much. She had two backtoback. All right. Next, I want to welcome Rachel Hughes to the podium um to go over our uh what is it? Career technical education CTE report. >> Yeah, thank you. Um good evening, Chair Johnson, members of the school board, and superintendent Bone. I'm Rachel Hughes, the director of instruction achievement, and tonight my team will be providing an overview of our career and technical education programs. This isformational only only and I'm super excited to share one of the many things that we offer in 196 for our students. And you kind of got a taste of it in the previous um board report. In district 196, our mission is to educate, develop, and inspire our students for lifelong success. Career and technical education or CTE and career development opportunities play a vital role in realizing this mission by ensuring every student has access to pathways that match their skills, interests, and aspirations. These programs advance our strategic priorities of achievement and equity by providing students with authentic learning experience that connect classroom knowledge to future college, career, and life opportunities. Tonight we are excited to share an update on this important work. Presenting next is Zach Idolbus, our new instruction and achievement 612 plus grade six. This is I don't know if I could have made a more um complex name. It is 6 through 12th grade plus coordinator who will highlight the progress and impact of this work across district 196. Thank you, Zach. >> Thank you, Rachel. All right, so first of all, what is CTE? Career and technical education provides students with rigorous academic content and relevant technical skills. These experiences prepare them for post-secary education and for careers in current and emerging professions, including high-skll, high wage, and in- demand industries. CTE also provides students with a standards aligned integrated curriculum that connects directly to real world experiences. Through these career connected and experiential learning experiences, students gain practical skills while also having opportunities to earn post-secondary credit, industry recognized credentials. And CTE further supports their growth through student organizations like DECA, HOSA, which you saw earlier, FCCLA, FFA, and BPA and additional leadership opportunities. We also have partnerships with business and industry that help students build valuable social capital and networks that extend beyond high school. Together, these elements empower students with the skills, confidence, and connections to succeed in any career path that they choose after high school. So, now I'd like to introduce Dr. Stephanie Hicks, our college and career development specialist, to share a bit more about our CTE offerings. >> Thank you, Zach. Our students experience with career technical education actually begins in middle school as every student has a chance to take courses focused on topics in family and consumer science and trades and industry. In high school, our offerings expand to include business and marketing, health and human services, as well as agriculture, food, and natural resource. In addition, students can enroll in work-based learning courses where they can focus on more sustained practice of employability skills before going out to apply these skills in an actual job setting. CTE courses are offered as early as 9th grade and they continue throughout a student's high school career. In these courses, our primary goal is to support students in developing interest and skills for high demand career areas, but we're also focused on helping students earn or prepare to earn industry recognized credentials. Each course marked with a gold star is aligned with an opportunity for credentials such as OSHA 10, our private pilot's license, compia, emergency medical responder, and certified nursing assistant. Also intentionally embedded in each CTE course are a set of employability skills that include understanding the role of technology in a relevant career field as well as developing strong community partnerships through advisory boards and community experts, direct collaboration with state regulator regulatory boards and engagement with post-secondary partners. Our students in 196 are highly engaged in career technical education. According to our May MARS data, 64% of students in our district were enrolled in at least one CTE course last year. Interest in these courses consistently spans across grade levels and sites throughout our district. All right, so in the board handout, we also have the updated career cluster wheel from Minnesota CTE. And this helps align secondary and post-secary courses to industry. And as Stephanie mentioned, our students are actively engaged in each of these career clusters. And there are also several crosscutting clusters. And those are industries that can stand on their own while also supporting and connecting to every other cluster. So thinking of some opportunities that we have here in 196 and some of those crosscutting clusters, we have our personal finance connection and that aligns with the new course that's part of our state and local graduation requirements. This course launched in district 196 this fall and supports students in gaining essential life and career skills. Digital technology is also another one of the crosscutting clusters that benefit all students. Access to technology helps students develop the skills to adapt and succeed in today's rapidly changing workplace. And providing these experiences as part of the overall experience in district 196 ensures our students are equipped with the skills to be successful in the next steps of their career journey regardless of which career path they choose. So we are also grateful for our industry partners across the district that serve an important role as we mentioned earlier and we asked a few of our partners how has your industry changed in recent years and what skills do students need for the future? Abby Torbert is a human resources professional with BTD, a local manufacturing company to give some insight into this question. >> Here at BTD, we make parts for our customers such as John Deere, Toro, Polaris, Cat, Cumins. We love to be in the schools. We love to have people learn about the trades. This summer we had a student join us as a manufacturing engineer intern. He was working with a motocross team building sports utility vehicles. He did that with his schoolmates. He was really wanting to put the skills that he has learned and worked on at school and apply it to some of the projects that we had here. A lot of the schools now have welding programs. So, if they've learned the beginnings of welding, they can come in and transfer some of those skills to be able to set up the robot welding. If they've got programming skills, that's a big bonus for us. They're going to learn how to weld on the robot. They're going to eventually learn how to program that robot. A student that comes in that has experience would be a great employee. So thinking about what's next for CTE in district 196. Uh when we look back at the 2025 senior feedback that we we received, students and families consistently share that they value the courses with real world applications and career and technical education and college prep options provide those practical skills and prepare students for both future careers and post-secary opportunities. Because our students have so many options, intentional scheduling over the four years of high school is essential. So CTE courses range from single trimester classes to year-long double block classes, offering flexibility but also requiring careful planning. To support this, we provide students and families with information earlier in their secondary experience so they can make informed choices so students have the opportunity to take courses align with their interests and career goals. In closing, we look forward to continue to providing these important experiences for our students and would like to thank our CTE teaching staff as they continue to support students in building the skills, confidence, and connections that they need to succeed in any career path that they choose. So, thank you for your time and we'll open it up for any questions. >> Thank you very much. At this time, are there any questions or comments from the audience? Seeing none, questions or comments from board members? Jackie, this always makes my heart feel good. Of course, as a CTE teacher myself, but this is always something that comes that people say, you know, we should teach kids, too. Well, you know, in schools, they should teach kids, too. I'm like, we do. We do. Sometimes I feel like it's district 196 bestkept secret that we have CTE programs and the variety. and he did a great job of showing people the variety of CTE programs that we do have in the district. I think the and as I think that the catch not I shouldn't say the catch is those what what do you the intentional programming because you have to know that you want to do this because it's a two block and where then what are you going to leave behind so well we do a marvelous job and I'm I always look forward to this report because it's growing in numbers the pe the students that or do we have that I guess I should ask you that as a question it is are we growing in numbers for the students that are taking CTE classes. >> So that's something as Stephanie and I have just started this summer we need to dig into some of some of our data. I know the one thing just thinking about it being the best kept secret. I know one thing that we've talked about is some of the offerings as we've started we didn't realize that we necessarily had the plethora of options that we do as we started. So just being able to continue to communicate that and make sure that >> our all of our families know that these are our options. So, we're excited to continue that work and make sure that we're getting the word out. >> Perfect. It'll be fun to to see and hear your next report. And where do you want to take us from here? So, thank you. >> Thank you. >> Other questions or comments from the board? >> Soden. >> I just wanted to add uh what Jackie XY said that two of my kids that graduated Egan High School actually will get exposed to aviation for the love of aviation out of the Egan high school that they have. And I'm really happy that you're also asking parents I mean graduating class their input. I think it saves us a lot of money. Uh imagine kids uh it happened to me myself. I mean I had to go to college uh spend the college careers explore change my majors two three times right and happened to be now finance. But to get that exposure early on in high school to figure it out at least to know what they do not like or what they like is really a huge bonus given that uh the cost of higher ed nowadays. So I think uh is best kept secret. I I've seen it as experience as a parent myself. So >> I appreciate you mentioning that. And I know with our programming, just being able to have students have those opportunities to explore at no cost at this point, like you mentioned, I think is an extremely valuable option for our students. >> Excellent. Other questions or comments? >> Question. Um I'm thinking about um the size of our high schools and we also have large um a large set of counselors in our you know offices. Um, and when we think about the planning that is required if you want to take some of these tracks, um, is that create creating an undue workload on our counselors? Are they prepared for that? Um, because I think that is a lot to do and we want to serve all of our kids well, but I also want to make sure that we're not having um, unrealistic expectations of our counselors. >> I can speak to that. First of all, I wanted to quickly say to your question of growth, um, we currently have 650 seniors across the district that are just in those double block classes. So, which is very, very cool and a lot of certifications going out. So, um, and to that point, so um, in coming here, I've realized that I don't think that our counselors have exactly what they need in order to grow these programs. So, I am currently working just talked to a few counselors the other day. What would you need in order to be able to speak competently about what you're giving this kids? And so my goal then would be to put together kind of um a pathways cheat sheet for them and then to meet with each of the counseling teams and right before registration to say what kind of questions would you have and what could I include in order to get you to be able to understand or the kids to understand what they're going to get in these classes. >> That's perfect. Thank you. >> Other questions or comments? >> See none. >> This is I agree with Jackie. This is always uh just a phenomenal topic to focus on. Um, also just I think like my generation and many others had never had any of these types of opportunities. Nothing even remotely close to it. You can you can graduate high school with your CNA with a pilot's license with a degree with a specialization in cyber security and a design. I these are things I we could never have even thought of. So the fact that you can get that opportunity in district 196 is amazing. So thank you. >> Excellent. >> All right. Thank you. >> All right, that brings us to our old business and we do not have any other old business. So that brings us to new business and we got no new business either. So we are at other action and I'd like to welcome Joel Miltier to the podium to go over our collective bargaining agreement with support staff association of Independent School District 196. >> Great. Thank you. Good evening, Chairperson Johnson, members of the board and superintendent Balsson. I am Joel Miltier, the director of human resources for the district, and I'm pleased to be here this evening to present to you the tenative agreement between the district 196 and the support staff association representing our custodial, grounds, maintenance, and warehouse employees. This collective bargaining agreement represents the terms and conditions for these employees for a two-year term from July 1, 2025 through June 30th of 2027. On September 13th, 2025, members of this group voted to approve the new agreement within the parameters established by the school board. The support staff group is made up of dedicated employees working diligently to ensure that our students and staff have clean, well-maintained schools, and work sites with tools, resources, and supplies to ensure the best education possible for our students. We are truly grateful for these staff and their tireless work to support our students and staff. The primary changes to the terms and conditions include a 2% increase to salaries in each year of the two-year contract, a 2.5% increase each year to the differential and certification stipens, a 2.5% increase each year to the longevity pay schedule, a 14% increase to the district contribution to health insurance in year 1, and 8.55% increase to the district contribution in year two, and a $200 increase to the district match for 403b retirement in each year of the contract. Other changes in the contract include language modifications regarding uniforms, probationary period, vacations, holidays, sick leave to align with the law, personal leave, parenting leave also to align with the law, and leaves of absence. Tonight, we're asking the school board to approve the 2527 collective bargaining agreement between district 196 and the support staff association representing our custodial, grounds, maintenance, and warehouse employees. >> Thank you. This is an action item for the board tonight. So before I move into the question, is there a motion to approve? >> So moved. >> Motion by Robin, seconded by Leah. At this time, are there any questions or comments from the audience? Seeing none, questions or comments from the board? All right, seems pretty straightforward. We have a motion to approve the contract made by Robin, seconded by Leah. All those in favor of approval, please say I. >> I. >> Those opposed? Motion carries on a 70 vote. Thank you very much. >> Great. Thank you. All right, that brings us over to school board and superintendent updates. So, I'll turn it over to Superintendent Bosone for his updates. >> Okay, thank you, Chair Johnson. As briefly mentioned earlier tonight, the district is holding an election to renew and increase our expiring tech levy um set uh for another 10 years. Initially, it was approved in 2015, and the technology levy is the primary source of funding for all instructional technology, including our 1:1 devices, internet access, reliable network, and cyber security. As we know, technology continues to expand. There's a growing need for cyber security and a responsibility, as we saw this evening, to prepare students for high-tech careers of the future. Residents of District 196 are encouraged to be informed and vote. Early voting starts this Friday at the District Office in Rosemont or at the Dakota County Western Service Center on Galaxy Avenue in Apple Valley. Residents can find more information at www.dist196.org/ org/techvy. In our high schools, our fine arts and theater programs are holding rehearsals for fall performances which are scheduled to begin at the end of this month. The first performance of each season uh for actually for each performance is a senior preview which invites residents and retirees ages 65 plus to a free performance in the afternoon. Egan High School will start us off with The Importance of Being Earnest, followed by Eastview High School at the end of September. Rosemont High School the second week of October and Apple Valley High School's performance in November. More information about the titles, performing arts, and theater programs are available on our high school websites. And that concludes my report. Thank you. Thank you, Superintendent Balone. At this time, are there any items that schoolboard members would like to share? Seeing none, is there that brings us to the end of our agenda. Is there a motion to adjurnn? >> So moved. >> Second. >> Motion by Jackie. And I think I heard Katherine next. >> You were louder, but she was first. Uh, we have a motion to adjurnn by Jackie, seconded by Katherine. All those in favor of adjournment, say I. >> I. >> I. >> Those opposed, we stand adjourned. [Music]