So, I'm wondering if we could allow like we had been at one time just having the district do like updating the policies and then they just came through on the consent agenda and we just knew that those were just updating to um statute, right? Can can we do something like that so that the district is working on going through those that just need updated and then if the board has like ones that they want to look at and more discussion about it, that's fine. But can we at least get things updated? Like that's what my concern is.

My thoughts are I'd love to get us in compliance uh first because that's uh the administration we've been trying to get there for a while. I think we do have a comprehensive audit that anybody could um review in whatever detail that they want to. But uh I think starting with compliance is a good um first step uh for for policy uh goal. I'd make that the first goal.

I think that yes, there are probably a number of them that could that have very minimal edits um that could be put on the consent agenda and moved through rather quickly. Um, and I have heard us say more than once that that's what we would like to do. But when those policies are then put on the consent agenda and they're pulled, we're not looking at we're looking at all of the language rather than just the recommended changes, right? And that's where we're getting caught up is that we start going through all of the language and why this and let's change that and then it's taking weeks if not months to get a policy done.

the purpose of a wellness policy is to require at minimum goals for nutrition education, physical activity, other school-based activities that promote school wellness as well as nutrition guidelines to promote student health and reduce childhood obesity um for all foods that are available on the school campus. So those also include goals for nutrition promotion.

I think because it was only one board member, we're no changes would be made to the to this copy unless someone wants to see something different. Okay. All right. Okay, this will come to the next meeting for review and um consideration for approval.

he recommended uh against including language and policy stating that we will notify parents prior to doing any interview with their children for both legal and practical reasons. Um first, there's no clearly established right in any case law or statute that says we have to notify parents prior to interviewing students.

Where is the intersection or where is the point in time um when a parent truly should be or a guardian truly should be notified because something is developing.

I just feel like I would probably align with um our superintendent in terms of trusting our administrators to handle the situations appropriately. And I feel like I I'm only an end of three years here on the board, but I've never received any sort of email contact about our administrators not responding appropriately in terms of alerting parents.

if a if an when you start an investigation, you might not know that it's going to become criminal or that it's that is is as bad as maybe it could be, right? And so it it could start off very innocent, a very minor thing that could by investigation open up into a big thing. And so I don't think an administrator would always know when when that time to call the parent before an interview would start.

achievement and integration is uh a program as designed by uh the state of Minnesota. It's under state statute and its purpose and intention is to design racial and economic integration, increase student achievement, create educational opportunities, and reduce academic dispar disparities based on students who are coming from uh diverse racial and economic backgrounds.

from a data scientist standpoint, how do you test, you know, which which portions of the plan are actually being effective at at achieving the goal or moving us forward and which ones are not?

equity is everywhere um and needs to be systemic. So we are really trying to make sure that we're embedding as much into direct student services in the systems that currently exist to try to bolster those systems.

our lowest hanging fruit and our most acute you might call it pain point when it comes to equity in the district is with regard to um the sort of the gap between our EL students and our non-ELL students in academic achievement.

One of the things that we had a goal on that we actually got worse on over time was representation in terms of teachers of color. And so, knowing how important representation is, is that something you guys are,

the general fund we're expecting about 3.2 to3.3 million increase in the total fund balance pushing that up to about 29 million.

We are expecting at this point in time to be a little short in that fund. Um, I know we've talked about it here the last few months and the concerned about that deficit and what's going to happen to it and whether we have to cover it. Um, I've worked with our auditors. Um, we can u borrow against the general fund. So, we can borrow the money to fill the hole and then to build it back. So, it's not something we don't have to just take general fund dollars and just take it and pay it off.

But then if we get if we hit this 8.3, then we're approximately one and a half% away from our policy goal. Yes. Correct. Okay. Yes. That's We're gonna hit that, right?

the gened formula is never going to get us where we would like to go. So that means operating levy or future bonds. That's that's the only path.

I mean I think um it's always nice to see kind of that upward swing, but also to acknowledge that those big swings were related to cuts. And so the fact that I think as a board member, my personal perspective is as long as we're continuing to move in the positive direction, we can't expect these like big percentages unless we're making significant cuts, which I don't think we want to be doing at this point.

everybody understands our role as a board and I think the chart below which I know when we did training um with MSBA before articulated um you know what the school board governs and what the superintendent manages um and that that this chart helped me kind of you know put into buckets like the things um that we're responsible for and then what we're asking um the superintendent um and through his delegation to to implement.

I do wonder if we can kind of work on some trust building and some of that just occurs through um actually spending time together away from the table and obviously not doing any sort of board related business, but just getting to know each other more. Um because to me, that's how you build trust.

Minnesota has one of like the most strict open meeting law policies in the country. And so um it I think it it's easy to to potentially like violate it because um it doesn't take a lot to to be considered a meeting.

Well, here's what happens. All right. Any board member, my staff knows uh you're a board member. You are going to get a response or an answer, but we're also going to internally we're trying to triage that to get it to the right place. So, it's it is it depending on the nature of it, it can be disruptive. I would just like if I could get it, I can streamline that by saying, you know, either Emily, make sure it gets to the right person or I can go direct to the to the uh staff member and say, here's where it is in your priority because I'm trying to run a district and there's a lot of stuff going on and we want to answer your questions. I mean, I've tried to be really diligent about that and if you don't get an answer right away, it's not because I don't want to answer you. is because I got to fit it into the priority or there's some research that has to be done and I don't want to give you a halfbaked answer because that'll just frustrate you more.