All right, it is 6:00. Um, I'm going to call to order the June 24, 2025 school board meeting for Independent School District 194. Everyone, please rise with me to say the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right, we'll take a roll call. Starting from my right, Brett Nicholson. I'm Matt Swanson. Michael Bowman, Kim Baker, Carly Anderson, Brian Thompson. All right. I uh want to acknowledge our two stakeholder guests in the audience today. Thank you guys for coming. Um agenda additions. Who's that? usually have we don't usually I no I had before and asked and was told that if you would like to introduce yourselves we do have a number of cabinet members here some of which will be speaking tonight as well but uh agenda additions anyone need to add items to the agenda director Thompson did you want to add an item to the agenda to discuss hiring policies and discussion items. Uh, yes, I I'll do that. Let's uh I'd like to add to the agenda the the the school district's hiring guidelines and hiring approach as an agenda topic for discussion. All right. Is there a motion to add that to uh the reports and discussions for the school board under section six? I'll make the motion. All right. There is a motion by Director Baker. Is there a second? I'll second. All right. Second by Director Thompson. There being a first and a second, a motion to approve an addition to the agenda under reports and discussions to discuss the hiring policies for the school district. All those in favor say I. I. I. All opposed say I. All right. It is approved and added to the agenda. Uh any other additions or modifications? If there are none, I entertain a motion to approve the agenda with that one addition. So moved. All right. There's a motion to approve the agenda with that one addition by Director Nicholson. Is there a second? I'll second. Second by Director Baker. Um, all in favor of approval of the agenda with that one addition say I. I. All opposed. All right. It is approved. Move on to the good news. Superintendent Bowman. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good news for June 24th. 93 graduates from the class of 2025 receive academic scholarships. This May, 93 students from our class of 2025 were awarded academic scholarships. These scholarships are a testament to the recipients dedication to their studies and academic excellence. 47 Lakeville North High School students and 46 Lakeville South High School students received scholarships on May 12th and May 19th at their respective senior scholarship awards programs. Congratulations to each of those students and to all those who support them. Lakeville North boys lacrosse team takes third at state. Congratulations to the Lakeville North High School boys lacrosse team on finishing an incredible season with third place in the class A state tournament. After winning the class 1A section tournament on June 3rd with a score of nine to eight against our neighbors of Farmington Tigers, the Panthers advanced to the 2025 class A state boys lacrosse tournament. The Panthers came in third place against the Eastridge Raptors on June 14th at Chesa High School with a score of 18-5. So congratulations to Lakeville North boys lacrosse. [Applause] Lakeville South girls lacrosse team takes fourth at state and a congratulations to our Lakeville South High School girls lacrosse team on finishing a great season with fourth place at our state tournament. After winning the class 1A section tournament on June 3rd with a score of 13-7 again against our neighbors at Farmington Tigers, the Cougars advanced to the 2025 class A state girls lacrosse tournament. And the Cougars came in fourth place against Park Wolfpack on June 14th at Eden Prairie High School with a score of five to 15. Cougars claim Miss Lacrosse and Miss Goalie titles for the 2025 season. Congratulations to three class of 2025 graduates from Lakeville South High School girls lacrosse team who earned top honors from the Minnesota All Sports Alliance for their outstanding performances during the 2025 season. Charlotte Fannon and Ella Mills were named finalists for the Miss Lacrosse Minnesota award. Fannon was ultimately selected as the 2025 Miss Lacrosse Minnesota after leading the state with an impressive 135 points this season. She becomes the third Lakeville South student athlete to receive this distinguished honor. We also congratulate Kate Bale who was named the 2025 Miss Goalie Minnesota. Bale is the second Lakeville South athlete to receive the Miss Goalie award. Congratulations all. If you want to read more about the amazing things happening in our district at isd194.org/news. Thank you, Mr. Chair. All right. Thank you, Superintendent Bowman. Uh there's no public comment. No one signed up today. Um maybe next time. Uh moving on to the consent agenda. Any items that any board members want to remove for further discussion? Yep. Director Nicholson, do we pull out 4B, the employment recommendations? All right, we'll remove that for discussion. Any other items? Director Thompson, I like to pull out item F, the Minnesota uh State High School League. All right. Anything else? If there's nothing further, I would entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda uh except for items B and F. So moved. All right. There's a motion by Director Baker. Is there a second? Second. Seconded by Director Nicholson. Being a first and a second. Um all those in favor of approval of the consent agenda items A CD E G H I J say I. I. I. Any opposed? All right. They are approved. Uh let's start with 4B. Director Nicholson, if you want to jump in and ask your questions there or Yeah. So I wanted to ask I just wanted to ask uh a question regarding uh assistant superintendent uh Emily McDonald currently holds that position. Uh that position is marked again. I was wondering if we get a little bit of clarity. I know that for all the stakeholder involved, you know, maybe clarify what roles, responsibilities, what might be changing, what might not be changing uh in her current position, um maybe why she's on there if it's material. And then um that's that's kind of my main question. Superintendent Bowman. Sure. Uh thank you uh Director Nicholson. Um what I'd like to just share about this is we are diligently working and trying to uh develop our commitment to strengthening our systemwide leadership and the operational cohesion um of our school district. I think it's an element uh that is not optimally functioning across our school system. I'd like to share just an overview of the chief of staff role if that's okay with you. Um and highlight why this role is essential. Um functioning with a chief of staff serves as the primary director. This position will serve as a primary director of all district staff operations. and um to have this position designed to create full alignment across our departments, ensuring the coordination, consistency and clarity of work throughout our system has large supervisory requirements and a scope that is substantial. It spans the day-to-day staff management for all the staff across the system, implementation of internal controls, the quality assurance across the district for the outputs that we are able to produce and synchronization of staff priorities which has been a big challenge I think u as we've move as I have returned and uh trying to adjust the culture a little bit. Um it's also support for the role and the work that I have to do. Um but it'll primarily focus on uh executive team and director level um across the district. Um some of the key responsibilities first of all staff operations and objectives uh will include a staff operations plan task management. We have taken the strategic plan. A lot of work was done uh over the last year and a half, two years that delineates and provides for specified tasks by business line of operation that um we want to track and we want to track those in order to maintain alignment with our strategic plan and to make sure that the quality is occurring across all the levels of the of the uh staff. We're trying to develop a district-wide budget input and inquiry process to support all stakeholders and ensure transparency. Uh that's one of the biggest challenge I think in any school district is where do those inputs come from, how are they marshaled, how are they prioritized and how are they reported to the school board so that the school board has clarity around where those priorities should be focused. Um supervising the development and sustainment of a quarterly business review system. This is new in the system. Um it's uh something I've talked about I think quite a bit um with regard to responding to your desires to have dynamic data reports um across the uh the school system and this is this is also a major functional change within the system. So currently there's no such dedicated capability that exists in our district and this has placed a strain I think on operational efficiency and will continue to do so for two factors. One is um the quality assurance quality control I think is going to go up and I also think that um one of the other challenges is how how agile are we and able to provide um the information that the board and the public deserves. Um, I think also, uh, because Dr. McDonald has a long history in the school system, I think she's ideally suited. She's, uh, got a high, uh, professional credentials as an education doctorate in education. She's got a superintendent's license from Minnesota. I think those credentials are essential to this role and will be functionally very valuable. Um it is for all intents and purposes what I would have liked to have done in my first uh goround here and was not able to accomplish that. Um because I do think that having these systems operating at a high level are very very important. I also think I can I'm ideally suited as a coach, teach and mentor for her um in order to execute on this at a high level uh having done this professionally in two other assignments and then being the deputy superintendent St. Paul public schools doing exactly this job uh on a scale three times larger than Lakeville area school. So I do think I'm ideally suited to help her do that. We want to do um with this role we want to move with elacrity dispatch clarity and impact and do that right away. Uh and bringing somebody else in to do a function like this would be very challenging to achieve that elacrity that dispatch that clarity and impact. So I think it's uh it's a very important move for us to make as a system. Um and as you know we are looking to bring an executive director of teaching and learning in so this position is no longer dualheaded. It's highly focused with a large span of control. I know I said a lot. Uh hopefully that's helpful. Director Baker. Yeah I just have a few questions. So um I'm a very visual person. So looking at the so that org chart in there has not been updated correct to reflect how that will work. So I just want to say that before you Yeah. Um my question is based on this um the assistant superintendent and the role that was previously had um schools and continuous improvement, director of technology, elementary and secondary teacher and learning and director of early learning like under her purview. Yeah. So what will that look like now with this role? All the executive level and two levels down. Okay. And then um so then my second question is knowing that um you are hiring an executive director of teaching and learning. Would that person then be overseeing the teaching and learning organization? So just directors of elementary and secondary or would that encompass early learning as well? because I I'm looking at like a a whole broad picture that we would do E12 and that person would be able to continuity build you know through correct that will be the that will be uh we won't change that okay so they'll they'll be under both then both who like the director of teach executive director of teaching and learning would be yes director over elementary and secondary and over early learning okay thanks all Uh, Director Anderson, I guess I'm wondering um how we as a board should see this impact um like what are the measurables that we should see as a result of this change? So, I know you've worked in a much bigger system like what are the things that you feel like with this change you can deliver upon? Well, what what the goals are that you give me will be nested her her tasks will be nested in that. So I think that's the starting point because I can as I explained here the staff synchronization using the operational plan and doing the all the tasks there which there are I can share that document with you there are by business line of operation in total over 300 tasks that we want to monitor and track uh in the system but I think the goals that you give me have to occur before I can like itemize that for you. Okay. Can I Sorry. Yeah. I think one of the um things we've talked about is just at the higher level kind of seeing the systemic vision like you're talking about. So, do you feel like this will result in just greater consistency across our schools and making sure that there's similar operate? Well, I'll be able to be more engaged at the schools as I I try to be as much as I can. um it's it's very difficult to do that. Uh I want the staff preparation and then the follow-th through supervision that is the primary function of the chief of staff and the primary staff team. So that making that work in a concentrated manner is the is the ideal goal and we are not in a condition to do that as we set today. Just the fidelity is the problem, the follow-through is the problem. Okay. Did you have a question? Director Baker. La last question. Um so then knowing that um Dr. McDonald had been working on our mentorship program for our district, will that now go under the purview of the executive director of teaching and learning or is that something that she'll be overseeing so that we can make sure that that gets implemented with Fidelity? because um you we don't want to be out of compliance. Well, so the the TNL will have the primary responsibility, but obviously Dr. McDonald is here. She knows that that will be uh another level of support for that. Um we want to broaden that as we have shared uh in the past as we've talked about the mentorship program. So she'll be responsible to um pursue the the staffing and the development of that program along with many others. Thank you. I mean, when you think about a QBR and all the pieces that are associated with that, when you think about how are we going to uh better articulate the inputs of budget requests that literally come from everywhere and organize those into a process that's uh inside the budget development process timelines that exist as directed by the Minnesota Department of Education, which today we're getting to the last stage of at least one of those. Um we have to we have to figure that out and be more disciplined in that process so that the right priorities are um defined and rise to the top of whatever priority list that we want to articulate and that should be a collective process not a compartmentalized process as it is right now. Will Dr. McDonald continue to oversee teaching and learning pending the retention of the new executive director. Uh, no she will not. Who will be in charge of that? Well, the staff actions of that she will have a responsibility for just as I do. U, but the direct the executive director of teaching and learning has that responsibility. Well, is is there an executive director of teaching and learning right now? I'm just saying pending once until that individual is Oh, no. She will have to remain in that role. I apologize. I misunderstood your question. No, until my practice has always been until you have set the condition, you you operate as you are because the confusion of that transition will create all kinds of havoc. Director Thompson. Yeah, I think I might have misheard you, but if you can uh provide additional clarity. When I think about an org structure, you've got the superintendent and then you've got all the executive directors that reporting to the superintendent. Did I hear that uh the they the executive directors would reporting to the assistant superintendent and then you the chief of staff down the chief of staff will be the staff director. the the uh executive directors remain reporting to me. Uh they will have to report to her as well in order to do the staff actions necessary. Uh so you can do two things can be true at the same time. However, ultimately I am responsible for their evaluations and their performance uh and the principles as well. So, director, I guess does that put her more in a dotted line responsibility there or are they going to be more directly to her? A dotted line's a fair statement around the if you if you need a a graphic representation. Sure. Yes. Okay. Would you say that? Oh, sorry. Sorry, Director Anderson. Yeah. Quick one. I was just say I think um one of the things I just wanted to kind of bring back into the picture is um because I think whenever we're making these kinds of changes, you know, this is a this is a big change. It's has money associated with it and um something that I have reflected on is just when we were looking at um different districts and how much money was devoted to admin for various districts and how low we are. Um and so um I think people are going to some people are going to challenge this kind of decision just in terms of where we are um financially. But I think if at the administrative level we need more support to be able to deliver on the things that the board is asking um for and ultimately the board is asking for things that hopefully won't move us in the right direction then it's it makes sense to make these kinds of changes. So I just want to remind people of that. I see the visual in my head. We don't have it before us but our district is far lower than others in terms of admin 2.9% on admin uh in fiscal year 26. Um also the the changes that I have made uh were were done uh in in the three positions that I am uh that I have proposed are um are neutral for the 26 budget. Um, executive director of operations is coming from LTFM, not on fund one. The uh, teaching and learning, we uh, did an accounting adjustment for our operations costs for um, utilities and the sal there is no salary adjustment on um, on Dr. McDonald's and that's already programmed in the budget. So I just think those are important facts for the public to be aware of. No, I I am extremely sensitive to that reality. Um for all the the reasons that people have brought up in the past uh having dealt with this year-over-year since 2005. So I'm I'm try to be um sensitive to that as I look at what administration and what the costs are. Um, what I'm trying to do is match the need with where we have shortfalls without putting the pressure on fund one. Can I just add one thing just to that? I mean, there is a visualization on page 54 of the preliminary budget that's on the board book today. Uh, that does show our administrative costs, like you're saying, Carly, are significantly less than a lot of So, I have the data before that. Mhm. Um and just for comparison, in fiscal year 2018, we were spending 7.4 million on administration. Um we hung at 7.4 for 2008, 2019. 2020, we um cut it back to 5.3. Uh we got to our all-time lowest in uh fiscal year 23, which was approximately 4 million. And so now we've kind of crep up a little bit. Uh so fiscal year 26 it would put us at approximately 4.7 million which obviously is um quite um quite a downturn from that 7.4 million that was in 2018. So I just want to give that for comparison. Yes it is a change but given where we were to where we are now I feel like um it it balances out. Yeah that's good perspective. Brett did you have a comment? Sorry I cut you off earlier. Brian. Yeah, I I think um what everyone has shared I I think this makes sense and and I I try to I'm trying to like give myself an analogy or metaphor or whatever how this is set up like you know if you're a football coach do you have the right you have an offensive coach you got a defensive coach and when you have an assistant superintendent who's also playing the the director of teaching and learning they're also the offensive line and the offensive coach and the wide receiver coach probably at the same time and so I don't know if um uh if that resonates with other folks. But from my point of view, uh having a dedicated person who focuses on our uh academics, uh education, uh teaching and learning makes makes the right sense for us as as as kind of been our focus. Uh in regards to the executive director of operations, uh previously, you know, Mr. Homegrren had that and finance and and so you've kind of managing the hoha you know the all the facilities all of the custodians um uh LTFM dollars plus the financials I think by bifurcating that that also provides a little bit of checks and balance and governance where you've got now a finance department or a finance team focused only on finance and so they there is no uh bias there is no uh you know there is So like uh they're they're department agnostic and they can say here's where it is here's the financials and and obviously with our current budget that we're in while we are getting to 7.3% unassigned balance we'd love to get to 10 uh bills done a great job to getting us there but does that also mean that did other areas within the scope of his responsibility uh you know may not be at the level that they could have been because there's such a huge focus on the financial side. So having someone who's focused on, you know, operations, everything that is needed to enable the education to be delivered, having a dedicated person in that in that space makes sense. Um the assistant superintendent, when you've got an organization that does $300 million in revenue in some capacity, you've got 1,200 stu uh FTEEs working for your organization, and you've got one kind of CEO or one superintendent. uh there there is value in having a chief of staff slashperson uh being that the the right-hand person in that effort. Uh so it is not uh while we provide guidance and we provide input it is uh we we've given you the responsibility to field the team that you need to execute on the goals and the directions of the of the school board. Uh and then we will provide uh feedback uh when that makes sense. And then the only asset I have is that uh we've got clear uh financials I mean uh uh metrics ROI uh and making sure that you know what are the progress uh uh things that can we show that we're making because of these changes that we have done uh so from the operations size from teaching and learning from the council to the executive director of operations and so forth. Well, thank you. Yes, and I look forward to partnering with you to uh clearly identify those and articulate them. Director Thompson or I mean sorry Brett. Yeah, I think just to add to that with the change in role not being over teaching and learning, not being over technology and continuous improvement and all those functions anymore. Um, just want to make sure that we detail out kind of these are her roles and responsibilities. These are the expectations and then that all should tie to our metrics, tie to showing that we're delivering better information, more transparency faster, we can respond better, all that kind of stuff. Acknowledged. I will do my best to do that. Brian, so then I do have one procedural question. uh while this role is the assistant superintendent uh and this role will continue to be an assistant superintendent, is there a reason why it was listed here? And and I and I appreciate it just from a transparency perspective, but if the role isn't really if the title isn't changing, but the scope of the responsibilities may change here. You know, parts of the scope of the responsibilities may be changing, but it's still an assistant superintendent. Does it warrant to be on on this uh consent agenda? I don't have the answer. I'm just asking. Yeah, the intent was to be transparent. I I could defer to our our HR director or executive director of human resources slash administrative services, but um that would be my reason to have it there. Uh if there are no other questions or comments, I'd entertain a motion to approve. One more, Brian. I I I want to move to a separate topic on this on this section, but I don't have any further questions regarding this uh on this role. Yes. Okay. He had F. Okay. So, are we going to approve B? Do you have another question on the employment recommendations? I have another question on B. Yeah. Okay. Okay. All right. So, so we're I'm looking at the employment and recommendations and uh I I see a lot of and this is for a topic for later this afternoon, but I but I want to make sure that I understand that we're aligned with the the hiring of staff and and we we've talked about this a few times in previous meetings, but when I'm looking at kind of like where these where the staff is coming in in their step and lane um uh category, uh I it has given me pause to make sure that are we being uh efficient and effective with the dollars that we have. And the reason I ask is that we've got some rules here that we are that you are asking the board to approve that might be outside the scope of um uh outside of the scope of of optimizing our budget. So, as an example, you know, there's a lot of there's some teachers here that are falling in the the the employee group called teachers, and there is a salary range for staff when they come in. Uh and so these teachers when they start in as an entry level uh start off at 51,999 9996 thou $996 all the way up to $97,000. So there's a really huge $50,000 span from first year teachers to uh senior teachers that have uh that have their 60 uh credits plus step 16 or uh I believe that's 15 or 16, one of those two steps. Uh, so I'm looking at this list and I see we've got reading interventional interventionist which are great that we have. Uh, and they're kind of coming in the in kind of in this middle category where they've got their masters uh, and they're kind of in the middle category. But then I see this other uh, physical health education teacher who's coming as a MA15, which is 15 additional credits, step 10. I'm I'm just trying to better understand how are we what are the guard rails that that our hiring supervisors have to ensure that we're optimizing uh our our budget. And here's another example. We've got a math teacher that's coming from Century Middle School who's an MA60 step 16, which is the very highest step that a teacher can come in at, which is $97,000. Um, I want to make sure and acknowledge I am not saying that person is not worth $97,000. What I'm saying is that do we as a district have a policy or have some kind of guidance in place where if we've got $850 teachers that we are hiring, can we afford 850 teachers at $97,000? And so when I think about it at a macro lens, you know, you you would have a reasonable distribution of staff, those that are kind of in the entry level, those are in the middle level, and those are at the uh experience level, so that as our district continues to grow, we can to maximize the budget that we have. So, as I again look at this list of new teachers that are being hired, I'm not going to vote no because I would assume we've already given offers to these folks and and and it would look unfavorable if we rescended that offer. But I do want us to make sure that we think through um the allocation mix so that we've got the right optimal uh you know staffing folks for the budget that we have for the experience that we're looking for for the culture that we want here in our district and the academic levels that we're that we're looking for. And so that's probably just a high level, not a high level, but a lengthy overview which we can discuss later this this afternoon or later this uh during the rec in in the the agenda topics, but I want to call that out because we're we're paying reading we're paying again there is a there there seems to be inconsistencies. I'll pause here. Well, and I guess let me just ask uh you know, Superintendent Bowman or maybe Brenda if you know, is there any policy currently in place that restricts or provides guidance as far as um where we want to focus our hiring? We we did at one point put um a cap on that um during the budget cuts, but that's no longer in place. That was removed. I don't I'm not sure the exact date of when it was removed, but I Was it just a temporary one? It was just something we did as part of the budget cuts, but I'm not sure when that changed. Do you have the date of when that changed? Well, I think I think when we did the $7 million budget reduction, part of the cost savings was that all future hires were going to be in the um more of the entry level uh space to maximize the budget and cost savings. And then again, as I see this list, we've got folks that are MA uh step 16s and and someone who's an MA step 16, I believe, makes $86,000, which is very close to the $97,000. So again, uh not I don't want not saying these individuals are not worth that, but from an allocation mix of our district, you cannot run an organization when you pay your quarterback $200 million and you can't have an offensive line or wide receivers because you don't have any money for that. And so I'm just that's just I'm sorry. Go ahead. Um okay. So the uh cap that was put in place during budget cuts I believe we did that for the uh what year would that have been? 2425 school year and then that stopped. So we're bringing people in according to what the contract says as far as placement. So we give people their years of experience and their education. Um there are things that you do need to consider uh such as I'm just going to speak in generalities. Okay. So typically a teacher who is coming in at the highest step they typically are going to be older than a first year teacher. Not always but generally. So then you you need to look at other circumstances such as protected class, someone who is over 40, someone who may be female, uh a number of protected classes when you're looking at hiring. Um so so we don't want to say that we just flat out aren't going to hire more experienced teachers because we don't we don't want to do anything discriminatory there. Um, we could however offer that applicant a lower step and and place them lower. They're going to turn it down and go to another school district. Um, I think also it speaks a lot for Lakeville area schools that we have someone who is that experienced who is leaving wherever they are now to come here. Uh, I think that that speaks very highly for Lakeville area schools that those teachers want to be here. Um, but I can go into more um information when we get to the agenda item later. Yeah. And again, I think maybe this is part of the bigger discussion that we'll have a little later tonight, unless you guys had comments on the spec specific 4B action items. I'll wait then. I I'll wait. I Yeah, I just want to confirm that there is no policy that would prevent us from approving this. Correct. Okay. Thank you. All right. If there's no other questions on 4B, I'd entertain a motion to approve the employment recommendations, leave requests, and resignations. So moved. All right. Motion by Director Anderson. Is there a second? I'll second it. There being a first and a second, all those in favor of approval of the employment recommendations leave requests and resignations at 4B, say I. I. All right. It's unanimous and approved. Uh Brian, you want to jump on 4F. Got some questions or comments? Yes. Um 4F is the Minnesota State Minnesota State High School League uh renewal membership. And so by renewing this membership, this allows all of our uh high school students uh in uh in activities, in athletics to be able to compete at the uh state high school level uh for have we like like we've always done. And in doing so, uh we are following the rules of the Minnesota State High School League and uh and the the policies that they have in place for our students to participate in those those endeavors. Um, just curious has like has a school district ever not renewed their membership in this. I am unaware of any such situation for Lakeville area schools. My time only goes back to 2013. That's the best answer I can give you. I am unaware of any any nonparticipation. I I I think the Minnesota State High School League that we are participating or that that we would be renewing in uh gives our student athletes and student uh student folks folks that are in various activities opportunity to be engaged in um uh their future, the things that they that they have interest in. And so I I am in favor of of this. But I just want to make sure that folks are aware that as a school district uh by not participating in this uh that would m that would not allow our students to be involved in um a competition against other other high schools uh part that are part of the state high school program which would include probably all of the schools in the South Suburban Conference. Is that accurate? More than likely. Yeah. State tournaments. State tournaments. Yep. Yep. Okay. Is there a motion to approve for I'll make a motion to approve this. All right. Is there a second? I'll second. All right. With the first being made by Director Thompson, a second by Director Baker, all those in favor of approving uh the membership renewal for the MHSL under 4F of the agenda say I. I. I. Any opposed? All right. It is approved. Uh on to reports and discussion. Facility use update. Reyes. Good evening, Chair. Excuse me. Excuse me. Good evening, Chair Swanson, members of the school board, Superintendent Bowman, Executive Cabinet, and uh all others who are here this evening and watching online. Uh my name is Devon Reyes, and I am the facility systems uh and use manager for our district. Tonight, we're just going to be bringing an annual presentation to you. We will be covering multiple different pieces within it, including There we go. uh a little I'll go I'll be brief, but we're going to have a a team review uh just because you are newer in this board and and we want to be able to give that information to you. I'm going to go over some basic definitions so you understand the lingo of the world that we live in and many of our school buildings have adjusted to that as well as well as many of our community user groups. Uh we're going to go over some data which I know that you guys really like. Um including not just how we use it but how we use our facilities but also uh the revenues and the costs. Um and because uh comparisons are a real deal when we're talking about money. Um we do have some district comparisons with multiple other school districts. Um finally we will end with letting you know what has what leadership has asked me to bring forward uh to put into implementation upon approval um by you. So make sure I press the right button. Um I am a full-time member of our team. We have three other full-time members uh including an auditorium coordinator, a facilities assistant as well as our on-site specialists. uh we have approximately 35 and the reason I say approximate is because they are casual employees and they are in different teams that we have including our facility use supervisors um our auditorium an event and stadium supervisors um we also have technicians for those same roles and within the technician piece we have a student role and a non- studentent role so that even our students can begin to get involved and have another avenue of things that they may be interested in that we can help them develop while they also may have even their first job um in that role. So the other thing that was added this past year is we do now have a district's aquatics technical supervisor. So we have a stipen position. That role oversees all of the high school uh uh occurrences that happen and contests that happen at Century. And then any additional really amazing events that Century or any other pool is able to host including Special Olympics we had um in the past. So we have additional casual members who are trained on that. Many of those casual members are crossrained uh in different roles. So can you clarify casual member for me? Sure. you, me. Okay. Uh, so there's and and Brenda can um possibly help if I if please if I don't speak properly on it, but uh so there's full-time and then there's part-time and then beyond that there is casual. So casual do not uh obtain medical benefits. They work a very small limited amount of hours. So casual is going to be somebody um who may be wanting to work three to 15 hours a week. Um Yep. and we don't have they don't have consistent schedules. Um so and with that it it creates a Rubik's cube kind of way to be able to staff things. So thank you. All right, if I can move forward just to recap what this slide says. There's a lot of words there, but really what they're all just describing is that while our facilities and our grounds are in very high demand within our district, um our staff is um also um always on, we are available pretty much all year round, six to seven days a week. Um, we even have a dedicated general facil facilities line that people can call um when they're on site if they have real in time concerns, questions, safety items or maybe the room that they reserved is still locked. Um, and we want to get that taken care of. Hopefully that doesn't happen very often. Uh, we work not just with our community groups and non-dist groups, which we'll get to that in a moment. Um, we also work very closely with every single school and every single district department, including our district office departments and those around the entire uh school area just to be able to ensure logistics are in place for all of their events. Um, that we have insurance requirements in place and all of the above. So, great. Okay. All right. Moving on to the next here. So the definition piece I wanted to touch base on and and if you already know these things, thank you for uh indulging me just a bit. Our district sponsored groups are anything that is underneath the umbrella of our school, our schools and our district underneath the liability of that. Um the monies that are there are going straight into a district account directly and ultimately everything that falls underneath that district sponsored use um is subject to all the district policies. um excuse me versus the non-dist sponsored group. So I try to be very simple sorry about that um with it and I so I summarize so anything with the operations of an organization or a user group um their personnel their finances are not directly overseen or deposited directly into a district account that we would be accountable for or that you would be giving policy direction on that would be then considered non-district. So when we are contacted by uh someone who wants to be able to schedule something and they believe that they are underneath the school umbrella, our staff has qualifier questions to be able to just sort of build a relationship, ask them some basic items and then once we know what that is, it guides them, our staff on what what steps are next and needed to make sure that we follow the process that we've set in place. So for all non-district sponsored use, we do have an insurance requirement. they do have to provide to us a certificate of insurance. Um, currently that minimum is a 1 million per occurrence in general liability uh with ISD194 listed as additional insurance. I point that out only because it used to be 1.5 and we were able to get clarity and move on um adding that into the addendum officially that it is at 1 million now. So um each one of the non-district sponsored use does fall into three different classifications. So we have the two umbrellas. So the district sponsored and the non-dist sponsored. And then underneath the non-district sponsors, we have three different kind of classifications that a group can fall into. And that will determine what type of fees will be associated with the use that they're asking for. So district sponsored, no cost. No cost, but non-district sponsored then it falls into these correct pay categories. Correct, Carly? So So I know we had an email about I think we all had an email about this about the senior party at the high school. Correct. That would be non-district. Non-district because it's not organized with the so like it's a student related event. Sorry, go ahead. I apologize. Um so that is considered a non-district event because the monies that are um brought in because the planning that is done is not done by a direction within something that superintendent or yourselves would have approved that role to oversee. Um they do provide and did provide insurance on their own. Um and were able to work great logistics with our team on a lot of different walkthroughs and pieces and we worked with the other support department. So I believe they all had a great time. But it's just So then that does come with a fee though, right? Correct. Okay. Correct. Is Go ahead. Is there any way to not have that be associated with a fee or if it's I mean I'm just thinking that's a very specific student built event that if it wasn't happening would be pretty sad for seniors. Um so I'm just Do you think if the school collected fees from the students and it came through the school? I I think I know where you're going because I think I I might be in alignment with with you now. Obviously, we haven't gone to the next two, three slides that might have definitions of the nond district levels, but if there's an activity or an event that's being hosted that uh is only eligible for our students, then maybe that should be one that gets grandfathered in saying, "Hey, you get you it's a freebie." Cuz like I don't see a non Lakeville graduate going to the senior party. You know what I mean? Now, if it is a that's how I would think through that. Now, if you were having a u an event and uh I'll use the the Lakeville soccer club as an example. They don't just have Lakeville student uh athletes. They've got athletes from Prior Lake and they've got athletes from Burnsville. So if you've got uh participants leveraging our comm community our our spaces that don't go to uh our school district then one can argue may maybe that's a different category but for for an activity where we know it is all our students that go there maybe they shouldn't have to pay a fee. And now here's another example which maybe we will get to is the PTO's you know they they are not they may not have a funding and I don't know if they do or not so I'm just I'm I'm making this up but if you have if you're a PTO of Lake View or East View and you're hosting an activity and only East View students are eligible to come one would one could argue well maybe that maybe that facility you should be free uh and and not follow the non-dist sponsor uh pathway uh because the funding that they don't they get don't go directly into a certain category. So, I'll pause here because there might be more. Yeah. I mean, they they currently pay, right? So, we're not changing any classifications or moving anyone into a hey, you don't have to pay anymore or now you do have to pay. Correct. But I think it's it's a good point. And if I may, I just would like to be able to sort of touch on what you just spoke on. Um, in the world of facility use, rental, whether it's Lakeville or anywhere, whether it's a school district or any type of thing that there has to be, unless district leadership provides different direction, of course, there has to be a consistent um standard that is followed for all groups. So, in the in the senior party example, again, I'm acting on what we currently have in place. If that were to change from district leadership, of course, I will follow that. But currently, what is in place is because of how the monies are done, how the liabilities are done, how the decision of what and how security is done for those events because it isn't overnight. So, there's a lot of layers of planning that go in that the district has no there's no staff person a part of that committee. That is a sheer committee. And though it's a one night and yes, it's a great night for seniors. Hopefully, all have a lot of great fun. There are there are hundreds of groups and committees in our community that would say the exact same thing that they have the benefit for the student and they offer this in an academic sense or they offer this in a athletic sense or fine arts and that's where it comes back to in a large school district having that set standard and that set consistency that I can be held accountable and my staff can be held accountable to make sure we're doing our job that there is no uh favoritism because that's the last thing that we want to add to the conversation when there's already a lot of other objectives that you're working toward. So, that's just sort of an explanation of how we got to that point. Um, as far as the PTO goes, I would like to just clarify for that one. Um, it was determined and correct me if I'm wrong, three years ago, possibly a little over three years ago, um, by leadership then that the PTO's would not pay a rental or usage fee and and they were the only organization type that would not and that is simply because what they did was literally everything done for the full child within the school environment within the school day. They do, however, if they chose to say have a dad a daughter daddy daddy daughter dance, sorry. Um, they would pay if it was on a Saturday at an elementary building, they would pay the staff fees because those buildings would be closed and they would help offset the cost of that. Um, all other groups that we'll get into, if you'd like, I can go to next. Yeah, I I appreciate that clarification because I feel like this these sometimes these questions are one-offs to us when it's like, huh, that does like make sense that that would be a costly thing, but as you're saying, you could start adding up the groups like girl scouts, boy scout, like those are all Lakeville students, let's say. But you're right, there's lots and lots that you would have to make except and they're all very valuable that explanation. Yeah. Um before we move into classifications, I just want to make it real clear again that um all facility use that happens after a school day is done till the very end of the last event um is on our school calendar. That includes all school sponsored items, all district office sponsored items and that includes all non-dist sponsored items and that calendar is accessible to the public. We and my office do manage that and manage all those requests. We work to ensure the logistical pieces are there. Um, and we work very hard to keep that as accurate and up to-ate as possible, including say if because of rain we have to close fields, we try and update that pretty quick as well. No. Okay. You had to look. It was a question look. All right. So, moving on. Here's just a real use right. See, if we use the right one, we'll be good. So, here's the breakdown of the three classifications. Class one would be the local school groups that we've been talking about. Um, but are not limited to what you have listed there. There are boosters, there are youth organizations, there are PTO's or out of season um from state high school. MSHL um was referenced earlier. So out of season is considered non-district because their boosters or their youth associations do handle a lot of their financials and all those decisions for their outofseason training and they pay for those. So that puts them into a non-district sponsored piece. Um we also have nonprofit adult groups um with the exception that is noted there. And then also any national election polls, caucuses, school board, local, state, those type of things are all fall under class one. Um national election polls and caucuses, there are no charges for those across the board. I just need to clarify that um in case there was any questions. uh political conventions do fall into class two because they bring in more than 200 people and um they that would be the definition of the first one under class two. So within class two is the next level of it's non-local and we'll actually give you a definition on that. That'll be the end of the definitions I promise. um nonprofit youth, nonprofit adults, other K through2 schools and school organizations such as a charter school from Minneapolis rented one of our auditoriums a couple weeks ago for their graduation. So, um we also have religious organizations, colleges, universities, and class 3 is simple. If you're a for-profit, you're in class 3. So, do we have questions on the classifications? Because this is something that my team asked in the presentation because this is a big question that comes up, right? Yeah. Can you can you provide a um if you can a couple examples of who would be considered uh well I see PTO's I see let's say like the soccer booster club for the high school program and then when we get into class two would that be the Lakeville soccer association I'm sorry the Lakeville traveling soccer club or would that be would they be considered class three and then would is class two also like our our basketball association like where do they fall into? Sure. So, all the basketball associations uh would fall as long as they provide and they they do notify us, you know, their statuses if they ever change, but right now they all fall under a nonprofit status. Um and Lakeville Soccer Club who's is who we have registered with us and through their p um given documentation is also underneath the class one as well. So our football associations um we have um band boosters um they would fall under that. So really any any of our students who are being um have extra attention and extra opportunities given to them by people outside of a district role those would fall under class one unless of course they're for profofit. Okay. Okay. All right. I'm going to ask um Bill, Director Hongren, to come join me. Um I'm going to explain this and then we're going to talk a little bit about the data and he's going to help talk about some revenue and cost items. We talked about local. Um local is defined currently and it was updated last year um for clear understanding that if a group's primary address is based within our boundaries um that that and that organization overseeing the events insurance lists that group's primary address um on the required certificate of insurance then we will consider them as local. it comes up not all the time but um it it does so we wanted to include it here. So now to the data piece as you can see here on the in the red primary pie chart that is the district versus non-district use and this is from 3:00 or when school is out across the district till the last evening event is completed. Uh 81.8 8 82% is by our district and these are data these are numbers from 2024 or sorry 325 um from July 1 through May 8th the uh pie chart on the right which is primarily blue uh is 88% class one is is our you know so we do have a focus on ensuring our community has that priority of being able to use the facilities that they're a part of. Uh, class 2 came in at 8% and class 3 is 3.9. One thing to note about space and maximization. Something that every board since I've been here, a mission that has been stated within the policy is that they want to um, ensure that we can try and maximize the use of our facilities. Um, and so our school districts have done the same because they've created amazing more events after the school time is over. And that's across the board. So that's why um those other two numbers are a little bit smaller. Devon, is it is it first come first serve with reservations? Um there's there's a there's a good process in place and I'd be happy to get that to you if you'd like. I can go through it. It it it is lengthy. Oh, no worries then. Okay. We can email it. Okay. It is also available on our website. Okay. Yes. All right. You're up. We're going to talk a little bit about numbers. Um, over the last few years, we've been working hard trying to get to a place where our budget wasn't running in a deficit when we talk about our facility use, which was really considerably running as a deficit when we look back three years. Um so going forward right now with the changes that are bringing forward in the uh in the different categories of what what there'll be people will be paying. You can see here that uh on our revenue side um the the general render are two and three um um class areas. You'll see a relatively large increase after we tell you it's 7% but one thing to remember is the 25 numbers are only through May um actually the end of April. So there is a bigger bigger jump. So um anyway with the new um fee schedule you see that our total would be running up to almost a million dollars on the on the revenue side. We look at the expenditure side here. You can see where our our costs are at. So we look at our auditorium operations, you know, our casual staff and our facility team. And of course we got a lot of custodial uh time um in these different um facilities as they get used. you see that we're spending 935 um this year so far. Um and so looking into 26. Yeah, Brian, these are these are costs outside of the normal pay of of the staff. And so if they're working sat, you know, after their normal hours. So these folks are really working like 50 60 hours a week potentially. When you look at the custodial time, that's all after their regular hours. Okay. And it's always overtime. Got it. Right. past their 40 hours. So when you say these are mainly these are mainly Saturday hours or late evening hours. But when you say overtime, we're paying time and a half for these folks for these positions. Well, it depends on the day. If if we have a Sunday, um that's double time for our custodials. Or if they're asked to come in and work on a holiday, which we have a lot of groups wanting to use our facilities on a holiday, we're paying double time for a custodial. It should be noted we do charge in those situations when it's outside of business hours or the size of the group, but Based on current standards that we have in place, we are only charging for what the group is there for with the time that they're there and not the actual time it's costing our custodial to get the building ready to turn it over for next day operations. And that was a big piece that we talked about this year to try and recover that. Um, so that is going to be something you'll see on the final side, but that's also leveraging existing resources beyond the 40 hours that they already are working. So, we're paying them overtime. Whereas, if we identified external sources to cover those services, there could be some cost savings there. Now, obviously, that would be more to the staff, but like we're pay are we paying overtime and double time? Is it necessary for us to pay double time and overtime when if if there were additional uh resources that that are are working over the weekend instead of the week weekdays? You know what I'm talking about? Like bringing in a contract? Yeah. bring in a contractor or bring in extra staff. But that's I I'm having a tough time us having to pay double time and overtime if we don't have to. You have people in multiple buildings though, right? I mean, you you It's not like we're running one building where one person can cover, you know, say an event at Century, but then what about all the other schools? What about everything else? Somebody's got to but if if our custodians custodians are already working Monday through Friday 40 hours a week, you're talking about hiring another full-time person to or persons to offset to do that. It'd be multiple one would think that's all at at this at this point in time. If we are running any anything that's after hours, which is after six o'clock or on a weekend, yes, we're paying overtime for all our custodial time. Okay. So, regardless of whether or not they've hit 40 or not, right? Well, they're always overtime once you hit 40, right? They're going to hit 40 no matter what with their normal job. The regular hours, but I can't really steal their hours from what they're supposed to be doing because we can't get the buildings cleaned otherwise. I I need my custodians to do their regular work. So, anything here is extra. Yeah. Brett, you have a question. The only question I had was looking at fiscal year 25 is that that number there is still through April, right? Yeah. Okay. So that that deficit number is going to increase still in the next two months. Yeah. Well, we're definitely using some projections. We we don't, you know, it's hard to know exactly what days we're going to hire somebody. I didn't want to put a number in here that overinflated the cost. So that's why we use these numbers tonight, but you're right. It could be higher. That's still going to probably be higher given two more months. So, okay. Thank you. So, I guess the main point of this slide is working. Well, the the main point is we're improving our our budget situation by the fees now that we're charging. If we go back just a few years, we weren't charging anything. Two years. Two year two years. We weren't charging anything for our class ones at all. Zero. And we were we were considerably um over or or under what we needed to cover our costs. Because I mean people need to remember when we have people come in that's after hours, you know, yes, we get money from the state of Minnesota to run our schools, but that's for our education of our students. So now we're turning on lights and air conditioning or heating or whatever. That's all extra cost that we wouldn't have otherwise. So we're just trying to cover that cost um here. We're not trying to make a profit. We're just trying to cover our cost uh going forward. And just to be very clear for the public, so the fiscal year 25 number, the loss of, you know, 215 right there, that's with the current fees. And then with the proposed changes in 26, we'd be looking at, you know, 24,000 roughly breaking even. Yeah, that's our goal is to break even. Yeah. They say it could be a little bit up, a little bit down. That's all projected. We're not trying to make any money. We're just trying to stop taking money out of our general fund. Correct. But leveraging our existing staff and not looking at alternative staffing models. I mean, you could have a weekend and evening team or an activities team and and and they and then we're not paying over $688,000 in in headcount costs. But that's a separate conversation. Go ahead. Th this is just clarify. This isn't general fund. This is LTFM money, right? LTFM was only maintenance. No, this is general funds money. Absolutely. Okay. Yeah. So, that would be a good question. Um, employ youth It's not my place. I'll I'll defer to you guys on because obviously obviously there's logistics with finding staff that are willing to work evenings and weekends and and and and I'm assuming the um the um uh the consistency of hours might be different, but that's a separate conversation. But right now, our our labor costs for this year is $680,000. And we got that number because it's generally overtime or double time. On the custodial side, on the custodial side, on the on the regular staff, no, they're regular. Oh, the I'm sorry. For the c for the casual staff, team, they're I mean, they're working full-time, but they're mainly working their hours, right? So, it's just a custodial staff, which is the 380,000. And remember, keep in mind, I mean, it'd be a nice idea to bring in a different crew, but remember, we have a custodial union here, and that is their job to clean. So, we we can't bring in a different crew to do their cleaning for them. That's not that's not something we can do. But but isn't this outside the scope of school hours? I mean, it's outside of this is a separate It's not like we're doing education. I don't understand why we couldn't use I think you're talking about the overtime hours, right? Because like we're not taking away from their typical 40 hours that they get a week. He's specifically talking about the overtime hours and after my thought process is why can't we be creative with that and use like students and do work-based learning and have them, you know, do things like that? you know, let's help everybody out. But So, I guess the question is, are they are they entitled to do the work under their contract, right? And I I don't know what the question that sounds like that's what Bill's saying. Yeah. Maybe maybe they like the overtime and contracted for that. Brenda, right? We cannot outsource um outside of a job description that is already in a union. Otherwise, you will have issues with union in grievances and probably arbitration. Well, we we can't we can post positions and hire um additional staff additional staff and they could be high school students um if they apply as they're qualified, but we we cannot outsource. Got it. So, so the the only pathway is to hire more custodians and and and make their hours evenings or weekends potentially. Okay. Just just a thought. That's all. Yeah. All right. I'm sorry. And the reason I'm I'm bringing this up is because like I knew it cost us more. And if we want to break even, how do we lower our expend expenditures? Because if we increase our revenue, we're increasing taxes. Like we're charging other people more money to use our fac for for our facil facilities. So uh but I'll look at to see what the um price adjustments are for class one because class one is more important to me because I think that's all of our district people, right? So class twos and threes. Yeah. your point is I mean if we can reduce our expenses we can also keep our costs down for our class one right and and just as an an aside here um we don't really have places in Lakeville for uh people to rent facilities like we don't have a community center we don't have any of those spaces so really our district level buildings are what the community is using I just want to add one thing I know you said brevity is good I'm just going to add one point this is not your fault No, I understand. But I just want to make sure because you you bring up a lot of different things that have been talked about um but have not seen longer ways to light. Um and that is generally because um for majority of the year, not now because we have so many buildings under um offline for projects, but for almost the entirety of our school year minus maybe a month and a half, all seven buildings, 17 buildings are used six days a week and five of them will be used at least 70% of the time on Sundays. So the logistics for all those large events and for everything that our local groups that we've mentioned a few times depend on those facilities um for that evening and week weekend use throughout the entire school year including in those buildings where they're closed on the weekends. And can I say thank you for doing all that because I can imagine the work it is to try to schedule that for every day hour by hour to have the staff to have the buildings open and um available to the community. So, thank you to you and your team. Thank you. Lots of partnerships. All right. We can't leave quite yet. Sorry. Oh, well, because we're looking at the wrong one, that's why. See? All right. I just wanted to give you some comparisons that I promised. Um, and these, uh, Lakeville is on the far left on this bar graph. Um, we are for our class ones is $10.30 an hour. Um, which is extremely low. that is a flat rate across every single space within our district. So regardless of how much time a custodian um or grounds crew will need to prep a space or clean up a space, it's a flat um usage fee. Um we call that a usage fee for our class funds. Um we use multiple different districts and then I do have a raw data comparison right there. So you can see that there. Um every district does things a little different. Their classifications might be a little different. And I mentioned that earlier. So, um, understanding how other districts work, uh, working with their, uh, facility coordinators and managers, um, is, uh, is a big part of what our team does. Uh, so that is where that data there came from. And I think we are to the final slide. So, the recommended updates that um are being brought um, number one would be the rental rates that we've discussed this evening. Number two is to note that equipment use fees have been added to the addendum. Three is events where custodial has been assigned due to the size of the function or the function being outside of building operational hours and holidays will be assessed an additional two hours of custodial beyond what the user group end time is uh to assist in covering full custodial cost for that event. Number four is elementary use requests will require user group to provide their own hall monitor for their group. Um if they do not, they will be charged a fee and a supervisor will be assigned. Um so with that said, that is the updated. Um I don't know if you wanted to mention anything there other than um we put some final notes in and um it's increasing fees is not something that um we want to jump at but um it's it's necessary um from what leadership has directed me to bring to you to support extending the building access and to try and do it in a financially responsible way um according to the constraints or the resources we have however you look at it here in Lakeville. So, Director Thompson. Yeah. I mean, so if you go back to the data slide, I I that that was super helpful for me. I I think it's great. It's um it's it's really interesting just to Oh, I'm looking at a different one. I go back to the previous one with all the with all the numbers. Yeah, that makes sense. So, that that um we're we're $10.30 and you're looking at Shakape who charges $50 just for the auditorium use. So when I think of the auditorium, the the lecture hall and the cafeteria commons, uh what is your proposal for those three? Again, were there was there going to be an increase to C1 for C1? Yeah, there for each of those there would be an increase. I don't want to misstep. We were these numbers were worked on very quickly yesterday. We'd want to pull that up. Okay. But for the auditoriums, I can tell you that um all three auditoriums have a different hourly rate proposed. Kenwood would be at 45. uh Lakeville North would be at 55 and Lakeville South would be at 65 and that is because of what the space offerings are within um each of those auditoriums um and the upkeep and the equipment and needs that are in those spaces. Okay. So, so when I see the cafeteria, the lecture halls and the auditoriums that they go up uh the impact to a group uh you know would be consistent for all of them. So, there'll be a whether it be a $30 increase or a $40 increase or whatever the numbers are where I've got con um so you're gonna have to help me out as I figure out how to explain this. If you are a football team or uh and you are using the football field and you're just using the field uh and we increase the cost of that field by $5, so it's 15. They pay they pay 15 bucks for that. Uh, but if you are a basketball team or a volleyball team and you're using a court, I don't know if is if it's $15 to use that court or half of a court. And so when we move it to 15 because the volume that they may use that court and the number of courts that they may use is a basketball would a volleyball team would their cost uh percentage- wise go up higher than a another class one you know organization because the frequency isn't as high. Their percentage is actually increases lower. Does that make sense? It makes sense and I want to address it if um and answer to it in a simple way that probably you'll want more discussion at some point in time or tonight. Um but first of all 15 that's not a quoted thing quite yet. There are some spaces that are 15. Um majority are moving to 20 um that are the basic uses but I'm not going to speak specifically to those because I don't we don't have that in front of us this moment. It was something for the board. Um, when we first started charging, um, the prior superintendent met with different groups and explained, you're you're asking about something that's apples to oranges specifically because of the intent of what the use is and what is needed. So, we look at it from an operating standpoint. What is needed to prepare the space? So, um, we have people contact us on a regular basis. we need XYZ fields lined by this time by this date um for this amount of people and our grounds crews contract and you know they leave at two so they have a lot of things they have to do for the school day and everything else and now we add a ticket in for them to be able to get all the preparations done so all of those types of thoughts and planning went into what our fees look like considering what I know other districts do and how they work with their FPP and their custo custodial and grounds teams and that partnership. Um so that is it going to be a is it going to be more costly for them? Um that that would be on how they plan to do that and that's not within anything in my perview my role to ever um direct them on that. So, so I think where I'm trying to get to is that if you're in class one, you are a uh an organization that supports our district and if you use the facilities the same as the previous year, uh but because of the the the the rate change model, one organization their their their costs go up maybe 20%, but another organization their cost may go up 80%. But it's the same usage. And so, uh, I don't know how that does, how that impacts those other organizations because obviously those costs will then eventually trickle down to the residents of our community. And so, uh, I I think my where I'm where I might be leaning towards is how do you make our class one increases um, percentage-wise fair and same? And I don't know even know if that's even cons if that if that should be an option. But and I I think what I mean I think what Devon is saying though is these costs that we're charging are related to the actual expenses incurred for those specific areas. So like an like a gym I mean you're going to have electrical costs um related to the AC to the lighting to the custodians cleaning it up. Um but a field might be more premium but you still have costs related to whoever's managing that outside. So it's not like we're necessarily you're not picking and choosing like hey we're going to charge a premium over here. you're you're just tying it to the actual costs that we're incurring that and um going off of district comparisons that I have here and then about 50 other districts that I also pulled uh information on. Um a majority of districts do have a not a flat fee for um their class one, but remember all districts will decipher what class one entails. Some districts do hold their BTO's and boosters underneath them and those districts are a little bit smaller so they're able to manage that. However, they do that within the business office. I can't speak to that. We are we are not a small school district. We're not a small community. Um, and to goes back to the very beginning when I said my goal that I've been directed on from Director Homegrren to Director Porter to to Superintendent Bowman has been make sure things are accountable, make sure things are consistent, make sure that every group is treated the exact same respectful manner and get answers to them. And we're not going to please everybody. Um because I have to say no a lot of times because we our our buildings and grounds are in high demand and we have weight lists um pretty much all school year long in multiple buildings for multiple spaces. So if if our are spaces in high demand I mean like how far how much are you increasing class 2 and class 3? I mean are they going to be the same or are they going to be double the amount of class ones? because I if there's more if there's an opportunity to push more off to the class twos and threes I like that would be my preference. Yeah. If you click on there's a link on the in the board book. If you click on it you can pull up the the proposed rate increases and class two and three are you know significantly more per hour. I want to just point out so what you what you just said Director Thompson um that would be opposite of the direction that leadership for the tenure that I've been here um because we want to make sure that our local groups and this is again the verbiage that's been given to me is that our local community feels welcome um to be able to request to use our your spaces and our associations that build and grow um and provide whether it's athletic or fine art opportunities um that they have a place to do that. Um, and many school districts have that same um, desire and they have rates placed in similar to what we have um, now in the proposed item. I I just want to say I think um with what you're proposing it seems like an ex excellent proposal just in terms of looking at these numbers and kind of right sizing us in terms of the quality of our facilities while also keeping us very competitive with other um just districts that are probably pricier than our facilities. Um so it seems like a good middle ground. So I think it looks great. I mean I hear what you're saying, Brian. It's tempting to say, let's just charge class two and three more, you know, to reduce the cost for class one, but then you're going to need them to use the facility more to kind of offset that. They're our community, too. I mean, it's it's not Well, maybe. Maybe. Yeah. But I mean, a lot of these nonprofits who are in class 2 are going to be from our community and potentially potentially. Yeah. So the idea of running though at you know trying to stay costneutral especially considering it's our general fund number one bucket there bud like I mean we want we want that to be more neutral I think I mean I think that's better overall for us I mean we want everybody to use it we want them to have access to it I mean there there are costs associated with it either we absorb it and have to just figure out where we come up with more money which we can't make more widgets we can't tell kids to come and enroll here. So, how do we find $92,000 more because that's the whole FTE like that's another person that we can bring on potentially too. And so, when I think of um the model, I mean, would it be reasonable to to ask what would be a a netneutral model and what pricing do you need us to to approve to get us there? I mean, well, I think that's the proposal. He's that's I know, but I I but I see the fiscal year 26 says we're going to be short $92,000. No. 20. We're gonna Yeah. 24,000 is the on the positive side. Yeah. Go back and slide two. Positive. Okay. I'm sorry. I was think it any other questions? Thank you. And just for clarity, we will this is coming back in a couple weeks for final approval. So, so or a vote for clarity. So the FY26 is with these increases then in terms of correct what is based on the proposal before us. Okay. Thank you. Does the board have any uh desire to see what an what a um labor structure model might look like to reduce the $380,000 custodial overtime double time costs. I mean, I think that could be adjusted by I mean, if you hired another person or two and have them dedicated to evenings and weekends as part of the contract or part of the agreement, like we could potentially save how much more. I don't know. Well, those costs will still be there though in my in from what we've talked about speak to it. I I understand what you're saying that we could hire somebody else and not be paying overtime, but right now we have positions that actually run Tuesday through Saturday. We can't fill them. Nobody wants to work them. We have zero in those positions. They're just open. Well, is it also possible that some of the people who are getting over like that's part of the appeal of the position is having opportunity for extra hours. Is that an advantage of some of these positions too? Well, there's always going to be overtime uh for our custodials. Um but at the same time, when you talk about hours, we would have enough hours to put a you if we only work evenings or maybe on a Saturday, we can't even get them to 40 hours. There's not even a full-time position. So, we have to remember that, too. But like I said, we cannot get people to work Saturdays on a regular basis. Sure. Now, they'll step up and they'll pay, you know, they'll work overtime, you know, every third week or so. We we've been doing pretty good at asking for volunteers and keeping it full, but there has been nights where we had a catal event because we don't have any custodial time that'll come in and work it. All right. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you, Devin. Thank you. All right. board discussion on the addition regarding hiring policy and guidelines. Uh we talked about this a little bit or started the conversation. Um Brian, I don't know if you want to jump back into it. Yeah. And and yeah, let's let's jump into this one. Uh this this has been a an observation of mine over the past couple years and and obviously at the uh a couple years ago when we had to do a a reduction in force or reduction in the budget, we we tried to figure out how do we how do we maximize um and optimize our budget for for our community. And so, uh, I think at that time I was, uh, I was made aware that, you know, uh, the the steps and lanes model that this that school districts offer and and and obviously as a as a community member, like it's not something everybody knows, uh, you know, so based on uh, when you become a teacher, you uh, you get an entry- level uh, starting wage and as you earn additional credit, college credits and your master's degree, you increase your compensation and then based on how many years of experience you have, you increase your compensation automatically. So, it's not like something you have to uh get sign off or approval. I'm assuming you do at HR to validate that you've done those courses and user service, but um the range is $51,000 to $97,000 and then the uh uh the middle point is $75,000. And so when we think about uh the 850 teachers that we have and and we think about other bargaining units as well, how do we want to make sure that do we have the right allocation mix of staff? And I think about two years ago when we had the $7 million deficit issue, uh we asked for numbers to ask, hey, how many people are in these categories? How many people in our community or uh of our staff are in certain buckets? And based on I think the data that we got about two months ago and now I I believe uh it it will be different because of recent additions that that they came on board. We've got a total of 846 teachers that I see that we received the the data about two months ago. And then of those 86 teachers, uh we've got about 311 of them in the very last step and the highest step possible and the highest education possible, uh making uh $97,000. and uh and and so when I think about the allocation mix of our of our district um like how many more can we afford at the highest step and the highest lane possible uh and so I think there's value in having experienced teachers here but I also think that uh we have to be mindful of how we spend our budget and give our district an opportunity for you know, newer teachers to kind of be a part of our our our school district and grow within. And so, again, like I shared earlier, I like the idea just visually, and again, in a in an ideal world, it's like it's never going to be ideally you want one-third in your entry level, one/ird in your middle bucket, and one/3 in your higher end. And if you do a total salary count of all of that, divide that by the number of staff that you have, you know, the ideally you want an average roughly around uh from what I see in the current model, $75,000 is is what we ought to be, let me rephrase that is the middle spending dollar amount. Now, as it sits today, uh I believe as I look at our district, and Bill, you can tell me if I'm mistaken here, but when I look at the cost of our staff uh that we have, the current average salary for a Lakeville uh uh teacher is sitting at $86,900. I mean, that's we'll round up and say 87. And now the highest step is 97, but the the current average is 80 $87,000. Now, if the median is 77, that is a $10,000 difference. And if we've got $850 teachers, uh, and we're spending $10,000, was it 12? Oh, thank you. $12,000 above the the middle point. Again, that's the experienced teachers that we have. We're spending $10 million more than maybe we could be spending. And and so if you take that $10 million uh and I'm going to arbitrarily divide that by $75,000 assuming newer teacher benefits. I'm just and Bill might be like that number is low, but uh but that's that's a hundred teachers more we could have which would lower class sizes which could uh uh help divvy up the amount of of work and and with mentorships and and a variety of different things. So if if there aren't any guard guard rails right now for our hiring managers at our elementary schools and middle schools to say here's where we need you to be within the budget and they just hire whoever they want to hire. Uh eventually we might get to a model where our current salary is above and beyond 87 and we just we can't afford it. Yeah. You know so that's that's Go ahead. Yeah. Just the 87 number is probably low, too, just because you're not counting in um longevity bonus, too. No, I'm not. Right. Yeah. I mean, if you're here for what 15 years as a as a Lakeville teacher, I believe it's 3500 longevity pay, there's like a bonus pay of like goes up higher, too, though. But yeah, it's it's more than that. Okay. It's more than that. So So if you're here for for 15 years, you get a longevity pay, like an extra bonus like, "Hey, thanks for uh staying with Lakeville." And then you're here for 20 years. I believe it's $8,000. A little bit more higher than 8,000. But the bottom line is that we've you've got you can you're making over $100,000. Uh and we have a current average salary that's on the higher end. And if we're not going to do anything about it and there is no oversight or monitoring of this, uh are we going to put ourselves in a position in the next couple years? So go ahead, Director Becker. So, I'm I I love your scenario. That's a perfect world scenario because it I just as a hiring manager when I I mean and granted I I'm hiring for special ed, but I'm also looking at other positions. We don't have that many applicants for some of those positions. So, you may have like a PE teacher and that's a very specific license. You may only have one applicant. So, you don't have that choice. But I also um think there is I I mean I I understand what you're saying that there's not parameters around some of these hiring principles, but um when I work with principles within the buildings, like we're looking at like our teams and if we have like a second grade teacher position open and we maybe have 10 applicants, right? But we know that every single teacher that we have in that grade is a new teacher, we're probably not going to hire another new teacher because we really need the experience to help round that team out. So, I mean, it's more than just like looking at some of those things. It's building the team. And and I also want to point out that there is an abundance of research um around teachers in the classroom. And you can have the perfect curriculum and all the resources and all the highest technology, but it's the teacher in the classroom that that makes the most difference, not any of the bells and whistles. So, if you don't have the experienced teacher in front of the kids, um it it doesn't matter what curriculum you're using, you're not going to get results. So, I I just think that there's a balance with that. Like, I understand where you're coming from. Um but I also know that um I was really um I I just have watched like some of and I've talked with some of our principles that are doing hiring within Lakeville and um I'm encouraged that we're we're starting to see a few more applicants. I think the last few years I've been very discouraged by the amount of applicants that have been coming to Lakeville. So, um I'm excited to see that we're getting more of this staff coming back because I feel like our morale has been low and then, you know, people teachers talk to other teachers and then the word spreads around and then all of a sudden our applicant pool goes down to nothing. Like, we want to be able to have a healthy pool of candidates that we can choose the best person for that position, you know, the the best um person to fit in with that team. Um I I just think that yeah, we we may be getting some um some people on the higher end, but then when I look at a PE teacher, like if you think in the grand scheme of things, how many PE teachers do we need versus like first grade teachers, right? Or elementary teachers, like the the need is more for like that like a general elementary ed teacher than a PE. So you just it's hard to find some of those types of teachers. Um so I just think, you know, I get what you're saying. I wish we had that many applicants so that we always had the choice, but sometimes it's going with um the pool of candidates that you have in front of you and trying to balance it out for your team. Just a second. Let me hold up. Uh Carly's been waiting. I was just going to say I feel like we're talking in assumptions and so it might help for Brenda or perhaps um our superintendent to talk about how they approach this as opposed to like us. They don't have budget. We talked we've had this I think. Yeah. Can we have a point of clarification? Well, we used Do we have an applicant shortage right now in terms of like the general pool of things that we go for like like are we like do we struggle with a general teacher a fed teacher like are those struggles we talked about sped we know that that's an issue and and specialty stuff is that's a different discussion but do we struggle when it comes to say we have a second grade teacher position open is that a hard position to fill or is this the conversation that maybe we should be having saying we do have a a more senior staff around them. Maybe that is the position we should be putting guard rails in and saying we should bring in somebody on the lower end of the pay scale. However, we do that whether they're an experienced teacher who takes less money or it's a new teacher who comes in lower on the on the experience level. That I think is the bigger question because you can't put in a blanket guard rail. I think he's asking Brenda just to clarify if we could. Yeah. So, generally speaking, um, for our elementary ed positions, I would say we have typically a pretty decent, uh, applicant pool. Again, it's going to be your special ed positions, high school, math, and science positions that are a little more difficult to fill. I think that since we did get our uh staffing and postings out earlier this year, um I have seen improvement in those areas as well. Even the difficult to fill positions, but that doesn't mean we're getting a ton of applicants for special ed in some of those high school positions. So it you could also I think director Baker addressed this you could get you know a handful of applicants say for high school math and science that you have teachers who have all of the years of experience in the education and then someone who would be lower on the salary schedule and they're they're they're just not the right fit for the position. And you really make that decision based on who is going to be best in the classroom. That's not always true. Um but if your applicant pool is shallow, it makes it very difficult for the difficult to fill position. Well, and not to mention the the lensure requirements that we're up against too. So, you know, we may have three candidates and maybe one of them doesn't have like a license in the field and we'd love to do an out of field placement, but state statute says that if there's a licensed candidate that applies against them and maybe they're the one that's clear on the high end of the we have to hire that person. We are required to hire that person if they are qualified for that position versus the one without a license. So, you come up against some of those things as well. Yeah. So, so 100% agree and and there are going to be certain roles that warrant a higher compensation because of the market conditions based on wherever it may be. But I think we can all agree like every single role isn't at that level. And so you're going to have a certain pop uh group of of teachers that are going to be on the higher end that are going to be uh in the lower end. They're going to be in the middle. uh and that and that goes back to what you shared earlier where if you've got you know uh younger or newer teachers in a particular grade having an experienced teacher might make sense but when you aggregate that out it ought to be you know still generally in the middle versus a versus the upper end of the band. I mean, right now, again, looking at the data, our current salary is 86,000. Our median is 77 and we've got a $12,000 Well, maybe it's 1075. Did I say 70? Oh, I'm sorry. It is. Yeah, it's 75,000. The median is 7. The middle point is 75. The highest end is is 97. And our average when you look at all of our salary totals, divide that by the FTE count is 86,000. Again, going going back to what are we leaving$10,000 $10 million on the table to bolster um our elementary staff, our middle staff, lowest class sizes. Uh but not but not disre disregarding those uh uh uh you know roles that that warrant a higher pay. I mean, I'm not saying we can't hire those individuals, but could we provide as a board, should the board provide the district guidance saying we want you to be in the middle point? We want you to strive to be in the middle point with a plus or minus 5% variance so that we don't have this wide swing of folks in the 86,000 for for our average pricing to be in that range. And so I I don't know, but if I had an open wreck uh at my company, let me rephrase that, not it's not my my at my work. Uh we have a budget. We have a budget of how much we can spend on a particular role. And uh if I have more senior people on my team, there's a high there's a high probability that I'm not going to get approved for that requisition to be another senior person. And because I only have so much of a budget to work with, we only have so much of a budget to work with. And so when I see earlier today when we have, you know, math teachers coming in at MA, you know, MA plus 60 step 16, which makes sense because they're specialized maybe in that particular space. But if we've got a um back to director Baker's comment, a gym teacher who's making is it is it MA 15 uh with a step 10 and that's kind of like 70 somehat thousand dollars and you've got um an MA reading interventionist interventionist coming in. I I just where if we're not going to provide guidelines, is it our role to provide guidelines? And if we don't, what happens when it's too late? Yeah. And just let me jump in here. I mean, the way our our system is structured, I mean, with the lanes, once you hit 15, you can be at 15 or the top top lane for 20 years, you know, and so we're naturally going to lean towards the top side. Um, and if you're not careful, we could all be I mean, we have a 94% retention rate with our teachers right now. So, we're keeping a lot of our teachers year after year, which is a good thing. And ideally, yes, we'd have teachers that are extremely experienced, um, and they would all be that way, but financially, and this is what Brian's going towards, we just can't afford it. You know, if we hire the most experienced and most qualified every time, we're going to get into a situation where we don't have money to pay them at some point. So, that's my question. Doesn't that kind of explain though why we're sitting higher than the middle level? We should be we should be a little higher than the middle level, I think, just because teachers retained that we're naturally going to lean higher. Well, because yeah, I mean, even if you broke it up a third, a third, and a third, I mean, once you hit 15 years, you're going to be there for a while if you stay, right? So, even if we hired, you know, somebody at seven years, and another seven years, they're already at the top end, right? Well, and that's the challenge of comparing this to like a business where you have probably higher rates of turnover and changes in positions versus when someone's hired. We have higher rates right now. I feel like we I think we brought in 120 plus new teachers this year. I mean, and that's that's a lot of retirements too. It's not turnover in the same sense that she's talking about. Then if it's retirements, are we backfilling them well with a model that that that's fiscally responsible as we continue to grow? Because we're bringing in an MA60 step step 15. We that and from a business sense that's considered a liability for the next 20 30 years that we are responsible for paying that that number until they choose to move on. Is isn't it the case though remind Bill you would have this or maybe you have it in your head maybe you don't if you don't I apologize but like when we talked about um how many of our teachers that are at the very bottom right or right bottom right 63% a huge percentage right so we can't just hire new you know if we have that's our that's such a huge percentage of our teachers that the like mathematically it won't work out. We can't only hire people who are freshly new. Y or it's going to create a problem over time. What? Why would that? I do appreciate like where you're saying in terms of what the spirit of that would be, but we can't have such lopsided like it's lopsided right now. It's it's highly tenured right now. Can you flush that out a little bit, Carly? I'm What do you mean by we can't hire? Well, I just mean if we were only to, let's say we have 63% of our staff are at the highest end and we just spend the next however many years just hiring new teachers or that are kind of new out of college, it's going to I would imagine that that creates problems in the system that you have highly experienced and very fresh and not kind of an equal distribution. I would imagine you want some that are in the middle. Yeah. Grade. So it it it would I think from a hiring perspective it makes sense to try to hire the way you're speaking, but the fact of the matter is we already have 63% of our staff sitting at the very high end. So it makes it tricky to get toward that middle, right? And and I don't anticipate us getting there overnight. It it's one of those where I would look to the administration, what is your plan and what is your pathway to get us towards a a metric that we could look at from a financial lens and ask are we being efficient in optimizing our dollars or do we or are we as a board going to commit and say yes, our average salary is going to be this and this is what we're going to pay and then if we want to hire more teachers then we have to go to the public get additional levies passed so that we can hire additional teachers if need be at the range that we feel that our community is is needing. Well, and I think you're saying we should be intentional with the hires, you know, setting parameters on and I agree, it can't all be brand new teachers right out of college. there has to be some additional experience. But by, you know, setting parameters, we can adjust the budget a little bit where we even pay the teachers more, you know, because we're not so topheavy. So then all of the teachers get paid a little bit more because there's more funding available as opposed to right now the 63% kind of dominate, you know, that portion of the budget. Whereas if we're able to diversify that a little bit, um, you know, all lanes would get a little bit more. So, so to that end, as another kind of point of information, like what's our current mix when we're bringing in, you know, say, you know, we got a a a new year coming in here and 100 new teachers come in, like what's our, you know, macro view? Is it 20% of them are new teachers, never taught before coming in on one of the first couple steps and then you know we got 40 in the middle and another 40 on the top end or is it flip-flopped or how does it work for us right now if you were to say kind of break it out from more of the and I and and I I honestly like if you can leave out like specialty stuff and positions that we know are completely like the special ed stuff like we if we can't fill it and it's hard to fill anyway. Like let's like kind of leave that out. But like in terms of more general education, you know, I'm thinking K through five, you know, middle school, high school, like if if we're looking for a new teacher to fill a position, backfill, normal classroom, like what's our mix, I guess, in terms of hiring. Okay. So, without pulling the data, I'm I'm going to guess that in your elementary level positions, it's probably pretty close to the average. I would say the majority of them are probably pretty close to that average. Maybe not all. Um, I also do want to clarify a couple of things that that I heard. Um, so not not every new hire that you see is a resignation. I think like you mentioned, some are retirements, some are resignations. People leave the profession or they go to another school district and some of them are uh teachers that we have on a variance or an out of field placement where we are required to post those positions again. We're also required to post positions if if a teacher was hired uh after a certain date in August, we're required to post those positions again. So, not all of them are necessarily going to be new hires. They'll be the same person will probably be placed in those positions. So, I just want to clarify that. And then, um also uh because I I don't want anyone to inadvertently overpromise and underdel. Um, I heard a lot about the potential if we hire lower on the pay scale that that could potentially um decrease class size. And just keep in mind that class size also has to do with space. So, we don't have the uh space that is necessary. We can't necessarily have smaller class size just because we're um hiring people in lower scale. Yeah. Did that answer your question? But I appreciate that clarity. And yeah, without pulling the data, I don't know. But what I heard was that it's the middle like it's it's not it's it's the middle. It's not the lower end. Meaning that after seven years, generally those middles are going to be on the top end, which then it is which which is which which is going to cause a financial uh you know issue for us seven years from now for the next board that that will be here. So I I guess um without jeopardizing the need and the compliance and and and market conditions uh are our supervisors or hiring managers are they giving are they given a budget to say you can hire a staff but here's your budget and if the answer is no should we ask for that so you guys did it last year didn't you I mean you put a restriction on what we did. Go ahead. Yeah. And how did that work? I mean, did that handcuff you too much, Brenda, on the hiring side? Can I address two things? Yeah. Can I go back to uh Director Nicholson's question because Bill pulled up some data on where hires were they came in last year? Yeah. So, just to keep everything in context, last year, um I have Anyway, we we hired 37 of our hires last year for BA. So, first lane, right? We get that the MA level, 20 of our teachers were there. Okay. And above that level, there's only six. Okay? So, we we did hire this past year a lot of teachers involved in we did not. They were all NBA. So, and the average that we're using right now, the average that we see Sal is at 83. 83. So, so from where Michelle was given to us earlier, it has dropped. Okay. You just get now but still she point there was another question you had so maybe a point of clarification from the superintendent or Brener Bill um would be is so I know principles are involved in hiring right? they're interviewing and deciding who are they set with a budget for their school generally. I mean with with consideration of special programs and things that you may have to not for hiring. So the the one word I heard earlier was requisition management or rec requisition administration. That's something um we could look at. Um, I think that with when we talk about guidelines, which I welcome that conversation, we have to any guidelines we have, and I think everybody can agree to this, uh, has to be in compliance with labor law in the state of Minnesota. Has to honor our agreed labor contract, however, that is uh, codified. Um, we also, I think, have all said that our what I call low density or hard to fill um is is going to have to be administered differently in order to have any expectation of um hiring effectively for the needs of our students and and families. And um I think as long as any macro parameters are set there, they should also be attendant with the data that we do have. and um articulate that so that the board public sees what that is. I the description of you know one-third low, one-ird mid, one-ird high, but in the budgeting process for the school system uh on the macro scale, we're looking at where our wage costs are for both salary and benefit because I don't think you can disassociate those understanding that the salary part is is um is a critical part, but the benefit element of it I think should not be lost in this conversation. Um, as far as issuing macro guidance, um, I I do want to look at, uh, requisition control management method, um, because that could that could have some promise for us in in our ability to be able to, um, issue that guidance at the uh, at the school level uh, or programmatically within directors who are doing hiring within the staff. Um, so those are just my comments. I don't know if that's helpful at all. It does. I mean, it does make sense that a if I'm a principal and I'm looking at I'm interviewing people, I want the best qualified person, right? And so to put some guard rails on that in terms of Yeah. Yeah, if I could just also um best qualified um I think the the more appropriate term is best fit because there are circumstances that uh director Baker I think uh spoke to that I think are important elements that would um would impact. So qualified best fit I think kind of got to be synergized. But on a macro scale from a a governance andor an operational um internal control I think the the points that are being made here are solid for us to be able to look at and say at least what's the picture which we have provided but maybe provide it more transparently to all. Well, and some of the things that you've talked about with Dr. McDonald's new role in terms of kind of consistencies across the system, how hiring is approached at schools. So, let me ask just from uh historically, was there a vote in 2023 to limit the ranges that you're going to hire? Okay. Because if we were going to do something like this, are we talking about a vote, written resolution, or a policy? I mean just just for providing guidance for the district moving forward. Um it was part of like the the district reduction um that that we went through and it was like one of the line items. So it you know we were going through all the reductions and then we just approved it as like a um like one vote total thing. It wasn't like just an individual thing. There wasn't like a resolution with it. It was just part of the the package on what was recommended. Um, but but was it a onetime deal or was it something that we assumed would continue on in perpetuity? It was just that it was just for that year. She said, "Yeah." Yeah. So, I guess if we're looking at something that's going to be, you know, part of the system that we're developing here, do we want it to be a board policy, you know, that we establish for the district, you know, that has details as far as, hey, these are exceptions to this policy. You know, obviously there is going to be, you know, ability to bring things to the board if you need an exception to the policy itself for approval or is it just a vote with some guidance or is it a resolution that codifies a little? I see it like the general fund. It's like here's a general guideline, you hit a certain percentage, it triggers a whatever, you go above and beyond and you put a remediation plan. uh and and but the guidelines have to be aligned with the values, the the the staffing needs, the market needs. Now, I'm not saying the middle point of $75,000 has to be our number because because I don't know. And so I I think I'd look to the board and HR and teachers and uh and the administration around what is the appropriate number and then what is the action plan for us to get there and how much of a variance are we going to allow as a board uh as we continue to you know as we continue to grow. So that that's how I would think of it as. So, I mean, so maybe if you're talking about comparing it to the general fund, I mean, maybe it is a policy that we talk to the district about because we don't want to handcuff, you know, our administration in their hiring processes by making it too difficult or restrict them too much. So, it' be good to get their guidance as well, you know, if we're going to set guard rails essentially. Um, I I feel like with the budget discussion, I'm sorry, you're after me. um we got really specific percentage-wise. This to me feels like more in the spirit of what we're the staff we would try to create. Um and so I would say anything policy-wise, I wouldn't recommend we be highly specific just because things are probably going to change year to year and needs are going to change year to year. And that's where I think we can't anticipate all of these exceptions that we're talking about that how does you know does an exception then potentially v violate policy. Um so I don't know if this is more like this is a procedural thing that we're asking the the administration to consider and help us better understand versus we need specific policy. Can I add something? Yeah. Um I'm specifically wondering I mean I know I know that this this discussion is um around teachers but um I'm also thinking bigger picture wise of um you know at there was a point in time where the school board had an audit committee and it wasn't just teacher salaries that we looked at. It was administrative salaries. it was all of the different ones and we would compare it to other districts to make sure that we were aligned with what other districts were um offering so that we weren't so far above or or anything like that. Um maybe it's a bigger discussion about looking at some of those pieces as well. Mhm. I'd be 100% in alignment with that looking at all bargaining units because while uh we're looking we're talking about just one there are there is a spectrum uh of of the of that range across the various bargaining units. I don't even know what the ranges for our principles are. I mean there might be some that are on the lower end and there might be one way above and beyond like like like but yet so things to think about. Yeah. Brett I guess thinking about it from a goals perspective. I mean if we can try to put a goal that we want to have a a healthy mix of people across the matrix. I mean we could do something like that in terms of you know upcoming goals. Let's try to, you know, when we have say a 100 people retire, exit the system, whatever, you know, you want to bring in some sort of a, you know, try for a 33 33 33 split on new hires, you know, and over time, again, if you're getting more people across the spectrum, might level us out a little bit. So, I mean, that kind of goes to what you're you're talking about. I mean, if we set it as sort of a a target for new hires or filling positions, if we can, and again, I think there has to be caveats because we've talked about sped, specific credentials, lenture, etc. I I think some of that you're just going to have to bite the bullet and pay market rate. I mean, it is what it is. So, it's the bottom line is resource management. That's all it is. And and if we have the extra dollars, which I feel our mix today has an opportunity that we could gain some extra dollars, could we redeploy those resources in other areas that might be warranted? Digital media specialists, more pair of professionals, more staff, more like interventionists. Yeah. Yeah. you know, and and whoever is supposed to watch the kids outside when they play during lunch, you know, like there is there enough of those adults outside. So that it gives us more flexibility and it might be ideal for us as a board to provide some guidance on that. I would be open to um the discussion on that as long as we weren't targeting one specific group. I I still feel like we would need to have a broader discussion about it with with the other contracts that we have and other employee groups um because they wouldn't have the same potential to have those issues as well. Brenda, do you mean as far as where we're hiring those employees? I I'm just looking at like um you know when I review past documents that um that the board has had in in previous years um you know with the audit committee that that was looking at um all of the salaries that we had coming in and comparing that to you know other districts around not just with like our MCA numbers but with like our hiring numbers and and where we're hiring people on contractually uh what we're offering what percentage we're increasing every year all of that specific data because I think like if we're targeting just the teachers that doesn't seem equitable to me. I was talking across the board. Personally, I I I was saying, you know, we should have a healthy mix of new blood into the system, people who are experienced. I think across the board. Personally, I asked is because our our other bargaining groups, the teachers have the largest uh salary spread. Um our principles I don't I I don't know exactly but I think they have four four steps um so our pair professionals have two uh so it's it's the teachers salary schedule is much different that's why I was asking that question yeah thank you you could have a third grade teacher who's got a a degree from uh has her bachelor's degree and has been a first grade teacher for 10 years in our district and make 59,41 1. I mean, that's step 10 or m I think it things start at step three. So maybe that's really eight years, but they're they're they're in the field 8 to 10 years roughly and they're making less than $60,000. Whereas a teacher who has a master's degree plus 60 additional college credits and have been here for four 15 years making $97,000. So that's a a $40,000 swing. And and so that is a wide range. And and so I I appreciate the experienced teachers and I also appreciate those that have been in the field for eight years teaching, you know, first graders, but that's a $40,000 difference. And so how do we as a board uh ensure that we're being mindful and optimizing our community's dollars to make sure that we've got the right staffing, the right allocation mix, and maximizing what we have. That's all. Okay. Okay. Yeah. I think we can have discussions with the district moving forward as far as what's the best way to look at this um procedurally to set guidance and we'll bring it back for more discussion and any vote before any action is taken. Any other comments? Maybe this could be um moved to the discussion in July too when we're talking about board goals. All right, superintendent report. Roll right along. Uh, don't we have the Oh, board reports. Board reports. And I I'll Okay. Uh, I I'll just share a couple things. Uh, was able to get out and look at uh there's a lot of projects going around. And I just encourage board members if you're driving by and you see Tacos or you see um don't walk into Cherry View right now or uh well Kenwood, there's a lot going on there. Uh we just have a lot of projects. This is the season for projects. Um and where we have uh activities and buildings too. Um I went over by Christina Huddleston and the the kids out there in the field. Today was a beautiful day, by the way. If you didn't get outside, shame on you. Um I I somebody asked me in passing today, how was the weather outside? And I said, well, it's the best day I think we've had in Minnesota in the last month. So hopefully you got out there. But the kids were just tearing it up and having a good time out at Christina Huddleston. Uh I only gested about Cherry View, but if you've if you go into Cherry View right now, you go in the main entrance, take a right, and there's this long trench um being dug up there. Uh, so they got it taped off nicely and all, but might want to step by and take a look at that, see what it looks like. Uh, sometimes that's fun. I don't know. I get into those kind of projects. Um, so I I just if you can get around, uh, please do. You're always welcome and invited to do that and we got a lot going on in the district. That's my report. Thank you. I'll just say I was picking up my boys at Eastview today from the summer adventures and the kids there are having a great time. So yeah, they're the staff are doing a great job. Thank them. I skipped the report reports in case there are any. No. All right. I think we're to bill discussion on the approval of the LTFM plan and 2026 budget. Good evening, uh, Chair Swanson, members of the school board. Um, Superintendent Bowman, tonight we get to talk about next year's budget uh in in your packet or I put on your um on your desk tonight um our final um fiscal year 26. Well, I shouldn't say final, this is preliminary. We always come back in the fall once we get through our audit and through all our hiring and give you a new budget with a more accurate numbers because we have a lot of assumptions built into this. Now again, this is the this is the enrollment that we've been working on with our with our um uh budget. When we look at the numbers, these numbers are coming out right right where we thought they would when we're finishing up this year. So, we're continuing to use this. We will update these numbers again this fall when we uh see our October um enrollments in the um in the book too. I just I'll try to keep you a breast of the pages on, but that's on page five. You see a little more detail not only by the totals but uh um build out by the by the grade levels. Okay. Revenue. Um here here go to page 10 and you can see our our revenues. We put a few more a few more years back in the book than what you see up here on the screen. But you'll see Oh, they didn't put that. They didn't fix it. Okay. We we apologize for typo. It's fixed online. Oh, is it? Yeah, it's not here. So, we did fix it today, but So, um our our increase on the state, you see there at 3.3%. That's a little bit more than uh the 2.74 the state gave us today. Yes. Can I ask one question? So, this is on page 10, but I just wanted to point out on page nine, um, in your notable changes for fiscal year 26, you noted that, um, with new funds from the legislature, the district was increasing counselor support at the high school level. Um, and knowing that we had talked about that as a board um, with the high school principles earlier in the year, I just wanted to make that point known to the public. Um, so I I think is that from to four or is it that It's it's one more one more counselor at each of the high schools. Okay. We're we're using the new state money, the the um student support money to pay for those. Okay. Thank you. I just wanted to note that because it was something we had discussed. And how long does that last? Just to make sure like it's something that we have to find. That's ongoing that's ongoing revenue at this point. Now, we talked about a little bit last time that the state of Minnesota during their their their budgeting process here the last few weeks that that increase that we got slowed, but we still have more than we had from the year before. So, we still have enough dollars to cover these two positions out of that new funding. Okay. Where we at? Okay. Again, I just touch base. Um the the property tax, you'll see that that's down this year. We talked about why that is. um because of the the change in our or the slowing in our enrollment. You can see the details of our our property tax levy on page 40 of the of the book. Again, the federal sources were really back to the level we were before the pandemic. You see a very small change there of only 30 $36,000. Um when you look at the other, you see that increase there about 484. Most of that is actually um revenue that we're receiving from investments from cash that we have on hand. Now that we have a little more cash than we had in the last few years, we're actually gaining a little more funds there. So that's helping us um actually fund some positions. So again, just as a reminder so the public can see, I mean, when we talk about I think a lot of people think when they pay their taxes, they're paying the whole budget and they really are not. Most of the funds that we receive come from the state of Minnesota, but you can see that our budget from the community is about 25% of the funds that we receive. I mean, technically the income taxes come through the state. You are correct. Yeah. Okay. All right. So now looking at general fund expenditures and this is by the object series, our salaries and wages are going up by roughly 5.7% is what we're projecting. This is a change of give or take 6 million. Um you see that benefits are going up a heck of a lot more than the salaries. That is due to increased TRA percentages, uh health insurance and the new uh tax that is being applied to everybody for the paid family medical act. Um purchase services are going down. That is um primarily driven by the special ed contractors. So we are actually sourcing those internally. those go into our salaries and wages. So that's why that little piece is going down. Um supplies, this is primarily being driven by teaching and learning. This is if I remember right an offcycle year for curriculum. So there is being less curriculum being purchased. Uh equipment is heavily due to LTFM. We have fewer LTFM projects going on this year and other is primarily insurance related. So the main reason why we include this chart is just to give you the depiction of how much we actually spend on our students. So 82% of all of our expenditures are directly correlated to our students which is a fantastic number in my opinion. I think there's one more thing to point out when we talk about our expenditures. There's some things we added to the book that we haven't had in there before. If you um look at pages 22 through 37 um that broke down um expenditures per building. You see what's happening in those particular buildings. It's it's it's important to note that sometimes you see one building a little more than the other and that's mainly because a building has more senior staff than another building or we might have a special ed education program more in one building than another. Um we also have added um again reports by program page 41. you see that broke down a little more detailed than the pages that we have on the front end in the you know 10 and 11 and then on page 43 through 50 you see then it's broke down by object by program. So a little more detail for you to to digest there. Now we look at our our um fund view. You see here that our assigned our assigned amount is going down this next year. um that was mainly due money set aside for some specific teaching and learning um expenditures. Um so you can see from 25 to 26 our total fund balance you see that the increase there has slowed from the year before but if you look at the unassigned number you see that that's running is moving from 13 million to 15.5 million. So when we look at our fund balance percentage, you can see here that it continues to improve going forward with a projected uh percentage at this point at 7.3%. Can we just stop and look at that a second because we were new board members when it was down there at the bottom and that was one of the toughest times. Um so to see where we've went from there to now, that's amazing. So thank you to you and your team. Yeah. Okay. What do we got? Nope. Uh, one more. Uh, the the general fund. And so we were able to um uh we were able to save roughly what $6 million in this current school year. Correct. And that could be attributed to good weather, you know, staffing issues and or staffing um scenarios and a variety of other different factors. and the fiscal year 26, uh, you know, we're we're potentially saving about 2.5 million. Um, potentially could have been five if we weren't having to pay back the property taxes, right? But we actually gained that the previous year, so it ends up being a So that sounds about right. Um, I guess my question for you is is like, do you anticipate the 15.5, the 2.5 different $2.5 million difference on the conservative side? And again, we can't control the weather, but if the weather is similar to last year, there's a potential where that could potent, you know, that could go up. I I guess for me, it's like how quickly can we get to to $20 million and making sure that we as a as a community have at least three months of, you know, of expenditures uh to to cover those costs um in the savings account. So, like, are are you are you okay? Well, how are you are you being conservative in this? Well, when we bring a a budget to you, yes, we're bringing you a conservative budget. Um, I don't expect it to be worse. Um, could it be a little better? Yes, we would hope so. Okay. But until we know exactly who we've hired and what our expenses are, we do not know. And so, you're budgeting right now with who we hire at at a dollar rate that's in the middle or on the upper end. I mean because like that plays a huge part too. So it's what's what's currently in it's on macro rollover uh the macro. Yeah. Okay. Thank you for this. This is like three years ago and we were in a very difficult position. uh lots of discussions and lots of information that um you know that was probably uh you know accurate and also some discrepancies and to be where we are today uh to know that after 3 years that we are in a much healthier financial position and and knowing that the end of next year after four years worth we're we're back to well not back yet but you know very close to being a very favorable comfortable position so that we have more maneuver deliver ability as we move forward and and as our district grows. So, good job. Well, thank you. Okay. Where we at? Okay. Okay. So, looking at food service, as you guys know, um at the end of fiscal year 26, the state is going back to a 3% fund balance. Um or sorry, not 3%, 3 month fund balance total that you can have. Uh for us that's roughly $3 million, a little bit more than 3 million. As you can see, that's far above that. Um our director uh RiseAc for food service is doing a good job in trying to devise a plan to bring that fund balance down. Um so I believe that we will be at a balance that is at state required levels towards the end of the year. We're just not quite there yet in this budget and we're going to get there and we're going to present that in the final budget. Bill. Um I know that you had mentioned at one time that there were things in the legislative session that would allow us to move some of these funds around. Did that not pass in the final budget? Yeah, but there's some small pieces um that we're looking at and whether we can use those. And just an example right now in a in a particular cafeteria, we're not allowed to use any of the cleanup in the cafeteria, any of the supervision in the cafeteria out of food service funds. It has come out of the general fund. So, those are the things that they've kind of tweaked. We're trying to get exactly what we can and we can't do, but there's some maybe some small help for the general fund. Thank you. When you say we can't, I mean, is that somebody somebody has tried and the state said no or actually that's a good question because we just had a we just had an audit from the from um student for student nutrition and there were some very small things that they made us change back that we were very surprised that it was a problem. Case in point in one of those just for example on Bill what Bill was talking about. So we had uh bought students badges which were okay for them to swipe so they could purchase their meals with those badges. We bought lanyards. Apparently we can't buy lanyards with food service funds. So that's just an example of how strict the food service piece is when it comes to federal requirements. So you have them follow like the kindergarten class around without the lanyard and see if they can then approve the funds after that. as ridiculous as it sounds that the the the bureaucratic process of that is any kind of your restricted funds and grants are probably even worse. Um your audit it's it's auditable and that's the accountability measure. Um so it's a thing unfortunately. All right. or fortunately depending on your perspective. So this is just a history of the food service fund balance. It's been pretty stable. We do need to bring it down and again director Risac is going to devise a plan that we can accomplish that by the end of 26. So looking at community service, um I wish Steve was still here so I could commend him in person, but he left unfortunately. Uh they're doing a fantastic job. They dug themselves out of the hole that they had in fiscal year 23. They're now projected to be at 76,000 at the end of 26. Um, kudos to them for digging themselves out of that steep hole. Just to be clear, that was uh COVID induced uh because programs all had to shut down in their revenue base. Just to be clear. Okay, now I'm gonna shift gears a little bit. um we need to take a few minutes to talk about LTFM. Um in order for us to get authority for levy authority in the future, I need you to um approve our plan. So part of the budget, we just hooked this together. Now, we've talked about this already um this spring. Um these are the numbers. Um actually, if you turn to page 51 and 52, you can see the details of what we're doing in LTFM um in in 26. Now you can see we already have projects detailed down through 27 and 28. So you can see that in 27 we're spending 18.5 million on our LTFM projects and in 28 it goes up to 19 and a half. going forward. Um the uh the variables that we're using is health and safety an increase at 3% per year and our actual projects at 5%. That's the construction um increases that we're seeing right now going forward. Now I put in the whole thing, very hard to read um but these numbers are based off the the percentages I just gave you. And this is the spreadsheet that we send into the state of Minnesota um that they give us authority to move forward on. And I just want to just quickly touch base too that part of this plan is to uh bond some money next spring u about $21 million and that's used over the next bianium. So about a third of our dollars come through the general fund through our levy and twothirds we bond and pay back through well through levy also but it it spreads that cost out over several several years. So we're not we're not giving a huge increase to our taxpayers. Um actually next month we actually will bring forward a resolution to do future bonding so that we can have that ready for our levy even though we won't borrow the money until we get to next April or May for the next bianium. And just to be clear on the levy that you're talking about we don't need um stakeholder approval on that right that doesn't go on the ballot. Correct. that does not that the state gives us authority to bond what we need to do our maintenance of our buildings. Okay. So again, now here's a building construction because that's where those that's where those bonds go into and let's say two twothirds of the expenditures come out of this particular fund. So you can see they're under fiscal year 26 under the un under other financing sources about halfway down you see that new borrowing there of $21 million. Uh so that fund balance of course goes up and it goes down because we use those funds. So it we see every other year because we bond every other other year you'll see that fluctuation debt service fund. Um as I've said in the past every year that um the state of Minnesota allows us to levy actually 105% of the actual dollars we need to make our bond payments. And we do that in case we have a group of people who don't pay their taxes or don't pay them on time. We don't want to be short of funds to make our payments. Um, but what happens as you see our fund balance is is growing up a little bit. You'll see when we get to levy this fall that we'll actually do an under levy in the debt service area. Um, so we won't build that fund balance up. It'll actually bring it back down. Internal service fund. This is where all our self- insurance runs through both our dental and our health. Um, we've had this in place now for five years. We didn't have a self-funded health plan before that time, but you see that fund balance is growing very very nicely. It's a very healthy fund where we're expecting about 7.6 million in that fund by the end of next year. Uh we're really looking at trying to get that up to about 25% of our expenditure to really have a a good number that we can use to to help subsidize those premiums for both our employees and for the school district in the future. Um but that number is about 8 million. So, we're we're getting close. Um, but won't be too much longer. At the same time though, our increase of 5% overall um going into next year is actually less than markets running eight and 9%. So, we feel very good about that. Well, again, just a a look at that that uh fund balance and how it's growing. Now, over this is just a look now of all our funds put together. So you can see overall um we expect a a fund balance of around $50 million out of all of our funds the end of uh 25 and then we get the end of 26 that growing to about $62 million. But the key of course is the top line which we've talked about where that fund balance is going to projected at this point about $22.4 million. Um so back to a very healthy point. We're back to where we were five years ago when we look at fund balance. Uh, with that said, any questions? Director Thompson. Hey, Bill. Can can you provide some guidance on the internal service fund? I I see that at the end of next year, 7.6 million in reserves. Um, when is that the number that you want to hit where then we start to recalibrate what the health insurance premiums might be or like what are you what are you thinking? 8 million. 8 million. Okay. So, another about 25% of our premium and that's about $8 million. So, we're almost there. Okay. Close. close. Are there any particular parts or expenditures um that we have that you're maybe less certain about or going to be paying particular attention to over this next year for this budget? I would say there's something necessarily particular. I like I said earlier, this is a conservative uh budget. So, we want to make sure that all the staffing that we're bringing on, any new staffing fall within u the parameters that we have. So, there at this point, no, I don't have any red flags. um this fall when we see our actual enrollment, we see our actual um staffing, then we'll have a better idea of where we are at. I just want to point out um Chair Swanson on page 53, if you look at the appendix, which is the finance profile and benchmark, that compared to other districts, our enrollment size is eight, but our revenue and expenditures were ranked 21. So, we have more kids than everybody, less money coming in. You're looking at page 53. 53. Yeah, we're ranked as the eighth largest school district in Minnesota with 12,000 uh students. Uh but we are ranked 21st in total revenue that we can bring in and ranked 21st in total expenditures. And so uh ideally one would want uh a top 10 school district to be in the top 10 within the top 10 in revenues and expenditures that would provide additional services, additional um capabilities that we may not have compared to other uh districts. But as it sits right now, we are outside the top 20 even though we are the eighth largest school district in our community. Now that might mean we're very prudent with the funds that we have. Uh but are there opportunities where we want to accelerate academics, accelerate um uh student readiness and and does that mean additional funding might be warranted? Uh and then also how do we ensure that staffing levels and compensation of staffing is at a level that we think is appropriate for our community. So those are for another discussion. We need to pass levies. That's exactly it. Any further questions? Otherwise, up for a potential vote. Is the approval of the preliminary 2026 budget? And I'll make the motion. LTFM plan. Uh there is a motion by Director Baker. Is there a second? Second. There's a second by Director Anderson. Any discussion on the vote, Director Thompson? Yeah, I think um I am appreciative of this uh preliminary budget proposal. Um I think from where we where we have been over the past couple years, we've made continuous strides to to move forward. Uh I like that it is conservative and that definitely makes us uh in a much favorable position and give us some flexibility if things go sideways. Um I do feel like part of this exercise and now I've gone through this three times and and same with you two uh when the budget has come um I would like for us to be more um I I'd like to be more involved and and maybe that's a independence where where I want to know the more the financials even more so uh and further ahead. Um, I know that maybe before uh we started the previous superintendent went through an exercise when we went through some budget reductions. Uh, some sort of kind of a what are the top 10 things you want to keep or the, you know, things that are areas that we can cut and what does that look like? And I believe there was a technology assessment that was done around all the uh software and licenses that that we did a a few a few few years back. But um for the next budget cycle, I would like for us to contain uh uh entertain a zerobased budgeting approach where it won't it wouldn't impact every single program area. I would like it to impact at least uh some of uh at least four of them. That would be my recommendation uh that would be attached to this uh proposal. I'm sorry, attached to this motion approval so that uh it gives the district some time and for us to think through you know uh what would that look like having the district support services category, the pupil support services and the instructional support services. Um and yeah, those would be the top three that I would ask that we entertain a zerobased budgeting model for the next budget cycle. and and so to I I'll pause here. Um yeah, I I I'm thinking about that when we went through that budget process, too. um what that looked like. But I I also feel like there were some things that we started during that time that were never quite finished or we we never received resolution on. Um program assessments that were occurring that we never heard about like for um impact academy. Um and then uh gosh I it's I'm losing the one that was at the high school level. Yep. Um it was on the ANI plan. they Oh, um, Abbid. Yeah, we were supposed to bring that back or they were saying that they were going to and then it just kind of like disappeared, right? So, I mean, just maybe like an assessment of some of those or an update maybe on some of those things as part of that process would be helpful in determining budget budgetary needs. So, so I want to recognize that a a zerobased budgeting model is time time consuming. It is intensive. Um, but I also don't feel like it should be some something that could be applied to every single program category. We don't need to justify kindergarten classes. We don't need to justify special education classes. But when we think about uh district support services, uh when we think about uh you know some of the technology that we have within the instructional support services, uh what about uh school security, uh um pupil transportation? Uh the zerobased budgeting is is if you had to start from the beginning, what do you need to be effective and how much money would that cost? Uh and then you bring that back and say this is how much we need to be a really good department or section or uh business unit. And it may be more or it may be less than what's being proposed, but it is good business hygiene to make sure that are we spending the dollars effectively. Uh and so part of this proposal and the adoption of this budget, my recommendation is that could we dep uh would is the board open to adding adding a zerobased budgeting um uh exercise for three or four of these program codes within the general fund. Are you really are you really looking at everything that's not um just instruction based, you know, teachers in the classroom? looking at everything above, you know, what we're already required to provide contractually. Yes. Um like under the ELM contract. So, district office operations, administration, support staff, stuff like that. Yep. Yep. Anything that isn't classroom facing instruction is is what I'm envisioning. Uh and and again, it's not an exercise to say that these roles are not important. It's an exercise for us to recalibrate. Okay. Uh I is this ne is this truly truly necessary? How does this particular um uh uh money that we are spending align to the strategic priorities of our district and when we finalize our strategies and priorities in over the summer that ought to feed into the zerobased bud budgeting for the following year. Go ahead. Can I ask a question about it? Because this this is kind of outside my realm and so I'm trying to understand like the purpose for it beyond like what we already do, but the way that you're explaining it um I'm understanding it as almost like an evaluation of specific systems within our budget. Is that Yeah. Okay. specific programs codes. Okay. All right. I just I just want to make sure I'm comprehending that. And part of those program codes could incorporate the AVID program. like we yes we got rid of it but what did we replace it with and and is that something we want to continue if the dollars are XYZ and and the return on investment may not be there and now again these are things that as a board we should probably know we have an AVID program or we don't have an advant program we have a mentorship program we don't have a mentorship program and so these are things where where are the gaps because if we know there are gaps that allows us to be more planned ful for the next school year as we kind of set the stage. We have to be 9 to 12 months ahead because whatever we are deciding as a strategy technically we should be having our strategy formalized or finalized in like October, November which allows the administration to make sure what do you need to do in January, February and budgeting and then any hiring in March so that we can train and and educate the staff over the summer so that they can execute in the September school year. and then we start again our strategy session in September. So that's how I'm thinking we want we need to be ahead as you go through the zerobased budgeting concept. I mean, I like the idea of taking a look at what are all the other positions, programs, things that we have and looking at it saying, is this still driving us towards student success? Whatever we decide that means, like, is it still meeting the objective? Are we getting value out of all of those dollars? Or should we consider something else? if it's AVID, if it's some other program, if it's, you know, we should be pushing, you know, lower class sizes or whatever. Are there are there programs or things that we are executing currently today that might be better served in a different capacity those dollars? So, I think this would help bring it to light and force leadership to kind of say, these are the important things. these are our next nice to haves and if we got to cut something this would be it. Y but it also kind of helps us align on are we delivering on our mission. So, and here and here's and here's an example like in on page 47. I I am not saying we shouldn't spend this much money, but the activities and athletics category of our school district, we spend $6.1 million between salaries, benefits, purchase services, supplies, memberships, and miscellaneous things like that. Uh uh again, not at this moment saying we shouldn't spend 6.1 million, but it's one of those where does it make sense as an organization we recalibrate and assess uh do we need all these programs? Are there programs we ought to discontinue? I don't know. Uh are do we have it just for five people? Um and stuff of that nature. So that that so my recommendation or my if there's alignment here I'd like to make an amendment to the motion to add zerobased budgeting for the next school year uh the 100 series the 600 series and the 700 series and and you can even throw the administration in in that category as well. I would do that. I can you um can you identify what those those are for people that are listening the Oh, sorry. Go ahead. She have a question. You can. Yeah. The the administration series includes the board of education, the uh superintendent's office, instructional uh instructional admin, about $4.7 million in expenditures. The district support services, the 100 series would include the office, the business support services, legal services, HR, school elections, uh which which encompasses about $4.8 million. The 600 series includes general instructional support, uh, curriculum, media center, technology, staff development, uh, which is a total of $22.9 million. And then the 700 series includes pupil support services, uh, counseling, school security, uh, drug abuse programs, pupil transportation, uh, which in incorporates 15.6 million. I don't anticipate that there will be a lot of cost savings out of the people support services because you've got a big chunk of that 10.7 million out of the 15 million is transportation like there there isn't going to be a lot that we can do there. But I I think uh for from a board perspective uh I would have a little bit more peace of mind knowing that that uh we went through an exercise. Uh we went and saw and and we and looked underneath the hood to say all right this is what we are spending our money on. These are the contracts that we have uh and this is the return on investment so that if there are extra dollars that are available could we reallocate that elsewhere? So, all right. Can you just clarify your your motion real quick? What were the four Can areas? Yeah. Can I make a recommendation? Yeah. Sorry. Now I feel like we're amending amend. Um I I kind of feel like this should be somewhat directed by our superintendent business or our directors. Um just because I feel like they probably have a better idea of how long certain like analysis of certain areas might take. So let's say we approach this from a year-to-year kind of model that they might say these ones would take like I'm I'm a like you're saying one of those categories might take very little time one of the categories might take a lot of time and so I think they would have more knowledge in terms of how to develop a strategy there. Yeah, given there's a time limit, but yeah, given where we're at though, I mean, I think you're almost looking at kind of 26 27 budget like having any impact anywhere like it wouldn't affect what what's here. I just mean it's going to be a time if we're having them present to us for instance in the next several months on these what he's talking about. I think if I'm looking at that from from the superintendent lens and I don't want to speak for you Mr. Bman, but it might take it might take more investment or time or collaboration with groups to understand how certain areas work in terms of the funding. So, it's not going to have the immediate budget impact, but would there be a strategic approach to something like that that he would have more information on than we do? That's what I'm saying. No, I welcome uh I just like to know which the four are. Um we look under the hood. Uh, this presumes we're not doing I I'm going to have to get exactly what the zerobas model is that you're referring to. Um, so we can take a look at that and assess that, which is no big deal. Um, it presumes we don't already calibrate, which we do, but we'll continue to do it. Maybe there's a different method that we could use. Um, but I just want to make sure for the purposes of the motion, I got 100, 600, 700 series. Uh, I didn't get the other one. Is it and and you can throw in the uh the 0 or the the the administration series if you want. It was it's 4.7 million. The one above district support services on page 41. Okay. I I think maybe what I'm hearing though is you guys already have a process that you do yourselves. Well, so zerobased is a very specific u methodology. Um I can say we are not doing a specified methodology. So it's this is perfectly fine. We can absolutely do this. This is consistent with trying to reorganize at the senior level. These two gentlemen and uh chief of staff, we can get after this and we should. So I got no problem with that. I just want to make sure that the method and the reporting back meets the intent and the expectations of the board. So, one thing just to note and clarification for everybody who's never gone through any sort of an exercise like this, sometimes it will highlight the fact that we don't have enough resources in certain areas and it will very clearly point out we should probably spend another 5 million in this bucket to really be effective in it. I think that's good and I welcome I welcome that opportunity. But but that again goes sometimes sometimes or you know and again but but again again again it gives you the decision point like do we have to take that to the community and say if we really want to be effective at XYZ this is what it'll take to cover or do we have to make additional changes throughout the district and funnel money in a different way. It's a it's a open lens. So back to the back to the motion just so we're clear. There's a motion to amend the motion to approve these um with the addition that we're going to provide some direction to the district office um to do a zerobased budget practice for the administration expenses 100 series 600 series and 700 series as all right there's a second any discussion I just want to clarify that I mean we will at some point discuss what the appropriate time frame is to have this back. The goal is um we'll probably be using the 26 budget, but it's really for the following fiscal year, right? any adjustments. And I want to set the stage so that Bill and the team have enough of a road or um uh runway to talk through this, figure out the logistics, the the people because it will be labor intensive because you're going through justifying why you need something and uh if you had to start from scratch and what does it look like and so it it's what uncover some things and uncover some things and that will lead to what we might need as a district going into January for staffing. models and then how we want to um plan for budgeting for the following year uh with upcoming elections in November. So there's it it's setting the stage so that you've got the data and you can decide how you want to proceed forward. Yeah. And Carly, to your point, we might want to break it up for discussion purposes and, you know, take your advice as, hey, we should discuss this one first or this is going to take a little bit more time to dig into and have a couple different sessions to discuss the different series. Any other discussion? If there are none um on the motion to amend uh to include in addition to the approval the zerobased budget uh exercise for the 100 series administration expenses 600 series and 700 series. All those in favor of the amendment say I. I. All those opposed. All right. The amendment is approved. Any discussion on back to now the amended motion? I thought Bill did a good job on this proposal. Bill and your team. Thank you. Yep. And Mr. Baker, is there a I'll make a motion. Motion to approve. Second. All right. Being a first and a second uh to approve the amended motion, which is just so I'm getting the language correct, if I can find it. Uh the approval of the LTFM plan as presented and the preliminary fiscal year 2026 budget as presented. um as well as directing the district office to perform um the budget exercise of a zerobased budget for the 100 series administrative expenses 600 series and 700 series. Uh there being a first and a second. All in favor say I. I. Any opposed? All right, it is approved. Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you. Uh with that, I would move to adjourn. Is there a second? There's a second. All in favor say I. I. I. We're done. Thank you.