e e all right welcome everyone uh to the February 11 2025 Lakeville area school board meeting uh I'm going to ask everyone to stand and join us for 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 if the board members will uh introduce themselves starting from the right here Amber Cameron Brett Nicholson Paul car I'm Matt Swanson Michael Balman Kim Baker Brian Thompson and we also have the executive cabinet with us as well if they want to introduce themselves yeah Bill hren Brenda alre uh executive director of administrative Services Emily McDonald assistant superintendent Michelle Humphrey executive director services and some additional guests over on our right if they want to say hi I'm Amy I'm the American Education coordinator Nicole Adam director of integrated continuous Improvement Jack Baker controller of finance kimson and Kim mson all right we're going to jump into the good news uh superintendent Bowman thank you Mr chair um first of all we'll start with students of the month as many of you know Lakeville area schools has a students of the month uh recognition program and this program highlights three students each month students can be nominated by anyone in the Lakeville area schools community so we're excited this evening to announce that February's students are Abigail Morrison from our Small Wonders preschool Milo duri kindergarten at Christina hudleston Elementary School and Cole noff sixth grader Maguire middle school so congratulations to each of you students as well we have a staff of the month and uh the nominations for uh staff of the month can come from anyone in our Lakeville area schools community so we're excited to announce that February's staff is or are Christina Clark a math teacher at Kenwood Trail Middle School and Britney Raymond District licensed school nurse at Kenwood Trail Middle School she's also covering down on Maguire middle school and Lakeville South High School and our Lakeville Pathways Academy so thank you to Britney and to Christina congratulations all right stepping into our future career exploration event on March um I'm sorry on January 15th Lake valer Schools hosted it's the third annual stepping into your future it's a career exploration event for all 8ighth grade students this was held at airlake airport in Lakeville The Hanger was transformed into an expo space where students visited booths led by high school students local businesses and Community organizations this event featured interactive activities and highlighted in demand careers in fields such as agriculture Medical Services Human Services businesses Administration and our trades this event exemplifies student leadership in action as it was planned and executed by Lakeville South High School seniors as part of their stem Capstone project uh NAA rishko Grace Hall Julie Julia haslinger and Taylor nural worked closely with the Lakeville Chamber of Commerce and other Community Partners to coordinate the event and just a special shout out to Chamber of Commerce for all of their support in helping make that happen uh if you did not attend you missed a good event however I think there were a lot of video and a lot of other um marketing um sharing with that event so again thanks to everybody and especially to our seniors who put that together it was pretty awesome event Lakeville South High School selects the 2425 Excel Awards nominees Lakeville South High School has selected their nominees for the 2425 school year Minnesota State High School leagues Excel Awards the Excellence in Community Education and Leadership recognition program is designed exclusively for Minnesota high school juniors who are active in school activities show leadership qualities and volunteer in their community so congratulations to this this year's Lakeville South nominees Junior's Romy cich and Bryce Edwards yay Lakeville North High School will have their nominees later this spring Lakeville South High School also announces 2425 AAA Award nominees Lakeville South High School has also named their nominees for the 2425 school year Minnesota State High School league AAA award triple is academics arts and Athletics Awards it honors Minnesota high school seniors who have a 3.0 or higher GPA and participate in the Minnesota State High School league sponsored Athletics and Fine Arts activities so congratulations to seniors Ian Bamford and Charlotte Fannon yay uh Lakeville North will also have their nominees this spring and if you want to read more about some of the more amazing things that are occurring across our school district uh please see isd194.org newws on the worldwide web thank you Mr chair our all right um we're going to move on to the approval of the agenda uh if there are no requests for additions I would entertain a motion to approve the agenda I make a motion to approve all right motion is made by director Carbone is there a second second second by um director Cameron all in favor say I I I all right the motion passes uh moving on to the consideration of the consent agenda um if there are no requests to remove any items or discussion on any items I would entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda I'll make the motion all right motion to approve by Kim Baker is there a second I'll second it seconded by director Carbone all those in favor say I I I motion passes uh moving down to reports and discussion uh we're starting off first with the American Indian education plan believe we have someone here to speak on that right sorry good evening I just want to make sure this is working okay perfect thank you for having us my name is Nicole Adams uh my title is director of integrated continuous Improvement and I am here with my colleague and team member Amy Gish Meer who is our American Indian education coordinator uh she will be introducing herself in more depth in just a moment here we are here to share a little bit about American Indian education in Lakeville area schools part of the reason that you are hearing from us now is because it's everyone's favorite time of year annual compliance just to give you a little bit of a idea of where American Indian education is situated within our org chart um we are under the teaching and learning department and um Amy Gish Meer um is one of my team members in addition to the fact that we are at that time of year where we have to make sure we are completing our annual compliance there have also been some very significant changes in American Indian education since 2023 that you may or may not be aware of so we thought this was a good opportunity to share some of this with you um because it is pretty substantial um this legislation uh occurred in May of 2023 and its intent was to ensure that American Indian educa American Indian students have Equitable educational opportunities that value their cultural identities and is also focused on preserving and revitalizing cultural heritage for the American Indian Community in Minnesota so there has been in the past uh American Indian education but it was optional um and it was a grant it has shifted and that it is now required um in school districts and we'll get into that criteria in just a moment um and it is state aid so this increased funding for American Indian education in public schools this started in fiscal year 24 Minnesota allotted 60.8 million to improve American Indian cation uh education over a 4-year period and that funding supports programs that enhance educational outcomes for American Indian students in K12 Public Schools including culturally responsive curriculum and student Support Services she' also mentioned it also includes um indigenous education for all students there are many notable shifts this uh statute was very far reached teing it even reaches Beyond public education and into Health and Human Services because we want to be uh mindful of time we're really going to focus on the elements that really pertain to annual compliance but in the future should you be interested we can always come back and share additional information so we are going to be Focus focusing on American Indian education Aid I would just like to point out at this time you may accidentally hear Amy or myself use the term Grant that's because for years it was a grant and sometimes it's just hard to make that shift but do know that it is state aid um we're going to discuss the role of the American Indian parent advisory Council we're going to talk a little bit about how these shifts are showing up in Lakeville area schools specifically and the role of the American Indian coordinator on the right you can see there are certainly other elements to consider in the future and we'd be happy to share some of those at a later date so on the left you're going to see a little bit about the mde requirement so in 2023 it became mandatory that districts who have 100 or more State identified American Indian students must employ at least one full-time or part-time dedicated American Indian Education Program Coordinator the reason for this is to promote communication and collaboration between the schools and the community so for Lakeville area schools this was a pretty notable shift um previously there had been um Amy in a liaison position that's when it was under a grant and schools could opt in or not um and we did not have a full-time coordinator it's also important to note that no more than 50% of American Indian education funds can be used towards salary so um we'll talk a little bit here about how funds are allocated but no more than 50% of that total amount can go towards salary of any type the rest must go towards direct student services um we are adding an additional 05 American Indian education liaison that position is posted we anticipate that we'll be hiring that uh individual um by the end of the month here um and the reason for that is because we still have um a lot of student facing needs and where Amy has moved into more of that programming and program development role um we still need um some assistance with making sure that students are um getting Direct Services um through a liaison and that 05 American Indian education liaison will be paid for out ofar achievement and integration funding and with that um in the spirit of the statute um the purpose of the statute was really to be be more intentional about centering indigenous voice and um making sure that we are uh holding space for that and so with that I'm going to step aside and I'm going to let Amy Gish Meer introduce herself B Anin n Amy hello my name is Amy unfortunately this is the only part of my introduction that I can say in my OJ language the elders and my community didn't speak the language my elders were boarding school survivors stories history the language and knowledge was and is still passed down through oral history my people were storytellers as am I so winter is a time for storytelling luckily we have some snow on the ground today so please indulge me as I share a story um of my first presentation in the Lakeville area schools my first classroom presentation provided a really Illuminating experience which required me to adjust my thinking and proved one should never make assumptions I received an invitation to visit a fourth grade classroom they were beginning a unit on Native Americans I was was told that I should go through the culture trunk that um some of the previous liaison had compiled and familiarize myself with the contents uh showand tell of items um and their cultural uses and significance with the trunk and toe I walked into the classroom with the students Seated on the rug and all were waiting for me to begin I introduced myself myself by sharing my name that I am ojibway and that I grew up on the white Earth reservation immediately a student raised his hand and I called on him he asked did you study this or do you know some real Native Americans and I paused I answered that well when I introduced myself I shared that I am o way and I grew up on a reservation a short time to my presentation the same student hand shot in the air and again I called on him he blurts out what was it like living in a teepee and it that one caught me off guard a little bit um and I I I just said um I grew up in a house and I don't know anyone that has ever lived in a teepee I've seen a few um I don't know anyone so I also mentioned that um again I am ojibway and we lived in wigwams or Birch houses and not tepes those were the dtas um so I went on I told them that I I lived in a regular house um then I continued and the more questions I fielded not just from that one young student um I it came very apparent that the students knowledge of American Indians was entirely historical so I paused my showand tell and gently shared native people um today live in homes go to school have jobs shop in stores wear clothing that isn't made out of animal skins and furs and the only times uh and only in times a celebration do they wear feathers moccasins regalia I further explained that I felt that maybe their um perspective was just what they've seen in movies and in books and on TV and most likely YouTube and whatever else they're watching um so I also told them and the look of shock on their faces I said you do realize that there are American Indian students right here in your school and they looked at me like I was you know I had four heads so I finished my presentation and I left this the school a little bit baffled um and then finding perspective after my first classroom experience I concluded there needs to be a shift in the narrative and understanding of indigenous peoples we can share the historical significant without negating the present we are still here [Applause] um um thank you so um on the screen right now there's two different Maps obviously you can tell that um the one on the left is um a map of the US with the 574 federally recognized tribal Nations community and Villages um I would like to note um in some of uh the I've done a lot of reading research I'm asked for a lot of um resources for classrooms um right now there are only 150 native languages spoken today and unless something changes drastically within the next 30 Years 130 of them will go away leaving 20 native languages the map on the right um shows the 11 federally recognized tribal nations in Minnesota there are seven ojibway and four Dakota soue communities um one other thing um along with my story um I do want to share that um there have been findings that 87% of schools and not just Lakeville this is Across the Nation 87% of schools don't teach about native peoples past the 19 past 19 or it's all prior to 1900 um so I am really working um where I can to kind of change that for Lakeville schools and bring a broader perspective what is American Indian education Aid so this is for all schools with more than 20 American Indian students in their um districts it is state aid not a grant funding is based on student count and per pupil formula and um in this school year so this fiscal year there's 331 school districts in Minnesota and 195 of them receive the state aid okay now we're going to take turns thank you Amy so how is American Indian education Aid calculated the way it is calculated as Amy just mentioned it is on a per pupil formula So based on October 1st American Indian student counts in a per pupil funding formula that is how the grant I'm sorry see I said it the grant that is how the state aid is allocated by District so essentially there's a base award um as Amy mentioned at minimum uh state aid is awarded for any District that has at least 20 um identified indigenous students at 40,000 and then there is an additional funding formula at $500 per student beyond that initial 20 this year Lakeville area schools um the Mars reported 116 students so our budget this year was $88,000 in 2026 a higher student count uh there will be a higher student account so the award amount will be higher you can keep going on this okay we um okay oh sorry I must have I skipped a page excuse me um so our Mars data um just a little history um I've been in this position for nearly 3 years when I began in April of 2022 um no one could give me an accurate count I was told it was our student population of American Indian students was between 43 and 71 I questioned that um I wanted answers I wanted a concrete um number um so this past um October of 2024 the Mars data that was submitted to mde reports us at 187 American Indian students in Lakeville area schools and no there has not been a recent influx of native students enrolling in the district um but through persistence and garnering understanding with stakeholders I feel the current student count aligns with the data I have collected um and this is a breakdown of um our indigenous students per school and you can see the some of the changes um the 116 to the one uh 87 and that'll increase um our budget next year significantly so you mentioned that um there's a parent advisory council is is there something for students like a student council where they can get together and that is something that I have aspired to get going um so as of the past two years I've been a oneperson um team and um there's 17 sites and um if you take a look I don't have huge populations per School so it's it it's been a little bit difficult for me to get some traction on that along with the other um and we will be talking a little bit more about the parent committee as well oh Dr kbone yeah Amy you mentioned that no more than 50% of the salary or 50% of the money can go towards salaries correct and the rest goes towards Services what type of services are provided I'm glad you asked thank you next slide what's the next slide do you want to do the one part okay no um so um some of the things that we uh use utilize the funds for um enhancing existing programs um building sustainable programs culture language um Family engagement um professional growth College and Career Readiness um some of the pictures so the pictures to the right each year um uh Lakeville are schools and eight other South Metro districts we host um a poo it's usually held in Burnsville it's kind of centrally located with all of the districts um and then we do an honoring of our seniors there they're bestowed um cultural um stalls thank you um we also leading up to that we collaborate as well with those same districts and do um twice a month starting in October we do drum and dance classes together um there's also a picture of some of the contents of the culture trunk um Furs uh there's birch bark skins I I do joke that I hope it doesn't flag me because I do Google where to purchase animal bones and skins but it is for cultural purposes and education um uh also doing a book study not only for staff but then going in and reading with um students um I am partnering with um the 10th grade AP English classes um and they've selected two indigenous authored books um and then they they'd like me to come in and do some Q&A with their students as well to further um their knowledge um I of course put my favorite book fry bread up there because that is one of my favorite indigenous treats um and then the far right corner um we did do a ribbon skirt uh making class last year um I had one participant who actually fulfilled and created her own um ribbon skirt during that time okay our AAC um the American Indian uh parent advisory Council uh the APAC plays a critical advisory role in ensuring culturally relevant and Equitable education it also um strengthens the district and parent partnership which is essential to um Student Success schools report American Indian student count to the Minnesota Department of Education via the Mars system Minnesota automated reporting student system um October 1st each year I do have to go back and look at that I believe it's going to stay the same um but our the timing of um when I submit our plan for aid for next year is Shifting it used to be uh November 30th and they're switching it to fall within the fiscal year so I will um be completing another plan um for for next school year as of June 30th okay APAC membership um this is primarily composed of parents or guardians of American Indian students other eligible people would be American Indian um secondary students American Indian District staff American Indian community members or family members grandparents older siblings Etc um who are native American non-native American District staff may attend but cannot be voting members District staff should not outnumber um council members at the meeting okay um APAC must meet before March 1st annually to determine if um the district is serving the needs of American Indian students uh we met on Tuesday January 28th to conduct our review of the current American Indian plan so with that the possible outcomes resolution of concurrence that means the district is meeting the students needs or resolution of non-c concurrence district is not meeting student needs requiring formal recommendations for improvement non-c concurrence requires a written response from the board within 60 days we will be providing um the reading of the the vote um at a later date we also the resol resolution must be presented to the school board and we will be doing that on the 25th AA APAC plays a vital role in ensuring Equitable education for students districts must support and collaborate with Apex for Student Success and ensure compliance with statutory requirements and Foster strong Community Partnerships I think we more or less covered this slide as well so um and then the last uh slide has a lot of links if you are curious and want to take a deeper dive into um the state statutes um and guidance on APAC American Anan programs um we do have a page for in the lake Viller schools and me git thank you thank you we'll see you in two weeks right yes yes director Thompson thank you for coming and and more importantly providing an overview uh over the past two years I I have not had an opportunity to have this kind of level of information sharing so I'm appreciative of that so thank you um I do have just a few other just a few questions more tactical uh if you can provide some clarity uh fantastic to that that that we were able to identify 116 students and move to 187 uh can you kind of walk me through the process of like how did you find or how did we identify these extra students do they are they 100% are they 25% what constitutes that and then more importantly um the process that you took how do we is it automated now so that as new students come through the process we've got a mechanism to identify that the the the validity of of our of our uh student population count so I'll start there so the process I went through is I ran several um reports and I literally went through one by one anyone um and where the discrepancy fell initially was on students who were identified as two or more races it wasn't it was identifying them as two or more races it wasn't taking a look at what are those two races now the federal definition and the state definition of American Indian are two different things there is no blood Quantum and I do not ask for verification unless we're going to go after Federal funding title six funds so I do not ask blood Quantum from anyone or any sort of verification of their um their status with their tribal Nation the only time that that would be required is again like I said if it's for federal funding and right now this is entirely state aid yeah the automated if I may to the question of so systemically what we've done is uh through through Amy's work uh with our Mars and enrollment team we're now doing that dissection if you will uh and and deeper dive to do a verification um on on the uh Fidelity of that information so when you when you get those reports it's a manual process unfortunately um maybe it will migrate through our student information system into a a user issue where they make a correction but I think Amy's explanation uh because I you know we asked the same question when when I was going through this um so we do our enrollment team is alerted to it now and knows how to basically follow the trail on that and work with Amy uh on that matter you asked about automation the only portion of it that we have since automated is that if we do have a new student who enrolls in the district and they um identify as indigenous um whether that is entirely or um as two or more races and one of those is indigenous Amy now gets an alert that we have a new student has enrolled as opposed to in the past she would have to go through this process multiple times in a year y does does the enrollment form not allow you to select two different races it does I'll let you any parent who has gone through um enrollment or anything automated um at times go through it rather quickly um I'm speaking from personal experience um and you don't always read through everything thoroughly you might just there's the dropdown and it says American Indian and then it says do you want to do you identify do you not identify do you identify as this particular um tribal Nation do you um so if you don't hit the right dropdown there can be conflict and there's no way I've looked I've I've gone round and round with our um Mars and data collecting and our um enrollment people and I I think it's confusing across the board not just for our Native American students um and one thing that I also identified were the um students whose families are from India so East Indian but they live in America so the definition of American Indian can get um confusing but that is the federal term and state term that's used for our indigenous students okay George Thompson and I think I heard earlier did you say that the percentage there's there's no threshold so that if you've got historical 5% 10% that counts according to the state of Minnesota yes there's no other um culture race or anybody that has to appr approv by um blood Quantum so the state of Minnesota all they have to if somebody identifies as American Indian they can be counted from a federal standpoint there is documentation that needs to be and that can go back um as far as a grandparent being enrolled okay director Cameron um thank you for the presentation tonight I Echo um director Thompson and I learned a lot about um programming in the district I just wanted to say um my family has attended the south of the river poo a number of times and it's a great event and so thank you to Lakeville schools for being part of that um I think um it's exciting to see the schools in our South Suburban Conference or however we want to group them collaborating together on these efforts um my husband also works at Shaka high school and have been really um impressed with some of the initiatives that they're doing there and so I think there's a lot of opportunity to learn from our conference on um you know new initiatives or ways to support native um students in our community um that being said probably not today I'm cognizant of time and also um you want to focus on on the reporting um I also want to say that you know um this the University of Minnesota has incredible resources um it was the first University in the country to have a department of American Indian studies as you probably know um and the mington Sue has just um gifted a $1.2 million Grant to the College of educ ation to develop a native education for all initiative um and that can that's targeted for like teachers but also just general public and so um and then I'm also aware that like the Minnesota History Center has had um Native American teaching cohorts for teachers and so I'd love to learn and maybe this is an offline thing but just how our district is plugging into these State resources so that as a party of one or party of 1.5 soon hopefully um you're not having to do all the programming but can kind of rely on these assets that we have here So yeah thank you um yes I'm aware um and Justine does a great job at Shaka um and she's a wealth of knowledge and is always willing to share um Resources with me um and yes I've I have connections with people at the Historical Society I don't specifically have at University of Minnesota um however my dad's been in Indian Ed since the 70s so um and nationally so I have a a lot of um resources that way um I'm just excited to try and get some of that programming here into Lakeville schools and for our students I just want to point out and add on to that as well that there are a variety of State Standards around indigenous education in social studies Ela and then even beyond that you're going to see more of this coming in Through Math and Science as well so um a lot of this is going to start being embedded in a lot of places so this education is going to be really critical for our staff um to be able to make sure that we are teaching those standards appropriately director Thompson uh my last question is that I think next week or on the 25th a res you guys are come forward with a resolution with the plans of things that you guys have that the the committee the stakeholders have agreed to um just want to get make sure I understand the clarity the uh Your Role has is funding 50% by um the the AIA and then other 50% from the uh achievement and and integration Gap so we're covered there uh because of the program coordination role then you've got a successfully Asen coming in but only halftime correct is that halftime enough to make sure that we're able to touch7 of those SE 187 students I I know that with that that extra 187 I think as I'm looking at the numbers is going to get you an extra 35,000 for the following year but do we need two successfully aison or or will you be doing part of that as well or or not I'm just curious um I'll help out as much as possible um that being said I don't know what the budget looks like but the I'm not sure that the Ani and the aiaa budgets can handle um can accommodate salaries for more than that point5 and um we've never had a tandem of um partnership working together in the American Indian program here in Lakeville um so I I felt that we should start small um because I'd hate to have someone here full-time and then they're not finding that we're utilizing them appropriately so we were trying to conserve funding um and training so that's why we're starting with a0 five and it if it needs to be expanded absolutely we will be doing that I can just to add on to the budgetary piece um in a perfect world we would definitely love to have more of that support um whether it's American Indian education or all of our Liaisons um right now the Ani is we are maximizing it to the extent possible to make sure that we are getting as much direct student support for all of our diverse student groups um and that is based on state aid and we're going to do as much as we can to get those resources into sites but we could always use more thank you thanks so we have thank you so much appreciate it gig Min I think the budget the budget question is probably a good segue uh into our next discussion it's the uh revised budget review Mr hren a board chair members of the school board um superintendent Mike Balman uh thank you for having us tonight I have here with me Jack Baker he's our controller uh works with me hand inand on a regular basis every day see what tonight we're going to take a little bit of time really talk a little bit about school Finance as we have a lot of new members uh on the board um besides that we want to take a look at the current year budget how's it performing how's it looking how are we doing now that we're about halfway through the year and then of course we're going to go over the r the revised budget um we have a lot of information put on our our website we have a section in there actually says School Finance 101 there's little videos um a lot of information if anybody's interested to go there for more information but we're going to show you the first uh small little clip in 2023 as a result of a large budget surplus the Minnesota Legislature approved significant funding for schools but there's more to this story beyond the headlines with the new state funding there were also new mandates adding new expenses for our schools school funding is complex with most Revenue coming through a combination of State AIDS and locally collected property taxes the majority of our District's Revenue comes from the state in the form of general education Aid we also receive funding for specific categories but we can only spend that money on the category it was allotted for in other words just because the state is providing us with more dollars doesn't mean we can use those dollars wherever we like the remaining revenue for our district comes from local tuition and fees federal grants and local property taxes the largest portion of our budget goes toward paying our teachers and staff our people are our biggest asset and our most significant expense our budget also has to cover other things such as curriculum technology Transportation operations maintenance and administration the state mandates some of our spending for things like special education services and certain required courses but many state mandates do not include enough money to pay for them so we have to take money from other important budgets to cover those mandates other factors that impact how we spend money include inflation class size ratios aging buildings emerging technology and the specific needs of our students and while we work hard to balance our budget every year sometimes unexpected factors can make a significant impact when we find ourselves in a situation where the needs of our students are outpacing the funding we receive from state and local taxes we may go to our community with a referendum to ask for additional funding each year we tackle the challenge of balancing all of these funding sources and expenses to build bu an effective budget School budgets can be complicated but what isn't complicated Is our commitment to using our resources wisely on behalf of our students we strive to be good stewards of the resources our communities have entrusted to us while putting the needs of our students first by working together we can keep our schools and our community [Music] strong okay okay I just to reiterate there there's other pieces like that on our our website um also we have passed reports we have budgets so anything that people are interested in are there to see so I'm going hand it over for Jack for few minutes all right so what you have on the screen right now is a list of common use terms acronyms that you will see in the school Finance realm um the important ones here in my opinion are the restricted uh and the unassigned pieces of it the restricted refers to any funds that are design for a specific purpose they cannot use outside that purpose like we talked about those buckets earlier or that video did then you have your unassigned piece the unassigned piece is funds that the district has the discretion to use in whichever way they see fit um gby is the government accounting standing board standard boards um this essentially dictates the rules and policies that we must follow as a district the act for the financial report that you get at the end of the year that states the financial health of the district and then there's eup fars which is uniform Financial Accounting reporting standards so the eup fars codes are what dictate the overall spending in the district and it's broken down into six different dimensions and uh 17 digits those dimensions are the fund which dictates where it's at so if it's general fund Food Service Community aded Etc the organization so it could be districtwide it could be at a specific High School Middle School they all have their own organization code then you have your program your programming is dictating if it's like um special ed funding if it's a specific uh disability um if it is title funding anything along those lines your Finance codes dictate the funding source so that's where that restricted aspect comes into it so restricted funds have a specific finance code that is associated with them uh then the course is more local tracking and the object or source source is revenue object is expenditure is more micro and tells you really what it is so down below you'll see a code an example of one in which every uh piece of the U code is used so you have fund one which is the general fund uh 028 which is the North High School 265 program which is our stem 795 Finance which is all of our Capital project from that Levy and then 152 course which is the local it's a stem but it's also specifically manufacturing piece of stem and 530 dictates that it is equipment next talk a little bit about um enrollment enrollments is measured actually in different hey Jack are are these you fars code Codes readily available for constituents to be able to access are they available on our website like how does one even like get this or are they not available to the public um it's actually a great question well it it is on the mde um website you just go to wh go there and and uh just put in eirs and the and the the book will come right up so there's a manual like how we're using it is not necessarily there so our codes aren't in that manual but the dimensions on what each piece of it is is on the MD website under you fars if you just Google that you will find it but so if I go to the MD website it's GNA it's not it's not going to give you the information of how we're using it is that what I'm hearing did did I just hear that correctly it if I just gave you a string numbers yeah you probably wouldn't be able to decipher the answer is no okay uh you would have to be in our system yep to uh get our codes because as you see in there um there are codes that are local um yep so you would have to be in our system to see theod is available for I mean the data is there it's just not right now available to the public in in the way in the way how we were in the way how we use it the way that we're reporting out instead of using the actual numbers we use the words so you're going to see North High School what's happening in North High School you're going to see a capital projects lby what's happening in the projects lby uh equipment we buy an equipment it's in that Series right when different schools use this you our schools that's where we try to standardize so if we're buying a piece of equipment or neighboring School District buying a piece of equipment we're using that 530 code on that piece of equipment so they can actually compare across different school districts how we're spending that money yep so where I'm trying to get to is like this is this is our public money where it's being spent and I just want to understand how do we make sure this information is U accessible for those who are um super smart at Excel and and and and jam pivot tables and so forth but that's a separate conversation I just want to know if it was available answer is no okay thank you the answer is not no the answers is not available by E fars so we do have our budget book online for anybody to scrutinize and look at we also have uh um accessible any of the presentations that we have the the public can look at um and of course our our finance managers are available to to the public if you want a scheduled meeting and go through that we we would obviously accommodate that but not by you fars code because people don't want to dissect a 17 digigit code they want to see as as Mr holgren described um Lakeville North they want to see it aggregated but it's all reported we also do the C uh there I go with the acronyms again um remind me that they changed it from caffer to AER AER which is tell the public what that is it's is our annual comprehensive comprehensive annual report and so it goes into the detail for all the spending and the revenue and expenditures that this school district has and anybody especially those who are uh probably want to get into the granular detail can read that document as well now um if you want to go through and and do some manipulation of the budget and do comparables we do do have a budget uh analyzer tool that we can manipulate and do deeper Dives like you were talking about director Thompson so I I just want to be clear that we have multiple mechanisms the reason I asked to share the eup fars code is because it's also a an accounting reporting system that is regulated by the state of Minnesota which puts a lot of um uh requirements on the finance system and on the finance team on how to report our information I think I shared with the board uh and I don't want to go too D too far down the rabbit hole but kind of the ibida versus the how we have to do it in public sector um and there are differences but we are this District goes a long way to try to be transparent with the reporting um and I I know the other thing we want to try to do is get better at um metric reporting and maybe simplifying some of the finance health indicators which I know you have talked about so every expense of the district gets categorized using these six different metrics and is you fars is that mandated by the by mde yeah absolutely okay I on your table tonight I did give you the revised budget which we'll be going through a little later in a little more detail but if you turn right right now to page 25 you'll see how we break the codes down so that that report on page 25 breaks it down by program we even have the actual program code on there so you can see the very first one on the list is the Board of Education the 010 that's the that's in that second category on that ethar code and it tells you there how much is being spent you know on the board of education okay if you turn it two pages later to 27 it breaks it down farther where we have the program and each o each um object underneath it so in there's a wealth of information in this in this budget book and it's broke down several different ways so hopefully the public have a better understanding of our budget okay we're going to move on to talking about enrollment everybody's heard in the fall of the Year what's our October one um enrollment count we do that's a that's a that's a snapshot in time where MD looks at our at our particular enrollment and that's just counting each student that's on on in our buildings on that day we count them as one student and a lot of Revenue is based on that early in the year um enrollment count but as we move through the year um I had um with uh the our enrollment team just the other day we have a lot of new students that have shown up here and you can see now that if you looked at it today we have 12,120 students so that's a change from what we had last October but we have to be careful not to say oh now we have 12,120 because it just happens to be that particular day so if we have a student that comes starts say the 1 of December right well I don't get to count that student as one because they weren't here for the whole year it's only a partial year so that's why we go down now to the to the um ADM it's our average daily membership and that's weighted so if a kid's a student's only here for half a year we only get a half of a or only here for three months we only get worth the three months um and then another piece that you hear is pupil unit and our our students get waited again for an example our early childhood kids that come we by the time we get to the end of the year we usually have around 300 kids enrolled in our Early Childhood Program but we only get paid by the actual hours that they're in the building okay so we get about 35% of that so about 100 students we actually get paid for at the end of the year now when it comes to our um k6 kids they are counted as one of course it's weighted because of how many months they were here but if you remember we talking in the past a high school kid or a secondary um student starting in the seventh grade they get weighted as a 1.2 um with the idea that a older student costs a little more to educate so when we talk about enrollment when we get paid at the end of the year it's that pupil unit count is what we get paid for like back against what we'll talk about revenues here in in a second but I just wanted you to see that there's different ways that we talk about enrollment and for when when uh the uh enrollment people come to you they're going to give you the actual enrollment count of that particular day but for Jack and I we we want to know what that weighted number is because that's what we get paid paid on we get paid on the the weighted average daily membership or the pupil units the pupil units okay director Baker I just have one quick question um when I'm looking through the budget uh obviously uh those of us that were on the board last year we went through some boundary redraws um so I always look at enrollment and I'm always thinking down the road too like when are we going to need another building and how is that impacting our budget because if we lose students then that's money out the door right um so one of the things that I had some questions about when you look at JFK like our projected enrollment at that building right now is 644 and the capacity is 588 and Lake View the projected enrollment is 612 and the capacity is 644 Century the projected enrollment is 891 and the capacity is 896 so we have three buildings in the district that our over capacity are very very close and we just had a boundary redraw um now when I look at some of the other buildings it looks like there's room um to level some of that out but of course then that requires some work by the district to make sure that that's happening um what are your thoughts on that and is that something that you're monitoring as a district no yeah we watch our enrollment very close and we do have we do have two buildings that are relatively full and Sentry is one of those and the other one is of course our brand new building our High View Elementary is is uh we're using every room that was built in that building now for classroom space so we we do U watch that very closely so we can make a good choices for next year how we want to um take care of where those students get to go a little deeper with the answered your question on 25th we'll share with you and the whole public the the uh excruciating detail on where we are on enrollment and uh what that means in terms of uh future requirements uh on on our existing buildings you also need to hear and the public needs to hear what's the long range building requirements for the school district and uh will that will come early March okay than thank you very much okay now I'm going to take a couple minutes just to talk about uh fund accounting it's a little different than regular accounting or or cash basis accounting in your home um when you look some you think about a fund is really like a bucket of money okay so we have our general fund and of course that's where most of our funds come in and you can see we can take general fund dollars and we can put them in all the other funds we can help all the other funds with general fund dollars but we cannot do the opposite we can cannot take any money from a secondary bucket and put it into the general fund so I think that's very important to to understand um of course you know the first three year that's our biggest volumes are running through our operating funds um but we'll get into the details of the different funds as we move along tonight but just to get an idea of money is separated and uh we can't use it in places that we necessarily want to use it when we look at our annual budgeting process we'll start on the top here in June uh June's coming up relatively soon and that's when we'll bring to the board uh a budget for the for the next fiscal year um when we get to July through October we we really are ending our year um and that's when our audit comes in place our Auditors come in they look through our through our finances that really happens from July through October they're here a few days they're bomb they're come back um but they spend a lot of time in our in our finances in September I'll bring to the board a a preliminary tax tax levy as we get ready for the next next year that happens we on the 8th of September every year we get the information from mde that calculate what we're allowed to uh Levy um and then once once we get the um okay from you to go forward that's when the county gets their that information so they know how to spread that across all the um property owners in our district in November um usually November sometimes December depending on the timing that's when you'll actually get the audit reported out to the board the Auditors will come in uh give you our annual report and let you let you see what's happening with our finances and then in December I'll come back to you we have a truth and Taxation hearing really talking about how taxes work and of course how our particular um school levy is going to be in the next in the next year so and remember we're in a fisal year so when we come to you in in December with the next year's um tax levies so we just did that for 25 everybody's going to pay their 25 um taxes but remember for us it's the next fiscal year so we need money that we collect in taxes in the spring isn't actually available for us to use until the next fiscal year when July 1 rolls around now in January February where we are right now that's when we look at our midyear adjustments in our budget well how's it been going do we need to make any changes and then we bring forward a revised budget for you and of course we look at the next fiscal year and what changes need to be we what money do we have available for our programming for next year and then we're right back to June and we're going to bring a new budget for you so when we look at our budgeting process we're always in three so uh for for folks that are watching and also for again some some additional clar if you go back to the previous slide we are uh right now in the middle of or your team is right now in the middle of planning on what the budget's going to be for the next school year so next September 2025 uh and and so forth um and so you are estimating how many new students are coming in you're estimating which teachers are going to go where and and or if there's going to be changes or some that are going to retire or whatever may be uh and then we've got a bunch of things that happen between June from June and when school starts in September and then you come back in January to the board saying okay 6 months later uh our budget's wrong well let me rephrase that our budget is not what we budgeted for in June cuz I'm I'm assuming a lot a lot a lot of things happen between June and January right and so I I'm just I'm having a tough time understanding like when we approve a budget in June if if it's going to go over the budget when you come back in January do you just does the district automatically just just pay for the overage and just and just lets us know in January hey we went over $2 million we we we paid for it already or are there incremental checkpoints uh that get us uh that that informs the board ahead of time before January happens because like you just I'm hearing right now we have a 100 more students and I don't know where they're going I don't know if we added more staff uh and it does that because we approved the budget in June but is this or or or do you or does the district run in a manner where we will you won't spend anything above the budget and if it happens then you'll come uh so meaning then is the June budget kind of padded so that you've got that extra cushion so that you don't have to come and you know what I mean so I've got some questions because there's a big gap between June and January if that makes sense yeah okay a couple a couple things um yes in June we have assumptions that we use for that budget um I mean we get surprises in the in the middle of the summer somebody decides to retire that we didn't know about okay and if we know we have people that have left that we have um different positions we need to fill we're gonna we're going to be very conservative on filling that that particular position that needs to be replaced so you know we're going to make an assumption well that particular um employee you know what kind of insurances are going to need you know so we're usually going to put in a family insurance on that because we don't know where it's going to be because we don't want to come in too low and then they come back to the board and say whoops we were wrong so we really want to be very conservative in that June budget and that's what we're that's what we're seeing this year when we we reported back out to you last November say say that the fund balance that we where we thought we would be is going to be a little higher than what we anticipated and that's some of the reasons why because some of the hirings came in at a lower amount than we budgeted for okay and at the same time though we get to January and there is a a situation with Staffing you know we can't make any type of an adjustments let's say our enrollment went way down okay in the middle of the Year okay so now we're short on Revenue that is a place that we can't just fix it I we can't cut any anybody any type of Staffing in the middle of the year once we start the school year everybody's locked in so that is a risk to to a school district where as we go start that school year that Staffing is there and it cannot it will not go away okay that make sense yeah related to that so when we make our projections for the number of students that we're going to have enrolled and then we get funded for that when does that funding come in and then I I believe there's a discussion back in November I wasn't the meeting but uh that we had overestimated the number of students so then do we have to return money okay first of all um money is kind of metered out we don't just oh here's September here's all your money right it's not that way and you'll see that when we talk about um our budgeting and where we are in the year well so you'll see some differences there of how that money rolls in so anyway the money is metered out through the year so we we get kind of just enough to keep going right we there's no excess funds from the state of Minnesota so now the same thing now if we've estimated our student count too high which we have some of that this year which we'll get into here in a few minutes um so we're going to have to change that budget we're bring that Revenue number back down um but on the expenditure side like we just talked about we we can't change that sure okay but we'll talk about the details of that Revenue here in a minute and you'll see because we got inflows outflows nothing ever is exactly the way that we plan to but we always bring you a very conservative budget budg in June so does the state just reduce the amount due to the new student or the the accurate student count weit yes we we do a we do an estimate on our students starts way back in the summer and that keeps getting right through that whole Levy season through the fall so if it is changes then we change that because we don't want to end up actually with cash in hand that we have to actually pay back just to a couple points so there is reconciliation of the budget on a cyclic basis between school districts and the min Department of Education to uh director Thompson's question about the the dwell time between uh the answer to that this District's going to move to a qbr a quarterly Business review and I'm going to make sure that um as we go through that process that those reports come to the board um and I wanted to structure that around finance and our uh metrics on uh uh teaching and learning um so that that in that will be instituted starting with the next cycle um just because I haven't had a year to put that into place but uh the the you should see a Reconciliation on a quarterly basis I'm talking about the fiscal year as opposed to the um the school year y okay and that should align things I think a little better for everybody uh our our community as well as the board to have a um those I call them in progress reports or inride reports um so you can start seeing that as well okay director Cameron um chair Swanson was your question does the does 194 have to return funds to the state for um overestimating student counts Well yeah if there's if there's a surplus do they just count that against us for the next funded based on actual account not estimates is that correct yes as we work through the year it changes from estimates to actuals and when we get to the end of SE of June say the school year's over there's at least 10% of the money from the state of Minnesota we haven't received yet we have to wait for that it's getting into November before we actually get our funds from the previous year so that actually turns into a receival because the final count is the October count that we mentioned earlier and you don't really know what your total amount you're going to get for the uh previous fiscal year until that October 1 count is uh solidified but that turns into a receivable so we're just basing our budget off from our estimate but then the funds that actually coming in are based off the actual numbers correct yeah and and Matt I think one of the things that we have to be mindful is that part of the estimates where if we overestimate our students we may overestimate our staffing needs and so then we get uh that that expense that we that we have to cover uh for that year and then we find out that we don't have the number of students to that bring in so then it almost becomes a double whammy uh so I'm glad that the so thank you for the quarterly business reconciliation that that would be a huge Plus for me just because I think in my first year on the school board we ran into a financial uh event that that threw quite a few folks off and and was not a sherff so so thank you for that to another point though as well and and this was mentioned about enrollment and the Fidelity of your projection on your initial enrollment that's why cohort survival is the method that you want to use and what this District used at least when I was in Bill's role and as superintendent and cohort survival was accurate to plus or minus 1% uh if you're outside of that tolerance like 3% or 5% I think you are U making a gross error um the second thing I'll say is that um if you are doing your uh I'll say weekly checks on your budget you won't run into those problems yep and so my last comment that I'll share is so I appreciate again in June the goal is to provide a conservative overestimate of of of our expenditures uh and then a very conservative estimate of the number of students that we might be uh that might be coming in between June and and September and and also folks that come in throughout the course of the school year uh and then I think want to want to make sure I understand that that I'm on the same that that I'm clear uh you said that the staff is locked in after a certain date so is it is it like September like when the school date starts is it September 1st is it July 1st is it like when we bring in staff we there's very very little um flexibility in um discontinuation of of of that of the of our staff so uh if our student count drops there's nothing we can do in in that respect is that is that accurate yes that's correct and once once our teachers you know sign their contract they're in so that's happening in the summertime yep okay so yeah so it's done before school starts okay just talk a little more about our budgeting process um we're always working in three years you can see on the top there as a year is over we're working through our audit you can see in November then you get the that presented to you um in the the green area that's in our current budget that's where we're watching that enrollment and that's where you'll see a um you know updated enrollment projection right there in October um and you'll see then the revised budget which we're talking about tonight we're bringing to you in February so we're working on that revised budget way back in October where we're really putting our assumptions back together and and now we know who we've hired we have actuals of our staff instead of estimates um so we work we work with our with buildings and departments we meet with each of them and we go through their budgets in detail to make sure that we have what we need for that particular um Department area and of course now in the gray area the subsequent year that's where we are um you know right now getting ready for next year so and then first of all the tax levy that starts right away you see that back in September we we brought forward the uh preliminary Levy and in December we did the truth and Taxation hearing and we brought that to the school board to certify that Levy for the next year um also last fall we brought forward a 5-year projection we really need to have a very a very good um plan and where we what we see our programming looks like in the in the next few years so if we see we don't have enough Revenue to keep our same programming going we've got to make some adjustments to it um before we get to the end of that five years okay so along those lines like when we look at like the governor's budget um there's a number of areas that look like he's recommending cuts for schools um special education qm all that kind of stuff that we kind of talk talked about previously but how are we factoring that in is that is like how detailed are we getting in terms of that 5e plan CU I I think looking out I mean being able to have a decent understanding of what some of those things are how they're going to impact us and then what we can do today to start you know putting some money away to cover those shortfalls is pretty critical so maybe can you sort of give us an idea yeah I'm going to go ahead and take that one so if you remember uh the first thing I did when I came back here was I talked about The Five-Year Plan and I said the most important document on that fiveyear presentation was the planning assumptions so that's where you that's where you start those planning assumptions are are vital and important I can tell you haven't been through the process multiple times we are in the stage where the legislature is talking a lot of different things so what's happening behind the scenes is I'm going to bill and Bill's coming to me and we're saying what if and you're doing budget projection scenarios to say what if this happens what if that happens uh and and it's not just that I mean you mentioned qm uh uh director Nicholson and qm has a a wide swath of impact across multiple parts of the system so it's not just the the financial end of it it's all the other things that are second third and fourth order effects that you have to be accounting for so we're doing that as an administration because that's what we're supposed to be doing but you have to be also cognizant of the fact that those are just things that are out there um and they don't they don't have efficacy quite yet so you you have to be on the trail of paying attention to that and we have amsd we have masasa we have obviously all of you who are looking and people are are saying this that and the other so I'm also talking to Senator Duckworth and to our other representatives and saying what's coming what's coming cuz you got to see it coming right and then you have to be prepared for that so what if and projecting is what you do in the meantime so we are doing that director Thompson can you I'm looking at the gray section here and and I think I'm a little confused and I've gone through this twice so I apologize I'm going to just restate a couple things um the Staffing for our school district we're hiring them in March but we're not approving the preliminary budget for the next school year until like June and how like then how do you know how many teachers to bring on board or to hire you're predicating that on your enrollment Staffing is super critical issue because you're competing with every other school district out there so you're assuming some risk uh but it's educated and refined risk over iterative and iterative uh um opportunities with that and this school system has made a a what I call a one giant step for man uh on shifting our staffing earlier in the cycle and you don't want to go later because your ability to actually be competitive and get the teachers you want to have into the system is really it one major factor is timing so it it's we have a good understanding of that um but it you know anything is not zero risk it's low risk and managing that risk in a manner that's fiscally responsible and that's doing conservative projections through your planning assumptions director Thompson and so that I would assume that's with the Assumption where you'll know uh if you've got staff that is that that um that are retiring and so you you can say oh hey we're going to backfill those positions uh I don't know at that time if you'll have staff where you're like we may not renew their uh the contract and and maybe you'll know at that at that time as well I'm just wondering that where you've got the school board approving preliminary metrics or the data or the budget in June I I don't know I feel like does it make sense that the board is further you know uh involved Upstream whether we get a pre prelim in in January I me I there may be school district initiatives School District board strategies that we want to implement for the next school year that might warrant additional resources for whatever it may be and so I just feel like uh again we can come back to this but these are just my thoughts out loud I know that where I work at we've got we we do forecasting five times a year and and we're we're we're for uh we're projecting things that we need to um spend you know 9 to 12 months ahead so uh that I understand that's that's how we're currently doing it and I understand there's logic and meth and and good historical best practices and how that's being delivered I think as a board from my point of view further awareness and involvement might be something for consideration that's all I'll pause okay let's move on to revenues it's like about revenues a little bit um of course we got our general education Aid we got categorical AIDS really are all restricted which we talk about in a second our property tax is a big piece of our budget and of course our local Revenue when we look at state aid everybody knows about the formula allowance it's $ 7,281 student dollars per pupil unit so we're not disc counting the kids we're talking about our pupil units so you can see for this year we multiply our our pupil units times a 7281 we have 95694 so almost almost 96 million dollar comes from that formula allowance but now within that formul allowance there's restricted dollars that we have to spend in certain particular ways like staff development that's set aside to use only for staff development our Learning and Development of course we got our special ed cross subsidy that we've got to cover with our with our general fund dollars uh gifted and talented you get an idea there where of how much we actually get for gifted and talented and of course Pathways that money gets set aside for those students in that particular group and it has to be spent in that that way so when we talk about our un assigned dollars in the formula allowance it's really only $85 million that we receive at least in the year that we're in this next slide is really just to show you all the different kinds of restricted dollars uh that we get from the state of Minnesota all these all these have to be spent in this particular way um but it is not it's not part of the formula allowance it's on top of the formula allowance so our operating capital and we get some incentiv a and there's the there's the integration uh uh Grant right there so just so you get an idea here's special education it has to be spent on special education you see that we we do receive almost $32 million for special education and at the same time we're subsidizing that program that's the kind of cost that we're talking about there so when you look at the our dollars that come in in the general fund you see that about 35% of it is restricted it's not we're not able to just use it the way that we would like to use it for the kids when we look at our school levy kind of set up the same way our that Top Line is really our operating levies you see that we get $36 million for operating levies but the really the rest of our school levy is restricted um many many different um in the assigned areas for an example you know we just talked about the AI uh Grant well a third of that comes from taxes not sitting in this restricted area then we have the Capital Area too where this is our ltfm funds our our maintenance funds and our Capital funds all are restricted in our in our school levy and what's interesting it's almost exactly the same split about 36% of the dollars that come from our our school levy are restricted the last couple pieces that we get in Revenue especially in the general fund as a federal aid course that's we get some money to help out with our special ed uh program and we also the title programming comes to this area see here we're at $3.4 million and then of course our local other a lot of different Pieces come in you see that's tuition we receive fees admissions uh interest earnings and and so forth so but that adds up in in a year time to almost 8 million so um but still a relatively small piece of our of our budget what's interesting that just part of that 35% of that also restricted so it's pretty much across the board the different areas where we have that money come in now here just to get kind of a perspective of how much money comes in those different areas so you can see that our property taxes that you know that go to our community is about 27% of our budget the really all the rest of it comes from the state of Minnesota or through some local um area so now we're going to talk a little bit about expenditures so there's two major ways that we as a finance team look at expenditures and one is by the object series and one is by the program series which we talked about earlier in those e far e far codings so there's different series underneath each one so there's salaries and wages employee benefits anything purchase service supplies that we buy for our students Capital expenditures and all that under the object under the program we have things such as Administration District support um Community Education special ed everything along those lines that's how we really categorize these when we look at them on these levels so one thing I want to highlight when we're talking about expenditures by program area is that roughly 74% of all of our um expenditures are related directly to instruction so you have your Elementary and secondary education you have your vocational special ed and instructional Support Services that's all tied directly to instructional uh Ser services and we're talking about object roughly again 74% of all of our expenditures are salaries and benefits so those two are kind of correlating how you can see that director Thompson can you to the previous slide please uh just two back just want to make sure I'm on this uh one more so 19.78% for special education is uh so of the not the not the 13,000 people unit because that's not the number of students that we have we got about 12,000 so about 20% of our 12,000 Stu students fall into this category is that my understanding not necessarily this is not talking about the number of individual pupils this is talking about the total amount of spend so we might spend a little bit more on our special education students than we do on our other students so that's really anything in the special education piece of the pie is dollars that we spend directly on special education I think the number might be close to that too though or the percentage might be close to that 15 15 yeah but so if we have a $29 million expenditure we're spending $40 million on special education for our school district and and and is it and how is that comparable to other school districts well maybe that's just for another conversation so I'll I'll pause on that yeah we didn't do any bring any comparative um information tonight but we s we didn't be any com comparative information tonight with other school districts but that certainly something we can put together in a future time I would say that the state average is around 19% for special education so we're probably right on with other school districts okay okay now we want to talk a little bit about the the Year we're in and how is our budget performing okay so just take some snapshots here you can see what's going on um we don't have the uh month of uh January Clos yet so this this dollars we're talking about are through December 31st at this point in time but you can see that we do get fluctuating the way the money comes in um to our district so you can see last year at this time we had quite a few more funds have been brought into the district than we did this year um but one of the one of the main reasons of that if you remember last year we sold some bonds for ltfm so that was um 20 over $20 million that came in um when we when we sold those bonds and uh it was a November so when you take a look at this those bonds they sit in that other category so you can see that last year we got the that that area of the budget came in faster than it is this year but when you look at the property taxes our local sales on our and our State dollars they're coming in relatively the same as they have in other years so it's performing exactly the way that we expect it to perform and now a good example to talk about how our money comes in look at those state revenue you know we're at the end of December here but we only got 25% of our our dollars well that's because the state of Minnesota assumes that we have property taxes right so when we collect our property taxes in November and December well the state doesn't send us any money in those months we we have to rely on the on the on the tax dollars to get us through the cash that we need to make payroll and so forth and talking about expenditures it's roughly the same stories uh where it is cyclical in nature but it's relatively consistent throughout from year to year so you can see this year we have 36.227684 I do want to point out in this is nothing is at exactly 50% because the school year does not operate in that type of manner whereas you have your salaries wages benefits and your purchase service that around a third well when this was taken we're about a third the way through the school year so that makes sense um Debt Service dead service has two major periods uh July August when we make our interest payments and then February uh March when we do our principal payments so that's coming up and once those principal payments are made that'll be up to 100% and everything else will be drastically below it okay now we're going to go ahead any any other questions on that otherwi now we're going to dig into the actual revised budget that we bring forward to the board again um just to briefly talk about enrollment um which we mentioned way last fall when we were seeing those October one counts it's like our enrollment has had considerably slowed in the year that we're in but now I say over the last I'd say about the you know the last 60 days now we're seeing those numbers grow again but we're still basing the budget on on this this graph here but going forward we definitely see growth uh much slower if you go back in 22 23 24 we were seeing two two and a half% uh growth on our students and we're not seeing that now this line now is about at a 1% and that's what we expect um I guess again we follow that on a monthly basis to see what's happening with our enrollment uh but for for today for the revised budget bringing forward that number is at 12029 now if we look at the changes um from last year so now we have our actuals from last year as you can see our state sources um there were 136 million in 24 and for this year we expect and 41 I'm going get to the right spot here my notes now um you see that 3.83 and we we've just talked about enrollment really not changing so how do we get 3.8 83% of of growth um and the changes there are we know we got 2% of that money is just straight formula allowance increase the other areas example we have received money for the read act at over $900,000 so that's over a half a perc right there we have a a special ed increasing by $1.6 million so so those are the other increases that you're seeing in the in the state um that state increase um property taxes if you remember we passed a new operating Levy this past uh year for $100 per pupil unit to cover all the new um staffing needs that we have in high high VI Elementary so that's why you're seeing a larger increase uh than normal most of the time when we look at our property taxes the increases that we're seeing are number one enrollment and inflation factors in our operating Levy so that's usually run under more like around like a 4% on a yearly basis but here we're seeing number one it's the new operating Levy number two is uh shifting some uh payment of use of funds um for our ltfm into that into that general fund area uh Federal you see a small decrease there it's mainly due we don't have any Co funds anymore we used all those up last year so we're down to what we used to get which is just special ed and title uh programming and you look at our local they're really not a huge change there of 265,000 now you want to look at this a different way now instead of looking at last year we're going to look at the original budget that we put in place last June and now so what's happened um to these particular categories um in that time now we talked about this a few times already but our enrollment had didn't grow like we thought we we thought we'd be over 1% growth well now we don't so now we had to pull that that particular number back so you see a decrease from June of 1.3% now property taxes they were locked in the December before so you don't see any change there that doesn't change once we once we um do that that uh certification in December of each year uh Federal sources um even though you know we just talked about it going down overall but now we we're locked in we know what those different areas are using for their federal funds so we're seeing a little increase than what we thought we were going to see back in back in June and what we're seeing in our local is really um three big areas where we saw increases which has been really nice this year because it's really covering our loss and our revenue from our enrollment can I just ask a question about enrollment what what are you using to predict enrollment numbers and how accurate is that prediction because we've had it happen a couple times where we it wasn't quite what we predicted and so you know I'm looking through some of the the data that you've shared here um and like when you look at the Early Childhood numbers like they're they're topped out because we only have so much room in our early childhood space but then we also know that the houses that we're building in the community there's a lot of young families right so they have to be going somewhere so I I just I don't I have to are you using Census Data like how are you trying to because those kindergarten numbers are going to be vitally important to the district as we move forward um how are you using that to predict um enrollment we do take some time to look at new births but that's not a real a really great number because it's five years later before they actually come to school and people don't necess they stay in one place very long so as superintendent Balman said earlier we use that cohort survival method it's really looking back what's been happening over the last last few years and pushing that forward and then we had to make an adjustment this year year because we didn't see those students coming in in the fall like we anticipated or we expected them to do so we had to pull that back a little bit this year thank you okay you you'd mentioned that there are three areas under the local SL other that benefit the big areas number one is our investment earnings we just went through a large large time where we really weren't hardly getting anything you remember interest rates were lucky if we could get 1% well now we're most of our our um um Investments now are running four 4 and a half% um so that an increase when we didn't anticipate again we we wanted to bring very you know conservative budget back in in June we don't want to anticipate a bunch of earnings that we don't necessarily going to have but that's a that's a $600,000 increase than what we expected um we have some reimbursements um that now is about a half a million dollars that we put in place and then um we have some third there's a third party Revenue piece and that's an interest that's a in Insurance piece for our special education that the state actually helps pay for nursing costs and that's a $400,000 increase in what we expected and that has more to do with that what students show up okay okay on the investment side of it um are those I mean are we in the market are we locked in are we doing some sort of money market account guaranteed interest rate like what how do we do that we are very limited by state law of where we can invest our money and by far the majority of the dollars we have sit in CDs that's just that's just the reality we we can't put anything in any type of Market funds we cannot do that we can sell some commercial paper um wherever they're categorized at and actually I could have my my expert here here as a past uh investment banker and um but we work half we worked side by side to put those investments in place but you can get a little more detail on what we have in place right now no I think Bill hit it on the uh now on the head on that one um we are extremely limited and what we can and cannot invest in they have to be extremely high highest quality graded bonds they have to be CDs um I mean as of right now our broker is absolutely fantastic at picking out Investments for us and labeling out and he they send us out uh yields they lad them they do all that and I make my choice off the menu that he sends us so it's not like he's sitting there picking them um bill and I sit discuss and we decide where we want to put the funds but we also look at cash flow metrics and see when cash is needed in our account to cover debt payments etc etc but the broker that we work with is absolutely amazing um yeah so along those lines I mean I I you know looking at normal everyday random taxpayer you know goes to the bank and says oh well I can put my money in a CD at 4 and a half% I mean do we get similar rates do we get anything close to what the average person could get just going out to a bank or just you know looking at a high yield savings account or whatever else I mean do we like are we in the ballpark are we better are we worse like how cuz we we are very limited so I think in most cases we can get a little better because um the volume that we put forward we can put almost 250 a th000 into one CD and we shop across the United States it's not just here in Minnesota not just local it's they bid back to us what their rates are and then we can pick the highest rates and and pick our time frame our terms so basically we tell them how much we want to invest they go out they get bids for us they come back with those bids or those quotes and then we invest from there right Paul yeah very good bill you mentioned that the the covid funds have ended um are there still ongoing expenses that are a result of covid and and trying to fill that learning Gap that people talk about well I would say no at least at least the place that the supports that we put in place during the pandemic all those supports that we put in place and we use those Co dollars for are gone this last year in 24 there was a couple positions that we still use that money for but now that money is gone and those positions are gone okay so so there isn't an ongoing expense okay thank you well there's not one that's like obvious like that right that that's but obviously all our especially younger kids but all our kids had to come back from stay at home now come back into a school environment and we did that hokey pokei for a while uh our staff had to come back and reintegrate so those things they're they're not as tactile in terms of it's that program or that thing it's you have Behavior challenges that you have to deal with to reintegrate our our kids back into that brick and mortar scenario as well as our our our staff so they're not they're they're not as clearly identifiable programmatically in terms of what the federal government provided for in those in that situation but they still continue as we try to you know get ourselves back into a a more normal uh um uh operational Tempo within our school system okay thank you okay Brian thank you thank you thank you for sharing the screen I think this is I think this is something to um uh uh put into perspective while the state sources uh it's so it's a 1.3% change and so you know one would think oh I've got $1,000 and A 1.3% change is 10 bucks that's nothing but when we're working with a budget that has $143 million a 1 point A 1.3% Change Is is just two two million bucks that's a lot uh and and when I look at I think our uh 2024 budget you know that was shared in July or June we were projected to have only 3.6 uh uh million dollar in our savings account or the UNR unrestricted account so when I see these kind of numbers even a 2% change that would decimate us and and and so when we think about budgeting for the next cycle 25 and 26 uh there aren't very many instances where we come back and like oh we made more money it's you know it it feels like it's always been oh we lost $2 million or we we projected 200 students less and now we we got to make up make that up um I I feel like we've been uh pretty lucky and I'm going to use the word lucky because local others yes we were able to use Investments to offset that uh I think maybe last year we were able to move professional development dollars out of a certain category and move it back move it into another so that we can get you know have reasonably a million dollarss so we've been lucky in my sense for the past 2 years to uh mitigate some of these um potential uh Financial scenarios but again the 1.3% when you look at it it's like hey it's it doesn't seem like a lot it is a lot in this and it makes me pause when when we budget for the next cycle if we've got to be even more conservative just in case until we get to a point where our savings account is at a reasonable number and I think the target is roughly 8 to 10% of your expenditure so if you're spending $29 million a year you ought to have roughly $15 to $20 million in your savs account so go ahead Amber um this is related to that thanks Brian um I uh I agree that seeing like a $2 million um adjustment in the budget is significant correct me if I'm wrong here because um you're the experts on on the budget but yes there's a reduction in let's say 2 Mill ion Dollar in the budget but this is based on per pupil um the per pupil model and so we have we have less students than we thought meaning our expenses are also less than we thought and so um in a way like it's not a match perhaps but that um and to some extent they'll even out is that true to some extent well I'm I'm going to tell you it's not true okay well like we talked about ear once once the school year starts and our staff is going and they're working that expense stays there's no way for us to slow it down make it less that expense is there yep okay um now I agree you know you're talk about $2 million that that's a big number but at the same time 1% and our total budget is not a big number and we need to keep that in context okay and I I think I want to say two last year remember we came to mentioned that in 24 we came out a lot better remember last year last year was the year without winter we didn't plow snow we didn't burn heat we save money everywhere across the district and that's why we came up so much higher than we anticipated okay okay what we got left I broke this down now just to look at the state piece okay here's just a state of course that's our biggest piece and we see in that 1.3 million that 1.3% decrease so you can see back to our enrollment change really was about a 1% enrollment change so you see that's where the state funding actually um is decreasing but of course because we are touching all of our revenues by the number of students that we have that's why you're seeing the operating Capital the staff development all lessen a little bit when we look at the unemployment this really yes it's less but here is an area we actually have less expense because it's right now the state reimburses us for every dollar that we have to spend on this unemployment and we've spending less than we anticipated so that does wash there is 415,000 less in expenditures when we look at our unemployment cost okay we're going to switch over to expenditures now so in looking at expenditures the two categories I really want to point out are salaries and wages and employee benefits now they are tied um to each other and they both went up 8.3% I just want to remind you guys that when we settled the fiscal year 24 teacher contract it was backend loaded which is why we are seeing such a large increase and if we look at uh the capital expenditures piece of it um last year direct Thompson C can you clarify what is backend loaded what do you mean by that like like can you can you share the the numbers and the percentage just to make sure that people understand yeah sure um so fiscal year 22 was two and a quarter perc in fiscal year yeah it's actually 20 in fisal 24 um the contract was a 2 and a qu% increase um in the second year it was a 4.75% increase so the increases that we're seeing in that particular contract are in the second year so that's another reason in 24 we're way under budget because we spent much less in salaries than we had originally planned on before we had finished negotiation with the with the different um Union groups so if we uh look at Capital expenditures that's primarily due to the construction of High View getting close to completion um so if we're looking at supplies materials um if you'll remember during the truth and Taxation hearing we had mentioned that the we had put money into the assigned fund balance we underspent the curriculum we just put it there in a fund to spend in the next fiscal year so that is what that increase of 54.9% is it's not that we weren't expecting it it's just that this is the year it actually took place in when we planned it for last year here it happens it's just how it played out this time any questions on that uh Paul yeah please Bill there you go Bill the on the employee benefits you're looking at just under 50 million and I I believe if if my numbers that I saw are correct uh health insurance is about 3132 million of that of that number it's about 33 million okay how often do we go out to bid that in the market to make sure that you know we have competitiv and I know we're self-funded but there's still you the biggest part of self-funded are claims and there are providers that contract with I'm sorry there are carriers that contract with providers that can drive claims down by specific uh uh procedure categories so do we do that every 3 years do we have we not done it for five I mean where are we with that we we actually have to go out and bid that every two years so it's every two years it's every two years and we just did this this past year so this year um it'll be a straight renewal um actually our our program is is working very well this year okay um with the preliminary numbers we have we'll be working through to find out what exactly what that increase will be when we get to the end of March into early um April um and over the last two years as being self funded our increase overall was only a 5% increase when you look at the market is running 9 10% when we look at um health insurance costs right so we're running about half of that um and we'll talk about the balances in that in that fund here in a minute um but it's another area where we're getting up to the the place we want to be with that fund balance which gives us the opportunity even buy that down more so we're in very good shape when we look at our costs and our and our um health insurance okay thank you is it pretty common that school districts in Minnesota are are self-insured it yeah you have to get to a certain size to get enough volume because remember we are on the hook so if something really would happen um where our claims are much more um than when we anticipate we've have to pay those claims because that's what happens the premium comes to us and we pay the claims right we work as the insurance company do we have like re Insurance have a reinsurance so if we have a really high claimant we get to that $250,000 mark That's cover so we don't have to worry about those huge huge claimants coming back against us so that's you know that's our stop loss and that's where our our liability stops director Thompson hey I I appreciate the slide I think when we think about the the expenditures of of our school district uh the money that we get for for state taxes and and property taxes for a community uh we're we're spending about $24 million to educate our students here and of that $24 million uh about $150 million of it is Staff that's like so like we're spending as much as we can is what I'm well 75% is what we're spending right now uh on teachers on custodio Administration uh special Specialists you name it so uh so to me again like you shared earlier we are in the service business and and so you're going to have a high uh number allocated towards out of your budget uh for that respective uh space uh the purchase Services where where where it's $30 million can you explain like what is that what what makes up that purchase Services just so that like understand again yeah anytime we're buying any type of service from from someone else now a good example is this year we've had a hard of time filling some of our special ed um positions right so we have contractors that we've hired to fill some of those positions and that fits in the purchase Services category that's why you're seeing a little higher in increase there at 16% but it's also when we look at any of our maintenance piece costs where we have contractors coming in putting a new roof on one of our buildings okay that's purchase service anytime that we're bringing someone in to do work for us that's where it fits Brad so we had salaries and wages go up but we got a bunch of positions that we didn't fill for so purchase Services go up I get that part but how how do we have like kind of both scenarios is it just because of the the rate increases that we provided in the contract is that the bump I mean what's what's the why do both go up when you know I I could I could easily see if one went up and one was down but remember we just put a new building online so we have several positions that we didn't have last year so we have increased besides the increased you know wages we have increased staff and uh there's there's quite a few staff over at at the new building just a couple which we covered again with the new operating Levy okay we're going to switch over what we got left oh we got to talk about fund balances now well this kind of guess is a good picture um when we look at what's happening with our fund balances uh of course here's here's the last six years and you can see uh where we were getting um pretty low in our fund balance but we're expecting now in in fiscal 25 and our unassigned balance to move from 7 million to almost $13 million so that's the good news for the evening um what that what that moves is so I know last fall last fall we talked about that that what we anticipated about a 5.3% um increase over and we talked about the reasons and again um anything that we've put in conservative we're coming in under and it's just a great news so now we're looking at a 6.3% at the end of this this particular year and it does push us up above the current board policy at 5% Brett um so what kind of things can we put in place to sort of not touch that like how can we assure that not only can we keep that but we can kind of continue to grow that for a little bit I'll answer that um it's on me uh that will be that will be managed uh and it will go up uh it it the method is is repetitive and iterative budget review and fiscal let's say conservatism tight with that so that and all the internal control measures that walk us through the year to director Thompson's uh uh statements around this issue it's doing that in progress review uh so there's an internal Dimension which is I don't know Bill probably a daily and then there's the let's report out to the board on a more cyclic basis so you can see that and watch that along with us can can you go back to that previous slide than thank you um hey good job this is this is great to hear I mean I I I've been here just for two years and and we went through the 23 where we only had I think at the time projected $211,000 in our savings account in the unassigned balance and we were able to you were able to re reallocate some funding over to to get us to we about 1.2 uh thank goodness we didn't have a lot of snow in 24 so that got us closer to 6.9 uh but due to the conservative estimating cost savings uh to get us closer to $13 million like that's fantastic I mean I mean I I was anticipating that it would be I think I think maybe even 6 months ago we were anticipating that this is going to be a 5 to 8 year journey to get us back to where we needed to be at least to be at a more comfortable level I'm not saying that this is where we need to be now I prefer to be in the 15 to20 million and and I while Apple Valley Rosemont Egan they're a much bigger dist district and they've got $64 million in their unassigned account uh if we can get to closer to 15 to 20 but this makes this makes me feel that that uh we can entertain conversations uh potentially around are there services that we might be able to bring back and be thoughtful around that uh and and knowing that we aren't needing to save as much as possible uh I know that two years ago we there was a discontinuation of digital media Specialists I know that there was a discontinuation of French I know that we couldn't have you know refrigerators in our or or a lamp at our desk and so there were things that need to be be discussed but uh and as because at that time while we cut those Services those that are impacted are the students that are still in our buildings and so they're missing out on what other students had and so if there's an opportunity for us to talk through that so over the next two 3 four months as we plan and discuss the budget for 25 and 26 are there things that that we might be able to bring back now obviously want to be mindful of not to go backwards but fantastic to see this back to 13 good job thank you Bill I just wanted to say congratulations to you and your team this is amazing news when you have news like this you should bring cake well we we we did have a little happy Dan so she's going to cake CU it's going into what Ma bill you you were here through it all um so someone who wasn't paying as close of attention you know three four years ago what changes were made um to kind of change the trajectory of where we are okay well I guess first I want to just touch some Bas why why was it going down because there still seems to be some confusion out there and it really goes back it back it goes back to that pandemic and we had to add many many many services to support our students because before the pandemic we were already on a downward um trajectory I guess to say where we were we were um overspending our budget about three three4 million on a yearly basis and that was going on for a while right so when that happened it got it got worse um I know at the time the board was very supportive we need to support our students and they said yes we need to do it so part of that was it was kind of a plan going down the things that we did not count on is the this when we got into that second year of the pandemic we had 200 students just kind of disappear so that was a $2 million hit that we we did not know and we talked about that earlier tonight of talking about what happens if enrollment goes down it's a good example cuz that $2 million just went away and we had no way to cover that cost so when we in 23 um we were over we were over budget um you know quite a bit and we had to make those changes so that's the year that we made some cuts and we we cut $7 million at the time in order to turn turn this and get back to where we needed to be but there was definitely a lot of lot of expenditures that were more than we would have done on a regular basis if the pandemic hadn't been here and I think it's important to understand that that it wasn't just all of a sudden the money's gone there was a reason that it happened okay again I just want to touch on these buckets because I'm going to have uh um um Jack go into now some of our other buckets and talk talk briefly about where those fund balances where we expect them to be at the end of this this year so uh apprpriate timing to bring up cake because we're going to talk off student nutrition here so one thing that you'll notice is that in fiscal year 25 the fund balance for food service is down substantially um at least in terms on a percentage basis now this is intentional because starting in fiscal year 27 currently the state has it where you can have uh 6 months of your average expenditures for the year um in your fund balance there used to be 3 months and they are reverting back to 3 months starting fiscal year 27 so if we were to end the year as this picture States we would still have to spend down 400,000 in order to be at that 3-month level so uh one thing that we've done this year is we have purchased uh the St has allowed us to make furniture purchases for with food service dollar so we've purchased a substantial amount of lunch tables and to the tune of $400,000 D Thompson are we looking to enhance the the food program like it Italian dunkers Monday through Friday or like what what are we doing cuz if we do need to reduce this number down like and obviously when you reduce it uh I would assume we'd want to focus on one-time expenditures things that are not recurring that we can't afford in future years so I get the furniture equipment but do you guys have plans on what what you want to do next okay well I I'm going to let Kristen our our student nutrition director um give you the the plan they've already um we've improve the quality of like quite a few of the different meat items that we use in the schools and that's already been put in place and we're looking at having here come give you an update um on student nutrition and she'll go through all those details of the changes that have have been made can you use the funds on for equipment we we can use the funds on food service equipment okay but in the past we haven't been able to do it like in the lunchroom so that's why this is a one the one year this year the state of Minnesota has allowed us to buy lunch tables so we we've kind of Taken of that we had some old lunch tables um so we've been able to get some new ones in so it's looking better in some of the lunch rooms right do we ever like if if it's becomes like the state-of-the-art lunch section or or or kitchen do we ever rent it out and and charge people to to use it just for additional Revenue I'm just curious I don't know from time to time we do have groups that would like to use our kitchens uh the only cavity out there is we have to have one of our staff work in that kitchen with them okay so it does happen okay and you have to be careful on liability issues with that as well um but that's not anything you can't overcome all right so now uh looking at the community Eden um Community Eden was putting up really dark place uh during covid to the tune of netive 585,000 as for fund balance in fiscal year 22 they have since climbed their way out slowly but surely and last year they actually ended in the black at 12,000 and this year they're looking to double that um fund balance and go to 23,000 so way to go Community ad keep it up on building construction here's another fund where you'll see uh the fund balance is going down of course that is on purpose we we sold the bonds to build a brand new school and now we've spent those funds down the fund the fund balance that is there is the bonded funds that we have sold for our ltfm or our maintenance program and that 11 million is earmarked for fiscal 23 for those projects uh Debt Service if you remember we're allowed to um Levy 105% of whatever we need to make our bond payments that's that's because in case someone doesn't pay their taxes um on time we don't want to be short of making our bond payments so we're allowed to do the 105 but over time we don't need 105 every single year right so that fund balance builds up so this next this year that we're in right now some of those funds are actually going back to the taxpayer because we didn't need 105% so you see at $84,000 decrease that's under Levy um funds going back to our community our agency and trust fund is really our our scholarship fund we have uh some very generous uh donors here that have put in funds that are permanent where we just take out the interest uh that we earn and that goes towards scholarships so that's what you're seeing here that you're seeing the fund balance not really change um that um those dollars go directly into scholarships and then our internal course this is our self- insurance fund and you can see here that we started this uh fund actually in fiscal 20 um so it's been a few years now um and you see all that's built up from zero we started with zero at the time and we're expecting to be at uh about 77.4 million um at the end of this fiscal year that 25% I mentioned earlier we really want to be up to about that 8 88 and a half million dollars before we can really think about buying down our premiums but we're getting there we're almost there uh so that's all good news now here's just a kind of a snapshot of all of our funds put together so you can see overall in fiscal 25 um you know general fund of course is the biggest there at 209 million but overall um Revenue about $285 million uh for the year with expenditures coming in at 291 we talked about the reasons why that's a little higher like for example um spending down the uh um the building fund and so forth so but at the end of this year we look at a total fund balance within all our funds about $50 million right um so you mentioned just what did you say the you said the building construction fund was earmarked for 20 fiscal year $23 yeah the the amount that's left there at $1 million is is for our ltfm program that's our long-term Main maintenance program so that's how we buy Air Handlers and roofs and cement and and uh driveways and so forth we took out a $20 million loan we spent 10 last year we're going to spend the other 10 this year okay thank you ish so we're yeah it's about $1 million yeah uh so just in summary this evening um the overall Financial Health of the school district has improved our general fund unassigned fund balance is projected to be increased to 6.3% of general fund expenditures and again the unassigned general fund balance is projected to be above the school board at least the current score um School Board policy of 5% and then just to reiterate the student nutrition balance needs to decrease to three months of yearly expenditures by the time we get the fiscal 27 and that's requirements of mde so with that said is there any any more questions Brett so overall I mean you're saying Financial Health of school district is good at this point in time correct yes yes okay um looking ahead uh you know looking at the next year two years down the road kind of thing do you anticipate any reason where we need to maybe start thinking now in terms of should we be making Cuts anywhere do you anticipate that today as of today I do not anticipate that um we have to watch like I said we have to watch very closely our enroll let me interrupt uh that so the answer to the question is it's a little more nuanced than that um if we are are operating cross subsidies from one program to another uh your your guidance to me is to be fiscally responsible so we should not be doing that with the one exception which is clearly identified is special education we we have mandates there but if we don't have mandates we ought not be doing that um or at least an assessment a thorough assessment needs to be done uh if there are savings opportunities uh within again deep inside the budget to be fiscally responsible you expect me you expect bill and the senior staff of this organization to be looking at that and being responsible with that so some might call that a cut I don't call it a cut I call it a keeping the the reasonableness and the support putting our kids first all the time and that's not just a mantra that's a real thing yep okay so with So to that end again there are some classes that we hearing about in high school that are tipping over 40 um you know 40 kids in a class is a lot to handle you know some of our um elementary schools are starting to kind of be in that mid 20s upper 20s so if there was an opportunity to potentially I won't say make Cuts I will say shift dollars to maybe more boots on the ground type of approaches where we can get more teachers into the schools so that we can reduce class sizing and things of that that nature have we ever as a as a board or has a superintendent in the last few years ever given you guys any sort of hey where could we potentially find money if we wanted to shift resources to that type of activity again back towards Student Success how do we help student outcomes those types of things if we want to push more money to teachers and actually people who have boots on the ground doing the day-to-day work have you ever been tasked with that have you ever been charged with hey can we find 1% 2% or anything like that I'm just curious more from a long-term planning perspective have we done that exercise right now when we're looking forward to next year next year's budget we are looking at the programming we have in place right now when we look at the the ratios of our students and our teachers those ratios haven't changed they're they're the same okay so we look at what is that what's that programming going to cost and then do we have funds to pay for that so to answer your question do we do anything specifically to change that no it's looking right now looking forward with the same program we have in place now and to the question of class size um we we have class size um standards that we use for elementary um class size has multiple Dimensions to it um if if you're going to reduce your class size numbers which is which is um a noble goal um you have to have the space in which to put students in the classrooms right so that that is the balance that uh always has to be managed and to that point we do that iteratively and always um the challenge that we will'll run into before we run into um anything else's classroom space and you can extrapolate that to generally building space um putting additions in place to accommodate that in a building has a financial uh uh component to it that could be Levy driven um if you're building a new school you have to fill it um and then uh if you're in the elementary area or I will even say the Middle School area you're creating significant emotional event within your community with moving students with boundary shift so and this District's gone through all of that recently uh I know in the 90s it went through it a lot it it was almost routine um so there's so many dimensions to that that you have to be cognizant of uh PRI so we do prioritize that but within the means in which we have the financial capacity to do that class size is a priority every single budget cycle director Thompson Mr Nicholson I think I think you are um I like where you're heading because I think it's an opportunity for us to maybe uh not not assess but to better understand what do we have existing today that is meeting requirements but also things that might be a plus one that are nice to haves and then those nice to haves might be are they still a high priority nice to have and is there an opportunity as a board to Think Through okay what is the next level of nice toavs that we may want to bring in that we don't have like for example I went to the step into the future thing that was awesome like it was a huge airport hanger and they had a variety of different things so I think U uh Mrs hicker whoever it was that that led that effort fantastic uh but do we want to talk about class sizes do we want to talk about enhanced um uh enhanced curriculum for that might be more trade specific from cosmetology to electricians to Plumbers um and so or do we need to increase uh Early Childhood care or or help establish a mentorship program that may not be efficiently here yet so uh that is a conversation we'll probably need to go through that might take a little bit longer of a working session but understanding what we have today validating this is the Min minimum and we agree that this is the basics what are the existing plus ones we have and what are the nice what are the new plus ones we ought to be thinking for the next generation of our students and again again for another for another time thank you Bill yeah thank you and Jack all right uh board reports any board members attend any councils yeah Kim so I've actually attended two recently um last week the 9177 board met um most of that discussion was around uh some budget shortfalls that the district is experiencing much like other districts in the area um and how to rightsize that budget um to allow for that um some of the other things we talked about were sustainability teacher recruitment um they have uh a program that they've been uh using international hires to fill some of the special education positions within the district um they have nine total um International hires this year and that's um obviously filled nine classrooms they still have a waiting list so um that's been a program that's been very positive and has really helped the district out um so that's something that uh that's just kind of a an overview of what is going on in our 9917 district um and then tonight the special education advisory Council met um some of the things that we talked about uh were the special ed openings like there's U one teacher position that's not filled yet at Lakeville North and then a point 2 speech so that is a huge win for the district because we had a lot of special ed openings so that team has been working really really hard on that um there's still eight full-time pair of positions open in the district and five part-time so if you know anybody that's interested in working with kids and uh is looking for a job we are hiring and we would love to have you um we also talked a little bit about Staffing updates for next year um how many students we have currently in special education and then we did talk um extensively about 917 what that is the purpose of that intermediate District just to provide some parent education um so it was a great meeting I thought we had some really good discussion and I think we're in a good spot with hiring uh for special ed in the district and yeah I was really excited to hear that thanks Kim anyone else Amber um uh Dr Baker do we have any maybe this isn't a question for you um but with the 917 do we have 194 students who are on a weit list for services right now with okay we do have students within the district that are that are on that weight list and obviously the member districts um that are part of 917 have students on that weight list as well um that's really there's there's classroom space there's room within the 917 buildings to accommodate more classrooms to get students off the weight list the issue is finding the teachers to fill the classrooms um some of that comes down to uh the just our colleges within the state of Minnesota and the programs that they're offering for example um the blind visually impaired is a is a need that we've tried to fill within the state we have no colleges within the state offering that program anymore um so the closest one I want to say is like in one of The Dakotas I think it's like North Dakota it's it's pretty it's a far drive so we don't have any of our colleges in the state providing that program so we don't have any way to educate teachers to take that um which is where some of those um those International uh students or International hires have helped fill some of those needs as well um special education is one of the I would say the toughest roles to fill in the state right now just overall not just uh looking at any specific disability category I mean obviously those are a little bit harder to fill but just in enal it's it's an area that is very difficult to fill um and it's there's just a big need it's just one of our shortage areas in the state Amber um thank you thank you for that um uh before this meeting I was able to go to the Blazing cats floor hockey game um at Maguire middle school and um it was a tough loss um against new prag um but I think sometimes we celebrate the wins when teams do really well win state tournaments right but I think it's um you know seeing our student athletes um take a big loss and still have incredible um sportsmanship with the other team was incredible to see also um I love when other teams cheer on their their peers and so the South boys hockey team was in attendance tonight and um just seeing the support for student athletes was really powerful so um good great job to the team even though they had a loss it was a tough game and um they're heading to playoffs so it's great yeah what's really neat with that uh director Cameron is that some of the kids even though they're in different school districts right now they play together on special uh Special Olympics teams and they had like a a hockey tournament a couple weeks ago and so I saw kids that were on competing teams in the Adaptive Sports competing on the same team within Special Olympics and they're all cheering each other on so it is a really great um great thing to see and and to see that sport sportsmanship I'll make this quick I attended the uh board meeting for the association of metropolitan school dist districts on Friday um they hit on some of the key issues in the governor's budget proposal some of which have been discussed tonight um cutting Q comp potentially starting in 2027 I know we talked about that um a couple weeks ago with teaching and learning um and then also reduction in special education Transportation reimbursement um which could affect our district as well um obviously this is all just proposals at this point so we'll see where it goes um the other issue that was interesting that they talked about was uh the St Cloud School District is using Ai and running a pilot program as far as using it as a tool for the teachers to help differentiate um within the classroom and it's still somewhat in its infancy um but it was interesting to hear some of the feedback uh and just realize that that is going to be an opportunity um they're jumping on early obviously and uh hopefully we'll get some feedback and see how it can be most effectively used um but something the board might want to discuss uh for the future of our district as well so uh if there are no other board reports move on to the superintendent's report my report is uh I see a lot of people who want to address this board so I'm gonna I'm going to maybe amp that up a little bit and uh pass on any reporting sounds good we'll we'll get over to public comment um I'm going to read our our little uh instructions here so we are going to open up the floor for 30 minutes to allow the public to address the board with comments and concerns uh to participate in public comment individuals must have registered in advance using the form provided on the website uh you have to do that by noon on the Monday before the scheduled public comment section uh there will be no board response during the session um public comments framed as complaints and or concerns about the students or and or staff are not appropriate in a public forum due to data privacy laws these comments should be addressed to the administration outside of a public meeting likewise complaints about Schoolboard members should be privately directed to the board chair Andor the superintendent um no for no formal action will be taken on a topic presented during public comment um as needed the administration will follow up with the appropriate personnel on any concerns that need to be individually addressed also if necessary the board will follow up during board Communications at the next regularly scheduled board meeting um individual remarks are limited to 3 minutes um the board will provide a signal or notice when there are 30 seconds left remaining in your test um and please try to keep the audience noise to a minimum to allow everyone the opportunity to speak uninterrupted uh we there is no random necessarily draw today because there are only nine people signed up so we'll call the names uh director Baker will let you know when you have 30 seconds left and then uh yeah so we are going to start with Lori L I'm not very good at public speaking so I will be reading tonight uh my name is Lori leau I am a resident of Elco and the mother of two biracial daughters who graduated from Lakeville South in 2014 and 2016 they went on to graduate with their Bachelors uh from Northwestern and University of Wisconsin the oldest just completed her MBA at USC the youngest is doing her Masters in Education and psychology starting in May at University of Wisconsin um so this district and their parents prepared them well going forward in their careers um my girls were in school in California New York and here and I will say this was the best school district of all of them um they made friends they participated in extracurricular activities they excelled in both academics Sports Deca yet they still felt a bit like they didn't fit in and we knew that was a risk coming here from California at the time the school district was more than 90% Caucasian um it's now about 71% according to the website um it's still feels like we're going a little bit backwards I was sitting in my house watching the news a couple weeks ago and saw that they were having the meeting on the posters um it was disheartening to see reals on Instagram and social media about this school district being negative when I know there's more to it and we have great teachers here um if you don't think that this is a problem for all of our children that's a mistake maybe you need to hear that there's a bus stop in my neighborhood it's on a corner across from a house that flies vulgar political Flags um some of those can be traced back to the Confederacy this bus stop was always on the Southeast corner of the intersection for the first four years I lived in this neighborhood it still is but during the fifth year a new family moved in and they're black they're little girl goes to this bus stop last year the kids slowly started moving to the north side of the street most of those kids are there with their parents now this little girl stands by herself on that corner while all the other parents and kids stand on the other side of the street when the bus arrives those kids run across the street to get on the bus I don't think that family would speak up um so I'm here because I see it twice a week and and no child should be made to feel ostracized and this District clearly needs to do something to Foster awareness of people different than themselves 30 seconds it isn't obviously happening at home perhaps we can all agree that the fix isn't simply posters but if that's what makes a child feel a little bit more comfortable and more included in the school where the vast majority of students and staff don't look like her at don't see the harm in having those posters truly a community is only as good as at schools and I think we can do better for our kids thank you thank you Lor Caitlyn o Caitlyn how about William F hello thank you for having me my name is Bill thinkink um my son's name is Liam he goes to Lakeville Online Academy now I recently heard that you guys are thinking about shutting Lakeville Online Academy down and I want to give you some context my son is autistic he has dyslexia and he's ADHD now we tried in person we tried Center based we've tried um district 196 online and I'm telling you the Lakeville Online Academy is the best thing ever um my son is in fourth grade and he's testing out at fifth and sixth grade in math he is above um um grade level at reading and writing this program is amazing now I know the numbers are dwindling and that could be an issue however the way I see it is every time I go to Facebook I go to any social media I'm seeing Eden Prairie I'm seeing advertisements I'm seeing all the other online schools no one knows we exist however we were one of the first ones before the pandemic like Lakeville Online Academy is wonderful and not only is it worked for my son and I know you guys might not know how each day works we do an hour meeting and then the learning coach me I sit next to my son one on-one I I can go to the teacher office hours and get help if I need it sometimes things are too easy sometimes things are too hard and we get assistance for each kid and some the math my son is working on some of the other kids are not working on that because he's Advanced so he's able to get some things that are custom for him and um he also is in special education which is great but the special education is only 20 minutes a day it really doesn't help that much but what does help is that he's able to have someone sit next to him 5 hours a day and then that teacher one hour a day now I heard you say earlier that you put the kids first if you remove this program it's not putting the kids first because there's some kids that need this type of program 30 seconds it really helps my son and by the way um like the lady before me talking about issues in public school Lake the Online Academy we don't run into any bully it's not an issue what they learn about different religions if someone's celebrating something they're all loved these kids are taught right and I wish more kids got to see stuff like this because it's a great program and I'm just begging you not to take it away it's time thank you thanks Bill thank [Applause] you Paul D hi B my name is is krie saber I am the second and third grade teacher at laka Online Academy um Paul D had to leave he has a toddler and a 9-year-old and he sent me his speech would it be okay if I read it on his behalf this evening yeah thank you very much I only did this a twice over so bear with me thank you again for your time this evening um hello my name is Paul Deon aren and my daughter Savannah is enrolled in the online program at Lake Academy Elementary this is Savannah's second year in the program coming from district 196 online before arriving here at Lakeville Online Academy our daughter will be in the fifth grade next year and it's a huge change to have her make for just one year in her last year in elementary school she already made the change here two years ago our family loves the online program it also makes my wife and I as parents more involved with our daughter's education as we are her learning coaches and assist her as needed we don't just drop her off at school and pick her up and let her do her homework at night it makes us and I'm sure other parents more actively involved with their children's education which is great Savannah loves both of her teachers Greta and Carrie and they always support her with anything as needed they are so loving and kind and make sure Savannah and her classmates are listening learning and also having fun both teachers schedule time to help Savannah and other classmates as needed to make sure they understand understand the kind of assignment and are truly amazing all families are different in such great ways and it's so nice to have a local teacher in the same area we live in and teach our children virtually my wife was speaking with Greta and my wife went to East viiew and so did Greta's children being local is so amazing it's flexible towards our family's needs which is a nice to have these days to have the alternative learning program for students that need it Savannah has been learning online and not has been learning great online and not all students learn best in the classroom times have changed and so many of us work remote and it's nice to have this option it's nice for her to learn how to learn at this option with this option all parents want is what works best for their children and to set them up for success for the future and to be educated in the best way that as each student learns best if there isn't many students enrolled in the program maybe we should make more efforts to do so with advertising I'm not sure how many parents are even aware of this program thank you Carrie Greta and Jenny and the rest of the staff for always supporting our children and always being so loving and caring my family and many others really like the program and hope it stays I hope the board can make the decision to keep the online learning for Lakeville Academy Elementary thank you very much for your time and consideration for our children for the future we do have our on we do have our inperson event at Bogarts Apple Valley it's our Valentine and bowling so 12:30 tomorrow if you'd like to join and see us all thanks thank you Robin r hi my name is Robin Richards and I'm here this evening to address serious concerns regarding the recent decision to remove the inclusive poster series to be replaced with a new initiative first let me clarify that moving forward we should all refer to the posters as signs as they are solid District branded signs that are strategically placed in 3,000 locations throughout our schools this choice to remove these signs raises significant issues related to the fiscal responsibility governance and the impact of leadership on trust and academic success rather than fostering inclusion this decision disregards expert recommendations waste resources and undermines the foundation of connection and stability that support student achievement many of the board members who voted in favor of this decision campaigned on fiscal responsibility which continues to be apparent especially at this meeting however removing durable District branded signs created through a student parent and District partnership and replacing them with new ones waste both financial and human resources you had an opportunity to create a more amendable solution which was part of your discussion by keeping the six of eight signs that were not under the threat of litigation but you chose instead to remove all of the signs and invest precious resources into a new initiative these funds and more importantly time would be better spent on improving academic achievement additionally academic achievement is built on trust and respect which you impact through your actions and behavior dismissing the superintendent's expert recommendation especially after requesting for his input signals a disregard for educational expertise remember that your role is governance not micromanagement and your focus must be on the policies that allow the signage not the signage itself further not responding to emails sent to you by your constituents that demonstr atates behavior that undermines trust signals disengagement and goes against the basic social norms of respect and accountability that any public s servant should uphold finally it's troubling that some members seem to misunderstand how academic data should inform decision-making MCA scores provide a snapshot But True Value lies in longitudinal analysis or data segmentation within a district comparing our district to others with MCA data is misleading and short-sighted we must focus on Research back strategies and data that reflects all students particularly those at risk fortunately we have many experts in this work on the board and employed within our district let's utilize them and listen to them given these concerns I formerly request two items one public disclosure of the financial cost of this decision including removal redesign and installation of the new signs taxpayers deserve transparency two that you focus on your role of governance versus management there is still hope the most impactful leaders are those willing to learn admit when they're wrong and seek Middle Ground I have faith in each and every one of you that you will learn and grow as a board and through that growth I know you will bring great benefit to our entire Community thank you thank you Kiara m hi it's my first board meeting so uh I'm also trying not to cry um so I'm here as a parent of that little girl sitting on her teacher swap here we go it's our first year with L Online Academy we transferred in from well Macy transped my my youngest one is in kindergarten it's her first year in the district um but we trans for him from a different program where I watched Macy my daughter who is n almost 10 struggle and she has 8hd and she started kindergarten during Co and all of these things are difficult you know um but I watched her as she went through third grade especially and I brought up concerns because I was watching her test scores and they weren't good and I was watching that she she struggled to read and it's not good in third grade everyone else was reading novels and she was struggling to read a sentence and I brought it up to her teachers and her teachers said some are just late bloomers some take time to learn she's in third grade and she can't read a sentence I finally pulled her out at the end of the year and that's when I learned that she had been in an intervention stage for 2 years and nobody told me nobody at the school contacted me and when I brought it up they told me that maybe she's just late so I actually we've lived in the district for um since 2021 and I enrolled her um actually looking to put her in person because I figured what we were doing wasn't working and I clicked around and found Lakeville Online Academy on accident and decided Well what's one more year online we'll give it a go because at least it's in our district it's where we live I've always loved Lakeville and um I was thrilled to move here once we finally got you know an offer accepted on our house during that crazy housing market um and this year it's been incredible like at the end of third grade she wasn't raising her hand she wasn't engaging she wasn't confident and like I said she was struggling with math she couldn't do math besides what she count on her fingers we came in Fall testing she came in high risk in every category which I expected um I knew that but with Mrs krupy and with Lakeville online she's not highrisk anymore her winter testing came back and I cried because she's not high risk anymore and she's above average in math and just that short time period because of these teachers in this program she has ADHD and she's able to move around and wiggle she'll stand at the counter to do her classes and it doesn't distract anybody around her that's what she needs because she's just a little bit different 30 seconds doesn't mean she's bad at what she does and sudden she learns self-discipline she's able to manage her own routine she knows what to pull out and when and since I only have a few seconds left I just want to get to you I don't think that the lack of is due to a lack of need I've lived in this district for 4 years and I didn't know this was here until this year I think there's more kids like my kids like um like like Bill like he shared like Savannah who is here they they need this program it's just that we need to do something to make them aware of it in Lakeville and in Minnesota thank you thank you Ben p Ben P Karen M well good evening uh thank you to everyone for hanging in here with us so members of the school board in Lakeville Community um I come before you tonight to make an appeal to all of us to UNIF right now it might feel like we are divided but we really are more united than we think members I listen to every single one of your comments and I listen to all the public comment uh in the last meeting and without fail every single person emphasized the importance of inclusion each of us is motivated to be here and engage because of the inherent value of every student and the desire to see them succeed yet our community is divided uh members are being hostile towards one another over pieces of paper on our walls and there are parents students and teachers in our community who are afraid to speak up so why is this it's because some of these posters say words which convey messages which are actually exclusive and discriminatory in 2021 when the former School Board created this poster series it included two posters which say black lives matters along with the statement of solidarity quote we stand with the social justice movement this statement represents end quote at the same time citizens requested additional messages to be included such as all lives matters and blue lives matter but the school board at the time denied these requests so because of this it's critical for everyone in our community to realize that this poster series is actually exclusive and discriminatory the eth SEC the eth Circuit Court ruled that the former School Board engaged in Viewpoint discrimination and violated free speech their actions also violated our own School District policy 5 535 which states that the schools are to remain politically neutral and cannot promote one message above another so tonight I want to thank you members of the school board for making a hard decision a right decision to remove this discriminatory poster series your vote in no way was a vote against inclusion it was a vote to bring our district back into alignment with our own policy of neutrality and the ruling of the eighth Circuit Court your decision has given our schools in our community a gift of a freshh start a blank slate upon which we can forge a new United path forward centered on values that we all share the true inclusion of every student fostering each one's unique ability to learn and Achieve academically and embracing all the ideas and possibilities that they will create just think of the potential thank you very much thank you [Applause] uh and finally Bob C uh hello board um thank you for the time first I like to say as a Native American it's kind of cool to see uh more focus on Native American history but the sad part about it is many of us don't want to identify as Native Americans because of we don't trust the government and take us off your flags and get rid of sports teams with our uh mascots on it so uh you know we just don't trust you um but at the beginning I'm going to get back to what I wanted to say here my beautiful wife and I stood up for all life because as a Native American every life and all life is sacred so we believe that every life matters and every one of our children is a blessing from God so I want to encourage you for your firm to stand up firmly to remove the so-called inclusionary poster series I want to encourage you and thank you uh to to start off and get rid of all this politically charged discrimination of every kind you know Dei being eliminated everywhere because it's discriminat and it's not inclusion inclusion is the act of including the state of being included but when you hear quotes like this you're not welcome I couldn't care less if you are you are a minority or disabled you're a poor victim shame on you crawl back in your hole where do your kids go to school none of that's inclusionary and it has no place in our schools please enforce policy 535 and keep political activism out of our classrooms and maintain neutrality discriminating or alienating anybody in our Comm Community is not neutral please enforce policy 514 because bullying because of the bullying and protect everyone The Bullying threats and intimidation of anyone in our community with different constitutionally protected viewpoints cannot continue please enforce policy 413 of harassment and violence nobody in the board or parents or staff should be harassed shouldn't be tolerated and finally stop using uh our children for public public use to push political activism or discrimination of any kind as parents let's lead by example and love our neighbors as ourselves God bless you all thank you thank you all right uh I really appreciate you guys um just respecting one another and not interrupting people as they spoke um yeah really grateful for that one last item on the agenda uh approval of tenative agreement of contract settlement with the custodial Union Brenda will provide the details good evening a tenative agreement has been reached with SEIU which represents the custodial custodial unit for the 2426 contract period highlights of the tenative agreement include an across the board increase to wage the wage schedule of 2.2 5% effective January 1st of 2025 uh that's year one of the contract and 4.75% across the board effective July 1st 2025 year two of the contract longevity pay was added to the contract and an effort to retain employees also agreed upon are increases to 403b contributions and sick leave buyback to encourage improved attendance the total package of this agreement is in within board establish lished uh parameters at 9.41% and the agreement is recommended for approval by the administration Bri uh two questions uh can you uh um provide uh some clar not Clarity but additional information how does this compared to the other ones that we had I I I think that we signed one um approved one a few weeks uh a few months back uh and then the second question that I have was uh just just to confirm this was approved by the custodial unit so all members had to choose and they had to vote and they approved yes to move forward uh and so they are in favor of this uh agreement yes it was ratified by the union um and the uh total package is I try to um get those in as tightly compared as possible with all of our groups so it would be comparable um with all the other groups that have settled Brenda when did the process start the negotiation process start on this contract um was it oob no yeah no it was earlier it was probably early fall I think yeah yeah September I think okay and so the settlement fits within the parameters set by the prior board exactly the board at that time right um I would move to approve the the settlement second second uh seconded by director Cameron is there any discussion on the motion Brian just want I I want to acknowledge and and think that this group um because the the contract is pretty much for 2020 through the end of this year right uh no it's through 2026 2026 it's an off cycle we have two off cycle contracts this is one of them thank you any other discussion all in favor of approving the contract say I I I motion passes thank you thank you Brenda I'll entertain a motion to adjourn motion to adjourn moved by director Nicholson is there a second all right seconded by Kim Baker all in favor say I I we are adjourned e for