Welcome and good evening. I would like to call the Monday, June 23rd, 2025 school board meeting to order. Lisa, will you please read the role? Director Duffy here. Weber here. W. Felton here. Claflin here. Cummings. Yep. T. Felton here. And Chair Hume here. That's seven present. All right. I ask all who are able to rise for the pledge of allegiance. I I pledge algiance 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. At this time, I'd like to uh welcome our guests in in the room with us today and those watching on Town Square Television and online later. Okay. First up, approval of our meeting agenda and minutes. I'm looking for a motion to approve the regular board meeting agenda for this evening, as well as the minutes for May 27, 2025's work session, May 27, 2025's business meeting, June 9th's work session, and June 9th's special board meeting. Do I have a motion? Some moved. Thank you. Second. Thank you. Any discussion? All right. Um, just explain we held a special meeting a after our June 9th work session to avoid any delays and the HR processes that have to happen at this time of year. So, that was a very short and kind of boring meeting. But there are the minutes for you. Although, um, that's it. All those in favor, please say I. I. Opposed. Uh motion carries 70. All right, we now move on to quality and action and reports. Uh reminder, we don't have any student schoolboard representatives during the summer. They are enjoying their break, but we look forward to those reports coming back in the fall. And I will open up the floor to Amy Winter to tell us about the key accomplishments from the past school year. Well, thank you so much, board. I appreciate having just a few moments. Candidly, uh, ED services, as we kind of call ourselves, like to be behind the scenes. We don't necessarily like to have a lot of attention on us. Um, but I thought this was a nice opportunity to just kind of review like what work we do do throughout the year. Um, and kind of what's our scope and also just, uh, highlight some accomplishments that we're really proud of this year. So, first, you'll recognize these slides. These are some slides that we've used in the past where it kind of just outlines some of the scope of the work that we that kind of funnels through all of our offices. And so um some of that is uh specifically around teaching and learning and you can kind of see all the different programs there. We also oversee a lot of state and federal funding programs um or even just kind of programs that support the work and um that's everything from the title from the read act um the Q comp um teacher development CTE you've heard me speak on some of those things before in addition um we also cover some community engagement and student and family programming and so that may include our liaison ons our interpretation services advisory. Um it also um many times you'll see some of the programming that Gan uh oversees directly around that community ed adult education and in different areas and then some programming that Robin directly oversees which is our like ALC programming and then finally um the technology department uh is under the ed service umbrella and they really kind of have two sides of their department. IT side and also the edte side. So, um, we will be onboarding a new director there. Um, and he will start July 1st. So, that's a lot of information. I wasn't necessarily going to go over all of it in depth. And so, I was trying to think of an analogy to kind of like just kind of help uh maybe understand what our roles are in our department. Um, a fun fact about me uh growing up, I grew up in Shakipi and I worked at Valley Fair for like 12 years. So, uh, that job got me through high school and college and actually through my first couple years of marriage. Um, and again, it was kind of just a really fun job to work with colleagues and peers the same age as you. And it was also seasonal, so you didn't have to keep getting rehired every year. But I wanted to use it as an analogy around thinking like when you take a trip to an amusement park and when you go to the park, you're thinking of the rides and the food and the games and everything you want to do at the park. Um but there's so many things happening behind the scenes that you don't realize and many times you don't even notice um because obviously you know the focus is on that experience that you're having as a family or you know um what you're doing and what you're looking forward to. But like when a system breaks down you suddenly realize all of the work that's happening behind the scenes. And so if wild thing is broken, uh you are seeing the maintenance all of a sudden coming out or you know you're assuming that that ride is safe and that there have been daily checks being done and so much of that is just happening behind the scenes. And so our goal in educational services is to kind of quietly manage the complexity behind the scenes so that our students, staff and families can focus on learning and opportunities. So that's kind of my big umbrella summary of the work that we do throughout the year. So, I'm just going to highlight uh kind of the different um departments that are under ed service. So, first is our community ed, early learning and AB. And Gan talks a lot about that birth to earth. Gan is the director. Kristen um and Tom are both coordinators to kind of support that work. And some of the things that they wanted to highlight, and you might have heard of some of this, but in community ed um in the partnership with uh Kitchen Coalition, they've been able to serve over 900 free meals to those in the community. In early learning, we are um really proud that not only our um teachers for the Redact got the core OLA training, but also our early learning teachers and administrators completed their letters training this year during the school day. So um that was their professional development and everybody has completed it. So it's a really big success for that. And then um student enrichment opportunities are continuing to be provided to our students at Kids Choice which is our um like afterchool support uh for kids in community ed. They we now have three competitive gymnastic teams. Uh through community ed we have kids choice that serves over 350 students um this school year and 120 in the summer program and then 414 participants in the learn to swim uh programming through lessons and then our AB we had and we talked about this at another meeting we had 13 adults uh graduate which is a huge deal they don't necessarily get all the recognition we want them to get cuz um they're not having it they're doing it throughout the year versus at the end of the year. And then we've had 144 seniors attend our fall and spring fashion show and 572 seniors attend our monthly senior socials which again another one is coming up here pretty shortly. In particular around our teaching and learning department, we will be onboarding Natalie and then uh Scott Sunundstrom also provides support in this department. Um some highlights here that we wanted to talk about is um during my time one of the asks was we you know COVID hit um we kind of put a lot of things on pause and one of the things I got put on pause is how we support our teachers around curriculum and so we have started that back up and um this year we have done a lot of review with the teachers around what are the resources that they need in the classroom and so here are some updates um you know we added uh lit literacy, but we also realized that there's also some additional support for foundational literacy that we needed to add it. So, we piloted functional morphology uh and have now um adopted and we'll be bringing that in for grades 3 through 5. Um we are looking at Smithsonian Smithsonian science for the classroom and we worked with the elementary science teachers for that. um middle school science uh would like to adopt Amplify Science and then our middle school ELA team wants arts and letters and that's um in partnership with our current elementary curriculum that we do in ELA. We've talked a lot about just the new addition of talent development and advanced academics and uh Jake is the one kind of leading that work. He does direct services um and really helps and co-ees with teachers and then also does pull out uh literacy groups. And so there we're sharing in our K2 talent development program we serviced 564 elementary students. And then in our three through five programming we serviced 153 students this year. Uh also there were some other kind of big highlights. We brought in the catalyst approach and it was really kind of an extra um tool for teachers who were interested. It really builds capacity around classroom management and it provides coaching. Um both the elementarymentaries and the middle school had staff that wanted to bring this in. And so we had staff that not only got coaching, went and visited other sites for professional development, but also um we are kind of building uh internal coaches now. and we have staff that really are eager for that. I've talked a lot about our career technical ed and providing some sustainability around that, but we're also building out programming uh there and also doing some more collaboration with local businesses. And then finally, just uh last week, we did our end of the year data dig with all of our cited um leadership teams. And so we had an opportunity to really look at our data, identify those successes, and then do some uh future planning uh for next year. And so that was just a really nice opportunity to um see all of the work that's happening across the district from the whole year. All right. Uh like I said, technology has both the digital learning and the kind of uh IT side. I'm highlighting specifically the edte side. Um like I said, Joel will be on boarding here in July and then Lori and Connor provide support on the edte side. they really wanted to highlight. So this year we really talked about how do we build capacity internally and so we created an edtech cohort of teachers who wanted to deep dive uh their skills around technology and so we had 13 teachers complete that they also got their ISTY teacher certification uh through their own PD this year. So that's a huge accomplishment for the dedication um and time that they did for their own learning. Um, we've also been training and supporting teachers around those Prometheian boards and I know you got to see some of those boards. And then we also implemented uh digital citizenship curriculum uh K12 across the district this year. And then finally, our state approved alternative programming or we call it SAP. Some highlights there is um again just the afterchool programming that was offered to all the elementary sites, our continued credit recovery at the high school. Um CLC really uh focused around that project-based learning and also extending partnerships with community organizations and we just had day one of summer programming. Uh so we had summer school start today. So that is like a very quick uh snapshot. Hopefully uh you saw some successes in there. We are candidly diving deep into what we want to plan for for next year and how we can kind of get ready um and get started with some professional development through summer curricular writing and also some training in August. Any questions? Amy, thank you so much. When I see it all presented in a big list like that, it's so many things that you've got your fingers in and making sure are working well. I love the Valley Fair imagery as an explanation. Well, you know, I realize it's maybe not as interesting to everybody else. We really are passionate about the work. We're excited about the work and we like supporting the the teachers and the staff um and how we can uh just come alongside and partner with them. Can I ask you to talk about the work that happens throughout the summer a little more? I know you said that you're excited to get into next year. Yeah. Um when we think of summer break, we kind of think, oh, everything shuts down, but obviously that's not the case. So, if you could share a little more on that. Yeah. Um so, a we have a lot of dedicated teachers who want to like leverage that they are not in front of students all like over the summer. And so, we uh go through like a curriculum writing um request process and proposal. Teachers who want to do summer work. uh we want to support some of that. So we have a whole bunch of teachers that are going to do some summer work to kind of better prepare them and so we kind of support them. Um we also do a lot of professional development. We have a whole group of uh teams doing some restorative practice training and so they are doing some of that training. Uh we do some uh like coaching training. So we do a lot of professional development uh for ourselves but also for our teams. uh we're unpacking the data a lot and then we are um like mapping out how do we support that throughout the year. So whether that's purchasing curriculum and literally physically like getting the curriculum on site, getting it organized, getting it cataloged, um or if it is like planning out our professional development schedules and our days, um we really try to get everything um packaged and ready to go. So when teachers come back officially in August, um it's a smooth transition back. Any other questions or comments? Well, thank you so much and thank you to the rest of your team that's hiding. That was really, really good. Thank you. Thanks, Mike. All right. Next up, item 3B, stakeholder comments to the board. As a reminder to the community, there are two ways to make comment to the board. You may either submit an online form or appear before the board in person. If you would like to speak in person, the board has set time aside at our second Monday of each month regular work session meeting. Uh please note there is not a work session meeting scheduled for July for the uh summer holiday, but online comments are always accepted and you can find them on the website spps.org under school board. Um there were no comments made to the board on our June 9th meeting. I will now hand things over to Vice Chair Claflin to give an update on our work session. Thank you. I'll scoot closer to this mic. Um this evening's work session began with an overview of the student rights and responsibilities handbook that we'll also hear more about uh this evening. um that has a lot of information about the behavioral expectations for our students. Um the processes for discipline, how uh families can communicate with the school if they think something was not handled appropriately. It's full of great information for students, families, staff, and um while nobody goes out seeking a handbook, there's a lot of really great helpful information in there that um I think it would be really valuable for all of our families to read before the next school year begins. Um and also gives us some support when we are um discussing how procedures happen within the school district. there's something that we can all refer back to. And then at last uh two weeks ago, the work session also included uh a discussion of the proposed budget that will pass later this evening. Uh that was an in-depth discussion at the finance committee as well and um preparation for some just very procedural discussions that happened at the special meeting last week, two weeks ago. It's gone fast. Thank you. All right, Dr. Zambbrino, you're next on the agenda. I hope you have some fun pictures. Well, I you know, we always try, but you know, first and foremost, I just want to say thank you to our dedicated staff, our students and families for an absolutely amazing year. Um Amy talked about the work that teachers do in the summer and I know that a lot of districts are still trying to figure out Reed Act and the PD and some of those things. And last summer, our teachers jumped right in and you got so far ahead. They're already talking that functional morphology curriculum that Amy just talked about. So, there are I mean, I want to just I can't give enough praise to say how dedicated our staff are and then what that means for our kids and the outcomes for our kids. Uh we continue to see um great outcomes for our kids and better experiences for our kids. So, just again, thank you so much. And when I say staff, I mean all staffs. A lot of times we focus on the teachers, but it is a it is uh there are many people, as Amy said, behind the scenes who make it all go. Uh whether it's our clerical staff, our our nutrition team, our buildings and grounds, there's just so many people who make it all come together. And it's easy to take it for granted that every day we bring 3,000 kids in, feed them thousands of meals, transport them to here and there and everywhere in between, and teach them so many great things. So just can't say enough uh positive about our amazing staff and students and of course the families who are raising them to be the great people that our students are. Um we did hear as Amy mentioned summer learning started today. So it's uh exciting to see the kids back. I know a lot of the kids I mean we always think like summer yay but for a lot of our kids they really miss school. They love their teachers. Uh they love their classmates. I remember on the last day of school, there was a kindergarter just sobbing inconsolably and I was like, "Oh no, what's wrong? I'm not going to see my kindergarten teacher anymore." So, like, you know, but here they are, a lot of them right back in our buildings getting taken care of. So, so fun. Uh, so summer learning academy kicked off grades K5. We have uh session one underway for uh Packer Preview, which is our incoming middle schoolers, and then we'll have session two on the other side of the Fourth of July holiday. Uh still time to enroll for any of the summer programming. We never like to have a barrier or limit. So feel free to uh hop on our website to learn more or just show up at uh one of the sites and get some information. Um we also talk a lot at this table about taking care of our own in any way we possibly can. And so very excited that our district is again partnering with Open Door and teaming up to provide free summer meals for children, all students or all children in the community. not doesn't have to be a student. Any child ages 1 through 18 are able to get uh free breakfast, free lunch. That's happening with regularity at Lincoln Center and at the secondary and that'll go starting started today and it goes for a month through July 24th. Uh but they're also going to be doing mobile meals. So, they're trying to get out to the pool or to the parks and and connect where where our kids are. And so, you can certainly learn more on our website, but I thought this was pretty cute. You can text banana to the phone number there, the 651-3708095. If you text banana, then they'll send you the updates on where they're going to be for those mobile sites. Um, also working to make sure people are aware of uh that the state is offering what they call sun bucks for families. So for any family who has children who are eligible, they can get up to $120 per student. And so for all of our students, we were talking earlier at our work session about students who might qualify for free or reduced price lunch through their application for educational benefits. So anyone who qualifies for educational benefits, you're automatically qualified to receive Sunbucks. And if you didn't do that process, you still can apply through the state. And again, more information on our website there. The last thing we would ever want is a hungry child. So any way we can help uh get that message out, uh we want to continue to do that. Um we're doing a lot of work. We landed our strategic plan which is very exciting. I'll talk about that in a moment. We're also looking at some of our our branding and looking at what we call a branding refresh. It's not to upend everything we have, but it's an opportunity to say we have a new mission, a new vision, new core values and strategic plan. Um, does our branding uh still work? Does it match? There's some things we've been learning about ADA compliance um that are going to be required in law. So, we're trying to get out in front of some of those things so we don't produce materials or a website um that that doesn't meet ADA compliance, but we're we do have a branding partner who's expert in that and they're working on some things around a logo, which uh some of us have seen is really cool and um some color designs. And then, as always, we're always interested in feedback. And so, we did some initial feedback sessions, and we're going to continue to do that. We have coaches and things we're going to be meeting with here in the next couple weeks to have them put eyes on it because we know there's a lot of passion for South St. Paul everywhere, but especially with our coaches and they're often the ones who are out there promoting the brand. Um, and then we want to get feedback from our students. And so, um, we're not in any rush, but we want to make sure we're we're following that. We have an amazing brand to sell, so we want to make sure we're able to market that the best we possibly can. And so, we'll follow up with more on that. and uh excited to see what comes of that work. Uh another shout out here, I want to give a huge thank you to everyone who helped us on the compensatory aid issue. We talked a lot about it here and had a lot of advocacy from our board members, from our community to get the word out. As a reminder, um compensatory aid is generated by students who qualify for free or reduced price lunch. And after the universal free meals program was uh passed, there was some changes to try to streamline things. It unfortunately had some unintended consequences that uh potentially had us losing a million and a half dollars of compensatory aid. Um through strong advocacy and the supports um that everyone did, we were able to recover that and actually grow. So we we did not lose our $ 1.5 million. We actually went up. Um, so I want to say thank you to all of our families who filled out those applications for educational benefits that benefits their own child but also benefits the district and we do a lot of great extra supports for students. So things like counseling, social work, academic and social emotional interventions. Um it's it's goes a long ways and those dollars as I've shared before we I I saw that the state is allowing up to 40% flexibility with those dollars meaning we can choose uh from this table or from the district office on how we use those dollars. We put those 100% in the school. So those are dollars going directly into supports for our students and that's the right way it should be. The the dollars belong where the kids are. And so, while I think a lot of people appreciate that flexibility, I'm also proud to say we put those dollars right into our classrooms and into our uh school spaces. So, thank you to everyone who advocated for that. And again, as I said, we were talking about this at the work session. So, our free and reduced price lunch count coming into this school year was 54.2% through the work that was done in the fall. And now that the legislature is counting apps for educational benefits and not just direct certification and we are actually increasing to 61.4 um I believe and I hope that that's mostly just better documentation and not meaning that we're seeing increases in and poverty rates. Uh but a a big big difference that those dollars are going to make to see that we're uh up about 1.75 million from when we first started that conversation a couple months ago. So, I want to thank the legislature as well. I had a lot of conversation with legislators on both sides of the aisle. I definitely was not a partisan issue. We of course never take that approach here anyways. We're here to serve our kids and our community and it did take a bipartisan effort to get that across the finish line. So, appreciate that. All right. So, you know, we talk about summer is not a time to slow down. For some of us, it is a time to continue pushing hard and working hard. And just last week, we had a really great administrative retreat with our principles, assistant principles, and our district office folks. So, what I call our district leadership team. We're a very small team. I love being superintendent in a district where you can fit the entire district leadership team around one small set of tables. I've worked in districts where putting everybody in one space means hundreds and hundreds of people. So, it's really fun that we all get to roll up our sleeves and work together. But our main goal, and we talked about this at the start of the year, is really around alignment. We know there's tons of great things that happen on any given day, really in any school system, but especially in South St. Paul. Uh, but we don't want random acts of improvement. We really want to have alignment in our efforts. So, all the arrows pointing in the same direction, everybody pushing hard in the same direction. And so, with that, we have aligned goals. Um, underneath that, we have, you can click, Lisa. Uh, thank you. um we're aligning our goals and I'll talk about that in a moment. And then obviously we need to align our behaviors. That's where we start to build that foundation but really building out the processes, the systems and structures for improvement. And so as we mentioned, we passed our strategic plan and uh I think the team did a great job um putting together something that's very aspirational with our three pillars. You can go ahead and click of uh packer performance, packer pride, and packer promise. And now I've talked about the next step is the scorecard. So we had some conversations at this table. What does it mean? Is that just words on paper or how are we going to bring this to life? And so this what really the focus of our administrative retreat was. So if you think about a building, that strategic plan is really the foundation underneath. And now we're going to build on top of that foundation and really flesh out how we're going to deliver on these promises we're making to our community. The next graphic here just kind of shows one of the things as we think about alignment is working smarter, not harder. We're not we definitely don't want to add to anyone's workload. We want those aligned goals, behaviors, and processes. So, if you think about how we're we start with our strategic plan, we set out our vision, our mission for excellence. Now, we're building out our scorecards. Well, directly under that is the great work our school teams were doing. So, we had our our building leaders, instructional leadership teams together. They'll be getting to uh they'll be building out the school improvement plans that'll then drive the work in the school. So you have the district plan, you get to the school level, then you start thinking about individual or groups of teachers. So the PLC's working together, the classroom goals and individual student goals. So we're going to really have a strong system of alignment and what we call rapid cycles of improvement. So what is an annual uh scorecard? So here are this kind of a visual. It's a lot on one slide, but kind of to help put the package together. So if you think about we have this vision of nurturing an inclusive Packer community of lifelong learners. Our steering committee came up with these great pillars of Packer performance, Packer pride, uh, and Packer promise. And so now we're building out the goals underneath that and how we're going to measure that. So underneath each of those, we're not going to make a thousand goals. That's too much. We want to have a handful of goals under each one of our pillars that then we can align our actions and monitor progress all built on our core values of respect, pride, collaboration, integrity, resilience, and equity. So, what we're going to do is uh some people are familiar with this is called the PDSA, plan, do, study, act. Sometimes I've seen it as plan, do study, adjust. We're really going to be building on rapid cycles of improvement and progress monitoring. So, to we we start with a plan. and we want to define what will success look like and how will we know if we're successful. Um, so that's where our scorecards really come out. Then we're going to take action. What steps are we going to take? So we know what actions we want to do. And then we have to monitor progress, right? We it's it's accountability but not gotcha accountability. How are we coming back to this table to our community to say here's the actions we're taking? Here's the results we're seeing. And then what are the adjustments we need to make? And we need to do that in what we call rapid cycles. uh it's not enough to look at your scores once a year or fall and spring. That's just too far uh too far along. Like we often call that lagging data. You're looking at data in the rearview mirror versus thinking about looking ahead and what are the things we want to be monitoring as we go. So like if you think about driving a car, you don't drive looking in the rearview mirror. Periodically, you got to look and make sure things are okay back there, but most of the time you're looking ahead. And so if we put that on a calendar, what you'll see is we're going to have these cycles. So we'll start, we started the work now in August, September, well in August, we'll finish out building out our scorecards. We'll share those with the board and our public. And then we'll begin that cycle. So we're going to continue, we're going to implement, we're going to monitor progress in the fall. Then we're going to do a checkpoint around November, December, come back, what's working, what's not working, what adjustments do we need to make, and then we're going to start the cycle again. We'll have a midyear report back to the board so we can hold ourselves to account, make sure we're delivering on uh all the promises we made. We'll do that cycle again, come back around that spring break window, and then we'll come back with one more cycle in the spring. So, what that does is it ensures we're not having too far go where we're not stopping to monitor how are we doing. And so, this is very similar like what our PLC's do. So, PLC's as a reminder, professional learning communities, teachers get in groups, they plan a lesson or they plan a unit, they implement that lesson, they see how kids did, and then they make adjustments. And that's what it looks like more at the classroom level. we're going to be doing this more at the systemwide level. So, very excited about that. We've been working in partnership with uh Tina Posnansky's, our coach from Stutter, who's done a lot of work with uh a lot of really great high performing districts and she's so excited about this team and the work we're doing. Uh so, she was here with us for that retreat and excited to continue to push that forward. All right, so a little bit of Packer Pride in action. Uh we have a a fun little video. Um, the prompt for students was, "What was your favorite part of the school year from the mouths of babes?" So, we'll give Lisa a second to get that running and we'll all get to watch. My favorite part of the school year is meeting with friends, having a good teacher. My favorite part of the school year was the Valley Fair and the meeting. My favorite day was probably learning. so much fun out there. Getting to make memories with new friends and teachers, being with each other. My favorite part of the year was all the snow days. So, we didn't have to go to school. My favorite part of the year was probably seeing my friends at basketball. Hanging out with my friends, [Music] meeting new people, being the beginning of the year or like my friend's teacher. and we got to go um make friends with the kids. My favorite part of the school year was my dancing going to sing. My favorite school year is very [Music] going to um the Mall of America for the school. So my friends [Applause] trip. My favorite part was probably my favorite part of the school year was the fifth grade party. Probably the tracking or the five. Our favorite day was the trash day, the fifth grade party, and just hanging out with everyone. Having lunch, my friends, the school all cuz we got to go home. My favorite part of the school year was probably my friends. Seeing all my best friends at school, leaving I met all friends. Yeah, field trips, too. Mhm. Lisa sent the fun field trip. Then there was free choice. We got to play in our pro book. That was my teacher. Jack's class. My favorite part of this year is probably first day in science class. I am so happy for the last day of school. Yeah, summer's fun, right? So cute when you hear it from the kids, right? Obviously, what we hear so much is the experience and the connection with each other, right? Obviously, the learning is is a huge piece, but so much of what is makes South St. Paul so great. Obviously, the people and you hear it whether it's the friends, the teachers, and then the amazing experiences our staff create for our kids. So, exciting to see those um comments from our kids and how much they're enjoying being at school. Obviously, there's some uh end points that happen with the school year and so we definitely want to take a moment to congratulate all of our graduates and you know what I always appreciate when principal Chaki is talking about graduation. He really makes the point of it's a graduation from the whole system. It's, you know, obviously the high school is their last stop on the on the destination, whether it's the CLC or our traditional high school, but uh it is the culmination of many years of work and of course, not just the students, but their families, their friends supporting each other. And so, big shout out to all of our graduates, the CLC and uh the high school. And I have to say, I was told like it's so sad if we can't be outside and I love graduation on Edinger Field, so I get the loss that that kind of presents, but I have to say the feeling in the gym last week was absolutely electric. you know, it just was you could just feel the energy and um the excitement. And so it was fun to to be in that little uh more intimate space even though it didn't meant we couldn't do the the the grand march through the field. But shout out to all of our teachers, all of our staff are helping all these amazing kids get across the finish line. And remember kids, young adults I should say. Once a Packer, always a Packer. So please pay it forward. Come back, tell us what you're doing, share some experiences, give back. Um, you know, we want you to pay it forward and show the world what Packers are. All right. So, just a few dates to remember. We are off of programming next week. So, we want to make sure we do have some time. We have a lot of staff who jump right from the school year right into summer learning and we so appreciate that. Uh, but we've just felt that that Fourth of July week is a great time for everybody to have a break, to pause, to recharge and spend time with family. Obviously, we have the big holiday on July 4th, so our buildings are officially closed there. the our buildings are always open unless it's a district holiday. So, if people need to get in, they can. Uh but we definitely want people to join next week. And then July 7th, we have that um middle school summer learning academy beginning. So, they'll have that and the second session of Packer Preview for incoming sixth graders coming in. As always, you can find all of our materials on our website. And our team does a great job of updating those. And find everything related to the all the information we shared here today and anything related to our board on our website. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Uh, next I'm looking for a motion to approve the consent items on tonight's agenda, which include the financial claims, bills payable, and staffing as presented on the report. Do I have a motion? So moved. Second. Thank you. Any discussion? All those in favor, please say I. I. All those opposed? Uh, for the reasons discussed in the work session, I'll be a no. Okay. me as well. All right. Uh motion carries 52. Thank you. Next, we are at the business items section. We have three business items before us this evening. First, I am looking for a motion for approval for the South St. Paul School Board to approve the 2025 2026 student rights and responsibilities handbook. Do I have a motion to approve? So, second. Great. Thank you. and I invite Amy Winter back up to talk to us about this annual process. Thank you. Yeah, the family rights and responsibility handbook. It's just a resource for our families, our students and staff just so that everyone has shared understandings around um what our expectations and policies throughout the district and throughout each site. So, um it will, you know, cover everything from behavior to attendance, communication, and just processes. Um this particularly year for the approval we kind of went through a standard process of getting feedback. We didn't make any major changes. Um and most of the changes were primarily like cosmetic or they were just updates based upon information or legislation. And so like one example I gave was like the core values was a change from last year to this year. So we wanted to update that in the handbook. So I am open to answer any questions and am asking uh for approval of the handbook. Thank you. Any questions or discussion for Amy Winter on the handbook? Again, we did have the opportunity as um Vice Chair Claflin told us to hear about it and ask all of our questions in our work session prior to this meeting. Um, thank you to your team and um, for everyone who gave their feedback into making sure that our policies are reflected well and are updated and everything works. We appreciate that. It's a lot of pieces and one little change makes all the other things move in that document. So, a lot of respect for that. Um, if there is no further discussion, I ask all those in favor of approving the new student rights and responsibilities handbook to please say I. I. I. opposed. Motion carries 70. Thank you. Thank you everyone. Next item. I'm looking for a motion for the South St. Paul School Board to approve the fiscal year 2025 2026 budget proposal. Do I have a motion to approve? So moved. Thank you. Second. Second. Thank you. And I'd like to invite our district finance director Chath up to do his budget presentation for us. Good evening, Madame Chair, Madame Vice Chair, members of the board. Um, thank you for allowing me tonight to present our fiscal year 26 adopted budget. Um, I just want to preface uh to say thank you to the board, the the community to to staff. It was quite uh a challenging year with a lot of unknowns with compensatory enrollment, but you know, we all rally up and and behind the scenes, I was working a lot to help develop this adopted budget for recommendation for approval tonight. Um having said that, I just want to give a high overview of what goes into creating a budget for a school district, a public entity just like us. Number one, uh we base our budget off of funds. There are various funds that are earmarked for certain expenditures. Um the crux of the fund is the general fund. It accounts for the general operating costs. Think of it as your general fund checking. Um next up is our food service fund. These are earmarks for our lunch and our breakfast programs. So they record the financial activities of the school district food service fund. Uh in in my world when I talk to other business manager, it's it's it's fun too. Uh so when I use fund two, fund four, fund one, they're all interchangeable in in my word. That's how we communicate. Uh for the community service fund, uh also known as fund four, that's the activities of the community service program such as AB uh before after school care for example. And then our depth service fund is our um obligation that we have issued our bonds and we're paying that back over time. So, think of it as sort of like a mortgage. Next up is the the budget process. As you know, there's a lot of planning that that goes into developing a school district budget. Part of the planning process in the January board um excuse me, the January February um time frame. The board helped review the 25 26 budget information. We get our enrollments projection uh tidy up. We also get our expenditures tidy up and then we start the process. Uh February to March, you know, we we we meet as a team to recommend the budget that is in development. It's not finalized yet. And from March to April, the board helps review some of adjustments. Some of the items that we spoke about was certain programs not to be cut. We had a guiding change form and also keeping class sizes. For the last, I believe, eight plus years, we have kept class sizes constant, meaning things have not really fluctuated with our recommended classy, which is important to our school district. Um, at the same time, it can be quite challenging, especially with the unknowns such as compensatory fundings and other state aids and also enrollment. So from that on uh April May you know the finance staff uh we help prepare the 25 26 you know I go behind the scenes to help look at all the various spreadsheets and the modeling and it goes and goes into the our ERP which is our finance system to help prepare the 2526 budget. I extract that information and now um I have given you guys a copy of the PDF for the board to review and potentially approve the 2526 uh adopted budget. It does not end there because in the summertime July, August, September, we are in audit mode. We're auditing the prior year's financials and from there on we look at the prior year's financials. by the time the audit is done in November, we're doing the revised budget to see where we're going to land. So, um, a key driver of revenue for any public schools out there is enrollment. Uh, we had an outlier year that accelerated decrease in enrollment and that was due to COVID. But not just due to COVID, but we're also forecasting in the next three to four years of continual decrease in enrollment with some stabilization in the 2930 time frame with a modestly still a little bit of decline, but hopefully we'll be more stable by then. But you know, that's due to a lot of factors and one of the primary factors is declining birth rates. It's not just us that is experiencing declining enrollment. that is metrowide. Um, a lot of school districts are facing the same headwinds that we are. Um, the next slide here, it shows the overall budget assumption. You know, when you build a budget, you you start off with revenue and you you look at what the state is going to be giving you as a formal allowance. We were quite lucky this time around where the legislature just a couple weeks ago passed the inflation index to be included in the assumption. So we had a modest increase of 2.74%. Which is in dollar term it's $200 from the prior year of 72.81 for fiscal year um 26. So in total we got 74.81 per pupil. Now 27 beyond it's going to be attached to inflation. We do have a floor of 2% and a cap of 3%. In many prior years ago, a lot of business managers such as myself would just forecast conservatively one one and a half% because we don't know where things are going to land. We can't take it for granted. This time around, at least we have a floor of 2% and a cap of 3% that we can assume going forward. Um you know in the past three to four years we relied on the federal relief funding also known as COVID. No longer that is in play. Um fiscal year 24 was the prior year that all that funding dissipated and then we are uh no longer factoring that in for fiscal year 26 um going forward here. So COVID funding is no longer in play. And again being that enrollment is the primary driver of school district revenues. It is our main funding stream. Just in context um each students that we serve, we have other category aid uh general aid formula. We generate a little bit over $10,000 in revenue. But because we've been experiencing declining enrollment, we have to factor that in going forward in the forward years to make sure that we're going to balance our budget the best that we can because we have expenditures that can exceed our incoming revenue. Okay. Even though um the state did provide some increase here in fiscal year 25, but in my my next slide here, this is this is a very interesting slide. in the last 22 years. 2003 was where our CPI and state funding actually was pretty much aligned. But fast forward 22 years, you see that gap right there. You know, we have a huge gap. We get 2281, but if we were going to kept up with inflation, we would have been in uh roughly funding for $8,645. As you can see, it's quite challenging every year because inflation keeps on eating our revenue and we have increase in expenditure. So, it's it's you know de declining enrollment. So, year-over-year we always have to be strategic and we always have to be cautious in planning. Next slide. for our expenditures. We did have some contract that was finalized that was already factored in with the known percentages. We're going to estimate going forward for any unsettled contracts that's currently in negotiation. Um also for the um benefit changes, our class size norm have not changed. We we kept that constant for the last couple years already. Um you know, but we are dealing with some headwind. There's going to be some transportation um costs. there's going to be other costs and you know sometimes we can have a bad winter for example. So the budget this year was pretty pretty tight. Um and another variable is that the state implemented starting January 1st is the paid family leave act. Um the maximum employee rate is 044. The employer rate is44. So it's is a share cost. Our liability for that cost is approximately in dollar terms according to my calculation is $135,000 for the full year. But because in fiscal year 26 we were in operating in um a fiscal year it's be a six months expense of approximately $65,000. Um again just to rejurgotate our fund balance we have various categories in our fund balance. Uh we have the restricted that is externally imposed on us by statute. Um that's the operating capital, long-term facility maintenance, staff developments. Those are our restricted categories are assigned or that's something that we internally impose that constraints and the usage of it. A lot of times we will seek board approval for that. It's it's the technology replacement for example that's that's assigned and our unc unconssigned consists of the remaining accumulated fund balance. So that is um where the crux of our balances go to the unsigned and we are meeting policy. Our policy is 8% of the annual budget which translate into dollar terms about $4.2 million. Uh we're in a good position that we have met this. I have seen some other districts where the fund balance policy is not 8%, it's it's 5%. So for us to meet and exceed this, it's something to be commended. Um again, um the general fund summary here, this is a summary slide here. It it shows what was audited actual for 2324. Um I did the budget revision around the January February time frame to project out revenue over expenditures of approximately 275K and then I projected that out again for 2526 with adopted here like I was um saying in my last couple slides here we're projecting revenue of approximately $52.4 million and expenditures of $52.4 $4 million again to balance the budget with revenue over expenditures of $15,000. Uh we'll continue to monitor um our audited financials and then come back with a revised budget around December January time frame again to see where we land and where things are trending. um not to be alarmed for the projection for 26 27 and 27 28 all those uh deficits right there that is if we could not get compensatory other states funding if we don't do any additional uh maneuvers that's what it's going to show but those are just rejections uh we are held harmless for a year thank goodness we got the $ 1.5 million because the cuts could have been very devastating for districts our Okay. Um this is what it looks like for the proposed budget in various categories here. Um our assigned our unassigned and also our restricted categories. A lot of this goes through a data cleansing process with MDE that when I submit the UARS tape to MDE, MDE takes that looks at various codings and what we need to correct. So a lot of these numbers will be fluctuating and changing because it has to go through a robust audit process as well. Uh what makes up the general fund revenue by source here? Um again a large portion of our general fund revenue is by state aid. Um second is the taxes and also we get categorial state aid because we qualify as a school district on certain categories. Um the federal it's 2% and our others are 3%. Here those are just interest and and all those other variables fees that makes up this total revenue here of $52.4 million. On the flip side of this here is the general fund expenditures because we are in a business to teach kids. Um we are not manufacturing anything here. We're in a business to teach and educate our lovely kids here. 80% of our budget goes to salaries and benefits. Uh the remaining of it is u purchase services. Those are your transportation costs. Those are your sub costs. Uh we also spend a little bit on supplies and material and capital as well. So the $52.4 million is broken down with the majority for salaries and benefits. Uh for fund two, which is our food service fund, also known as our nutrition funds. What we know so far for fiscal year 25 was that our reimbursement rates was approximately $4.65. Our breakfast was $2.84. 26 is not known at this time. So we were using some of these last numbers here to help forecast our revenue going forward. But we're also facing the effects of inflation. Food cost continues to rise and also you know our wages. We are we're having a study done for our food service employees where we are aligned in the overall market here because a lot of school districts are competing for labor. As far as fund four, our community education fund um overall free structure increase for revenue size was just 3% except for the senior program and it is also um covering you know Jean's program here at birth to earth programming and it's also on the sliding fee. Uh most family can apply for additional aid if deemed appropriate. Our depth service fund think of this as our our our mortgage. This is the depth that accounts for the revenue expenditures of our outstanding bond ineptness. Now, we are very fortunate that we get to levy about 105% of the scheduled bond payments. This is due to some lagging payments that we received from the county. So, that 105% is uh a buffer for us here and that is used to pay down our um borrowing that we did for certain capital projects. In a summary here which I label here in this slide here the general fund, the food service fund, the community ed fund, the depth service fund here. We pretty much are revenue over expenditure here but it it is very tight because of the various constraint um but we're going to monitor this and look at the budget revision and also the audited financials to factor any revision in this here. And in summary, you know, our goal and plan is to maintain the district fund balance, which is currently at 8%. We are exceeding that and then use our available resources to do what we do best, and that is to educate our our beautiful kids. Thank you. Thank you. Any further? Yes, Director Weber. Um, I would just like to commend uh RAW for all of his phenomenal work. You might not hear a lot of discussion about the budget at this moment. It's mostly because I know I've heard this presentation probably five times now um through various meetings and revisions and and different things and always presents the information in such a clear and straightforward manner. And we didn't know what the legislature was going to do. We didn't know any new mandates that were going to come about. Um, and so Ra would present us kind of like it could be this, but it could be this and it could be this and like um just is always open and available for questions if anybody has questions about the numbers. Um, was very open and flexible. Um, and so I just want to communicate that this is a very long and very thorough and drawn out process. And kind of by the time it gets to this step, um I think as they've as they've said like everyone has said everything that needs to be said about about the process. Um and I would just like to commend you and and and everyone else for your work. Thank you. Thank you, Director Overber. I literally had a reminder to myself to say we have been listening to updates about this since January and doubly so to our finance and long-term planning committee. So, thank you so much for your work um and your team helping you pull this together. Uh if there are any other questions or comments then um I would like to say also thank you to our community. I know you mentioned it. I know Dr. Zambbrino mentioned it, but it's huge the advocacy that happened from our community to the state capital about our need for compensatory revenue and being held harmless and to try to find a solution for the future. It's huge, huge. I'm sure you slept well after that was officially announced. Um, so thank you to our community. Thank you to Lisa and Danette for pulling together these beautiful postcards and the print shop for pulling them and um and our student reps for getting our students involved. It was amazing to see what can happen when everyone works together pointing all the arrows in the same direction and um and that is reflected in the great place that our budget is at. So, thank you to our community. Thank you. Um, with no further discussion, I ask all those in favor of accepting the proposed budget to say I. I. I. Opposed. Motion carries. 70. Thank you so much. All right. I'm looking for a motion for the South St. Paul School Board to approve the special work session on Wednesday, July 30th at 5:00 PM in the district office conference room. Do I have a motion? So moved. Thank you. Second. Yay. Uh, all right. This will be an opportunity for the board to meet and retreat and go through the updated work that we've been doing on evaluation tools that tie to our new strategic plan to keep our work and the work of Dr. Zambbrino in alignment. Again, pointing all the arrows in the same way. Um, also we will be discussing uh the two-year agenda and how we're going to launch that. Um, if there is no other comment or discussion, all those in favor of the special meeting, please say I. I. Opposed? Motion carries. 70. All right. Theformational section. I will ask each of our members of the board to report on recent activities or events or any otherformational items that you'd like to share with our community tonight. And I'll start with Director Weber. Thank you, Chair Humeman. Um, so the uh district 917, which is um the joint school district that I serve on um met last week. We also passed our budget. Um as a school district, we also had to pass the budget before um before June 30th. Um and so that has been passed and thank you to all of our member districts um who come together in that uh joint venture. um would like to say congratulations to all the new graduates, all the new Packers um who have now gone out into the world. I would just like to say remember that uh the path of life is long and to have many different adventures and there is no one way to personal success in whatever you define um success as. Um, uh, most exciting thing I think about this summer in town, um, are the community theater productions, um, both the, um, adult community theater show of The Little Mermaid. So, if you ever wanted to see The Little Mermaid come to life on stage, that'll be shown. And then The Witches Princess is the Junior Players um, show. So, that's going to be that's going to be fantastic. Um, a special note of thanks to uh, Representative Hansen and Senator Klein for all of their help on the compensatory revenue um, issue. Uh, we couldn't have done it without them. Thank you so much for that. And thank you again to everyone in our community who sent a text or a phone call or signed a postcard, especially all of our students. Um, I always say that, you know, direct advocacy is the best way to get what you want. Um and so being able to make your voice known um in such a positive manner I think was just a fantastic a fantastic way. And then just a a quick moment of personal privilege um to really express my personal condolences to the family of Melissa and Mark Hort Hartman. Um Melissa Speaker Hortman um was such a wonderful public servant who I knew personally um and her efforts in our states um will be sorely missed. Um and also still praying for the health of Senator Hoffman and his wife a vet um that they may be able to recover um from their injuries. Thank you very much. Thank you Director Weber. Director Cummings. Um, first I just wanted to say what a joy it has been to be a schoolboard member in the last month. Um, to see so much of the work that has been done by our students um, uh, culminate in their graduations. What an exciting event to be a part of. Um, and what an exciting event to see all of the different things that students have done to make that happen. wanted to give um a special thank you to all of our staff and faculty who have done so much in order to help ensure that we're sending off um our young people into the world ready. Um it was so heartening to hear at graduation the numerous stories of how um their lives had been touched by our our faculty and staff. Um so I just wanted to um give a special note of appreciation there. I too, as director Weber said, I wanted to take a moment to remember the life of Melissa and Mark Hortman. As many of you know, I work at the state and specifically the House of Representatives. and it was my honor to serve her um who I believe will go down as one of the most consequential speakers in Minnesota history leading us through a pandemic and civil unrest and the 23 and 24 sessions. She always said, whether it was herself or whether it was teams that she was on, um the teams that she was leading, if you want to get something done to improve your community or just just move forward with a goal, you have to be prepared to do it yourself. Um and time and time and time again, um she got her team ready to get things done for motans. And in South St. Paul. Um, one of the things that she worked on and would not have happened without her personal involvement was putting inflation into the general education formula, which for this school has meant financial stability in times of um, declining enrollment. Um she was also a strong proponent of the read act which along with many of the interventions that the school has already been a part of has meant um transformational success um in the literacy um of so many students across Minnesota. Um, I did want to just um end by saying um it's now important more than ever that f people focus on increasing their involvement in the good that is going on in our communities. Um it's the only way in which we're going to make improvements that we need. Um and um it's also our job to lower the temperature of this um political environment that we're in. And so if you're working with public officials, even if that means a school board member or a city council member or state legislator, um you may want to also just thank them because in many cases they're just trying to do their part. Um, and we did see even some of our um, people who represent us locally uh, were at risk in this last weekend. Um, and so I wanted to say thank you to them for their service and putting their lives at risk. Um, and I wanted to honor the life of Mark and Melissa Hortman. Thank you. Thank you, Director Cummings. Director Felton, I have nothing to add. Thank you. Vice Chair Claflin. Yeah. Uh thank you um directors public service is challenging in the best of times. Um and of course now my mind where I had some remarks prepared has gone blank. Uh but while I was listening to the students um give their speeches uh last Thursday evening, I found them very inspiring at that time and thinking about how our students do often return to South St. Paul to serve their community or serve their communities in wherever it is that they land. I had recently run into a fellow South St. Paul graduate who was on the school board in the community where she lives now. And um we were able to share some of the things that we had done in school here that had led us to serve our communities. And I can't remember which of the speakers uh from the staff uh said at graduation that they were urging our students to come back and serve South St. Paul, because as you've heard many times, once a packer, always a packer. And I very much enjoy serving our local community and seeing the impacts of the work that we do. Sometimes the very tedious or boring work that we do um really make a difference in the education of students. And uh seeing the pride of those families at graduation was one of those moments when I was very um proud of all of our students and they had every right to be very proud of their own achievements. And I kept that feeling in mind over the following weekend. And I would urge anyone who did not have the opportunity to see that graduation ceremony to go back and listen because our students had incredibly wise and motivating speeches that I have returned to since then. And I especially have to thank um those speakers for reminding us to be ourselves, to appreciate everyone who supports us along the way, and to look at the cohort that we are doing this work with. There is good work happening here in South St. Paul. There is good work happening in Minnesota, in our schools, in our neighborhoods, and we don't see that highlighted on the evening news as nearly as much as we hear about all of the horrible things that are happening across the country and also in our own communities. that doesn't reduce the uh impact that those events can have on someone's life, but I want everyone to remember the good things that are happening here. Our students definitely saw it and the adults uh can remember to take that lesson from the students as well. Uh, as we move into the summer, I hope everyone is able to take this as some time to recover from the rigors of the school year, to rest, and take that time to let our brains, uh, process everything that has been learned over the last year, and really make some of those lessons, um, be ingrained within our thought patterns. and for our students to take this opportunity to pursue some of their curiosities and their personal passions and for our teachers to come back and our staff to come back renewed for the next school year. This is all very hard work whether you're a student, a teacher or a staff member or on the board. It's all very meaningful work and it can all be very fun work. Um, so after a little rest, I hope that we can all return and um approach the next school year with all of that positive energy that our students closed out the end of this last year. Uh, they were certainly having a fantastic school year no matter what grade it was that they finished. Uh so thank you very much to everyone who made that possible. Thank you Dr. Duffy. Uh yeah, everyone touched on graduation and all the great things that happened there. I did not know that I would attend another graduation this soon. Uh but what a blast it was to be back. Um I had never experienced one indoors. It rained the morning of mine and stopped luckily. But it was a really special event. uh overflow in the auditorium which was which was great so people could still be there and watch. Um but especially uh this weekend coming up uh we're going to have the parade and a lot of fun things at Caposia Days. Uh sounds like things are moving towards the high school uh parking lot with the construction on Marie uh for some of those festivities. So get out and go uh show some Packer pride and have have some passion. uh catch a softball game. Um but yeah, enjoy this weekend. Enjoy the nice weather that it looks like we're supposed to have. Fingers crossed. Thank you, director. Director. Yes. Hi. First thing I'd like to say, I want to say a true congratulations to our graduates from CLC and from our secondary building. Truly thank them and congratulate them. They were both wonderful, wonderful ceremonies. And the other thing that is so exciting to me personally, hopefully you all seen this in the St. Paul Pioneer Press newspaper, there was a listing from our district of all of our top graduate students that were listed. There was a a full lining list of names. So, it's posted in the Pioneer Press newspaper. So, that's pretty exciting. And then also coming up this Thursday at Central Square, our school board is providing the the finances and the assistance doing the work at the senior center. You are invited to come and have a banana split. at Central Square from 11:30 until 1:00. So if if you're a senior member community here, please come and join us and have a banana split. That would that'll be a lot of fun. And as was mentioned also coming up this Friday night for Caposia Days is the parade which your school district we have a float that we will be handing candy out as we are walking down the aisle. Looking forward to it. We are in in the beginning of the parade route. We are number seven group that will be going down down the parade route. The parade does start at 6:30 this Friday night. Looking forward to it. And also on a personal level, I know you've heard me mention it before as I am currently a major worker on our 50th graduation class reunion that we are planning. As I am a graduate here from South St. Paul way back 50 years ago, the class of 1975 as we are planning our our class reunion coming up this first weekend in September. One thing that I learned which I appreciate from our our activities athletic department that our our class will be attending at the high school our first home football game which will be which will be held on Friday evening, September 5th. It starts at 7 o'clock. Our our class reunion group will be there. There'll be many of us there attending the the home football game which we are playing Richfield which is our first game for that season. Looking forward to that. So it it will be a very nice event. And also our class group is getting a tour of the high school as as the high school has changed in a few areas significantly since when when we were there 50 years ago, which is good, which is a fine thing. looking forward to our tour from Glenn Bernsteel will be giving us the tour of the secondary building. If there's any any people outside in our community that have any more concerns regarding this, please feel free you can contact me and I can answer your questions or refer you to anyone else who who can give you more answers. So it is coming up first weekend in September on the 4th, 5th and 6th, the 50th graduation class reunion. Thank you. Thank you, Director Felton. Um, as I said here, so many wonderfully phrased things for me to say. I had the honor, thanks to the other members of the board and the community to be on the stage at graduation and it was amazing. I mean, talk about an emotional I went through several Kleenexes. I'm so moved by the speeches from the student speakers and just the emotion coming off of our students in that moment and being able to sit directly in front of them and see their faces as they, you know, contemplate what's next and where the world is going to take them and how they're going to take their Packer Pride with them. Um, so thank you to everyone who gave me that opportunity. It's It was amazing. Um, all right. That concludes our public agenda for this evening. I am looking for a motion for the board to move to a close session for the open meeting law Minnesota statute 13D.03 for independent employee agreements. Can I get a motion? Some moved. Second. All right. Thank you. Any discussion? No discussion. I ask all those in favor to please say I. I opposed. Motion carries 70. Thank you to everyone who joined us this evening. The board will now move to the conference room across the hall for the close session. The time is now 7:16.