Welcome everyone. I would like to call this meeting of the Robinsdale Area Schools School Board to order. Today is Monday, April 7th. It is 6 o'clock. Will the clerk please take the role? Yes, I will. Thank you. Uh, Director Bassid here. Uh, Director Bowman, that's me. I'm here. Chair Evans Becker here. Director Hillenbrand here. Director Holmes here. Director Long here. And Dr. Stalo here. Righty. Thank you. We have a quorum. We are ready to go. First item on our agenda is approval of the business meeting agenda. Do I have a motion to approve? So moved. It's been moved and second. Moved by Holmes, seconded by Hillen Brand. All in favor, please say I. I. Oppose, say nay. We have an agenda. And actually, it's a pretty exciting agenda because the next thing on our agenda is to swear in our newest board member, Dr. Kenneth Wong. Welcome. Thank you. Okay, first off, hear that. First off, Dr. Muto will publicly affirm his commitment to the oath of office by reciting the oath of the actual oath of office. I, Kenneet Wano, affirm that I will support the Constitution of the United States and of this state and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of school board director of the Robbinsdale Area Schools, Independent School District 281, to the best of my judgment and ability. But I can but there's more. Wait. um in order to follow state statute, uh Dr. WHO needs to state any conflicts of interest that he might have and uh and declare them before us. Yes. I wish to declare that my wife works in a district and as a teacher. So I shall not be voting on any teacher contracts. Now would you like to shave? Sure. board chair Dr. events, pretending, fellow board members, students, staff, community members across the seven cities. I would like to express my heart I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude for the privilege and honor in joining the school board. I am deeply committed to serving and I come ready to engage and collaborate. I bring with me the lens of my lived experiences as a parent, a father, an immigrant, a spouse of a district employee, but most importantly, a proud member of this community. Guided by evidence and data, grounded in self-awareness of my own biases, I aim to contribute meaningfully as we collectively refocus our district on a shared goal, ensuring that every student is empowered to learn in the ways that honor their individuality. Together, we are building a future, a community that reflects the values that we all cherish. As Davis Campbell and his colleagues emphasized in their book, The Governing Corps, I believe that my addition to the board marks the beginning of a new chapter, one that energizes our collective work and strengthens our strategic and systemic efforts. Let us remain focused on the essential matters that move our district forward. Always aligning with our mission to inspire, educate all learners to develop their unique potentials and positively contribute to their communities. I am hopeful that through strong governance, instructional as well as administrative le leadership, we will continue to position Robinsdale's area school district to be the choice for all families and a destination for the community. Thank you once again for this incredible opportunity and I am ready to serve. Now, this is a big deal. So, do you have your family here to take a picture maybe? And then after that, we'll do a board up here. Come on, [Laughter] family. Got to get this. It shows enough separate from the rest of All right. over here. Thank you. Okay, board members, we'll do this snappy right up here. This is for the handbook and our home official. I got to go. We'll just smile then it won't be muggy. Okay. All right. Let's like cozy up a little here. We're angling now. All right. Are we ready? Okay. Ready? Ready. One, two, three. One more. One, two, three. All right. That sounded like more than That's That's way. Thank you. If there's a picture that looks anything close to that one, I'm great. Okay. And I think I left my stuff over there. Okay. Is that your pen? No. Oh, I think it's greet. That is mine. Mhm. This is me. That's you. Okay. So, in the meantime, what this this um Well, that was fun. Now, let's see. All the way down to number four. Ardel proud. Can you take it for us? Absolutely. Good evening, everyone. Tonight, Principal Jackson and I think some of her other colleagues will provide information regarding Robin's break at Robbinsdale Middle School. Uh these occasional movement breaks occur in the gym and outside the last 10 minutes of lunch. Movement opportunities include basketball, walking, volleyball, soccer, double dutch. To participate, the students just must keep moving. Robins Break began at Robbinsdale Middle School on Monday, January 13th this year and will run through the end of the year. So, with that, I will invite uh Principal Jackson up to the podium, please. Thank you. Thanks for being here and sharing this highlight with us. Good evening everyone. Welcome. Before we get started, I would like um to introduce two members of our amazing admin team, Miss Collehleen Kennedy and Miss Noel Nelson. And they were the brainchildren. This was their brainchild. But before we get started, um Miss Kennedy has graciously um agreed to read the land acknowledgement and the mission statement. Well, we already had it from Dr. Wuta. So, we acknowledge Robinale Area Schools is located on the homelands of the Dakota and Ajiway people. We recognize the painful history of genocide and forced assimilation of the indigenous inhabitants of this land. We honor and respect the many indigenous peoples who live on and held sacred these lands. and we stand with the members of these nations to fight injustice in all of its forms. We uphold the preservation of the Dakota and Ajiway languages, land-based education, and tribal sovereignty. The mission of Robin Still Area Schools is to inspire and educate all learners to develop their unique uh potential and positively contribute to their community. Thank you, Miss Kennedy. So, how many of you remember middle school? I see two of our Robins right here. So, they're living the dream right now. Vaguely. Raise your hand if you remember middle school. Everyone in here has completed middle school, right? Okay. How many of you remember actually having recess during middle school or some sort of physical activity outside of physical education? Not too many hands. So I did go to medical. That's why we came up with Robin's break. So studies have shown that recess benefits students by increasing their level of physical activity. It improves their memory, their attention to detail and concentration. And I'm sure our two Robins would agree with that. Additionally, it helps them to stay on task in the classroom and it helps them to impact middle school students specifically because they are improving their social skills, their movement skills, their cognitive functioning and overall well-being to help them become better students. And what is Robin's Break? As you see, it was the brainchild, as I said before, of our admin team. We were looking for a way to significantly decrease the amount of office referrals that we were having due to lack of movement or lack of just positive social interaction. And because of that, we researched the benefits of recess in middle school and adolescent behavior. Um, I will give you this information before we leave today. And we wanted to make sure that we increased positive interactions not only between students but between adults and students and adults with other adults because guess who participates in Robin's breaks too. So because of that, we wanted to make sure that this helped us with our physical and mental health. And we wanted to make sure that it was aligned, of course, to our strategic plan, which is rediscover Ardell, our school school improvement plan. And we wanted to make sure that we supported our professional learning um communities who are also a part of this this impetus. And in order to do that, we had to look to see how we could actually get Robin's break going. And as you see, it is occasional movement breaks. The last 10 minutes of class or last 10 minutes of lunch, the children have already eaten their lunch and they get dismissed in a systemic and orderly fashion to come into our gym. And we have strategically placed activities in both gyms A's and B's. And I'll talk a little bit more about that in a minute. So when you are in Robins Break, you have, as Dr. Stalo said, you have to keep moving. And if you choose not to go to Robins Break, this is also an opportunity for you to practice your social interaction with each other. You can read, you can, and this is all happening in the cafeteria. You can read, you can have positive conversations with your friends, or you can just chill out and get your mind right for the next period or the next class. Next slide, please. So, let's get moving. The plan is to get people moving, students and staff, and it's a way, of course, to make sure that our students are enjoying this time with one another. So, we have a way non-verbbally to let our students know that we are having Robins breaks for the day. That means that we would come our zone captains, which is how we dismiss or interact with our children during our cafeteria time. They will come around and nonverbbally let our students know that we are having a Robins break. This is also done in our advisory classes as well. Um, something else I want to let you know is when they are dismissed, they get a chance to come into the the area and have ropes, volleyballs, ba basketballs, and other activities. And some of them even bring their own sports equipment to enjoy Robins Break with. Next slide, please. And as you see, we do utilize Champs in everything that we do because we like everything in decent and an orderly fashion at Robbinsdale Middle School. And because of that, we want to make sure that we are setting the expectations for success in everything that we do. And because it is so important for our students to understand that everything we do is to promote learning and safety and well-being. We want to ensure that they understand the expectations prior to going into Robins Break. So, they walk calmly um through door seat. They have fun and all they have to do is make sure that they help us put the equipment away and are listening to the instructors in there which we are part of that and exiting through specific areas and returning in an orderly fashion to their next assignments. Next slide please. So let's play. How do we play? We have halfcourt basketball. We have double dutch. We have volleyball. And everything is aligned, as we said, to our strategic theme of theme B, which is student engagement. And the objectives one through four. And it's aligned to our school improvement plan because it is first of all dealing with school climate. We're having a safe and supportive climate which also will affect positively our reading and our math scores. Next slide, please. So, we have some testimonials as you see. And as I said, it has increased positive student and staff interaction. It's increased our physical and mental health. Some of us have even lost a few pounds. It's decreased referrals for fighting and physical altercations. And it's also decreased tardies back to class because several of our staff members are walking and talking with our students as they are moving through the hallways and up the stairwells. Next slide, please. And now I will let my my two um colleagues take over from here to talk about Robin's Break in action. Important to note while the admin team was the brainchild of this program for Robins Break this Robins Break was taken to our support team professional learning and they are the group that took it on to create the system and the structure and reached out to all the stakeholders involved that created this program because there are a lot of stakeholders that had to help create to make this happen. We had to reach out to our cafeteria team, our custodials, our special education department. We had to reach out to all the general ed teachers. We had to come up with the equipment to get some donations so we had the extra equipment so we weren't sharing and taking from our PE classes. We also had to create the systems just alone in the gym, the different quadrants, the signage. There was a lot of work that went into beforehand to create the systems and the structures to make sure it was safe. And then we had to also talk about the communications to our families, to our teachers, to our students. Robins, what do you think of the Robins break? Thumbs up, Micah. Come on. Come on. You're killing me. I know for a fact. I saw you as a sixth and seventh grader. You love h being able to go run around and play basketball. I know for a fact you do. I've been watching you do this. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you guys. I'm sorry to put you on the spot. the testimonials, right? Um, one of the things that we struggled with the most as a team in the cafeteria, as a catalyst school, um, our cafeteria team struggled with was the last 10 minutes of lunch every day as our students got done eating and they get squirly. And that's when our behaviors were really upticking. And now that they know they have this Robins break and that they can go do something else, um the anxiety level not only for the students but our staff has decreased and like there's a calm sense in both spaces and it's just a beautiful feeling. And right now the next step that our professional learning community is tackling right now is how now to move outside because that's what the kids want to do next. And so we're trying to figure out because it's a very short amount of time. So how do we get the entire sixth, seventh, and eighth grade class to move quickly out to the turf and then back inside within that very limited time period because we don't some of the classes oops I'm sorry that's the microphone. Am I talking with my hands? Um, some of the classes could have a little extended amount of time, but like one of our lunches goes right into their next class period, so there isn't as much wiggle room. So, that's what we're kind of playing around to help support um where we're thinking to go with next. But, it's been an absolutely amazing opportunity. And watching the staff interact and play double Dutch basketball is probably one of the highlights. And if you're ever able to come and um visit Robinsdale Middle School, I would highly recommend coming during block B for anybody to see Robins Break because it is to see the students in their element on either side in the cafeteria just socializing and hanging out or in the gyms. It's truly a magical moment. And there's been just a few times where we there's every once in a while you'll get a slow serve for lunch and that happens. And so we can't do Robin's breaks on those days and it's it's every it just happens and our teachers know right away. We don't have to tell them because they can tell, you know, that the students come up a little different, you know. Um but uh we've really noticed uh a difference uh in our afternoons that it's going much smoother after a Robins break. And we did have some in action. We had some action shots in here, but we also had some movies in here, some little snippets, but that that obviously didn't make the cut. But we want to encourage you all to come bring your gym shoes and wear comfortable clothing because you will be interacting. You will be playing volleyball and you will be walking around and talking and socializing. And the kids get a kick out of me when I try to do my shake and bake and my jump shot because they didn't know I was that girl. So, we really want you to know that um as we were researching this, we also did a survey for the children to ask them how they felt about Robin's Break. And our next step, of course, is to do a post survey with the students and staff to see what they thought of Robins Break and if they would like to continue this in years to come. Our outside component is to increase our gaga pit whenever we get it so that we can have that as a way to incite movement. And of course, we have those beautiful fields outside. So, how can we get some relay races going? So we are constantly thinking of a way to evolve Robins Break and I will now thank you for your time and turn it back over to you Dr. Stalo. Excellent. Thank you so much. Any questions? No questions. I have one. It's wonderful. Thank you. Did you have a quick comment? Here's a quick question and I apologize. I've been a little distracted. My laptop is crazy and so when the meeting starts I got to be ready. So I've been doing this. So, I apologize for that. Uh, but um, how long is it? I was trying to listen, but I think I missed that part. 10 minutes. They got to move fast. Yes, I know. It's not long enough for any of us. Well, but they love it. Thanks for that warning. So, when I come over, it does 10 minutes does wonders for them. And I'm sure Dr. I will pass this to you if you could pass them to your left. A little information. Thank you, Director Holmes. Did I see a hand? Yes. How many lunch periods do you you run? Three. And then which staff are out? Is it the the core teachers or you all or? No, we actually so our cafeteria teams are made up of our allied teachers and then we have our grade level support teams that help with each lunch. So they're grade level lunches. We start with our eighth grade lunch, then we have our sixth grade lunch, and then our seventh grade lunch. Thank you. and our support team are our school social workers, our school psychologists, our us of course, our um GLC's and our EA security and the counselors. Everybody is there and that's a way for them to see us in another light other than just in the classroom with them or in the hallways. It's a way for them to actually interact with us on a different level. and um for them to see that they can just be kids and we can be adults interacting with kids in a positive way. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Thank you. Next on our agenda is our superintendence report. Dr. Stalo. Excellent. Thank you very much. Uh good evening, Chair Evans Becker and school board directors. As you already heard twice at Robbinsdale Area Schools, our mission is to inspire and educate all learners to re to develop their unique potential and to positively contribute to their community. Our collective work is focused on this mission. And tonight, I'd just like to share a few of the things in which we have been engaged. First of all, we are proud to share that the adventure club, our elementary before and after school child care program, has been named the number one summer camp by Sunpost readers. This recognition reflects the dedication of our staff and the meaningful experiences they create for students each day. Adventure Club provides more than just care. It offers enrichment, connection, and a safe space for chu students to learn, play, and grow with a focus on respect, nurturing relationships. The program exemplifies our district's commitment to student well-being and strong community partnerships. Congratulations to the entire Adventure Club team for this well-earned recognition. On March 21st, sixth grade students at Sanberg Middle School hosted a science and imagination fair showcasing creative projects that reflected their learning their commitment to environmental stewardship. Each project was built using recycled materials and focused on strategies to reduce pollution and litter in our communities. This hands-on approach allowed students to apply science concepts in meaningful ways um while certainly looking to innovation and problem solving. Family members, school staff, and fellow Sandberg students were invited to view the displays, making the event a true celebration of community and student learning. On March 26, middle school students from across Robbinsdale proudly represented their schools at the Minnesota Urban Debate League City Championship. We had some outstanding results. Shai Watkins and Mecca Mix from Robbinsdale Middle School took first place as a team in the rookie division. An incredible accomplishment. In the novice division, Khloe Grant and Ally Trey from Fair School Crystal earned second place as a team, showing strong collaboration and critical thinking. We also had four students placed in the top 10 of the rookie division individual speakers award with Violet Brooch of Plymouth Middle School earning first place overall. Um these Yes, thank you. These results reflect our students hard work, their confidence and ability to use their voices to advocate and articulate ideas, skills that will serve them well in the future. Congratulations to all who participated. Cooper High School recently had the honor of welcoming US Congresswoman Omar for an engaging and inspiring Q&A session with students. Student leaders led the conversation, spending a full hour asking thoughtful and wide-ranging questions, touching on policy, leadership, and Representative Omar's personal journey. Um throughout the discussion, she encouraged students to stay engaged in their communities, to ask bold questions, and to believe in their own power and potential. Uh just want to give an update on reimagine Ardale Vision 2030. Today we've had 10,295 engagement touch points putting at us us at about 20% of our overall uh goal of 50,000 people. We'll continue conversations and uh encourage folks to to continue to attend. Um, and finally, uh, as we celebrate our students tonight through these accomplishments and the many, um, staff who support them, I want to take a moment again to acknowledge the incredible human side of the $21 million budget deficit we face since 80% of our district expenditures are used to support our staff. While all reductions have impact, there are varying degrees of significance. Every staff member in this district matters and they are doing incredible work on behalf of and in service to our students. Over the past few weeks, we've had to inform valued and dedicated employees, some who have served our district for decades know that their position was being reduced or eliminated. I want to recognize how difficult this is and I want to thank the staff who have been most impacted by these significant reductions. Thank you. The next item on our agenda is the budget update. But before we start that, I have a couple of words I'd like to say. Last year, the board, the school board approved a $17.1 million in reductions, but sadly $14 million of those reductions were never implemented. So that gap and the budget reductions for this coming year is how we got to the $21 million you've been hearing about. Thank you to Superintendent Stalo and CFO Hohheisle for the work you and your teams have been doing on this. I know that the last few months have been incredibly difficult for everyone, for students, families, teachers, staff, and administrators. First, wondering and worrying about budgets and programs, and then receiving official notice of non-renewals and reductions. As a board member who was a former as a former teacher, I know how this feels. I was a teacher who was put on unrequested leave dur due to budget cuts. I was also teaching when my colleagues were non-renewed. And as a principal, I delivered notices to beloved teachers that they would not be coming back. I want to acknowledge that what you've been through is a horrible, horrible experience. I also want to thank everyone who is trying to stay positive and focus on our students as we regroup and reimagine our district. We will come out strong and right-sized, but right now it hurts. Okay, ready for the budget update? Thank you. Thank you. Our outcomes uh for this evening as we look at the the uh budgets um update is we want to provide as we kick off this evening, we want to provide uh just a bit of a Minnesota school district finance reality. Um we also want to talk a little bit about where we are with school reductions, service model change. Uh then um CFO Hohheil is also going to help us understand the tiered transportation system bell time alignment. We'll review the impact of changing um bell times and discuss proposed bell times and walk zones to determine if adjustments should be made starting in the 2526 school year. So as we move into the next session of our presentation, I want to share a short video that helps explain the broader picture of uh the financial picture for Minnesota schools. I know it can be really confusing because headlines are receiving are headlines say that schools are receiving record funding yet districts across the state including Robbinsdale are making significant cuts. This video which was created with the Minnesota Association of School Administrators lays out some of these readings these reasons. You'll hear about inflation. You'll hear about unfunded and underfunded mandates. the changing role of schools and some of the services that students need and then a little bit about our funding being restricted in in many categories. So, as we watch this video, I want you to keep in mind that while we are significantly being impacted right now by these budget reductions, it really is a statewide funding challenge and it requires tension at both the local and the the legislative level. So, we'll go ahead and play this. It's about a threeminute video. after headlines across Minnesota declared. I'm Ter and I'm proud to serve. No, it's not that one. You all have seen that several times. I think Molly just getting that volume up and you had it. Across Minnesota declared record school funding in 2023. Why are so many school districts making budget cuts and going to voters for more funding? Here are the top reasons Minnesota schools are struggling to balance budgets. Number one, inflation. Families aren't the only ones feeling the impact of rising costs. For school districts, the costs of labor, health insurance, property insurance, and school bus transportation continue to rise. The 2023 inflationary increase to the general education formula is a step forward, but it doesn't make up for decades of underfunding and failing to keep up with rising inflationary costs. Number two, unfunded and underfunded mandates from the state. When it comes to some of the most costly things schools have to pay for, it's the state legislature, not the local school board, who makes these decisions. From implementing new instructional strategies to increasing curricular requirements to providing unemployment benefits, there are decisions made at the state level that local districts must follow. While the state may offer one-time funds to help pay for some new requirements, the ongoing costs are often the school district's responsibility. And number three, the changing role of schools in our communities. The needs of students are different than they were 10, 20, or 30 plus years ago. From mental health support for students, specialized learning assistance, family resources, and career programs to help meet workforce needs, schools have taken on additional responsibilities to meet the needs of their students and community. When you add rising safety needs, aging buildings and technology, and declining birth rates, it's clear why Minnesota districts struggle to balance their budgets. School funding is complex with the majority of funding coming through the state in the form of general education aid. Schools also receive funds for specific categories that can only be spent on certain items. Additional needs are then covered by property taxes. In other words, just because the state is providing us with more dollars doesn't mean we can use those dollars wherever we like. Each year, we tackle the challenge of balancing these funding sources with our increasing expenses to build an effective budget that meets student needs. When our student needs exceeds state and local funding, we may seek additional support through a referendum. As you can see, there's more to the story beyond headlines of schools receiving record funding, inflation, unfunded mandates, and a changing role for schools. Funding schools is an investment in our students, community, and future. Please reach out to your elected officials and share your story so they can help do their part to make sure our students and our schools are receiving the resources they need for success. visit our website to learn more. Thank you. I thought it would just give a little more context uh for those viewing at home or for those here just to see that picture. Um I think as the video shows, it's also important to know that school districts across the state are navigating kind of this perfect storm that we heard about with inflation, with unfunded mandates, and the rising student needs. Again, not unique to Robbinsdale. It is definitely a statewide issue. You can see on this slide um this is a report from the Association of Metropolitan School Districts AMSD uh shows how widespread the problem is. Um the there the almost 50 districts who are part of AMSD obviously mostly in the metro area are projecting more than $280 million in shortfalls for the upcoming school year. Even with the state's basic funding formula increasing by 2.74 2.74%. Um, what's more concerning is that under the governor's latest budget proposal, 23 dis districts will actually see their shortfalls grow. Why? It's because while the formula increases, there are also reductions in special education transportation, changes to compensatory revenue, and adjustments to literacy funding that impact some districts harder than others. Just like Robbinsdale, these districts are being forced to make incredibly difficult decisions to balance their budgets. resources to fully fund schools is part of a larger structural challenge and one that requires legislative action, not just local response. Executive directors Williams and O'Harn and I were at the capital for the AMSD MASA day at the Capitol um two weeks ago. Uh like many of our neighboring districts, also joined and to meet with our legislators to advocate on behalf of our schools and our students. Um, next year it's my goal that like many other districts did, we bring with us a team of school board members, parents, students, and community members who will also take part in that legislative advocacy, speaking to our legislators on support of public schools. Um, and the session isn't over, so there is still time to communicate with and contact our legislators. I'm going to hand it over to our CFO at this time. I talked a little bit about a broader context and uh Kristen is going to bring us back to the local appear to be off in slides. Um so what I wanted to call your attention to and unfortunately it's not on this presentation was the few slides that showed um what the school board had done last year what was approved um and it's been called u mining the gap is so in May of uh 2024 the board actually approved $17.4 million in reductions um and of that $17.4 $4 million in reductions. Just over 11 million was supposed to come from from the buildings, from the schools. Um, and those were very difficult decisions last spring. I actually remember having a conversation during a work session in December as it relates to budget about how the school board uh the members that were on the school board at the time have kind of been living this in perpetuity for about a year and a half. Um and then as we move on to what the preliminary reductions target are, you can see the proposed area of reductions um for ESC administration and other staff. We have moved from those uh on from those into the school-based reductions and the transportation conversation. Now, we're going to talk about like the short-term plan that's being implemented to date. How we're minding the gap um as you see in the slide outlines the changes that we are proposing for this year. And you can see that the 15.7 million to the 17.7 million actually does not get us to the $21 million. We honestly don't know how we could get to the $21 million. So even with what is proposed, we're not going to achieve a balanced budget at this time. You heard with the presentation uh statewide budget pressures with rising costs, underfunded mandates. We do have declining enrollment and that is a component too with staff reductions as far as uh Chair Evans Becker had mentioned trying to rightsize our diff uh rightsize our district. But we also have unique challenges. Last year, the planned $14 million in planned budget cuts did not happen. And to be very clear, we often hear the question, where's the money? To answer that simply, it went into people, paychecks. Because we did not eliminate positions we planned to, we ended up paying more than $1 million in staffing for an additional year. So looking ahead to fiscal year 26, we are proposing 15.7 to 17.7 million in reductions. This isn't a new plan. It's the board approved plan from last May and it reflects the realities that we're facing both locally and across the state. I want to take a moment to share the comprehensive look at a very real and difficult decisions facing our schools. This means that principles and leaders are being forced to make incredibly hard choices about what they can sustain in the year ahead. In previous years, principles were able to fill key roles, teachers, media specialists, educational assistants, counselors, and more at levels that are no longer possible under our current financial reality. As we discussed the base and service staffing model with you January 6th, due to the budget deficit, principles received less full-time equivalent allocation this year than they have in years past. This will result in larger class sizes, staffing reduction, and service model changes. So, some of the staff outside of the classroom that are being impacted are security EAS. They will remain in buildings. However, like in other areas, we have less full-time equivalents for these positions and leaders will work to ensure safe learning environments. Counselors have not been cut from district from the district level. However, principles were given less full-time equivalent allocation and they determined in collabor collaboration with their staff members the needs of the buildings. It is accurate that some principles simply did not have the full-time equivalent allocation to support maintaining counselors. It is also accurate that some principles chose other staffing priorities instead of counselors. Media specialists due to decreased full-time equivalents are impacted similarly at some of the secondary buildings. We currently have seven classrooms across all elementary schools that will leverage multi-age classrooms in support of budget realities and providing quality instruction. As part of this model, Sonnison will implement departmentalization where one staff member focuses on teaching math, another on reading, another on science, and another on social studies, often integrating subject areas through literacy. This is one of several creative strategies being employed to maintain program integrity while offer uh while operating with fewer staff. class size ratios. This was a January board discussion and class size ratios were not adjusted. However, class size ratios when you look what we currently have as our as what is being implemented which is and depending on how you're looking at it to your left. So where kindergarten is 20.2 or first grade is 20.4. that's what's actually in play. Whereas next year, we're looking at moving those again still within the within the board approved ratio up to the maximum of 25 or 26 or 28 and so on depending on the grade level. These class- size ratios are not out of alignment with our neighboring and comparable districts, including St. Louis Park, Bloomington, and Minneapolis. and we remain aligned to the metro area. Service model changes, health services being restructured, the number of nurses is being reduced. However, the same there will be the same number of health professionals. centerbased classrooms uh staff to the ratio of in the teacher contract which is also consistent with regular education classroom staffing. And then when we're assessing loca locations for our center-based classrooms, this happens annually. We prioritize students remaining in their home building staffing efficiencies and support and analyze where we could receive administrative reductions. I will move on to the one area that I'm going to ask the board to vote on tonight, which is our walk zone changes and our bell time changes. What has been discussed at the last work session or two has been uh adjusting elementary school walk zones from 0.5 miles to 08. Middle school uh walk zones from 7 miles to one mile. and then high schools would remain the same. We did we had sites that went out and did surveys um to see what um what the flavor was for these changes. And if you look an example, Forest Elementary, uh the elementary walk zone changes, the majority uh support the change that is in blue at 60 I can't read it 60 66 65 66% and then um 34% say they do not support it. Now, I would like to point out that with walk zone changes at any level, we would not put kids um in any sort of hazardous situation. We're not going if there is a busy roadway or some sort of um um I loss of words. Um any sort of situation that could potentially be dangerous for students, we're not going to do that. where we will adjust the transportation for their particular area without adjusting the walk zone. And then this is it. I would say it's honestly somewhat misleading, but it was the one of our middle schools who did the survey uh with Fair Crystal. It's you know, how does the middle school feel about changing our their walk zone from a 7 to a one mile? You say almost 50% it doesn't even apply. Um 27% agree and then 23% disagree. Before I move on, I would like to say about walk zone changes, we have received very little feedback um as it relates. I mean, when we're talking about the proposed belt time changes, there's been significant feedback um with survey data, but walk zones does not seem to rise to a level of um I would say concern at this point that it we just have not received a a a lot of feedback as it relates when looking at proposed bell times. Um there's there's a few moving pieces to this. I would like to call attention for for those I get that it's a lot of numbers and verbiage on a slide. If you look at like the aqua or the turquoise, those are the proposed. Um the gray columns, aqua turquoise with the yellow are the proposed and then um the gray columns with the green are what is in existence. Ultimately the summary of this is and this slide is specific to elementary schools is most of our elementarymentaries uh would be moving would be shifting 5 minutes earlier. So they would start 5 minutes earlier um they would end five minutes earlier. That would stay the same with C2. Even though C is not in alignment with other elementary schools um they would still make a shift. It would just be at the times that they're looking at. The largest change um for elementary schools would be to RSI. They would be switching from a 920 start time to a 7:40 start time. With that, its counterpart um is uh Fair Crystal. That's the swap to have our middle schools which is the middle column more of the um periwinkle or lavender where you see Plymouth Middle, Robinsdale Middle, um Sanberg and Fair Crystal. This would adjust [Music] uh those times so the middle schools could be in alignment for shared staffing and um various reasons. Our high schools would actually start the day at the the same time they're currently starting, but they would release 10 minutes earlier. We would be looking to move RTC to align more with our secondary schools. Right now, they're an earlier start. Um the intention is multiaceted in that we would get not only a reduction um in costs but we would also be able to do programming different for them and provide them maybe more of a workforce uh opportunity for the 18 to 21 year olds. Um so that's what we would be looking at for them. And then middle school would start back to the middle school. middle school would start 5 minutes later and still release at the same times. Response to the bell time changes in elementary. You can see that uh the change for the five minutes earlier and then releasing five minutes earlier. Uh 84% is in support of this. Again, it's Forest Elementary, but I would say any elementary school that doesn't hasn't is not where significant change is not proposed didn't have an a response that varied differently from this. When looking at RSI, um it's a different result you when looking for um and you can see the number of responses. It's 374 responses. And I want to say that was from parents and students. Uh vast majority would like to keep the bell schedule as is. Uh and that when I say vast majority, it's 73.5. Um the orange represents changing the bell schedule at 17% and then 9% is indifferent to the change. And again, RSI is the biggest change. They would be moving from the 920 to the to aligning with our other elementary schools. Um, RSI staff, we did separate, there was a separate survey that went out for RSI staff. Um, and I know the board had received feedback from uh, various people that are involved with RSI. 29 responses. Um, the majority at 48% said to change the bell schedule. Uh, 27.6% said to keep it and then 24% were indifferent. C elementary. Uh, one of the reasons why I put this up here is the change for C is actually that they would be, uh, their writership would change. They would no longer be paired with other elementary age students. They would be paired with Fair Crystal, which means you would be putting elementary age students on the same bus as middle school students. And what was the feedback as it relates to that? Um you can see 32% supportive just shy of 40% was neutral and then you had 28% that would be concerned about mixing uh the age levels and then fair crystal the middle school and keeping the current start time and the proposed again 278 responses keeping the same start time was uh 65.8% 8%. Various reasons for this. Um, honestly, there's some students that didn't want to go as late as the other schools, uh, the other middle schools or didn't want to wake up. No, they would go didn't want to sleep in. They were ready to start their day and they didn't want to go as late um, as the other middle schools was some representation of of the survey data. So, when looking at the preliminary reductions as it relates to transportation, which is really the purpose, one of the purposes of um looking at Bell's schedule changes and certainly the walk zone changes was how do we receive um a potential savings? We've already discussed um and moved forward with the Minneapolis transportation and we anticipate uh getting about $264,000 in savings there. Belt times and walkdowns walk zones. Now, I will say this for voting purposes. They the vote can be separate from each other. You can do bell times as one, walk zones as another. It wasn't costed that way. It that would be significant enough enough work for us to go out and break it out. I will say vast majority of the time is or vast majority of the savings is going to come in belt times. It's not going to be in walk zones. We will see something, but it won't be a lot. And then um the activity bus reductions we had talked about at a work session um moving away from having two activity bus shuttles if you will at the end of the day to consol in part because of wrership to consolidate that down to one. There seems to be support at the high school level um and throughout and that would uh achieve about $27,000. So in in total um $728,000 if everything that is proposed is approved. One of the um items that was brought up at the work session was possibly moving to hubs to transportation hubs like researching if we don't if we can get kids to a particular site. I'm thinking more of the magnets and then have hubs that bring them out. Can we do that? We can do anything. Um unfortunately the cost of the hubs is very prohibitive. It we it would cost us about $870,000 to run hubs. So that is one reason that that was not proposed. Um and just for context, our transportation budget is just over about $18 million. So when watching the presentation that Dr. Stallow showed, um as far as MAS and they talked about rising costs, you know, you have your utility, you have your transportation, whatever. We're we're not immune to that. Um we have uh we run a a lot of buses given the design of our programming. And so this was just mainly trying to achieve reduction in that area. So that was a lot of me talking. Um I know Dr. Salo had Yeah. So this this uh this presentation isn't wasn't the final one. So I just also wanted to I know what what Kristen just shared um was really that short-term uh plan. We've been talking since November about this $21 million impact would have both a short-term plan. How do we reduce as much as possible of that 21 million and then how do we also have a longer term plan to ensure that we're we're we've got fiscal stability moving forward. Um, so I just wanted to touch on a couple of things and most of you that have paid attention have seen most of these slides before that aren't in this, but we'll make sure in the board book we've got the the most um the most the newest uh presentation there. Um, as you've heard since November, the board has received regular updates outlining the shortterm plan in progress in the mining the gap and we'll be sure those slides get back up for you as well. Um, we've been honoring the board's directive by implementing the already approved reductions from last year while carefully studying our district to identify the most responsible path forward. Um, this isn't a new conversation. It's a continuation of what was determined last year. Uh, we're following through. We're doing so in a thoughtful way um with a strong commitment to honoring our people, our contracts, and our core values. That's part of what's taken some time in this process. It's not as simple as just copying and pasting everything that was um on the list from last year. So, while we've also focused on the short term, um we've been really intentional in keeping our eye on the prize now, our current students, our current staff, the current work that we're doing and building for a better and sustainable future. And that's where Reimagine Ardell Vision 2030 um comes in as part of our work. So, as I mentioned earlier, we've had uh over 10,000 people be a part of that process. We're going to continue that work. Um we're starting just now to look at some of the themes and the data that's coming forward. We um even as we were thinking about this transportation piece, we went back to look at some of the survey data there as well. Um uh I just wanted to also say I've heard a few concerns about us worrying more about the future than we do the now. And I want to be really clear on some of the things um this year that we've worked on to ensure that we are working and helping our students right now. We've expanded Bridge to Read. We've implemented more deeply school improvement plans. We've advanced our strategic plan. Uh we also passed a technology levy with the highest approval margin um of any school district measure in Minnesota and consistently elevate student and staff voices. So there's a lot that we're doing for the now. Um so in other words, this isn't just about cutting or reacting. It's about leading forward responsibly, thoughtfully with our students at the center of every decision for now and for decades to come. With that, be happy to take questions. We have like 15 minutes left for questions approximately. Is that 14? Yeah, 15. Okay. Did I see a hand from Director Holmes? Okay. You want to go one at a time? Sure. So, we had some outstanding questions um around the bell time changes from our last work session in terms of adventure club registration and coordination with families um pickup lines at RSI running into Sonos. Um and then staff that it takes to monitor those. Any feedback or answers to those? I will I will turn to Anthony for to adv uh answer the adventure club component. Good evening chair Evans Baker Salo members of the board. Um when it comes to the adventure club uh registration component of it and with the bill time changes the biggest concern but I know there's a concern around the the staffing like our staffing but our biggest concern is around the space you know that is RSI is one of our biggest sites actually our biggest sites. So we just have to work with the building administration around ensuring that we have the space um to accommodate the the needs of the of the families. Right now we currently have a waiting list. So that's something we can work on though. But that would be the the pieces and it's not the staffing, it is the space that is our concern there to serve as many families that may need the programming. And just to follow up on that portion of it, um you know, as a as a parent of an RSI student, I'm going to disclose that right now and my kid does not take a bus. um we we pick them up and drop them off. Um so this doesn't impact me personally. Um I did attend the last PTO assembly, general assembly, and I found out some interesting information. I was hearing concerns about um the space and in terms of if they register, they won't have enough. And then I guess an idea was thrown out, well maybe we bust them to a different location then. And so there was a lot of unknowns for the families and uncertainty. And that's what's really concerning me right now. Um, this was a big change and you saw it in the the response from the surveys from the families and the push back and I as a board member understand the impact and the logistic changes for staff and see a lot of value there and a lot of things that align to make that decision. But what I'm concerned about in trying to weigh is decreasing student enrollment and if we continue to lose families because they express some strong sentiments towards this and if it's that big of a change I I would wonder if this is something we could push to next year um in particular RSI so they can make accommodations we can give a timely um notice to families that are thinking about that or if they have to make other arrangements. So those are my concerns there. Thank you for answering and I know our adventure club is highly soughta and the parents spoke wonderfully um about it but it just there was a lot of angst over this and what it was going to do to them as individuals. Um so again my concern there is that we're going to lose more um enrollment. Thank you. Okay, other persons uh chair Evans Becker can I just ask again because I was not here at the time. So bell time changes happened once before in this district and I think it was in relatively recently I don't last handful of years where most of our elementary schools actually switch times from one of our secondary buildings um and and and I don't know the answer what was the impact to the loss of did we have a significant loss of enrollment because to me you know and and and again maybe it's maybe it's different now or whatever but if we if that was the trend if that was what our what our data shows is that bell time changes did or did not um cause an increase in different choice. Would it do the same? Can I just so I because they re they changed them before that tweak and I was not on the board then. So I went back and watched um the work they put into it and my understanding and perhaps director Basset since she's been here magnet schools RSI in particular has stayed that way and when they did that first change the magnet schools stayed. I cannot find a reason why um either other than I know there's a high high participation rate from parents at our magnet schools. Um but it did not change when they did it prior to this recent one. So food for thought. I believe it was because of busing director Basset and then director Hillbrand. So good evening. Good evening. Uh and thanks for all your hard work on this. Of course. Uh I um I still have some concerns about the transportation uh for I know that when we initially heard about the uh the impact to Minneapolis and one of the reasons I want to center on that and I also have uh some some thoughts and comments I'll make about the magnet school programs um but um the sum total and I don't know the exact number but from Minneapolis we get about let's just call it 1,200 students that open role into our district. And so, um, you know, the fact that and initially when we had the work session and heard about this, um, what we heard is that it was going to be limited to a specific zip code and and, uh, and the example given was that one of the children would be transported from Minneapolis out to Zachary Lane, which is a really big stretch. So, I mean, that's the example that was given, and it certainly I could see where that would be a concern. Now, uh, I have since learned, I believe I've learned because it's been in the middle of a work session when I heard different things. And what I think I understand now, and you can help me understand if that's true or not. Sure. Uh, is that uh, this is across Minneapolis. All zip codes would be affected. not just 55405, but all zip codes of students who are transferring into Robinsdale um would not the trans there's a transportation change and they would be u and maybe and I'll let you state exactly what that is again so I don't mess it up but the but the reality and so I guess my question is with the savings that we anticipate we might get does that offset the revenue we might lose? because because it's no small thing and we've heard some emails from parents who talk about the fact that transportation changes for those students who open enroll in would be a particular hardship for a number of those families and I don't think we sampled them like we've done of course our own students uh and I didn't expect that however that's a phenomena Because what I don't think people really understand is that the revenue that comes into this district and we really studied that when we established C without having a valve that allowed for open enrollment. We could not then continue to provide the array of services across this district that we do because you can't just move kids around. You can't just move our own students around. If we move our own students around and open a building, for example, we're paying all that more money with the for the same number of students. So the cost remains. So making sure that we have the the number of students that we need and they're not just students for the need of the money. However, being cognizant of that when you make those changes is very important. And um and so I wonder about the impact on those changes. And one of the things that made me kind of, you know, kind of understand it and kind of not press on so hard on it initially is that Minneapolis, as I understand it, don't do do not provide transportation for their high schools. I I'm not sure what they do for their elementary and secondary. I haven't researched it. My attention is right on Robbinsdale, and there's enough to keep your attention right here. So, I don't know what everybody else is doing, but I do know that. And so, uh, so I wonder about that. And if we know the amount that we might lose and and have we sampled that to see how many students we might lose because they can't get here. So, that's one question. I'm I'm not really looking for you to answer it right now unless you're prepared to answer. I'm completely prepared to answer that question. Oh, well, good. You know, and I but I have another one I want to kind of get but I but I'll hold it. But I that's an important question, but tied to that then is the magnet school question. Let's do one at a time. And didn't we already decide on didn't the board already make its decision about the Minneapolis routes? We did. Thank you. Whether they did or not, I mean, she has an answer. Well, but but but director uh Evans Becker, this is for the public as much as it for is for us. And we've talked about a number of things and so we're getting some recap from our administration which is very appropriate. We may get recap or questions from directors as well which is just as appropriate. So I I just think it's important to say that so we're not secondguessing each other about the questions we're asking. I assume good intent. If somebody's asking a question I assume they have a good reason to do so. Um and so I I think that that's the standard we want to try to keep to. I just wanted to be clear so people knew that we already had made this decision. Your answers, please. Director Haj. Yes. Thank you. And and I understand that I live in this every day and when information is presented um and especially when there's gaps in presentation, meaning every other week um that sometimes information gets lost or forgotten. Um so I'm more than happy to provide a recap of what we discussed. Well, we haven't really we have the board hasn't taken any action on those things. the administrative decisions that the administration can make they have made. That is so I think that should be that's a distinction that I think is important to make. It's a yes that is that is the distinction. It will not be what happens with bell times and walk zones tonight. You will be asked to vote but as it relates to the open uh enrollment transportation uh to Minneapolis was was discussed. Um it was presented I believe there were five zip codes um that were presented to or spoken to the impact of each the potential impact the number of students that were transported out of those zip codes 55405 in particular uh impacted 20 students in today's number of students and so that is why that zone transportation was saying we're just not going to transport out of 5545 anymore. The other four area codes um we had discussed and looked at the different buildings they would go to which would be consistent with how we do transportation internally. You get bound you get uh transportation to the most local school depending on the grade level and that's what uh you receive. I will also say that there is another factor that weighs in in open enrollment transportation beyond Minneapolis is all of the other schools. We do have AIO, we do have Hopkins, we do have students from outside of the district that aren't Minneapolis that are making um decisions and they they don't have a transportation choice. We don't move them at all. Um when looking at the budget impact, what I will say is this true, the cost savings is represented. When we looked at staffing and maybe um as the 182 um licensed staff members rolled out, there was an impact. We assumed and it was discussed in in December and certainly discussed um with administration multiple times. The assumption was is that we would lose we started out initially with an assumption of half of the open enrollment students that we were transporting and so therefore your class sizes or the the number of students per grade level decrease because we we're going to assume if there is a 100 students that were busing from Minneapolis 50 of them won't come back. an assumption. At that time, principals went out and pounded the pavement and reached out to their families and said, "What are your plans?" Because quite honestly, their building level staffing depended on it. And they did the work. They did the hard work. We believe we have as best you can uh relatively decent information on the students that intend to return and the students that do not. Now there are there we do have the undecideds and that's part of it. But to the revenue reduction, fair, fair enough. But we've also made a staffing reduction to show that. And if those families that we assumed were going to lose because of the transportation decision come back, we add staff back. I mean, great. I would say we have adjusted our staffing to support the loss of what we could have for transportation. I appreciate that. I appreciate that answer and I'll hold my other question which is also about transportation and the hubs and so I think there's others who want Thank you director Hillbrand. Yeah, first of all I just wanted to say thank you uh well for the whole presentation but thank you for um giving that survey information too because you know it's it's hard to know how representative some of the information is that you're getting and so that was really helpful to see that it's more to get a more representative sample. I know it's not all the families responded into a quick survey, but it it's certainly helpful to get a broader scope of people's um feelings. So, that I really appreciate that being part of that. Um and then I just wanted to say that in answer to the bell times um when they switched to make high school earlier, right, because that's better for the kids. Um then most of the elementarymentaries then went later and um the the uh sorry the magnets went elementaryaries went earlier. Yeah, I'm sorry. Elementary went earlier, right? Because middle school is the latest. Anyway, the magnets stayed the same. That was because of the staffing the transportation patterns at the time. Right. Just to answer that, I know that as a parent who, you know, it was impacting my kids, right? So I paid quite a bit of attention to that. One thing that I would like to and and and this is literally came at 5:00 that I would like to address to and you had mentioned you know the the representation of the survey data um when looking at the the big reimagine Ardale survey that exists out there we do have and was able to pull quickly. Um, when looking at everyone, and when I say everyone, this would be students, staff, um, and parents, and there was 2,853 respondents to this particular area. And it was, as we're looking to make budget adjustments, what cost-saving measures should we take into consideration? So, uh, actually, this says 2853, but I seem to remember 4,444 was a different response. Nonetheless, we have a few thousand people responding and the number one was adjust transportation routes, times, and zones, and that was at 21.72% supported that as the number one um potential for a budget adjustment as it relates to the survey that is still out live in our community. And then just quickly to walk zones, I just want to say I I know that that's not as big of an issue, but I think it's great. I think that our kids need to be moving more. My kids personally choose to walk to and from school even though they have a bus available and I think, you know, as we were talking about the Robin break. Um it's a really important thing for kids to be moving. Um and so I think it's it's a great change um that will help support the district. Director Long, thank you. Director Long, I was just wondering um last time during the work session we talked about possibly reaching back out to some of the RSI families. We'd gotten several emails from them. Um it seemed to be very concern a very big concern to them with this drastic change was what happened with that? I would say that the the survey data is resp representative of and I can go back to that is representative of of what we received not only from um RSI students and families and you can see their their um vote if you will on keeping the bell schedule changing is in the orange and then they're indifferent and that was students and families and there was 374 responses to that survey and then staff at 29 respond responses and and uh their opinion with changing the bell schedule at uh 48% keeping the schedule 26 or 27.6 and then indifferent at 24.1. So there was in there wasn't any discussion then about a possible happy medium with them or other options that Well, I mean I don't we did back to uh director Basset's question about what are our other options? What can we do? um and in the hubs. I mean, that was costed that out again just to make sure that that was the $870,000 for the hubs. As far as meeting in the middle, I don't know how you do that because to meet in the middle would indicate what part of the time and then it means more buses. The system that we have designed is the most efficient for the way our district is set up right now as far as what is proposed. If the board chooses not to move in that direction, then the times will stay as they are. Um, again, we can adjust walk zones and then we just don't see that savings. I don't know what a happy medium would be with it being a magnet school. It has to fall into one category or the other. Thank you. Uh, director Basset, did you have a followup or Well, I do have a question, but I know a couple at least one director hasn't doesn't have a question. So, if she doesn't, then I will. And so um the hub uh you know and actually uh you know I guess I would like to see uh the calculations around that because I recall when we did it before uh because actually I referenced it because it's a strategy that we had used in the district before and that is to have transfer buses for some of the magnet schools. Now, uh, is it reasonable to have it for a 100% of them of our magnets, the several that we have or not? I don't know. But what I will say is that at the time that we actually uh, you know, had some discussions about it, we actually hired um, a firm to actually help us figure out how to pull together the transportation array. Now, when we talked about it, I mentioned it in passing at an earlier work session and mentioned it again at our March 17th meeting. So, uh kudos to you if you're able to pull all of it together in two weeks where it took us some con consultants a couple of months to figure it out. So, and I say that uh you know to really acknowledge the work you put in in looking at that, but I am interested because I want to know how did we do it before and we can't do it now and is it cost prohibitive? Um, that's really valuable information to have and and I guess what this points up to me because as I look through this I have a number of different questions and this is I don't feel like the appropriate forum to necessarily go into them you know quite frankly but I think this goes to uh the importance of having an ongoing uh conversation and dialogue and I know we're we're in a fast track you know we've got to make some decisions fairly soon. So I know that you're under some time constraints. I realize that. But I do think that more involvement from this board in some of those questions because for example I don't know and we talk about that we're going to have um uh certain buildings do things I've got notes everywhere. Which buildings are they? Which ones are going to where are we going to have mixed classes? Because in the past mixing ages in classrooms was an issue that we got a lot of push back on some years ago. It's different people new people. But I'm saying there's some proposed service model changes that are coming to us and we're just hearing about them. Hearing about something that's already happened makes it very difficult to even talk about it with the administration because nobody wants to be negative. I I I I'm not interested in that. But but the questions that I have, I would be able to ask those in a more timely fashion. And I think that that's important because we've had a lot of um pay people have been paying a lot of attention to this district for a range of reasons. Asking questions is a board director's job. That's what the public elects us to do. And if we don't understand something, it's not for me to say, "Well, Director Hill and Brad, why don't you understand that?" That's not my That's not for me to do. It's for her to determine what she needs to know. And I just feel like this pace has has really been kind of an enemy of that, superintendent. And uh and I and I recognize the role the the pace has had. But I do think that there are some outstanding questions and I've got a I've got a pages of them. I've got a kind of notes, but I don't want to belabor this uh any more than it needs to be. But I think so I'm just reducing it to making the camp comments that I'm making. Director Holmes. Um I guess my comment will add on to what Director Basset just said because it relates to the service model, the base service model we've been speaking about since January. And since cut day happened, obviously we've heard a lot of feedback and um I think one email that came maybe it was this morning where it was asked that we pause on the service model and I think I'm ready for that as well and we need another work session where these questions can come out and I thought we were going to have one um we talked about having an additional work session where we could have free fluid discussion and I think the two of you were looking at calendars. I don't know if it hasn't lined up, but um it is it's a change of service model. And for people who aren't ready to have second and third graders blended together and we just say we're doing it, that does run the risk of decreasing our enrollment or families choosing elsewhere because they can. And it's the same thing when I go to a PTO meeting and hear that our base model, you know, they're getting zero for the MTSS, which is multi-tered systems of support, and that helps students with their behavior. Those are critical people that help students regulate emotions, um, you know, deescalation, all of those things. So, we can keep our students in class and learning. And without those, it changes. And so when we're looking at increased classrooms, no counselors, um you know, lack of a MTSS position, I have really, really grave concerns that we're not supporting our students the way we've agreed to do in terms of mental health support, behavior, all of these add up. And the reason why um I link this to another work session is because we keep doing this peace meal. And I know I've said that to you and you you respond with the pace and we have to make these discussions. We have to make the decision on the budget by the end of June. Before then, we have time to talk and discuss and the board has expressed interest to be brought into this and rough plans. Look at where you're considering. And I'm going to reiterate that ask because I don't necessarily agree with increasing salaries for cabinet, you know, bringing us to market rates um when we can't even provide core staff at our schools. So that should be a discussion and I did send that to the chair in terms of we have an assistant superintendent position posted above our posted contract right now. So, I just have concerns and I'm sure this is going to be alarming um or you know tagged on the media as something, but we need a session as a board and probably two or three so we can do as much as we are able with the the limited circumstances we're up against right now. I'm just I'm not comfortable running schools next year with what I'm hearing. And these aren't rumors. So I mean we are splitting classrooms and uh correct um as I had stated in the presentation we currently have seven classrooms in all of our elementary school in totality seven that are looking at a multi-age situation. I also said that wasn't a component of the presentation, but after the fact that we have made adjustments to our staffing based on what we believe the greatest impact of potentially losing open enrollment would do. So, it is possible that seven classrooms that are impacted could get up to a point where they're no longer a So, seven could go to four. Now, you're talking four classes. And again, I get it's not the service model. I'm just saying just to provide a framework for what you're looking at as if we're moving into a budget conversation. The other component that I would like to address um is the 11.115 million that the board I'm presuming talked about all late winter, early spring of last year and ultimately um moved forward with reductions in May of 24. Of that 11.1 million, you had 50.35 FTE and licensed staff, which included counselors, classroom teachers, and media. And so what is confusing to me coming in and then when looking at um EAS at 47.83, 83 when looking at EAS that was um getting rid or adjusting security and added hours that EAS were getting. What's challenging and I'm going to only speak for myself coming in new and I'm looking at something that was already board approved. I don't understand why like and I'm not I I I appreciate your position. I'm not saying your position is wrong and of course I'm happy to move forward with the will of the board. What's confusing coming in is if this was already done a year ago, why? And maybe this was the discussion a year ago and that's just where you landed. I don't know, but that's where my confusion comes in. Can I just read? Sure. She was posing that off of my comment. So clearly there were issues with leadership last year. We're in we're in a we're in a problem because of a numerous things. M there was lengthy conversations that went on. I think the difference for me is trying to do this right. If if you're coming on and saying I'm the CFO that you know I I don't mess with numbers. I don't like loosey goosey. That's one of the favorite things that you said here. Actuals and Dr. Solo is coming in and saying the buck stops here with me. What I did is I went back and looked since 2018 and how often this budget was approved. 707070. I have yet to approve a budget since I've been on here and it's because we need to do things differently. We need to partner with you. So, this is collaboration. And I think if you're new and you're saying you're not privy to conversations, you said yourself, we lived and breathed this for a long time. You did. So, I think there are pieces that we could bring to you that we know from the community instead of redoing surveys and bringing in consultants and doing things again. I don't want to hear consultant out of anybody's mouth right now at all. And so I think it's about really truly partnering with you. If you're putting yourself on the line and saying we're going to do this, that means working in collaboration with this board where we can help identify things and it shows a unified front moving forward because we are in a leadership role and there are expectations from the community for this board and they want us to do our job. So that's my goal. And so we're not having this conversation at a business meeting, but rather rather a work session. And that's what I have expected. It's always been what I've expected. And I think you'll do it. We've had bits of it, but not in totality, not roughing it out with the board who ultimately has to pass this budget. And I want to be really really aware and intricately involved with it. So I can speak. Yes, we are losing resources, but this is why we're going to do something. And it's not enough for me to say, "Well, we'll get to the Adventure Club plan." When we're making those decisions, I want to make sure we're servicing our families because it is hurtful and it's impacting a lot of people. And it's not it's no longer good enough for me to say, "Oh, we'll get to it. We'll make a plan." Because I've been down that path and I don't want to do it again. I I think it was somebody over there had their hand up, too. I did. Yeah. Dr. I can remember who. Dr. Long. Um, yeah. So, I'm wondering how do we make sure that administrative costs aren't detracting or taking away from our classroom supports? I know several slides that we saw in other presentations talked about how administration increased as enrollment went down. And I know the it was used that well we added schools as the reason for some of that happening but you know the students are the most important part of what we do here. And so how how are we making sure that our administrative costs are not affecting their education or what they're supposed to be getting out of their experience here in Robinsdale. I'm a little confused by the question because it sounds to me or at least I'm viewing it as administrators aren't a part of student success. So, I want to be really careful that that isn't when we had three administrators up here tonight talking about what they put in place over administrators. I'm using it broadly, not just not just building. Okay. Um, so thanks for that clarification. Um I think at the uh two weeks ago I don't even remember a former a previous uh presentation we did show the amount of administrative um district office administrative reductions and again um uh for those of you that didn't hear this I want to be really clear that over the last two years because the district office was a place last year that there was significant dollars actualized in the reduction. So we were operating um this building with fewer administrators and staff and then we added to that again this year. So over the course of those two years that's a 30% reduction of staff not just administrators that's the whole staff. So I I don't have that breakout. Um, Director Long, um, in terms of the building, um, staff, again, you know, we've seen some reduction and that really is going to be a place where part of when we close buildings, that will be an administrative reduction because as we are operating the buildings and that's when in those charts that we saw between 2014 and 2025 in the increase, that was when we did have I think three additional buildings were opened. Um so I'm not sure that I'm addressing um your question specifically. I don't have those numbers in front of me but I I there has been realization of administrators especially at the district office more so but some also at the building level I think three assistant principles. I think that's what we discussed today. Okay. I ask a follow-up question to that. Okay. A followup. Yeah. So, um, is there any way that we could know what administrators by state statute we really need to keep here at the district office? I think the only two that you actually need, if I'm correct, and please, if I'm wrong, let me know, it's me and I think it's the director of student services. Oh, and I guess it was also community. I I guess I guess they're all now coming forward with that. Don't don't forget me. Don't forget principles and principles. Um I know for a fact that it'd be incredibly difficult to run a a school district of 10,263 students with those three administrators. Director Basset. Thank you. Uh so u kind of a different way of this question that director Long posed. Um, as you know, uh, Superintendent, uh, you and I spoke about that because the chart that we got the last time, because I believe I asked for that chart, a chart similar to that, if not that chart, uh, the comparison between 2014 that you actually pulled together and, uh, where we are right now, and it provided information about um, a number of categories. the category that was missing and you and I spoke about this the other day was tosses because and then what we were what was said was um that's teachers on special assignment and so the the the delta between what it was in 2014 I don't have that slide right in front of me but it was something like 35 and then the number has gone up to uh it was shocking do you know what that is offhand what that number went to of the number in that chart I'm I'm turning it over to HR oh it's I can see her over there behind that podium. Well, but but and the and the reality is that this this the question or the comment about uh we've added buildings. What I asked for is let's go back to when we had those buildings and how many tosses we had then because the true comparison is how many tosses we had at the time that we had all those buildings before we closed them. maybe a midpoint that looks at some of the others, some of the other information that you think is appropriate and then where we are now in terms of how many doses and if I remember what that number was and and the director Horn's over there maybe she can tell us that ex how many 85 I think I sent that I sent that in an email you're right it wasn't on the chart but I think I sent it in an email to the board well last Friday okay and so I'm saying to you right now this peace mill information is difficult to keep track of and if we have a chart that had all of the information on it. Having that plotted on the chart is really what I asked for because then you can look in apples to apples and oranges to oranges. But 35 then going to uh 85 and the justification for that is is pretty much kind of around the same question Director Long is asking in a different way. So I think what you're hearing here uh from me now I don't need anybody to interpret what I'm saying because I'm talking what we talked about last year um before your arrival and it was pretty common across the district across directors was we wanted to try to keep cuts away from the classroom. And one of the places that we wanted more information about was teachers on special assignments because of course hopefully those teachers could then go back into the classroom and wouldn't lose a job. They could go back to the classroom was you might maybe naive thinking but that's what I was thinking. Uh and so when we didn't get that data because initially we you know we've gotten some of the peacemail but that is a concern um because I do think that that's a place that we perhaps could save. I appreciate the comments I got from one of our principles who really talked in detail about how they're being used and I think I said well can we know more about how they are being used? So I'm not necessarily looking for the answer to that at this moment. I am saying that the sentiments that I had then and I think I heard from other directors has not gone away you know and so uh that's my concern and uh and I don't feel like I have a handle on the trajectory of that growth in teachers on special assignment and when I hear that we three we lost three positions in the ESC you know I mean why not 10 why not 15 and I'm not you know, I mean, I'm not not on be, you know, um, can you explain that? What Well, I'm just saying why not more? I'll just put it like that. I don't I don't even know there's more than three positions that I think there 11 maybe. Well, whatever the number is, I'm just saying we did we didn't get a presentation to talk about the questions that were asked. And so I I think I'm I'm sure that my frustration is coming through because I'm sure it is because I am, you know, and I'm not I'm not apologizing for that. I'm very concerned as as everybody is. I'm not saying I'm alone or I'm the only one. I'm not saying that at all. But I'm saying that there have been some questions that were posed and the information has been choppy. I mean that's not a put down. I'm just saying it's been very peacemeal as you know because you've been work you've been flying the plane and building the plane at the same time. So we all get that. But what happens when people fly the plane and build the plane at the same time is that everybody's not always on the same page. I mean, it's just the reality. So, uh, I don't need any criticism about what we heard or what somebody else heard. I'm talking about what I heard and what my questions were. And so, if you have specific questions, any other director for Miss Hohisel about something you wonder about, have at it. You know, my questions have been asked. So, Superintendent Stallow, I just want to I just and I I want to just be really clear with a couple of things, especially with that TOSA conversation and we can certainly um you know, dig more into that data. Director Basset, that's not a problem. I just also want to remind you as we said in in multiple times in the presentation that our our principles at the end of the day, we have $21 million that we need to reduce. We have 80% of our budget. That's people. So, there are going to be positions that are reduced. Um, it's interesting to me that the media is so interested in this. Like, that's a big surprise that we're going to have to reduce staff. Um, we are reducing staff across every position. Our principles are allocated FTE and they have to and they they have believe in shared leadership. So they work with their staff in order to make sure they're making the best decisions possible for their building. So there are cases where our principles because of the value that we've already heard tonight about some of our teachers on special assignment, they're saying we could use that FTE and buy down and have smaller class sizes, but because of our school improvement plan, because of the work that we're doing, because of the supports that our kids need, it's more important that we have a teacher on special assignment doing X role. And and that's up to the principles. they get the allocation um and they get to make some of those decisions. Um it was the same way with some of them who did have allocations. Some simply did not have the allocation for counselors and some of those positions. Some chose things other than that. So, I I just want to be sure that the public understands, the board understands that we trust our building principles with their staff to make decisions about what is most needed to move their school improvement plan and student achievement forward and in cases that is teachers on special assignment. Well, superintendent, just a followup just a follow up to that to that point you just made. If it's quick. Oh, yeah, sure. this one and so make sure I understand. So, superintendent, uh I guess I was thinking about some of the specialists that are at ESC that aren't really under the purview of that's what I've been thinking about. Uh because it's my understanding that building leaders can use some of their compensatory aid to buy down a Tulsa or do whatever else they choose to do. So, but we also have many of the Tulsas who are based at the education service center. So, 11 11. We only had we only had 11 11 this year and we are reducing five of those. So there will be there will be six. And these are these are teachers on special assignment who lead our English learner program. They lead our literacy work across the district as we're implementing the ReadAct, which is incredibly heavy lifting. They support our fine arts um all of our curriculum areas. They help support all of our buildings with their school improvement planning. Um so while their offices are housed at the district office, you're exactly right. Um it really is district-wide work and working specifically with buildings in many of those areas sitting on um building instructional leadership teams. Um they do amazing work and are amazing staff members in support of students. Thank you for that. Thank you, Director Bowman. Thank you. I appreciate it. Um, I've heard over these last couple of weeks, I've heard a lot of things that sort of sound like allegations. Peace meal. That was that's a word that's being used here tonight. Um, let's do the right thing. Uh, all the things that we as elected official embrace. There's nobody up here that at all is separate from the belief that as an elected official, we want to do the right things for the students of our district and the people in our community, no matter how we've defined that community. Um, the other things, there's a lot of things that come to my mind tonight as I listen to this and uh I um I'm going to try to be be brief. I will be brief, but I I really believe that um doing the right thing involves for me supporting our superintendent and supporting our CFO because um we have lacked in leadership in this district for a number of years. It's not even worth talking about it at this point. We know where those gaps are. But what we have is we have some incredible expertise that dug in. Didn't know anybody even here. I cannot imagine walking into a job. I mean, there are some four-letter words that we've sort of heard bantered in the background of what kind of a show it was when we hired these two. Um, and my greatest concern from all of this is in the past two years, this is a board that has done a lot of fighting. The questions are really good from board members. That is the role of the board to ask really, really good questions. But what I'm really concerned about is the sense that when we get the answer back from the administrators that we we know have the expertise, somehow those answers are never good enough. They're just never good enough. And the reality of it is is what we're going through right now is not good enough for our students or this community or this district. It is a terrible thing that we are in this spot. And I know for myself personally, I put myself on the line when I say I support our superintendent and I support our CFO because I've not seen a better plan than what these two have put out with so little time over the last couple of months. It is concrete. Guess what? I can see the dots being connected. That is not something I have seen in this district over the past four years. Um, it is my concern of of the lack of expertise from board members. We all bring something to this table, but none of us have the education of the people who are making the recommendations to us at this time. And one of the things that I'm going to ask of this board at this point because it's been said we can't cut our way out of this. This is going to be cuts and cuts and cuts and cuts for the next couple of years. This is not going away once we put our signature on this budget. And the reality of it is is are we going to cut by are we going to fix our budget through a thousand cuts that are talked into the ground up at this table? Or are we going to let the people who we hired to do their job make their recommendations from the heart and soul that I have seen from these people so that we can pick up whatever stinking little pieces we got left and start to move forward because we're not going anywhere by bringing back and bringing back. I'm sitting at this table listening to reports that was done four years ago, six years ago, and they're all out of context. They're not based in the reality of what we've discussed and what have I been at the meetings, but what have been the content and context of what goes on in those meetings. And I know I sound probably a little more passionate than I want to sound, but this has been weeks and months of this. We owe it to ourselves to bring in a budget by the second meeting of June because I'm going on my first vacation for the last two weeks of June because I also caretake my sick husband. So, I'm I'm going to go away knowing that this board took the expertise that we have hired and guess what? We listen to it. What a radical thought for this district. Listen to the expertise. Oh my god. What will we do? But at this point, I'm gonna put my money, my passion behind this superintendent and behind our CFO because in living here for a full lifetime, serving 25 years ago when the first time I served, I have never seen such conciseness of numbers. I've never seen people pull together a the reality out of nothing. So with that, I would recommend that the board do the right thing, that the board support our administration, that the board stop this nonsense of trying to balance the budget through a thousand cuts. Thank you. Thank you. And I think the last person speaking, questioning is going to be Director Holmes. Um I'm glad you have the information you need to support these decisions, but some of us do not. And um I heard those sentiments actually when I went back and watched the approvals of the budget and you had said those similar things last year when we approved the budget. For me it's changing practices so we're not in the same hole again. And as we're going through this and you're talking about the comp dollars and the the principles making the decisions. I know it's a learning experience right now for some of them in terms of title one dollars and all of that. and it's been a work in progress in terms of who gets what and how it's allocated. Um, but with that, I guess I would like more information then on if they're making such large decisions, and perhaps this is what Director Long was going after when they're deciding on an AP over more EAS or whatever scenario comes up. What is the accountability factor there to make sure that our students academic achievement needs are being met? How are we translating that into real results? Because I know they're doing the hard work and working with limited dollars this year, but how are we tracking that those decisions are the right decisions each year because we weren't doing it before? And I know you're saying you're here and the buck stops here, but I would just like a little bit more information on how we're going to track that, how it's working for those schools because it's varying from school to school. So, what does that accountability factor look like? How do we know when to change again? How do we know if that decision wasn't the right one? Yeah, I'm absolutely um not entirely ready to answer. That's a huge question. Yes, it is. And agreed. And um you know I think the the the truth of the matter and you all have heard me say this multiple times and the community has heard me say this multiple times um we are not performing where we need to be performing as a district in any level. So, one of the things um that I've paid deep attention to is our systems and looking at, you know, we like many district have random acts of excellence all over the place. Um and I'm very interested in having consistency with those systems to have excellence across the district. Uh that's what we're building toward and we do that through common ways of looking at school improvement plans. I was in a meeting today where we looked at let's let's make sure that we're even having the same metrics in those. So to your point, we're comparing apples to apples. Um the decisions that principles are making right now with staffing. I I don't know that there's a correlative study that I can speak to. I can't right now. Um but I think the accountability piece is exactly that. How are they getting it done and how aren't they getting it done? Um, and I can't assess that in eight months. Oh my. Um, but I'll continue to work on assessing that. I I think that there have been areas that we influence and can help make decisions on for sure in terms of staffing. I am not in a position where if a principal says because of the work that they've been doing over the course of the last five years, it's more important to student outcomes to have a teacher on special assignment who serves as a literacy coach than it is to have a lower number of students in the classroom. I'm going to trust that administrator on that. Um then the accountability I think director Holmes comes as we look at end of the year progress as we look at goals being met or not. Um our administrators also learn a lot when they don't meet goals right where where do different strategies have to be employed or different resources put in place. So, I'm not really answering your question entirely, but I will get to a better answer to that. Um, because you're right, how we staff buildings also talks about what we value and what we know works um best. Thank you. Thank you. And we will continue to talk budget at work sessions. So, I think all the points have been made by the board. Thank you very much for your time and for answering our questions and your patience and your work on this. Next item on is we're moving on to item seven, operations. Letter A is an action on the bell times and walk zones. You've seen the bell times and the walk zones information. Director Holmes, can we split the vote on the certainly please? They said that we could do that. So, is there a motion on the bell on Let's do bell times and then walk on. Is there a motion to approve the proposed bell times? I'll move approval. Oh, I can. Uh, okay. Director Bowman moved it and Director Helen Brand seconded it. Okay. I'm going to go for a roll call vote on this one. I don't see any hands up and we doing right. This is bell times. Okay. So, can I I'm sorry. Yes. Is there any appetite to postpone this until next year? I I see the merits in it and I can support it and I see how it aligns. This isn't a failure to make a decision. I just want to be courteous to the families and the large amount of numbers that we did get back. We asked for feedback. It was not favorable from a family perspective. Um I don't even know if that's doable at this point. I know we're in the 15, but we've talked about 21. We're not hitting 21. Can we be um and I I would ask I could do that as an amendment for even doing it the following school year if administrators are welcome for that. I just am very concerned about losing additional enrollment. Okay. What I would suggest is that we vote on the motion and if the motion doesn't happen to pass, then we could have an alternative motion. Okay. All right. No more hands are up. Oh, we have another hand. Yes, director Brand. Yeah. I just I just, you know, as I'm thinking about it, I just want to be think, you know, I think the number is around half million dollars for the walk zones and belt times together, right? So, and I think of that as how many teachers that would preserve. So, I just wanted to say that I support it mo because that preserves positions and so I just want to put that out there why I'm voting that way. Thank you. Okay. All right. So, uh, Director Bowman, could you please call the role for this vote? We are voting on the recommended changes to build times. Great. Thank you, Director Basset. I'll vote yes. Director Bowman votes yes. Chair Evans Becker, yes. Director Hillenbrand, yes. Director Holmes, no. Uh, Director Long, no. Director Wuto, yes. Five, yes. Four. Whoops. That'd be too many. Five yes to no. The motion The motion carries to change the bell times. Okay, we're now we're up to walk zones. Um, is there a motion? I'll move approve. I'll move approval. We have a motion to approve the proposed walk zones. Is there a second? I'll second. Moved by Bowman, seconded by Holmes. I don't see any hands up. I see a hand. Director B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B Basset. Well, one of the things that I wondered about, I just didn't ask CFO about it. um was that um I am wondering about the smaller children with the larger walk zone. And since we didn't adjust the high school, my wondering was why could could we make that up if we increase the high school walk zone because they're bigger and we're able to and we're able to do that. And um I just it's not a like for like as far as what would be a financial savings. Um I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It isn't a like for like. It's not like well we'll just switch the uh area and therefore we will receive the same amount of savings. Um we transport more elementary students than we do high school students. high school students have a way of getting getting to um they drive, right, or parents drop them off. Um there's also if you look and I'm thinking of our two high schools back to you have multiple elementary schools. You have two high schools. What's And by law, you can't go more than two miles from a high school. So what is our radius around Armstrong or Cooper or uh High View versus what is the radius around the multiple elementary schools and so it's not a like forlike answer and I believe in the 1900s the late 1900s like the 1990s um this is what the walk zones were okay I don't see any other hands and so I would like to ask the clerk to call the role so that we can vote on the proposed osed walk zone change. Director Basset going to pass reluctantly. Yes. Pardon? Yes. I'm voting yes. Director Bowman votes yes. Director Evans Becker. Yes. Director Hillbrand. Yes. Director Holmes. Yes. Director Long, yes. Director Wuto, yes. It's unanimous. Uh the motion carries to ch to approve the walk zones that were recommended. Okay. Next up is uh resolution. It's proposing uh it's for the proposal for terminating the probationary teachers. This is required by law. That's why it's a resolution, not a motion. Um this is Will someone move the resolution, please? I'll move the resolution. Are you waving the reading? Yes, please. Okay. Okay. The resolution has been moved to uh terminate our probate the probationary teachers. Is there a second? Second. Seconded by um director Basset. Moved by Bowman. Okay. I see no hands. Uh board directors had an opportunity had an opportunity and we'll still have an opportunity to see all these names. Okay. Uh, Director Bowman, will you call uh do the roll call vote for I will the resolution terminating our probationary teachers with the suspended reading. Correct. Thank you. Uh, Director Basset, yes. Director Bowman votes yes. Director I mean, Chair Evans Becker, yes. Director Hillbrand, yes. Director Holmes, yes. Director Lawn, no. Uh, director Wu, yes. Six, yes. one. No. The the resolution carries. Okay. Item C. Um we the act it's an action item to accept the resignation of the financial advisory council member um Yuki Doer. He was appointed by the board and so we need to accept his resignation from the FAC. I'll move approval. Director Basset moves to accept. Second. Seconded by Director Hillenbrand. Director Holmes. Um, will we be discussing filling the vacancies? I believe it's coming up at our work session. Okay. All right. And this is a voice vote. So, all in favor of accepting his resignation resignation of Yuki Doa from the FAC, please say I. I. Oppose, say no. The motion carries. Moving right along. Okay. So, what happened at the January 6th business meeting is we approved um a particular amount of money, $12,500, but it ended up in the minutes $12,000. So, we just have to have a a motion to amend our minutes that were published. I mean, we're just we're just correcting the minutes. I'll move approval. We approve the right amount, but we have to have it in the minutes, right? It's been moved by Director Bowman, seconded by I'll second. Dr. Holmes. All in uh all in favor, please say I. I. Oppose say no. Okay. So, the minutes will be corrected for that one. And the other one is amending the um minutes of the uh February 18th business meeting. Okay. So, at that meeting, that's the meeting where we used the resolution to appoint Dr. Muto to the board. However, in the minutes it said we had a motion. What happened was there was a motion on our and our council said it needs to be the resolution in order to meet state statute. So, it was changed by the mover and the secondary and voted on that way, but it didn't get recorded that way in our minutes. Therefore, we need to just change the minutes. We don't have to change anything we actually did. It's just changing the minutes. So, is there a move to change to correct? Can I clarify something? It it it appears uh item 7D should have been a roll call and this should also be a roll call on the agenda. So the amendment changes should be roll call votes. That's what I have set up in mind. I thought oh where did I see I saw a voice somewhere but I am definitely wrong. Okay let's finish off this one and then we can go back to the other one and do it. Okay so we're going to be on 7E right now. So we are on the minutes for the 8 February 18th meeting. Do I have a motion to correct those minutes? Amen. Those minutes. So moved. Second. Moved and seconded. Holmes and Basset. And it's it it turns out to be a roll call vote. So let's do it. It is. I know. Director Basset. Yes. Director Vote Bowman votes yes. Chair Evans Becker. Yes. Uh Director Hillenbrand. Yes. Director Holmes. Yes. Director Long, yes. Uh Director Rou, I will abstain. Okay. Good point. Good move. Oh yeah. Okay. Chair. Madam Chair, the previous vote was unanimous. Because that we can use Thank you. the previous vote being unanimous. We can say each of us. Just check the little boxes. Move on. Chair. Yes. Just for practices, we're supposed to be stating why we abstain. I know why he's abstaining, but can we get in the habit of Okay. If one abstains, one needs to just say why. I abstain because I was not present on the board at the time. Thank you. Perfect. All right, moving right along. Um, item F, ad hoc safety and security committee report. Who's up? I think I'm I'm taking it. Um, so we met on March 18th. It was directors Long and myself, Superintendent Stallow and Director Bo Powell. we were missing two um individuals of our committee with a um administrator change occurring. Um our agenda topics included continued discussion on addressing the vaping and marijuana use in bathrooms, bathroom accessibility for all students, the student handbook, and any staffing updates around security. Um I think what I want to it's in there in in terms of more detail what we did in terms of um accessibility and facilities. I'll continue to to evaluate bathroom design but really the focus we had previously was on um bathroom lockage and students had come and spoke and the youth advisory council had spoken to it. Um, so trying to get our arms around that and my question here that I'm posing for all of us and I think it requires board discussion is what are the steps forward to producing measurable and timely outcomes to that bathroom issue because we are in the same place we were over a year ago which is bathrooms may or may not be locked although I think it was mentioned that principles are stating they're not. Um, so I'm asking at at some point this board's going to have to give a directive or a plan moving forward because we are in the same place. And then continue discussion on the student handbook. Um, we received no feedback from the board. Uh, we are going to be working through the standard protocol and how that is reviewed, where input is gathered. When I was looking at previous budget votes, I did see that they were approving the handbook at that same time. So, I don't know where that practice has been lost, but that is something that, um, I realized. Um, so that typically was happening right around June. Um, and that was pretty consistent. I don't know when and why it fell off, but those are my two asks for this board. And if we're work session or continued discussion on it, we are hitting some roadblocks. Thank you. All right. You have a question for the committee. Question. Yes. And so um are you asking that the handbook um approval align with the budget? I mean I mean it no you means at the same time it was done. That's what I mean at the during the same time period back in by June 30th. Is that the ask? So I I am asking for further clarification because we've been trying to flush that out as a committee. What is the protocol? Who is invited to respond to it? What is the board's role in it? because I think um conversations have been had around that. Um some saying none. Um but when I did look back on it, the board was actually you it was an action item to approve it. I don't know when or where it makes sense to this board. So I'm not recommending anything. I know it's a misstep that we're not more involved in it. Thank you. Okay. The next item is the pardon me. Okay. The next item is the governance policy manual task force report. Great. We're the fund committee. We are. We are. Uh Gita and I have been meeting uh weekly uh pretty much weekly on this. Uh if you will recall uh what we've done and actually it was it's been in collaboration. And it started with uh Miss Molly Olsen, our admin assistant. Um and Gita and I are working on it. And the focus of the work that we have done has been to customize where we can. So customize those items that we know we already have as information like the bylaws we made sure were put in there and like the picture that we're we took tonight will also populate our book. Um and so the timeline so we're at a spot now where uh our timeline for this is we will present it to we will give it to the board by the 1 of July and then the focus will be that the board will have July and August to review uh the updates to the manual and then we would like to talk start an earnest discussion in September. uh hopefully we could get it relative approved relatively quickly and then uh we will also include with our recommendations what the ongoing management of it would look like uh such as is it something we're going to review every year at the annual organization meeting in January or what does that look like? So we'll bring you the picture uh the complete package uh with a timeline and and then we can we'll be able to not have to have these reports after after that. And and when you say customizing um you're talking about customizing the MSBA template, right? What we did in the customizing and you'll see it what'll happen in your review is you will receive a copy of the customized uh manual and then you will also have access to the online manual that has not been customized so that you'd be able to pinpoint exactly where. We've not really changed any language. What we've really done is put links in there. uh this manual will reside online uh for the ease of management so that it is always being updated by MSBA and that those links stay alive and vibrant and uh so yeah the the only one piece we have that greed and I worked on that was different than just a mere customization of what we've already had was the section on roles and responsibilities and that's the piece that I presented to chair Evans Becker her and asked her to bring it to a board meeting uh board work session for discussion at a future date. Um we also know that the manual could be approved without that even being added. The difference is as much of the MSBA language in that is very statutory sound and nature. It's the statute and we didn't find uh statutory language to be relevant to the actual workings of the board. So, so we look forward to uh being able to take that off our desks. Thank you. All righty. This takes us to administrative reports. I don't I don't believe we have anything this evening. Thank you. Thank you. Then we're moving right along. Personnel report. Wait a minute. Wait a second. Administrative reports. Consent agenda. Thank you. Okay. Items on the consent agenda are routine in nature and are generally voted on with one motion and a roll call vote. And so at this time, is there any? Yes. Director Holmes, I'd like to pull the licensed staff report, please. The entire license staff report. There wasn't one in there, so I don't know what There wasn't one in there. The non-licensed staff report is in there, but the licensed staff report unlicensed, right? It's not on the website. We got one in our packets. It's in the packet. Okay. So, so the license technically is it in the consent agenda? Is it What are you telling me that it's actually on the website in the board packet? Okay. I'm seeing a couple people shake their heads. You can't access it right now anyway. Yeah. So, it needs to be turned. So functionally it's not on there. So are we legally voting on it? Has the board gotten a chance to review it? I have when it came in it came in the packet license licensed and I guess it's not posted. It's not viewable. Well, that's why there. Okay. We all got it in our packets though. What? Well, we didn't. Did we? Well, oh, wait. We did. Wait a minute. Can you tell me which document we're actually talking about? I'm hearing licensed, non-licensed. The l I'm pulling the licensed staff report which I have in my packet. The licensed staff report. That's the onepage item. Correct. In the consent agenda. I can't access it. Just currently you can't access it through board books, but it's in our email. Okay. All right. So, anything can be removed from the consent agenda by request of a board member. The licensed staff report is being pulled for a separate vote. Do I have a motion to approve the rest of the consent agenda? So, moved. So, moved by Director Hillbrand, sec seconded by Director W. Great. Consent agenda is a roll call vote. We're voting on the consent agenda with the exception of the licensed staff report. Okay, take it away. Dire uh Director Bon, I have one quick question. Okay, and that is is that going to come as a separate item? Is that what we're doing? We're not going to Right. Right. Tonight, it's just pulled to be okay. Just to be a separate item. Okay. And who made the motion against on this? Uh to approve it. Is it? It was It was seconded by Director W and moved by I think. Okay. I just like my records to be accurate. So, we're just voting on the consent agenda, the entire consent agenda with the exception of the licensed staff report. Okay, great. Uh, Director Basset. Oh, for the um for the main motion for the consent agenda. Consent agenda with the other thing taken. Yeah, I vote yes. Director Bowman votes yes. Uh, Chair Evans Becker, yes. Director Hillenbrand, yes. Director Holmes, yes. Director Long, yes. Director Wuto. Yes. Okay. It's unanimous. The the consent agenda is passed and now we have the licensed staff report to approve. I'll move approval. It's been moved to be approved by Director Bowman. Is there a second? Second. Seconded by Director Basset. And Director Holmes, you have some discussion. I did. It's in the email that I sent to Chair Evans Becker and Vice Chair Long. Um it relates to the five-year leave and the memo that we did receive back. Um reasoning behind this is that I would like the board to consider um past history of work leaves from past 281 placements all around the same time. Um, for this individual, the person's LinkedIn profile in indicates that they had quit district 281 and now started a personal consulting company that works with intermediate district 917, which I believe um violates the or it is a um conflict to to the memo we had received um from Director O'Harn on February 25th, 2025. uh the person's Facebook posting also shows that she has quit the district. And then I guess um moving forward this if the board approves this 5-year leave and the ex the reasons I just said it would have set a precedent where other employees expect the same consideration in c similar circumstances. I don't believe that this serves our students and our buildings the way that we intended to. Thank you. I would like to point out that our council has recommended that we approve this leave that it it works appropriately within our contract and a 5-year leave is in the contract. And so, um, I would like to recommend that we go along with what council has said that this is an appropriate leave to grant. that if we perhaps do not grant it, then we by statute we have to explain why we wouldn't grant it. Dr. Director Long, I guess I'm confused. I don't really know of other jobs where after you post and you tell people that you've quit that then you can come back months later and then ask for a leave. So, was there some kind of mishap that happened along the way? Because this just seems really confusing to me. Once you quit a job, I don't know that you can go back and ask for a leave than a job that you've quit. I'm just going with what council said that she meets the qualifications to be approved. Director WH. So I guess my question will be is there any formal resignation from this individual to the school? And if if there is not then I don't think Facebook or other mediums that we are referring to will be the places for us to make that decision that because we saw them post we can even justify the Facebook account belongs to them in the first place. So I think as a board we just have to be a little careful when we make those decisions. Thank you Director W Director O'Harn. Good evening Chair Becker, directors of the board, Superintendent Stalo. Um I am gonna 100% agree with director Wuan. Welcome. Um we cannot use social media as our viable platform of what we are getting our resources from. I will tell you that the person is currently on a leave from the district. That is reliable information that we have. The employee is employed as a consultant with another district. She is not an employee with that district, but she is working for that district as a consultant. I have verified that with that school district. There is a shortterm contract for that consulting work and that contract runs only for another 18 months. So, I will share that publicly because that was information that was shared with me that I could share with you. Um, outside of that, she the employee has asked for an up to five-year leave with an option to come back at three is what is in the contract. So that is what we have been working with legal counsel on that memo back to you on what was the request and making sure that we are following what is in state statute to make sure that you had all of the information you needed to make the decision. Thank you. Seeing no more hands raised for points I think we we pardon me I have a different question. Okay. And mine is the positions that are eliminated as superintendent, that doesn't mean that the people aren't still here in a different capacity. That was my assumption, but I thought since we're since this is pulled, I'd ask. There's a section depends on the effective date. I think so. The section that says positions eliminated. There are a number of positions that are eliminated. Do you need to see this? I don't have that. It says the effective date is June 30th of 2025. I know but that my I had my question and my question was absolutely and so my question is that uh are the you know that doesn't necessarily mean those individuals could re be retained in a different capacity is my question. So just because that position is eliminated doesn't mean that they're gone necessarily. These positions were eliminated right across the district. Yes, these people if they had enough seniority in that group that they were in would be placed back into the pools to retain a job elsewhere. That was really my question. So just because the position is eliminated doesn't mean that they necessarily go away. Sure. Okay. That was my question. Okay. Thank you for clarifying that. All right. This will be a roll call vote because we have the we had the motion and the second to approve this. All right. Take it away, clerk. Thank you. Director Basset, yes. Director Bowman votes yes. Uh, Chair Evans Becker, yes. Director Hillenbrand, yes. Director Holmes, no. Director Long, no. Director Wuto, yes. Okay, we have five yes, two no. The motion carries. And so the uh licensed staff report is approved. Okay, moving along. Uh, correct me if I'm wrong. I think we're up to future events and adjourning the meeting. Okay, I'll entertain a motion. Second. Moved and moved by Bowman, seconded by Basset. All in favor, please say I. I post nay. We are adjourned at 8:22. Thank you. We will reconvene at this question at 8:30 for our work session. Thank you. would be something. And we're back. Okay, here we are for the welcome to the work session. It is Monday, April 7. April 7th and it is 8:36 and I'm greet Evan Specker. We're in the boardroom and let's go around this way. Great. Renee Lman, director. Nick Wolsburgger, attorney for the board. Help school. Caroline Long, school board. Kristen Hisel, chief financial officer. Kim, school board. Anthony Wells, executive director of community education athletics. Yammy, executive director of human resources. Terry Styles, superintendent Helen Brand, school board, school and Wilson, executive assistant to the superintendent and school board. Thank you. Okay. Um we're going to have a discussion about our board meeting procedures and formats. And uh to lead us off to help us with ideas and shape our thinking, we have Dr. Style and Vick Wells Burger from uh our So who wants to start? I'm happy to jump in. Okay. So, uh, talking about meeting procedures, you'll recall back in October, I did some training and professional development for the board. And since we have a couple of new board members, we thought it might be helpful to just kind of skim through a couple of the pieces that really uh, have jumped out at us here. Uh, also want to talk about the recommendations that Liz Vieier and I made back in October and then some recommendations that Dr. Stalin made as followup in January. So, those are the uh pieces of information that you had before you're here. I'm going to spend most of my time on the the bigger packet that I did right now materials because a lot of the others are incorporated. I'll come back and touch on some of them. And when I'm chatting today, I'm going to try to be relatively brief, but I do want to talk about some of the observations that I have made over the last few months of the board and how it functions and some recommendations in response to some of the things that I've seen. So, with that, um, just jumping right in, just a quick reminder what the recommendations were that, uh, we made back in October. Livier and I recommended that we really try to maintain a focus on students. Uh at that time we're really struggling with personalities and kind of some infighting and things of that nature. And so one of the main questions we asked the board to always ask is how will this benefit students? How will my question benefit students? How will my comment benefit students? Um the second thing we talked about was assuming positive intent. There seemed to be a lot of situations where we were just jumping to a conclusion that somebody was attacking or that it was a negative. And so we've really spent some time talking about assuming positive intent. I heard uh that mentioned at the board table today. I love that. I think that's a very positive movement forward. Talked about formalities, minimizing personalities. The more difficulties we have getting along, the more formal we should be because that helps get us past that. Talked about transparency and what does that really mean? and the fact that transparency really means preparation, reviewing materials ahead of time, directing questions ahead of time to the greatest extent possible so the superintendent uh so that staff have time to collect uh give you a better answer, board members have time to digest the information. We're recommended writing questions down considering whether that question really is relevant to board's role in governance as opposed to management and thinking through the relevance. And we did talk about grandstanding, the importance of not grandstanding uh when we're speaking at meetings. Uh and discuss the training I'm going to go over in a minute. Uh we talked about some changes uh to the works uh business meetings and work sessions. I still continue to believe it's not a good idea to be both in the same night. Very long night, very tough night for board members. And the longer you meet, the more emotional things become. And then we talked about being future focused. So those were the recommendations. Um, I want to jump into the training materials that I provided and I'm going to go right to page 10 of the materials and right to the heart and soul. We talk about the board's role is governance and the uh superintendent's role as management. Again, the state of Minnesota has established a system where uh the model is that you hire a superintendent to manage your district and you simply have governance authority, policym authority, big picture authority. And so your policy says that you hire only one person. So you have only one employee and that's the superintendent and you hold the superintendent accountable. Um and at the same time I would hope you also are going to support the superintendent too because our all ships rise and fall together trying to undermine the superintendent that is going to come back negatively. You know I uh I often get criticisms from my my wife and I'm too direct and so I understand that but I'm going to be direct here when I talk about a number of things. You know, if we have social media posts criticizing our superintendent of the budget process, is that legal? Do you have a first amendment right to do that? You do. Does it make sense? Is it professional? Is it constructive? Or does it undermine the superintendent administration? And I'd ask you to think carefully about that because I think it's really the latter that's happening there. The board acts as a body and not through the individual members. I wanted to reiterate this because um we we talked in the last training about the the question does what a individual board member requests reflect the will of the board or the will of that individual board member and the superintendent responds only to a majority of the board. Same as that, me as counselor, you know, the the board directs me what to do with the majority of the board says, "Mick, I want you to take this action if it's legal. Even if I don't like it, I'll take it for you because then that's who I answer to because majority vote for the board." And that's similar to the superintendent, too. But if one board member says, "Mick, I want you to do X, Y, or Z." I'm not going to respond to that because I single board member has no power. No authority save the board chair as some special powers as the board chair. And I mentioned this that individual board members have no power because there have been a couple situations that have come up where there's been a suggestion that individual board members serve as the boss or as the super or the supervisor or the superintendent. That's just not true. The board is a body serves in that capacity but not individual board members. So, uh, it's a quorum activated, um, authority and want to make sure that we're being mindful of that. If we jump up to page, 17 of the materials, we talked about preparation for meetings and had a good discussion about that back in October. And one of the key things and the number one point here is no surprise questions. Preparation means you reviewed information from the superintendent or the administration. Ask questions before the business meeting if at all possible. And then what the discussions happened at the work here and one of the things that I can say is well there's been a lot of improvement in this area but there's still some improvements you made because at several board meetings there have been a lot of surprise questions that have come up and there really should be very very few of those. Sometimes it's going to happen. You know it can't be avoided to speak but it should be few and far between. Uh that's important because asking questions ahead of time again it gives you an ability to digest the information better and it builds trust with the administration. When you ask surprise questions it it comes across well I'm sure board members don't mean it but it often comes across as critical negative judgmental and when you look at the way your the employees of the district react that's one thing Dr. Christo is pretty pretty tough. You look at other employees when they present and they talk, you can see it on their faces. You can see it in their body language how this is impacting. And I don't know if board members realize the impact that their actions are having on employees. And so again, we want to make sure we're not coming across as blaming, judgmental, critical the staff were presenting information. That's really just not appropriate. If you I'll come to you just one second. If you um have feedback, who do you give that to? Your one employee. And you give that to the one employee, not in public light and say, "Oh, I'm upset with so and so how they did this." Before the next meeting, you have a meeting, you talk with Dr. Stalo and say, "Hey, here's my feedback about this." And we're going to kind of talk that through. Um, also, employees don't know how to respond when individual board members make comments that are kind of biting. Um, judgmental and why don't they know how to respond because they don't know if that represents the will of the board or just one individual board member thoughts and so that's another reason why we want to be careful not to do that at the board meeting it really causes a lot of confusion directors well excuse me I think that um I don't think we have very much argument about that I think that one of the things that our this board did not do and I think probably should have done is actually have a conversation about policy governance because policy governance is a choice. School boards get to make that choice. Far away in Minnesota, policy governance is the way they most boards have chosen to operate. And I think that that is really the hallmark of MSBA and and many others. And so I think it's important to know that there are other models of governance. And so um and sometimes you might get a blend from a from a number of these when I say part of governance I mean that sometimes the board deliberately decides to go under the line and they deliberately decide that if they see circumstances that are concerning to the board collectively. Now uh I probably not telling you anything you don't know. you know that that can happen and does happen. Policy governorness is a choice. It's not a law. I mean, so and and I'm not speaking against it. I'm just being clear that, you know, when it's talked about in certain ways, people under believe that it's a it's the holy gorilla. You can't do anything else. That's just really not true. It's the practice and custom in Minnesota. And for the most part, it's my understanding. You know, you certainly can correct me, but that's my understanding. And for the most part, most boards of Minnesota kind of ascribed to it, and I've certainly operated that way for many, many, many years myself. So, I mean, I'm not a an adversary to it, but I understand that it's not the law. The law doesn't say the board shall be limited to policy governance, but it really does establish a system. It really does establish a system where you hire a superintendent and that superintendent is licensed and is knowledgeable in the area and then hires other people who are licensed and knowledgeable. And um I think your point is well taken. There can be at times when there's a blend of things. But one thing I am always reminded of is I heard a speaker one time talk about the fact that your district has a $200 million budget, annual budget. if I if you have a $200 million company that you own. Director Bass said and I said, "You know what? I would like you just to go on vacation, relax, let me have the ring. Let me finish. Let me have the rings. I'll meet 24 times a year and I'll run that company for you." He'd say, "You're crazy. You're crazy." And I say, "Well, 24 times. I can do everything for a $200 million budget that's got, you know, 4,000 employees or whatever the case would be." You would say, "You're absolutely crazy. We need that structure to make sense. that argued that No, but I'm just saying that's my my response to I mean but I but I do think this is a training that somebody decided we were going to have. The board did not collectively let me let me let me let me finish. The board did not collectively have the conversation. There are a number of things where that happened that the board collectively have not discussed the deciding. So somebody is deciding what the will of the board is and it's not the board members. Okay? I mean let's just be clear about that because uh there are a number of things that people want to talk about and they're not talked about. I ask a question if I say what is the training about? When when are we going to talk about our professional development? If I don't get a response to that, that's not okay. I mean I I like following the policy governance. I like having a responsive in this case cheer. because that keeps down nonsense just to answer the question. If you know the answer, I mean, why do we have a central person if you're not going to answer a question? It's not this stuff shouldn't be a secret. If we're having a meeting and we're going to have professional development and who how did that get determined, you know, who's going to be the facilitator? Those are all conversations that the history of this board this district is a board the board had the conversation together and decided and everybody got to talk about when the date was going to be together collectively because everybody's on vacation. So I guess the point I'm making is that I have a problem when we talk about the perfect world, the perfect model when it's not that. And so when there are challenges and so I think that any training that we have about this, I would like for there to be some balance with challenges and what undermines it because there are some things that undermine policy governance and the lack of communication is a big one. I mean when that happens I mean it I think it happened before we ended up having a chair change and I think that the there are challenges and the whole reason why we had the training in the first place and you know I think when you're having such deeply rooted issues between board members um it it's not a situation where we're going to get consensus on board and I would also say that I'm not aware of a district in Minnesota there probably is one out there but I'm not aware of one that doesn't p practice policy governance as a school. It's Minnesota culture, but it relates to the way the statute. Well, that's true, but it's also a culture in Minnesota. I I I don't want to just say I'm just acknowledging the reality is that there are other models that used in other places. This is hardly ascribed to what you hear from MSBA, you're going to probably hear from MASA and the others, you know, I mean, because I mean, it's just kind of the way it is. And I think worse fielding questions now or bet. Okay. So I want to speak to surprise questions because I had this and when we had I want to make it clear too when we had our training before there was no question and answer because you came with your packet and spoke to us. There was really no discussion. Actually that's not true. We had a Q&A at the end and I took as many question. This isn't a this isn't I just wanted to say I I did have Okay. Well, I had lengthy ones and we didn't get through and it was a very rough process. So, um, if the point's not to avoid or the point is to avoid surprise questions, then I know this board's talking about materials need to be made available well in advance because I can't get documents on Friday and turn around questions by Saturday at 9 when we're talking about this much of information and when we're talking about $21 million worth of cuts. So to expect that kind of turnaround from board members when it's essentially I mean it's we're essentially volunteers here. Um yes we're elected and we're here but that's not reasonable. And then what in terms of when presentations are given for the first time at the board table there are going to be questions when there's no information on them. So we get the safety and security presentation in October for example. It was slides but it didn't have the substance in it. So we're going to react at the table and I have I I think I did a dozen questions that night and then I had more when we went through the presentation. We never circle back. So the notion that they're surprise questions, no, they're in-depth questions because the information is given sometimes without relevant supporting information and then also the quick turnaround time just to kind of kind of confirm a couple of the things that were said that matters. You know, I mean, for people who do care about policy matters, what matters is to get the amount of information and content that helps you really understand what the question is. I mean, don't and I don't want to be labor, but it's a two-way street. I mean, I think that I would have that conversation with the superintendent offline where you would digitally say, "Hey, this is our conversation." I think I talked about last time we talked. I mean, I I I feel very comfortable talking with the superintendent about anything that that is on my mind and he's been very receptive, Terry, when I talked to you about some of the challenges or some of the things. I I know there are a couple of things that probably I think I agree with when we've got a packet this thick and then by certain night you've got to have it. And some of the if you don't even have the executive summary about what is the what's most important in this data, you know, that's helpful. You got a lot of data. what's the ahas, you know, so that people can go to them and move along. So that's this that's this is not the forum for that. But I'm just saying it's it's the kinds of things that can help the directors because there is a lot of information. There is a short turnaround time that got changed a couple years ago. It used to be a longer lead time to ask those questions. When do you get your materials? The first round is Wednesday. So Wednesday, I would say at least since I've been here, 85% to 90% of the packet is ready. So on Wednesday, the board members get it by Wednesday after late afternoon. It's not released to the public until Friday. So Friday then late afternoon, it's released to the public and the board members get anything that any presentations that weren't completed. Um so so Wednesday they have most of it. Friday they get the full thing. The request is that I get questions by 9:00 p.m. Sunday so that we then have Monday to work and to prepare to either answer those questions and send an email to all board members or to embed the answers in presentations. So, and and I don't know this is this is a similar timeline um to I'm I'm accustomed to and I don't believe we have the Wednesday. Yeah. So yeah, most districts I I think are uh Thursday evening, Friday morning. So I think that that's not I think there's a balancing act there too because you're trying to gather the information. But that's something I I think for your folks to work through, okay, how do we how do we and maybe we try to have it 100% on Thursday and drop the Wednesday piece or whatever it might be. But director Long has so and then just kind of a clarifying point around that. So when we get the packets on Wednesday on Friday when we get them again, I have to go through the full packet again cuz I don't know what was added, what was changed. There wasn't there isn't a little indicator on there as to what was added or what was changed. So I don't know that unless I go through the whole packet again. So I feel like I'm going through it twice. Isn't it in I thought it was in an email that Molly sent out. It's highlighted in the email that she sends out. Usually sends an email out. Yeah. But I still need to go through whatever I got sent on Wednesday. I go through it. And then on Friday, I need to go through it again because there are changes made, but there's no highlighting. Okay, this was changed or that was changed or this was taken out, now this is put in instead. And so I don't know those things unless I go through both packets and then compare to see what has changed and what hasn't. Well, maybe that's again decide that's cuz we could do it once. I appreciate getting I appreciate getting it Wednesday and then what I thought we got on Friday in the attachments were anything that was additional or updated or updated just in what we get on Friday though. Yeah, there could be significant other things and so but it's not consistent. So maybe that's a an area for compromise to say, okay, we dropped the Wednesday piece and we dropped the Friday piece. And I don't know, I'm not speaking for you. I'm not committing you, but maybe that's a compromise to say Thursday and it's all totally done then and um that way people know and you don't have to read through it twice and maybe that's helpful. that I'm neutral. But I can tell you that there's a lot of times when I sit down right there, put it on a chair and not and you get a bunch of information. You got to figure out where it goes in the package. So you're sitting up there trying to stick it in there so you have the document because I like paper. This is education. So you know, we all learn differently. So we try to again we'll try to do that. Maybe that's something for that's feedback that we can take. Um couple of things. Uh excuse me. I I think we had a few more fingers up. Home homes and long. Is that right? I think both of them. Yep. Um, keys. I'm just going to go for the elephant in the room. So, we've had different legal representation come and speak with a different chair about what you talked about, one employee. We had Ann Waroring come and speak about Minnesota statute and our implied roles and responsibil or our required roles and responsibilities. I want to get to a point and I don't know if the board means independent council. I know you represent the district. I I get that concept. We can't change representation based on who's sitting in the chair role. So what I'm saying is some like you, some like a different person. We can't have that and expect to function well. Does that make sense? Kind of lost. Yeah. I Yes. No. I mean, the reality is that um at some point I'm sure I will rub each of you the wrong way because I will give you an opinion that you don't like. And the that's the reality. But I'm not going to alter my opinion to try to curry favor with one board member or over another. No. And that's not where I was going. But and maybe it's just the stats you like. I don't know. But we should be consistent with our advice. I mean the um the experienced council like Liz Garrett and I have consistent advice because we both apply the law. We're not looking at those external factors. And I'd be surprised if there's anybody who's who's saying something that substantially departs from what I'm saying. November 6, 2023, Director Basset and War Goring. Oh, and Gary Gary, thank you for the correction came and spoke at length about our responsibilities as a board. And for me, it's different than what you're saying right now, and it's recorded. Um, I don't know how to get into that or when it is. My goal is that we are consistent and it doesn't change from chair to chair. I think you could by majority vote decide who you wanted to use as your council for but that wasn't the practice. The chair has the authority to reach out and to determine counsel and but again if the board wants to have by majority vote if you say you know what Mick you wrote me the wrong way then that's fine you vote that way and you the majority of the board determin sorry mine's kind of going a little backwards from Kim it's still if we're if we're getting these packets on Friday I still don't have enough time to process all that information and get questions to you, especially if the meeting's coming up on Monday. Thursday, could you do it if everything was in the pack if Thursday was post? Possibly. If everything was in the packet on Monday or Wednesday, we talked about Thursday as a compromise. Was the discussion? Well, she asked me the question, so I'm giving my honest opinion. We're assuming positive intent here. I'm not trying to I'm giving my honest opinion to her question. Yeah. The Monday before. So the Monday before the like I would have like almost a whole week. Yeah. And I think that I would need that. The problem is that rarely does a district have all the information that far in advance. But again, that's something for you guys to work on internally. That's if that's a discussion point. I I have no idea what the abilities are or aren't in this particular district. I just know generally speaking that it's hard for districts to pull that far. My my only concern with one day and I I appreciate that. Yes, it takes time to go through it, but that's what we signed up for by running, right? And I think that the there is if if we expect to get it a week before, that means we're always getting leaked information, right? we are we're not going to get the most upto-date information because they're only going to be able to give us what they're absolutely sure of on Monday, right? And so we want it to be as in the moment and supporting the work of the district, you know, not slowing work down, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. Um, so I think there's a compromise in there and I don't know if it's Wednesday or Thursday or whatever the day is, but I just Monday seems a little bit far in advance to have all the links and attachments there. Thank you. Turkey. Yeah, I think just as the new guy on the block um with the observations with the observation and what is leading to this change discussion, it sounds like is the questioning during board meetings. And so if we are not willing to look at sending those questions to the rights people on time, if we do that when the board meeting is ongoing, they may or may not have answers to us. So then we should be willing to take their answers that say we will get back to you. That's the way I look at it. So I don't I don't know if we have to change the format necessarily or if the board agrees that's what we do that's what we do but I think what is leading to this discussion sounds like is the I got you type questions that we do on Monday evening that this the presenters may or may not have answers for us right so then we should be willing to accept that so just that just because you ask the question doesn't mean you will get the answers that you're looking for. If you ask it on a Monday, it's fair. Bass, you know what? That's always been fair. And and sometimes if I ask a question, I will actually include that. You don't have to give me the answer right now because you recognize it's going to take time. I think that that's very a very important point. Um but I think so too is director longs because sometimes the packets are very large and for people who work feeding that time in to get it all read and stuff is can be a challenge and so yeah people signed up for it and I think people in a good faith try to do it I mean I you know I do you know and come and get it uh but I think there's a happy medium so I think I I feel like the superintendent heard what we said about the volume of the information making sure that we get as much information as we can because when you get information the day of and it changes and you get it on Friday, it can be off-putting. Uh and so and the questions don't all come when it you know at a certain point that as far as I'm concerned and this way I operate if I have a question I'm going to propose it. I'll try to get it as soon as I can and you know I send you questions all the time. You know I try to do that. Uh and so and I will continue to do it but if I have a question because something I have a thought I mean we're all thinking people. So if you have a thought that you hadn't thought of, then don't be making a decision when you don't know what you're doing. You know, that is the bar for me is making a decision with information. I feel good. But I think I really like what uh director said because it's common sense, you know, uh if it takes more time to gather it uh or you don't we don't have the answer right away. I can live with that. I have been living with it. Dr. I thought that's how we were operating to be honest that all questions would be welcomed and if the answer wasn't there that's just professional meetings I just don't like the notion that because I ask a question it's a surprise question. So if we're going to assume positive intent then it needs to go both ways because we're not going to do this oh staff is getting upset by your questions. But have you gone back and listened? I'd encourage you to go back and listen to the last or watch the last business meeting. I watched a lot of it. Yeah. And you know, when I sat through that, I thought to myself bluntly, we want to work here because it they were blaming, they were accusatory, they were negative, they were judgmental. I'm just going to stop you for a minute because that's your personal observation. That's pretty objective. I'm not the person being asked that question. I was sitting across the room and I could objectively see it, hear it, and watch body language respond. That's not your job. That's not your job to interpret body language. But it is your job as part of this training when we're talking bluntly. It's not okay for board members to attack subordinate employees during a public board meeting. I have never attacked an employee. Maybe not. Maybe you haven't intended to, but the way your questions can come off can sometimes be interpreted. And so my point is the model the model is for you to communicate with the superintendent if you're unhappy with a per a presentation that a a subordinate employee gave that again who's your one employee. It's the superintendent. It's not to ask questions that are put that person in a spot to make them look like they're either in. So then what is the board's responsibility when the information is incomplete? is to go to the superintendent afterwards and say I found that information to be incomplete and I would like more complete information presented next does not come and the question then the second question to that is is that the will of the board or is that an individual board member and that's sometimes hard to parse out but you could always make a motion at the table to say I would like to make a motion to have um a more in-depth presentation provided that covers these points and then see if that motion is supported by three of your colleagues and if it is then you get that information. I guess I'm aiming more for collaboration than trying to get the majority of the board because questions are our job and they're not gotcha, you know? I mean, and you're going to say, who would want to work there? I have four students. I'm saying why do I send my kids here sometimes? And I ran for a reason. And when I brought that up that the answer has been, well, I respect that. And there are, this is not just me. We have a pattern of losing students. So, we've got to get out of the mindset that concerns and questions should be avoided or are harmful because we need to stop stop what we've been doing and figure out the root of the problems. Absolutely. Questions that are fair. They're not gotcha questions. They're not surprises. For sure. Yep. And when you look at why did we talk about this? Where did the board come from? Where was this board six months ago, seven months ago? And we're trying to say how you want collaboration. I'm trying to give you the tools to do that with both the administration and each other. Not you yet. It's on first. I Yeah, I guess going back to kind of what um Kim was saying, it just gets really confusing when it's like you have these conversations, you have these conversations, and then when it comes to the business meeting, all the stuff that you had already asked for, which we thought we were had discussed it during a work session, now it's like this report that it's like, how come we are talking about stuff that seems like should have been last year and then we're not going to have questions about that. So, you know, like when she talks about that safety report, that's something that has been talked about during ad hoc meetings, it has been talked about during other times and then we got this presentation and it was like, so I think our concerns were already brought up several times and then it still was a concern when it was brought to us like like where's the disconnect? like what's I I don't I'm just having trouble following. Can you can you can you clarify that? I'm just having trouble following what you're talking about. Is this something that happened at the ad hoc committee meeting? Is that what you're talking about? Sure. Yeah. I'm just trying to follow. We formed the safety and security ad hoc committee as the will of the board because of our concerns around safety and security in your district operating and functioning. did a lot of work and this is not a pointing fingers at anybody. Lots and lots of work with staff and then we had a presentation this past October on safety and security. It did not have substantial data in it. The board did not see it before in a work session as to see before a work session. And we I submitted I think a dozen questions that evening and then we had a quite a few more that evening and the work that we did in the ad hoc committee was not reflective in the presentation. You're talking about 18 months of work. Okay. And you're just you're referring to something happened in October. That's why I couldn't follow because I didn't know. Well, it's the final example because of the expectations that are being put on us as board members. So, it's we're giving an example of what's No, I completely understand. I just didn't understand the example. So, I wasn't following the point, but now I I thought I would understand. Well, and I think this is part of the hiccup is we have people coming on at different times and new council versus the council we've had. So, I don't know how to continue productively when we're we keep going. We're trying to go and and get some ground rules, but we're all coming in from different points of time. So, we're playing catch-up here and I don't know how productive this will be. You had your turn. Okay. Pass it. Dr. Passet. Um I when I ask my questions, Mr. Wberger, I'm not necessarily saying we need different council. So I don't I heard you say something about that and so that's not where I'm coming from. But what I am saying because I'm understanding what director Holmes is talking about because we did have a presentation. this whole issue of rules the board and all of that came up a while back when directors were newer and uh they were being you know that they some challenges happened from other directors about this not the will of the board. So I think the whole concept of will of the board got subverted in my opinion. Um, and I think one of the things that helps determine the will of the board is when issues come to a work session. When issues come to a work session, the directors have an opportunity to talk to each other. I can't tell you how many times I've over the years I've changed my mind because somebody said something I thought was, "Well, that makes sense." I mean, I that's just my natural orientation. And that's how you build trust. That's how you begin to build relationship is by talking about issues and hearing what other people have to say. When somebody's gatekeeping the agenda, that's not the job. Um, you know, hearing what people want to talk about and filtering that along with what the administration says we must do is the job. That's why we pay the big bucks. But gatekeeping, the agenda setting. So the issues that people don't want to talk about don't get there. That's where the magic happens is when directors are talking with each other about a given issue. And that can't be legislated. It that building of trust that can't be commanded because I know for me I only trust when I can hear what a person's saying, seek try to assess where they're coming from, ask them directly. Is that what you mean? Those are the opportunities to to develop collaboration. And I have seen that work for 20 years. People worked it out together in work sessions. It wasn't perfect, but I'm just saying we, you know, I mean, that's been the now it's everything has to be legislated. I mean, we can't have the conversation unless it goes to the to the attorney. I I've never seen an attorney so much in my entire 20 years. I've seen an attorney coming to board meetings and being involved in board stuff more than I have in my whole 22year career. and the way that was well you know and then and that was evolving and that was some everybody acknowledges there were some challenges I mean that's not you know that's okay but I'm saying that a way forward is not more legislation and not more control a way forward is for people to respect each other and collaborate and discuss that's the way forward and that's something that the board determines because one of the things that I'm clear about is no one person is the superintendent's boss but collectively it's our job to make sure that things are happening the way they should. And so we haven't set our monitoring standards up yet cuz we've been busy doing all this other stuff. We need monitoring. We need to figure out what we want to monitor, what's important to monitor. We haven't even had that conversation. So I mean, and so in some sense, I see I understand where you're coming from, you know, but the only way you get there with a group that's trying to go to the same direction is that they get to talk to each other. And that's not somebody gatekeeper what can be talked about. I'm not sure what the gatekeeper is. Well, and I don't want to go down that rabbit hole because I mean, but I'm just saying I think anybody who feels like who feels that way can feel that way or not. I I mean I'm just that's that's my language. I understand what you're saying. So let's dive. So I um so July 19th and 20th was the first time that I was with y'all and I had uh July 19th and 20th was the first time I could not agree with you more than what you just said and I have served in multiple districts and that's exactly what happened right so on July 19th and you have a little packet with six slides from a very long retreat presentation My goal was to bring tools and expertise. I felt not my goal, one of my roles. I think one of the reasons you hired me was to bring tools and expertise to help a board that was struggling and I watched for a year a district and a board that was struggling and to bring some tools that other districts including two I had worked with in one as a superintendent one as assistant superintendent bring tools that worked for efficiency. So in this packet the the packet piece that Yep. I'm just going to review this because you're gonna you saw the same thing after knowing me 19 days and then I brought it back to the board agenda planning. So one of developing a pathway for success I believe that and have experience in it's about excellence in management. My job my job is to implement the strategic plan and my job is to ensure operational excellence. I did that and I showed you that very first weekend that we were together what I was going to create with our team and what I have created the district system of continuous improvement. Uh I have tried to work on the board roles and views of the three-year planning and the agenda planning document. I showed you this July 19th. I have brought this back to multiple agenda meetings and I'll share with you in a minute. and then that whole notion of the board agenda flow. So in my world before Robbinsdale Area Schools, excellence in board's governance is on the next slide. There are five roles of the school board. So what I did every year and my board chair, my first year as a superintendent, my board chair and I went and visited another district because they had used this tool. everything on the agenda. There's no gatekeeping because it's all planned in advance and every agenda item in a work session is around the five roles of the board. District governance and policy, operational oversight, uh board governance, superintendent relations, and public engagement. Those are the five roles. And a year in advance, you can predict out. You could say, "Okay, for policy over the next year, we're going to do 200s, 300s, and 400s. We got to get the rotation. We know that we are going to be hiring a new superintendent. So, we need to make sure that we've got a timeline around that in the superintendent relations. We know that we're going out, we're going to be closing some buildings, so we know around our community engagement, we know we've got to plan that out for a year." So, we can predict some things. So, the tools like that make it predictable. I've never in my life had board agenda planning sessions like I have here. It should be predictable. There's a cadence of what needs to happen with board business and then there's a cadence that the board looks out to say over the next three years, what should we be thinking about and then how does that backdrop into the next year. I'm going to keep going right now. In this same presentation, July 19th, I showed a copy of a three-year planning document for the board and then a one-year and I brought that one year back and we actually are tracking it. We're using it internally. What I love about this document and what you can talk to any of the three board chairs that I worked with in prior life, it's complete transparency for the public. This is the first document that we show at every study session and the board chair introduces it. It's in our board packet. They see what the flow of the whole year looks like. The whole community does. And they know tonight we're going to be focusing on policy and community relations. And then I'm just going to show you one more time the agenda ideas very similar to what I also presented in January again around the flow of the meeting and how it's all about the five roles of the board. There's nothing that's called board topics. It's about everything should fit into those five roles of the board. The other thing that I think is really important and you've heard this from me and I certainly have um I don't think it's an opinion. I have a strong professional um experience around we are having too many meetings and they're too long. So we can't have the robust study session that you were talking about because we're all exhausted by 10:00 at sometimes. We can't get a board packet when we are doing four agendas a month. That is unheard of. Two business meetings and two study sessions. It's unheard of. So there is no way that we can produce those agendas and materials any faster than we are. So, I just want to reiterate some tools that I brought to support efficiency of board meetings in July and I brought them back and tonight we were going to be talking about those things as well as the flow of agendas that I think can make us more focused and more efficient because this I believe is going to be the easiest year we have in the next three years in front of us. I've got um Dr. Bowman, Dr. Holmes, and Dr. Basset. Okay. Thank you, Dr. Stallow, for what you just said. The items, the documents that you're working from, it's what I'm customary to working with. Um the calendar, all of those things that you talk about. Um, I don't know really where we want to go with these discussions, but for myself, it is really a fairy tale when people in this room say, "I just want to have a discussion." Because I've been on this board for two years, and I've never felt part of a discussion. We keep going backwards, or we zing out over here, or we bring up information that isn't relevant to what we're talking about. I'm confused. Uh, with I can close my eyes and have the to me this is my opinion is when questions may not be re when when it almost seems that when board members don't receive the answers that they want to the questions they're asking we fall into a pit and we keep bringing or we keep bringing questions back and ask asking the questions again this way or that way or if we ask it this way maybe we'll get a different response. [Music] Um we talk in circles. Uh we don't uh uh support the information that we get from our professionals. We discount it at every uh step of the road. Uh collaboration requires mutual respect in this group. It's a one-way street to me. Uh we have you can go back to if you want to talk about I watch board meetings, you know, who's doing the talking and and are we really discussing anything that's serving the kids and so when it comes to having help here, this is a veiled thing of saying nobody supported the fact that when I was chair, I said we really need to have some help, some legal help. And if this board disagreed with it, I don't know where else we were going to go. I didn't hear any comments from this board that would have produced adult-like behavior. And so what we've been trying to do because we didn't have 200 series policies, we didn't have 300 series policies, we had nothing documented, we don't even have when Dr. Stallow tonight at the meeting talked about the fact that it's a systems thing that is not in place in this district. That's the only truth that means anything to me at this point because because since we don't have systems, guess what? We can deny that it was ever done this way or we can just say it was this way or we can disagree with the process that comes up with. We continue to stir the pot of chaos because what should be clear road mapaps and daily process and procedure within a $220 million organization for whatever reason, we don't have any of that. And we churn out at these meetings of questions that are the same that keep us in the same place. The allegation that there's somebody gatekeeping makes me want to walk out of here right now. It busts every any sort of little bit of trust because some of us are actually trying to get things done and when we do what then we're told we're just gatekeepers. We're always minimized. We're always dismissed. We're always discounted and the words are there. I if you you know we could go back into our tapes and see it many times over but again here tonight it will be denied. It will be denied that any of that is a problem. Everything is fine. We just need to answer more questions or answer that question again in this way. All we do is turn out and churn chaos. And I feel cheapened by the fact that someone at this table could say, "If we just talked about it, what what nothing would have given me any greater joy than being on this board in the past two years and had an honest adult-like collaborative discussion with anyone. But it's not allowed here. That's not a voice that is allowed at this table at all. Ever. So whatever you guys decide, you can talk about, oh well, we don't want to use policy things or we don't want to use this or we don't want to use that or we can't have this. Oh my god, that is what this community is sick about. That is the kind of communications I get back from this community. It's not the micromanaging of budgets. It's the way this group of grown-ups are not behaving like grown-ups. I'm tired of the double standard at this board. I'm tired of it. And you know what, Director Bassid, many times you have said to me, "Don't make a face. Don't do this." And I'm watching what you're doing here this evening. You know what I mean? So, I I'm smiling slightly. No, you're interrupting. I have the floor right now. Don't accuse me of stuff. Don't turn to me. Call my name right now. And that you can have the floor, but don't attack me. I have the floor. Well, don't attack because that is what goes on at this table. You have attacked. I have attacked. You have attacked. Don't you dare wrap me up. I have attacked. That's the game that gets played here. When are we going to get to the point where we have collaborative discussions and then I will quit and I don't want to say anything the rest of the night. I'm done. I don't know where we could go. There's many. Okay. I'm going to jump on you really quick. One, if that's okay. I just want to finish up a couple of suggestions. Uh, you know, we talked about the fact meetings are going long. They're better. you there has been improvement but but there's still unacceptably low and one of the things I think asked you to think about is when we had comments again we talked about those tools are they ger mean to the motion do they benefit kids etc that's all the materials but we also talked about the possibility of adopting a rule saying nobody will speak nobody's comment will exceed two minutes you should be able to say anything you need of substance in two minutes and Yeah. And one time. Yeah. One. You get one comment on a motion, an item up on the agenda, 2 minutes, that's it. You think about that. If all of you exercise it, that's 14 minutes per agenda item. It's still going to be long, but hopefully not all agenda items are going to encourage that. And so that way, you've got to say your piece, you can let the parters know your thoughts, and the meeting moves forward quickly. So, I'm going to encourage you to think about a two-minute uh limitation and if someone goes over here, just call the question um and move forward with the the uh the item. So, also the the board reports, I know the superintendent mentioned before, I just don't see there's a lot of value in the board reports, the way they are done, you could submit them in writing. You could uh transfer them to committee report and have a one minute limit on those as well. There should not be, it's not a time to say, I attended 50 meetings, I did all these great things. No, I'm a member of the committee X, Y, and Z. And at the committee, we took these actions or we considered these options. Uh, and additional information, let me know. If you have questions, let me know. That kind of thing. It can be easily objective. So, just a couple items. That's all I have on Dr. Style. Do you have more than one to add on this piece? No. And I think for for me, it's just let's land. You know, I think we I I think if nothing's going to change, then nothing's going to change. then let's then let's keep keep a going. If something's going to change, then let's that let's look at that and what that could look like. I think between what Mick provided in the October 10th handout, I think the summary, there were three areas that I looked at what he did, paid attention to what um what I had also been paying attention to and have three goal areas uh that I put out for the or meeting. And if if if none of that works, then then fine, but then let's be done with it. Okay, just lost track on who's next. I know wants to speak. Director Holmes wants to speak. Oh, okay. It's Holmes next. I thought it was you. Okay. I think it's Holmes that's next. Holmes Basset. I've got Holmes Basset. You even went Homes Basset. That's what I had with you. Yeah. You said homes and then last check in. That's what you had. Yeah. Before Bowman went, that's what you had said. The first word you said was Bowman Holmes B. Okay. So that's what I I've got Bowman Holmes Basset Hill. So Holmes is next. So for me, when I was coming into this, I told you I went back and I went and watched board meetings dating back to 2017 when they were approving a budget. And please, no disrespect to anybody here, myself, you. We are all just fillers in this organization. And what I saw was a lot of the same verbiage from the other superintendent. We're doing this for the students. These cuts hurt. We're going to do them away from the classroom. Um there was a lot of speaking I the um UDV UDV thank you unified district. Thank you. Um and then you know I mean it's not fun to be doing these cuts. At least we're not doing it alone. It's happening throughout the district um the state. I mean it was a script that any of us could have stepped into. And so my goal by bringing that up is putting in real processes that regardless of who fills these seats can withstand the test. And the reality is we tanked financially and we tanked student enrollment. And that's not on you and it's not on the majority. You know, I it happened over a decade. But what is important to me is that the school board has an accountability role. And I'm saying that because you we obviously did a 70 vote and hired you and liked your qualifications and your interview. The reality is I saw it in all of those meetings. And so there needs to be a checks and balances in place for me in terms of systems or questions or when we interact because you had said yourself well in the previous district nobody talked the the one board member who voted you know that poorly in your review never really spoke to I'd like to that okay public information in a public meeting. Thank you. Okay, I'll be done. I was trying to talk to you. No, you can. I I would love you to make you go ahead and please continue the conversation, but not talking about my previous evaluations. I'm talking about how we give cons about what private personnel data. So, we should you should avoid any further discussion. Where is the proper place to give you constructive feedback so there are no surprises at the end of the year? the the appropriate place would be to do an evaluation of the superintendent in close session, right? No, I'm But if we're talking about sending an email about this employee or that employee or how it was decided, it's not an attack mode. It's a so we're not piling on and it's collabor collaborating. I I don't I mean, when there's seven of us, yes, we all evaluate. Maybe I misunderstood the question. The question then is how do I give feedback after a board meeting to say hey I didn't like how not a board meeting just in general about our expectations because you keep saying it's the will of the board the the board evaluates her how do we make it though so and it's not even her the position how do you make it because we had I think we had a six-hour review for a previous employee and so it's it's making it consistent in being the same process us and nobody we're talking about no surprises. And so if you're really bu building with a leader and working together, then there should be an opportunity. It's what director Basel was saying to talk and to get through things before they even become an issue. But you can't talk about private personnel data on any employee, including the superintendent session. That's not what if you're trying to establish what your expectations are for the position instead of for to say I'm evaluating you but let's talk about the expectations you could certainly in a work session like this say hey my expectations for the superintendent would be x y and z how do other board members feel do we have a consensus on that do we have and the problem is I don't think you can assume any consensus on this board at this time maybe in the future you know things will keep moving forward but it does seem to have some slits you know and So I think that you're going to have to work and promote that collaboration you're talking about in these sessions. talk it through to say what your expectations are without saying data on the superintendent because you can't discuss personnel data but you can certainly talk about hey these are the things I would like to see going forward whether it be for can I just clarify I wasn't trying to express data I was trying to say the openness it was expressed that you wanted to have open conversations with us and our in our one-on- ones and giving you genuine feedback or genuine thoughts like but now you're saying well nobody's a supervisor I don't know how to have real conversations if it's some of it's going to be like, well, that was just with one person, so it doesn't really matter. It's about going down the path in in real time. I don't know how to convey that anymore. So, it's clarifying our working relationship so you understand more about these aren't gotcha questions for me. this is how I get to a point where I can make a good decision for myself. So, it's not a gotcha, it's a just talking and this maybe it just doesn't exist because we meet two times a month and then we evaluate midyear and then end of year then it's a flawed process. But if we're talking about real relationships, I think that's the piece. I mean, quite frankly, Kim, I think that's the piece. I think it's trust. I I for me it is. For me, it is with with other board members that I've served with um with administrators and and I would say that's certainly something um I probably haven't earned and I haven't gained with all of you yet and that's going to take some time. I don't know how to do it without authentically showing up and being real. And quite honestly, I'm also don't feel safe in that space always at. So I I think I think for me it is about trusting relationships and I'm going to own my piece in that as your superintendent. And I do want to remember on August 26 in a public meeting that there was an attorney who has been practicing for 31 years that talked about this being the most dysfunctional board he's ever worked with. And and I don't I don't I don't say that to be critical at all, but I I just said before I said that, Kim, I said that I'll certainly own my stuff in all of this. and I said yes to this job because I want to collaborate and work with a board on behalf of 10,263 kids. I think there's a lot that we have to build on and that's I'm I'm going to respond because that's my point. This board before this board and we're different now. Those budget votes were 707070 and we still ended up decreasing enrollment and still ended up operating in the red for all of those years. So it has nothing to do about the dysfunctionality. This is a democratically elected board and things have not been working. So building trust means getting to ask questions and confront difficult conversations head on. And there's no welcoming space to do that. there just isn't. Well, um I guess I would say too kind of speaking to this whole question of um the trust thing. Uh I I do think that it takes time for that to go and I do think that when we talk about assuming good intent. Um usually uh that can that's visible. People may think they're doing it but to the outside looking in people can clearly point out that it's not true for some. Uh I would say that um you know comments that are made uh should just be taken in the spirit that they're made. I did not go back into 2023. I don't think I've ever been in a meeting where I really referenced that. So to come into a meeting where people are being accusatory when and we're really doing so much stuff in 2023. I So I just went jumped over it and went to the next year. So to hear people then talk about those things like they didn't happen uh and uh is is mindboggling to me quite frankly. Uh so and I'm not going to go back there now, but I was here and I sat through it. So uh I uh and even in then I still believe that we can go through and uh do the work that we need to be doing to the point that you're making uh Dr. Stale uh I call it Dr. Terry Terry Dr. deal with whatever. But the point is this. I think that the document that you prepared and brought in that July 18th, 19th, whatever that was, uh I think that that is good, but I also think that that too should be a working document and that pieces of it should maybe come to the work session where we're talking about it. Uh because I think not only is it your road map and plan, it's our road map and plan. And so if you brought it in July 18th and 19th, where is the opportunity that we ever had to have some input into it and say, "What about this, what about that?" Because as you know, school business is dynamic. So there always things that are happening that we could talk about and say, "Oh, well that may be better over here or over there." So maybe we bring pieces of this document um into the into a work session meeting and we talk about here's a couple months down the road. Here's where we're going. Here's what I want to do. Because if you're the only one looking at it doesn't mean anything to me. I'm just I'm just being really crass about that. But it's not my document. I haven't looked at it since you gave it to us. Except if you bring it back and present it again. But if it's your living document and framework, I'm cool with that. That's what that is why we hired you. But when do we get to get involved, you know, I'm I'm just saying. So it shouldn't be like an closed meeting in a work session where you're talking it through and figuring it out, which is important, but it's a conversation for the totality of us because there may be something else that I think is important or that director WHO thinks is important or director Long thinks is important. That's important too. That's how we build a cake, bake a cake together. Everybody's got a spoon and we all get stirred. And I'm not trying to take anybody else's spoon for anything. But everybody gets to stir the spoon and then we, you know, we all come to consistenc. And I think that uh I think the that foundation is there. I mean, I'm not in all the meetings you're in. I'm not everywhere you are. I think the foundation is still there, but I do think that some course correction has to take place, you know. I mean, I think it's clear from this conversation. There's some and maybe that's on our part. That's But I think you and we don't have we don't have to use the tool, you know. I I mean, we drafted so so I'll just tell the the first time through board chair and I drafted it. We did bring it back and said, "Hey, we modeled this after another school district. What do you think? They agreed. They said, "Keep building it." We forecasted out a year, brought it back, got ideas. So, so we can use it or we cannot use it. It It really doesn't matter to me. I mean, my main point is I think if we have a plan, I'm I'm not I'm okay with not reinventing the wheel. If we have a plan, I just think there needs to be some opportunity for some forecasting for everybody's involved. I agree. It's not just the chair cuz who knows what the one in the chair is mine, you know? I mean, I've been in the chair before. I mean, you're not all seen and all knowing. No chair is. No human being is, you know, and so you can't act like that. It's not a unilaterally. It's might our true decision and everybody else just go take a that's not the way it works. Okay. Dr. Helen Brand. Yeah. I mean really my my I said two questions. what is the ask tonight or the the point of this discussion and how do we move forward like what what are the next steps because we're to um director Bowman's point we are kind of going in circles at this point and not to say that things people have said are not important but um but we're not it's not moving forward so I guess to me we're going to be here it's almost 10 o'clock um I want to know what the where we're headed I don't see the road map right Okay. The reason it's on Sorry, chair. Did you want No, go ahead. The reason this is on the agenda is because after the January 6th board meeting, there was a request by board members to not adopt anything. I brought recommendations forward to not adopt this, but to bring it back to a work session. So, ask us if we're going to adopt if we want to adopt this. Is that Yeah. Otherwise, let it go. Right. That's what I want to understand. Sorry. I didn't mean to cut off the because I know you had stuff to say and I felt like my questions are kind of conversation ending so please. Okay. Thank you. And I was going to get there, but I'm not on the list for three more people. All right. Director Long, do you have something? Yeah. So, it's hard to have um conversations about all this stuff when you know you sit in the background and you know that there is gatekeeping that goes on and that there are some board members who know a whole lot of information and the rest of us don't know what and that makes it hard to make informed decisions about things especially when you've been privy to some of the gatekeeping that has gone on within this board. So this is nothing no not a comment about you at all. It's about the board. Okay. So that makes it hard when we're doing that to each other to sit here and make a decision about how these things need to go on in the future. And so I guess I would like a commitment of you know transparency. I think I've asked that several times before and that when we are going to have issues or changes that we get a chance to sit down at a work session and talk about them so that there can be transparency and not some people know and then some people give that information to a superintendent just generic. And then some of us are left out in the dark about well what happened and how did this happen? So, I would just like transparency and whatever this process is, say what you got to say so that we can figure out what we need to do and move on. Director Much. Yeah, I think my was already asked. I was again I'll use the new kid card, right? I felt like at the start of the meeting there was an objective set to review some processes and procedures that can lead the board in the right direction. And then we derailed that with a lot of comments that are necessary but maybe those comments will come in place after we listen to some of the processes that have been suggested. then we can build based on our individual comments build in places where we think things are lacking right if we don't have processes then it's going to be the same issue of I feel like I don't have the information or you have the information and you are not sharing it I don't think that's going to work for in a parliamentary setting or gathering like we have right we all have at the end of the day one vote once the vote is fast it is the board decision right so we should be careful not to point fingers at each other I think we should come up with a process listen to council let's listen to the training they have and then we can sit as a board and say based on what was said this night this is where I want this information to sit this is how soon I want information to get to us and if it's not getting to us is there a process for us to evaluate our own employee Right? And all those things should already be known. But we it cannot be known if we don't have a process or a good process in place. Okay. That we can follow. Okay. So I want to appeal to all of us if it will work. It's already 10:00. Some of us work at 7. Yes, we committed to be here. But can we just complete the training and then either follow the agenda or decide that tonight's training is not going to work and then maybe we can agend. Thank you. Okay. Okay. This is the third time at least that we've looked at this and it's it's a process. It's a format. It's not locking us into this topic here, but it's in categories. Whatever we've been doing hasn't been working. This is something that has proven to work in multiple districts and our superintendent is familiar with it. I would like to see us give this a try because we can't just keep on spinning our wheels. We can't keep on doing what we've been doing. And this is transparent. we'll be able to see what's coming up next and next and next after that like for a whole year, right? And so I would like us to to I would like us to try this. It's it doesn't lock us into anything, but it gives us a format. It gives us order. It gives us a process and it also by doing that gives us some flexibility, I would think. And so my choice would be yes. Thank you. Let's give it a try. Can we have like that? And specifically the specifically the as well the recommendations that Dr. Stella made on January 6th. I think that was the ask to say that we would adopt those plus the recommendation I made of two minutes of comments. I love that each meeting. You might have to do these separately though. Yes. So, I need to know though, are we going to have to open a work session to pay bills or not? Or can they all just be done once a month? I don't think we're there yet. We have I'll respond. You cannot. We have to pay bills twice a month. So, it wouldn't be you can't do it in a work session. You'd have to do an open meeting that lasts five minutes. You do a consent agenda. You close it. You go to the work session. Okay. How come other districts do you can do in a work session? Um if it's a regularly noticed meeting, you can do paper in work session. Can you really? It's no meeting. It's notified. It's noticed just like any other I thought you couldn't vote in a work session. Nope. Nope. It's just all a matter of your procedure practice in your district. So, um you can add items to an agenda or work session. And again, I don't know if you have any policies like that in this district, but um it's not a legal limitation because it's an open meeting wall. It's an open meeting. So, you can do that. Okay. So, why do we have to do twice a month bill? Pay bills there within a paying bills within a 30-day window is a requirement. Is a requirement. And if we depending on the timing of board meetings, if if you if we're the first Monday of every month, and it depends on how long the month is, we might already be past that 30-day window. Is that why some only because we just did it in probably like we just did it once a month. I've never done it once a month. Well, I take that back. It could just be the timing. I take that back. There are I have been with boards that only do one meeting in July. You you can actually there's a way to do them once a month if you do it within budgeted amounts. And so if it's a budgeted we could talk about that outside this context, but if you have a budgeted amount of money and you know these bills are coming due, for example, like your salaries, you don't have to have the board approve the salaries, you know, it can be essentially done in advance. So, we're saying we're approving salaries for the month of March. We're suiting for the month of April up into this budgeted amount. Um, and you can do that with other business like utilities and those sorts of things. Yes. So, is there any way that we could get more information on that before we do anything? Oh, wait, wait, wait. But this the decision tonight adopting this format of the three-year agenda and the one-year agenda. I mean that kind of format we don't have for clarity. Can we just bullet point the things that we're talking about so that everybody's clear on what we're talking about today. Okay. Okay. So what I was hoping is we could go around and see if we have thumbs up about this kind of a format scheduling for our meetings. Okay. as if we're opening. So that is kind of what what loses me because first of all it's just bullet points of items with no date, no timing, no nothing. It's just 2425 and then it's a long list of things. It's not clear to me what the cadence is. Uh and I it doesn't have to be totally and first of all it's so little I can hardly see it. Anything that's this important should be on a whole big old slide by itself so we can clearly see what it's supposed to be. You know I mean I'm just like you know this is not clear. I mean the issues are important. I get them. I think this is a concept and this is a concept. The concept for this is that it lays out there are five responsibilities for the boards and they're all categorized and we're going to work through them throughout the year and that there is a plan to work through them and uh the details of the plan we don't have to worry about. It's just like can we go with this concept? I'm okay. I have a thumb up. I still need to know about that this finance piece that concerns me how pain that's different. That's why I asked for us to pull that out. This is this is only on the concept of five board responsibilities and we can work toward that and kick it off July 1 or have time at our retreat. That's not the one that they're showing. So we all but so far the feeling I got was up. Are you doing a thumb up on this concept? I don't even know what there you are. Thank you. Okay. Well, at least we have so people in this is in the Terry Stalo presentation from July 19th and it's like the fourth page in and the fifth page. Okay. Yes. I support the twominut comment. I support making board reports into committees or whatever. Those make sense to me asking us to act on this right now. I I'm not on board by the way. Okay. Yes. Okay. So I think what this is showing is not necessarily meaning that the items that are bulleted are things that we are deciding on right now. Right. Right. Um one of the concepts is that we all know as a school board that at the end of June or by June 1st we have to approve a budget. So that is built into this calendar. So we know discussions for budget starts February 2nd or September 3rd. When that is done, we don't have to worry about that anymore. So we say, okay, for policy building, March or December is when we do policy building. The board is aware of that. We do our background research before that time comes and then we build that into the calendar. That makes perfect sense. And that's what this is talking about. But here's the thing. But what I think is important to understand is just showing people this as is now and not clearly talking about it as a concept and clearly saying that there's more definition as to kind of how it works the process for it will be helpful because then we're not all assuming something different right I think we're clear this is a this is a format this is a template it's so that we opportunities the things that need to get done in a year. That's a good word too for three years. We have at a glance we can see what's going what February happens or July happens. We'll kind we'll have an idea. So the question is the process for getting to actually clarify those things. I know it is but I'm just saying that's what I'm saying is missing from this for me because it's just a bunch of words on the page. Okay, that's okay. Can you go with the concept? I already said I could, but I'm just but I'm also being clear about because I could I could come in a meeting where people say we talked about this in this month, we talked about this that month with no definition. Okay. Okay. And we're not implementing it tomorrow like we'll build it, draft it whenever we do board retreat, review it, get input so we can maybe kick it off July. Okay, next thing. Great idea. one comment per person, two minutes long, and then we vote. And if you don't want to comment, that's perfectly fine. Okay, that was brought up for at our meetings. If you have if you have something to say about whatever's on the agenda, you can speak for two minutes and then anybody else can speak for two minutes. And if you don't want to speak, that's fine. And then we vote. Director Long, who's keeping track of it? Director, we need to talk to you. Director Long, we need to talk to you about that. You've been doing such a fabulous job. Yeah, you're the big winner. He makes me feel long is the bigger history. Long is the big winner here. But can you live with two minute comments, one per person, and then move on and then vote? Definitely. Can you live with that? One, two, three, four. Is it just the two minutes that we're voting on? Yes. Right now, we're just voting on two. We're just Can we try it in general, but there's got to be a little I mean, I don't want to be like, "Too, you're done." Like, let's be adults. I I Yes, we can. I think we can thought wrap up or you know what I mean? Yeah. I think that we can be concise though. I mean, the idea is jot your idea. Do it. Just do it. And we can be concise in it. It's ridiculous. I I think that we can. However, I I just cannot move away from this conversation without saying there are a lot of people who do a lot of talking around this table and only one or two get pointed out for talking a lot, but everybody talks a lot at this table and they have many questions and it happens all the time. I would say some talk more than others though. Well, yes. And I and I would agree and we all may differ on who we think that is. I don't know if let's move on for two minutes but for two minutes can can we at least for in general unless it's highly contentious or we have a big problem. Oh, I mean 2 minutes. 2 2 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Whoa. Is that a thumb Helen? No, it was me saying I go for two and a half. It's two minutes. I'm okay with two minutes. I think I'm okay with two. So, we're all okay with two minutes. We're going to give this a shot. And thank you, Caroline, ahead of time. Yeah, Gita, I just want to say we had the rule where you could only speak to a question one time or you could ask a question and that is constantly manipulated and it constantly is. Okay. But now depends on who's talking. I mean, I'm just acknowledging that has not been imperfect in the past. We're going to work at it. I don't like that one either cuz sometimes people say things and then I'm like, "Oh, now my brain is thinking again." Well, I hear you. I mean, I Well, let's give we'll give it a try. The other thing superintendent's recommendations. Okay. Can we just Oh, I'm sorry. Can we do the board reports? Lot of RAM. I mean, you want to submit them in writing or keep them to one minute? I'd like that writing. One minute in writing. What? submitted in writing and then they'll be sent as a as a email to the board. Okay. No. Will they show up then in the the um what would you like on here? They're email board business. So I have to be available to the public if they're should be public. So do you want to not have board reports or do you want to have them be public? What do you think? I think it has to be public. If we send them to everybody, it can be If you don't want to give board reports, I don't think if you don't have one, there's nothing to say. I know that some people we had a board report that went on 18 minutes and that was really really long. Well, and also it's the content and maybe that's helpful to frame uh content of a board report. I mean to talk about I've heard all kinds of things not related to board work reported at board report time. So maybe there's a criteria for what should be a suggested criteria and what could be included for board reports especially when you're dealing with new board members you know that may not and if we talk about being able to build a structure of process and procedure that would be one of them I think would be recommendations on how to construct a board report. Director Holmes, board reports remain the only time a board member is allowed to talk freely. You guys are locking this down where it doesn't need to be locked down. We can put parameters around it, but I think you're trying you're we talk about not policing or not dealing in personalities. You're policing personalities right now. So, if you put parameters around it and limit it to two to three minutes, that's something I'm on board with. That's what we're adults. I don't think it's okay. So I could All right. So you want to keep boarding parts? You want to keep boarding parts? I just minutes or if you don't have one, don't say do. Okay, let's go. Since we're speaking. Wait, are you talking oral or written? Cuz that's both been talked about, right? Right now she wants it oral. What's the reasoning? Help me. Why written? Just so that we don't have the the extra things to discuss. I mean, saves 14 minutes from your meeting. I'm sorry. Saves 14 minutes from your meeting if all of a sudden people get a report or two minutes. But this obsession about time is just crazy to me. Like I it's 10. I understand. And I understand where this district has been and where we're going and I feel it's very important. I feel that's why we were elected and if it takes the time the topic determines the time of the meeting the topic determines the amount of questions there so yes we can put guidelines in but to have absolutely no flexibility discounts the seriousness of an issue this isn't an issue I guess this is everybody to pounce on something no no I'm just saying that this is just board reports right so just It's informational and and we want to make effective use of our time and the people who are watching these meetings. People pontificating for 18 minutes is not a good use of people's time. And I'm as committed I mean I you know I hear people say they don't have enough time to review reports and I'm saying I'm committed to doing that and I think but I respect the fact that you feel like you need more time. respect the fact that after 10 o'clock this is just not functional for me and I'll just speak for me it's not functional. It's not it's doesn't we don't get anything done that's substantive and in fact we've had that's when our meetings tend to break down. So to me I'm just saying that it's not about limiting people's questions or limiting people's ability to talk. is about keeping us moving forward with the work and being reasonable about the time expectations and if we need to have another meeting on another week, I'd rather do that than stay after 10:00. That's just my Okay, yeah, so I think I was going to just piggy back on what uh director Rene was saying is that the structure around these board reports will be very necessary, right? because you hear what the structure and what we are reporting on. Okay. So if I'm on in the crowd listening to school board and they are telling me about all the meetings they've attended and all these events is great but what is the substance behind that? I should be able to summarize that in two minutes and just move on, right? And and so I think it's a matter of not not that we are trying to put limits on ourselves or circle ourselves, box us in, but can we all agree that we can set certain standards on what we are reporting to the public and just keep it at that. Okay. I think that's a big step forward. Two minutes. We won't get rid of them. We won't put them in writing, but we will limit them to two minutes if we agree on that for now. I would only add if you don't have any if there is no report I like that bullet. Another recommendation is to assume there is no committee report or another report unless you know I mean if you don't have anything to say don't say anything I mean just to make a report just to have a report is don't make sense right? So definitely okay as long as the language accommodates that flexibility. again move on. This is the next thing up. So who's in charge now? Just to accept the recommendations that were put forth by superintendent st on January 6, 2025 in the memorandum. Do we need to now? I thought we were going to be working on that during work session and stuff. And you know um am I hearing you say just like a little more time to think about but I think there's a the things we have agreement I'm confused we have agreement on if there are a couple of other items where we don't we haven't landed I think that's okay if we make it a point that we're going to come back and talk about that but one of them here is the board will not meet past command you don't get any argument on me so you know when we're looking down at the I think let let's walk through if you like Um yeah I think it's very important to walk right okay so at goal number one can we all can all board members agree to the bullet points under goal number one maintaining focus on students assuming positive intent formality in mind personalities transparency means preparation um and then I think that's really can be future focused the others are about the discussion items yeah can can everyone agree on those is a thumbs up on those bullet points One, two, three, four. Five. What did you cross out? Just training and business meetings, work study sessions because we have to talk about those separately. Yep. That work study session. That idea is to move it those around. Okay. All right. Then, um, we've already talked about committee reports. So, I think that that's okay. Listening time, I think, is a different item, Dr. Stal, unless you want me to try to raise that here. All right. Goal to improve meeting efficiencies. We've already added estimated time office to the agenda. The next one is the Are we committed to saying the board will not meet past 10 p.m.? How many thumbs up do we have? One, two, three, four, five. Yes. No, it's not up. Okay. All right. So, five five thumbs up for that and two down. And it says unless extenduating circumstances. And I would hope that we have good common sense to if something comes up. So, um, all right. And then that one we're going to have to come back to the agenda. I don't think we need a further sample. Um the only the only timeliness that doesn't have happened right this second, but I think that that question about more than one board meeting a month. Okay. We we don't have a board we don't have a board meeting calendar approved yet. Okay. um that I think came forward in January and that was we held on it because we wanted more time to talk about this. So I think I think we just again have to eventually land to say are we going to try just one robust board meeting a month and then a second one if we need to with the robust study session if we need to add a little bit of business the money. Well, and even if it's just a little business meeting on the top of it, the rest is okay. In all likelihood, but I am the one that's going to drive business meetings because there will be just things that I don't control timeline on with letings and money and debt and again my legal opinion is that you can do that as long as it's publicly noticed as an open meeting and you just put on the agenda that even if it's not consent. Yeah, you just put on the agenda. Absolutely. The action items will be ABCD E. You can certainly do that. Okay. You can chunk them. Yeah, you can you can put them on. I can you can do consent. You can do action items. The whole thing is just public notice. It's got to be publicly noticed meeting. That's the only limitation that you have. Director, I am not prepared to move to one work session. This has been talked about before. You all say you don't operate after 10. Why are we making this decision right now when we haven't effectively discussed it as a board? I'm not prepared. I mean, I I can tell you that I think we have too much work ahead of us. I think there's a lot of board work that has been missed that's been emailed and not gotten on the agenda. There's not a clear process of what's going on the agenda when suggestions are sent to you from not you the chair, from board directors. Um, and that's the process that I think Caroline was speaking to before in terms of it's not clear on how it's getting there. So, I don't want to I'm I'm this if you're asking now, I'm a thumbs down. We are not in the spot with each other with our business of this district stabilitywise. Um, we don't have community support and trust where we should in my opinion. to show meetings. Okay. Well, I would just offer I would just offer just because we meet twice a month doesn't mean we're doing the business of the board. I I I would say I would and I've been pretty clear with with how I've experienced this before. I would say let's try it. Let's try it in January from January to Janu or from July to January and see how it goes. Let's see what it would feel like if we did a three-hour robust study session and how that would or would not impact the efficiency of our board meetings. I mean, this isn't working. Well, a lot of reasons. So, we would have a listening session and then a three-hour robust study session and then we would have a business meeting a different night. A different night. Yep. Possibly. Okay. So, could we have a 4hour work session and then a listening session and a board meeting board meeting? I mean, could we get really ind depth then or just really we're not going to be able to solve this tonight because it's after 10 and we're not thinking as well. But I mean that's a I I also think I heard or am believing that this chart that we're going to try with all the things uh we're we'll be able to kind of uh do some of that intent as we move forward toward new things. And I think for me that's important because I don't understand I mean I just see bullet points but I don't understand how what's the flow, what's the cadence, what's the thing and I don't know that. And so I that to me goes to the amount of work that has to be done and then then I think it's reasonable to talk about that with that context what kind you know what would we do threehour meetings and a business meeting and a work session it makes more sense than in the abstract just saying let's just do it whatever. Um, anytime you add one new board member to a group, it's a new group. And we just got through having a group, a new group, you know, and it's a new group and this new group. And I think it's kind of just, you know, we got to walk before we can run. This group needs to walk. Okay. I'll also add though that having a new group actually gives us the opportunity to try new things in advance. We're going to do it. I mean, we're doing we're doing something new already. Okay. And so, speaking of trying new things, how do you feel about using that for the agenda instead of the agenda that we've done? I mean, this is not the first time we've seen it. We've seen it all other times. Can I just back something? We saw the other question, too. You were asking about about the the board reports will be two minutes. Okay. But they're going to be in person and writing in person and vocal for now but not more than two minutes. So that okay that So now we're on but then the agenda say I mean the same work gets accomplished. It's just slightly different nomenclature. Uh and it makes it makes sense. Are you talking about three now? What? We don't have what? Yes, go three is the heading on three. What's the benefit of the change nomenclature? Um, it is it's it's the consent agenda then I mean that's just a fast item. We've got personnel always if it's needed. I like the notion of unfinished unfinished into new business. Um there's always policy. I I don't understand. I haven't understood our current agendas with the where the action is. To me, this is more clean. We always know with unfinished business that potentially has action items to it. Most often new business doesn't. Policy does. Um it's not incredibly different, but right now we're mixing the action non-action items all through the agenda. And this is just cleaner and clearer. Well, not to me because I just based on what you've just said, uh, Terry. So, are you saying where where does the where does the action items come? That's my question because I I'm not understanding the list. Might be under personnel. There might be something under unfinished. There might be something under action items could show up anywhere. Could show up anywhere. Yeah. Well, that's I mean, that's what I'm trying to understand. Yep. You want to ask how many thumbs up you got for it? Okay. How many thumbs up do I have for this? One, two, three, four, five. Do you have a thumb? Nope. She has no thumbs. Okay, we got we have a majority. Okay. And the study session, same idea. Welcome call. Give the purpose of the agenda. And it's going to be one of those five things. It'll be governance, operational, board governance, uh, superintendent relations, public engagement, information. That's what the topics will come. Whatever business we have will come under some one of those topics. Give me a thumb. One, two, three. [Music] I I I think that, you know, I'm I'm somewhat neutral and more for don't I I really I don't know. I don't organizes. I don't see the benefit part. That's all I have to say. Okay. I'll see if it comes up. We have four. Okay. So, we are working toward a change in this working on the board planning document between now and the time this change takes place. And this change takes place July 1. Okay. I have a question back to the work session agenda. What can you explain the superintendent relations public engagement information items? So this doesn't make as much sense because you don't have the board document in front of you. But but so you look at the superintendent relation. So that's one of the agenda topics would always be one-on-one or some kind of meetings. when would when what's the timeline for the appraisal so you know that that's one of the requirements. Um again if you're hiring somebody that could end up being um you know part of the calendar as well. It's just thinking of of what are those predictable things in each of these categories that is really the work of the board. And so in my experience, what's happened when you have this is some of the contentious um agenda planning doesn't happen because there's a predictable cadence here. So the topics are here and they come up. So there aren't like like it's it's a new experience for me to have these things bubble up that the board members want to talk about because it doesn't always fit into one of these areas. So just what my experience was, it's a format that works, but I don't think if you don't see the board agenda, it probably doesn't make a lot of sense. My favorite timekeeper has told us we are 60 minutes over for this topic. Just so that you know, director. So, a question I have is where does AC, you know, where do the academics come in? Operational oversight. That's whereademics. Well, it's it's it's not just it's not just academics. It's the operational oversight is all of the strategic plan, budget stuff. That's where those things. Yep. All of those things. Okay. We have finished the discussion for letter A. Does everybody agree with that? [Music] Um, what did you say? I mean, this doesn't say A. Did you say A on the agenda? Oh, okay. So, moving on to B request from the safety and security movie committee. Uh, is a critical incident communication threshold which is approved March 24th. All right, I'm going to try to do this as quick as we can. Pass on paper. I'm all in favor. And as Mick handed out, I just want to give a little context. I I know there were concerns about me not doing what I was supposed to do aligned to this. and and I've had concerns since the first time I read that that there um I had legal concerns since the first time I read it. So I haven't been and so again it's taken us a while to get this on the agenda but we're here tonight to talk about it. Incidentally the first time I saw this I immediately raised concerns with Liz Vieira and she and I shared that we both had concerns about it. the I I gave you a memo so that you will have the opportunity to read through my thoughts on this, but um the short of it is that um this protocol is how I'm going to refer to it um requires a superintendent or a designate what I refer to as the administration to report anytime there's a level three or level four behavior and some additional behaviors. those level three behaviors, a lot of those are pretty mundane behaviors. Things like bullying, fighting, tampering with the fire system, easing, you know, things that are run of the bill in any school. Um, and then, uh, there are some that have some pretty sensitive information, uh, when we talk about, for example, sexually inappropriate behaviors, um, uh, extortion, robbery, things of that nature. Level four behaviors, it also requires report, those are a little bit more serious. arson assault, possession or use of a dangerous weapon of a firearm, possession of the firearm, sexual assault, etc. And in addition, the protocol requires a superintendent to notify the board by email if there's a staff member who's injured by a student or a visitor who's injured by a student or if a staff member uses an AR student. And um the protocol specifically requires that you identify in the district building a specific incident that's been reported and whether the police were notified. And then the app sent out a detailed report within five day 5 days after the investigation is completed. And so if you get down to the nitty-gritty at the bottom of page two, the the main legal issue that this raises is that it's going to result in violations of the Minnesota government data practices act in the educational rights privacy act because it the district has to identify the building, describe a specific instant and provide a detailed report. Even if the administration tries to take out personal identifiers and names, board members are going to know in a number of cases who these kids and staff members are. And FURPA doesn't allow for that. Uh FURPA, when we're talking about education records, allows school officials who have a legitimate educational interest to access education records and the data derived from those. But board members probably don't meet either of those criteria bluntly. And the purp goes on to say you have to use reasonable methods to ensure school officials obtain access to only those records they have legitimate educational interest in. Court's going to say in my opinion that board members don't have a legitimate educational interest in accessing that kind of identifiable information unless you're considering a student expulsion or some type of a lawsuit. Minnesota law is even more restrictive. The Minnesota Government Data Practices Act has what amounts to a need to know standard. And under the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act, it specifically says access to private data quote shall be available only to individuals within the entity whose work assignments reasonably require access. So when you look at that, what does that mean for a board member? That means does a board member need to know the information to fulfill its role as a body, not individually, but as a body. So what do you fulfill your role as a body when you're voting on things? When there's a student expulsion, when there's a grievance filed by an employee that comes to the board or when there's a lawsuit, other than that, the nitty-gritty information, you don't have a right or a need to know that information. And so it raises serious concerns because the protocol, as I mentioned, some of this is pretty sensitive information using NAN on a student, you're going to know that information is going to filter back. Board members are going to find out about it. Um, when a staff member is injured, that's confidential medical data under federal law. You're going to have access to that. You have no right to have access to that kind of information. So the concern that arises is under the data practices act, you can be sued for violating uh the South Washington County School District. I represent that district. And one of the reasons why they switched to me as counsel is they had some bad advice on what the a superintendent could say. This is almost 30 years ago now in the NAR case. The superintendent went so far as to say allegations against an employee, a teacher were serious. That's what he said. and a jury awarded $500,000 to the teacher for saying the allegations are serious. You're talking about sharing information that's far more sensitive than that. I mean, you don't want to be staring down the barrel of a lawsuit for somebody you don't need to to do. So, um it's just not the type of data that board members have a right to enroll or need to know speaking to. Um the second issue is we talked about the board members are really charged with governance not management and that just underscores the fact that again there's not a need to know the information. The third concern I have is that this information can come before you at a later time. Let's talk about student discipline and you have a student expulsion. Someone can then say well now you're biased because you got the information ahead of time. You're talking about information ahead of time. So now you're not an unbiased decision maker. Same thing when it comes to grievances. Um, and there are times when there won't act in a closeted judicial matter and you're the decision maker. So, we want to make sure that that's not coming to you. There also practical issues. Um, you know, I think the concept whoever put this together had some great thought, some great ideas, but the in practice it's really hard to follow this document and it imposes what is truly an unusual burden. I don't know of any district in the state, other than your district that has something like this. So, um, and there might be one out there, but I don't know. It's a very extraordinary, uh, document. I'm not suggesting, by the way, that the board should be blindsided by information there. And I'm not suggesting that the board didn't have need to know about truly critical events. You have somebody who was in possession of a firearm at school. There's something under the law, it's called a health and safety emergency, that allows the superintendent to share information. So, you don't get blindsided. so parents get to know and can be reassured, hey, there was a fire on school property. Um, but yeah, certainly don't want your blinds. And I also don't mean to suggest that you shouldn't have access to important data. You know, when we think about summary data, um, in cases I've been involved in even with the Office for Civil Rights, they want to know what number of kids, what number of suspensions for this type of conduct, and you get that summary data and maybe you review it in whatever intervals you think are appropriate quarterly or yearly, because then you can tell whether your policies are effective and whether they're being implemented as instructed. But the day-to-day stuff doesn't help you with any of that. It doesn't help with policy governance. Well, my recommendation is to resend this because it puts the superintendent in the um untenable position of essentially being compelled to violate the law or to not follow through on which you want and it puts you in the position of accessing data that you don't have a legal right or need to access. So, uh that's the short of it. Um my recommendation is to resend the approval of that particular requirement on critical incident communications. Okay. You saw your hand up. Yeah. So I did a lot of calling around other school board members in other districts asking them about this such thing. They said, "Well, why wouldn't your school board want to know that?" and they told me information that they get from theirs. So, I guess I'm questioning them and they're like, "Well, the community would want you to know that. Why wouldn't you?" So, I guess um that'll be a big thing for us. I mean, I think this is information that that we should know. Um they said they were even allowed to ask questions about it um if they had it. um they would get reports. Um tell can you share with me what board has a protocol of this effect the asking why the main city the ring of suburbs I called multiple multiple I spent days talking to people I represent a bunch of them so if you can let me know I can follow along I'm happy to do that I mean if there I'm just offering to do that to pull back anything that's in writing that they have. So, if there are names in specific that would help, that would be appreciated for me. I have a huge problem too with how we're choosing to do this instead of us sitting here as schoolboard members and discussing it and what we think is right for our district and what we know that community has said to us. Well, what we think and what the law is, we have to follow the law. Director Holmes, did you have your hand up? I did. So, the um our safety and security ad hoc committee, Caroline and I and Renee was there for a while. We put a lot of work into this and it stems from how often we've been in the news. Oh my god. Carrie Leven did a report on the increase of weapons, firearms in districts. You know who was at the top? Us. We were up there and I have yet to see and I the information is not flowing. And so if there is something that you can edit or that we are allowed to have if we strike building um if whatever needs to be done to make it more generic that would be beneficial but the purpose of it was to track what we are doing to change behaviors. Um, you know, we we um I think was it ED Edu Climber that was supposed to be tracking patterns and changing like we keep allocating all of this money to behavior supports and you know supporting um unruly behavior or whatever word. I'm sure I'm going to use the wrong one and people get upset. So we could support the students in changing behavior or allowing the classroom, you know, to instead of vacating, we can continue the education. So it's an accountability piece because you whether we get it or not, it comes to us at listening hour. It comes to us in our emails. And how do we have a tool that tracks that we're doing what we say we're doing in in regards to the student handbook, in regards to programs that we're committing to. Um, and then beyond this, once we created it, oh, by the way, we created a level five, guys. So, we don't even max out at four. created a level five of behaviors and that was never discussed. It just happened after this document. And so there's so much work that should be done and it it pulls into the confusion of when the board was approving the handbook and now suddenly we're not. And so I guess my question would be what is the board's or board members liability if these violent behaviors are continued unfettered? We hit the news all the time and nothing, you know, I mean, it's a it's an accountability piece. It's nothing new. This is something we all talked about as a board when we were safety and security ad hoc committee was committ um created and we wanted to find a way to make some inroads in those areas, those avenues. I think that those are very coaching comments and I would uh comment very persuasive comments and what I would say is that um I think you can get summary data uh number of incidents and again certainly you can have a system in place so you're not blindsided and don't hear about things for the first time in the news. You know there's a firearm that's in your um found in your school. How are we going to get that information out? Um there's but it's the detailed report that creates the problem. It's the ability to track that back and identify folks and that that's very helpful and understandable. So I I think edits but I think this needs to stay on the board's radar in some form that is legally acceptable because of what we've witnessed, what we've dealt with. And I'd be happy to um draft something that that makes it a sum of data so that you can do that and maybe that's something we can take up because like I said we've changed to level five now. So this whole format would essentially change and the discussion there that you weren't privy to is it wasn't the monotony of the day-to-day incidents and that was communicated communicated quite clearly when we drafted this. We must have gotten three or four rounds. So, um, if we can tighten it up language-wise, I think we're after the same thing that you were saying, um, it just didn't come to fruition the way it legally should have. So, when you're looking at things like bullying and fighting, are you looking at the number of incidents? What what is the data that helps you take that next step and make decisions? you know, it's it's it's patterned behavior because again, I mentioned it up at the U board table this evening when we are when when decisions are being made at the school level and we are say um let's do bar for example, it's a program we're being asked to you know that's going to go districtwide and it requires more financial dollars. I want to know if it's working or if it's time to adjust course. And there's so much flexibility from school to school to school. I don't want to jump from shiny object to shiny object. So, it's I I don't know how to explain that to you right now. It's accountability. It's it's we talk about, you know, reducing suspensions and um not addressing the disruptive behavior like I I don't know how to do this right now. At what interval would you need the data like because I I mentioned again you shouldn't be blindsided. So big events we can talk about how there can be notification for that but at what intervals would you need the data because obviously we don't make decisions based on day-to-day data. We don't make decisions based on month-to-month data. You know usually it's quarterly yearly type of data. What scenario do you think that would, you know? Well, I guess when they're major events, I I think that should happen the day or not the day, but soon after that event. A firearm in our school is a big thing. A machete in our school is a big thing. Um that that does require board notification in my No, I agree on firearm something like that. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And then but that's not for data tracking as much as it is the immediiacy and the notification is so you're not um well I think to differ because again you're like we had quite a lot of conversations around what was being given in terms of the disruptions that were occurring from school to school. So, I if you would like me to collect my thoughts and get them back to you or get them back to the board, I can sure as heck do that. But I don't want to dismiss the amount of work and conversations that we've had before if you're asking me to recount them right here on the spot. So, if that's the expectation, then I can come back with that information. But this is a problem that this board was aware of. That's why we created the safety and security ad hoc committee. There was a goal for this. I think obviously well intentioned. My concern is the legal aspect of it. And so I ask that the board resend that and that we work and I'm happy to work with you if you give me information, but I'm happy to put it in a summary format in terms of data that the administration can share without putting the board and the administration in jeopardy. That's what you I think that's a good idea. time. Actually, he asked my question. As a healthcare worker, I know that some of this information can be very sensitive and eventually school administration does send out generic emails explaining what happened and some of that information. Is that too late for us as board members to find out or is that just the right timing to allow the correct information to get out to the public and us as board members? Right. And I think that would be the question that I will pass. And it'll be interesting as you're on the board, you know, and it's a it's a great question because that's our current practice right now is anytime a notification goes out that would an incident would happen in a school that would warrant a communication um to staff and families, it always goes to the board. Um that's that's the consistency that we've done with that piece of it. Yeah. So then I guess the question to ask as board members is with the timing like attorney is saying how much information is too much because if you get it weekly what can we do about it right we are not going to be able to change the administrative practices that support what is happening in the schools. We have been informed one way or the other. So, do we need to get this, you know, on a call quarterly basis, annually? And that's been that's been part of my question with this too is it it goes a little bit back to roles. It is it management or is it governance, right? and and sharing the summary data whether it's academic data whether it's discipline data whether it's you know regardless of what it is that's that's my job is to make sure that through that oversight of operations you're getting that right um the how that that's the concern for me is that an ad hoc committee got into if you got into the how of it That that's my question and concern with it. Okay. Before I call on Dr. Bowman and then Dr. Bloombrand, is there can we just go to yes, resend it and rework it? If we commit to a time frame, can we you can cross? Okay. Resent. No. Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, my comment to Dr. Stala's comment is the words that have been used here tonight. I'm really concerned that again we're blurring the authorities and the roles uh between the board and the administration. What do we need to know? I mean, it would be customary that the office of the superintendent collect all that information, all the data around it, and and is it the board's responsibility to say to the superintendent, "Something's burning. Something's burning." when in reality it's the superintendent who does collect all that information all the time from all the buildings. And that's kind of what I'm concerned about. We don't want to be driving the superintendent. We want the superintendent to be driving our the information that we get with real life data. And that's my concern because too much of this like to say what are we doing to change the behaviors again that is a that is a a role of an administrative I was going to say administrative or staffing but it comes with the administration and and you know quite frankly the superintendent has the tools uh to do these things and and the ad hoc committee was formed when there was an absolute vacuum of information coming from the administrative office and now we have a whole different scenario here when we actually have a responsive superintendent that I think can work with us to better report because we as schoolboard members have never defined what sort of reports do we want and then we have an attorney that says well you can ask for that or you can't ask for this or whatever however it breaks out but let's then define the report but it belongs to Terry belongs to Dr. stall in the administration. So, as long as we can be clear on the the roles and the responsibilities, that's what's important to me. Okay. Uh Dr. Henbrand, did you have something? No, no, no. I just think it was addressed. It's about the data in aggregate as opposed to individual and all because we should, you're right, we should have that data in aggregate. We should understand what's playing into it, right? We shouldn't be micromanaging it. Okay. So to resend it and rework it. What about the timeline? What would be an acceptable timeline for you? Like tomorrow? No, I'm serious. This is I'm starting campaigns with me. So I don't What timeline are you under? Um how soon can you get information? The board is not going to concern until their next meeting. So we can have you and I can work to have something and I'm going to work through Terry to Dr. Stallow um to make sure that she's in that loop as the management piece and I I'll commit to doing whatever effort I need to do to get it done for the next meeting. Great. Maybe if you can include Caroline on there because she was on with me through all of this. And what would be helpful is really thinking about for me because again still drafting working on trying to land for um April the balance scorecard which which to me is going to be what are those metrics that again you're seeing every January progress where we have interim data. This would be an example of that. we would have it and then end of the year you're also seeing some data. So, it' be helpful as we're building that to think what what are what are some of those measures that really matter to the board as we think about some of the behavioral and the safety things. And just off the top of my head, one of the things at Climber, we were we talked about as a board and there was going to be a board dashboard so we could see some of this. I don't even know if that came to fruition at all. So, I know you're not going to answer that right now. I'm just saying this is one of those things where we did talk as a board and so um well think about those metrics because that that would help just like just like and again we're not there right it's been eight months but building that cadence of saying all right around academics we've always got proficiency growth and gap closing measures so what are we seeing midyear what are we seeing at the end of the year so that you can look at that which then helps you to say well wait a minute Terry you said the priorities for next year. We're implementing X, Y, and Z. So, what's the data? How are we going to show that that's helping get improvements? And again, that's the system we're continuing to build as we're as we're flying. Okay. We have thumbs up all the way around. Did you have them? I don't have any thumbs. Okay. Well, I only with the provisal uh I actually had my head up. Um I I really think it is important for whoever with him and with uh with me Mr. W and me and and just your name yet. Yes, you two with the two of them. I think that's really important because I think to find all of that information that they went through and all of the stuff that's in that document has opportunity because what's important to me is the legal aspects of it, right? And so and you know those things that we need those pitfalls and I think being able to talk about those pitfalls while at the same time hearing what they're, you know, kind of hear where they're coming from would be really useful and I think that I'm fine with it. Okay. Doing that work. Let's move on. Let's move on. All right. Let's see. discussion regarding financial advisory council. Take it away Christian. Thank you. So, it has come and it's actually been a conversation with the finance advisory council since I have started about honestly we are not she has one already. Oh, sorry. She uh the district's action plan and which is in the packet that's being presented. You also there were minutes that were included that finance advisory council wanted you to know. So you have why the plan was created or why the council was created by the board and then the bylaws uh that the board adopted and quite honestly we're not following them right now at all. Um, and so I think well the conversation at the finance advisory council was does the board still support the bylaws? Um because that drives the work or honestly probably disbands the committee. Um just a question. I cuz not too long ago I attended the Minneapolis uh finance committee meeting and and the only members of the finance committee are um board members. There's no members of community. Is that common practice? What is the common practice or I mean you've worked at 27. Can I can I feel this one real quick? Just a quick historical uh the finance committee along with the legislative action committee was born in this district about 25 years ago and uh the gap that the community identified at that time was there was very little um uh normal citizen resident whatever uh involvement in the processes and the district didn't have anything. So what they did was a finance committee was formed to really engage the residents in the discussion about the finance and so run by the administr I'm just no I'm just I'm just saying that I'm not saying it's right or wrong I was just curious after noting that what common practice is or what right and you're right to ask their purposes after that disbanded or whatever happened to it I don't know it didn't Okay, fine. But so in later about 2009, eight or nine, the board established another finance advisory council. So from that iteration, I don't know. I think that might have been when they had a finance council. My husband was actually representative. My husband was on that committee. I think that was that old life. Uh but so there have been a couple of iterations and this is the last one standing and was for specific purpose with selling property and all those kinds of things and worked really really well and helped this district a lot. it has drifted and um you know I think it's time to look at this and um and quite frankly I would also say one of the things that I wondered about uh is if we had uh if there's some places that the board could look at some of the processes and things we need to be doing in terms of monitoring what could what could we have helped at all or what should we have known uh when um in in the whole thing. And so I'm saying that imperfectly because I'm tired, but I I still think there's a need for it. If if this matches that need, I I I can't I won't sit here tonight and say I think it does, you know, but I think having it on the agenda for us to reflect on is a good thing. And I think we need to sit with it for a little bit and think about it. Quite frankly, I don't think tonight's the night to decide to do anything. I just can I get an answer? No. Okay. I know that you asked the question that was you got part one. My question was what is the common practice in other districts? Thank you. Remember I did calling around I asked about this too. Okay. I asked them about this too. Good. So I I've heard from the other districts that all surrounding us that um they have a financial committee and it's three school board members that are on that committee along with you know other people and they sit down and they like really go through the budgets and then they those three schoolboard members it's like kind of like how the ad hoc committee then they bring those reports back to the board for discussion. Thank you. In our bylaws, technically it's just one school board member which is the treasurer and I was reading that. Yeah. And so yeah, in transparency we had this conversation during I I was accustomed to exactly what you were talking about where there were three board members and then community members. So I mistakenly assumed that. So that was totally on me I think. But it was also discussion too that we had as this team where we all said we wanted to be there. Well, anyway, that's that because that's what I'm accustomed to and I I know the purposes um both in in AIO and in Prior Lake when I was there, that group was pretty the AIO one especially really robust in terms of they had a schedule the cycle of the budget and they had a schedule of what that group meant and I'm sure it's all online probably. Um but really well done. You've let them you um There's multiple advantages. The reality is honestly part of it is dependent upon the personality of your board. And the reason why I say that is if and kind of how you the wheels have fallen off. If it gets to a point where the board needs the information before the council or the finance advisory committee, there's no point in having this made. The board's already gotten the information. or if you have multiple board members sitting on the committee and you're just representing all of the information to the full board now you're just wasting board members time you know double doing. So it really does come down to what is what does the board what does this board how do they want any piece of um the budget budget process whatever to roll through. My one request has always been only I don't want to make budget assumptions in a silo. I am one person and I am in no position to say I believe the state is going to give us 2%. I believe they're going to increase TRA. I believe that is not advantageous for me, for the district or the community. So whatever form that is, if it's three board members, if it's three board members in a committee, if it's just a committee with one, my only ask is do not put me in a position where I am the one making your budget assumptions alone. That's all I ask. And just to for notes for everybody that even the the members of the committee public from the public also expressed that they didn't feel like it was very valuable use of their time right now. the way that it was structured too. Not the way that the way that it's being run. The way Yes. The way because the structure technically should follow the bylaws. We're just not the way it's currently operating. Yes. So, [Applause] if you were to make a recommendation, what would you recommend? I recommend you set on what the board is comfortable with and that's how we move forward. I I do not recommend operating under bylaws that we're not following. So either you you review the bylaws, we come back at the next meeting and you say, "Yep, reviewed makes sense." No, it doesn't. Because that truly drives the participation and the interest in the committee. Good. So we can hear the bylaws and decide what makes sense. Okay. Thank you. Long. She got me that time. Um, are there specifics that we're not following? Everything. Everything. Well, we did everything. No. I mean, in all in all honesty, see the the biggest challenge is somewhere along the way it started it became where the information is presented to the board before it's presented. Well, they before it's presented or discussed at finance advisory, well, they can sit in a board meeting and get the same information. There's no need to go to an independent meeting to hear and then have no vested interest in troubleshooting, problem solving, providing feedback, providing direction like well and I guess that's that's why I'm asking because I know that in various times we've all expressed like why are we not hearing from them earlier and then I go back and I looked at all of their reports and they're consistent. We need to be in front of the board. So that's kind of one of the dots we're trying to correct. Correct. So timing it well and it's not representation. Yes. And and and I it the honest response that was given to me in my tenure here thus far is that somewhere along the way it pivoted because the board wanted the information first. They don't want the finance advisory committee to have information that they all don't have and it can't work that way. It's either that committee is working to do the information or the board is or a configur but you can't be like it's always got to be in front of the board first. they have all information or you know if I were to come to you is if for example and say I'm I've met with the committee two months ago and we made estimates on enrollment making it up right whatever and then I come to the board and you're like wait a minute we heard two months ago this was at committee why is the first the board is hearing about it it's impossible to have the committee doing their work in advance of the board on behalf of the board and then have have it turn around and be like, "But the board didn't get the information." No, of course not. Because the design of the committee is that they're the ones. So, is that why in your experience and what you've called around, you know, three board members, it's a like an ad hoc committees and then they come and it would fall into when they report to the board. Yeah. Does that make sense? I Yeah. And I don't know that. I I think just because at least in my experience it it was a board committee and there's always three there were just citizens on it also or just three n citizens as well. So I I love the idea of a financial advisory committee because you are your own animal. You really are. And I also appreciate the board wanting to be involved in it. I am not one that would be on that. Um I think the expertise that citizens bring who have you know their careers and their stakes in it is invaluable. I would like to free. Yeah, timing. Timing is gonna be a huge one for me. And then how it falls into the calendar because I don't want to be getting things last minute. But if somebody comes to me and that says the financial advisory committee is saying X, Y, and Z, then it's on my radar. Does that make sense? Yeah. They want to be relevant. So I love the financial advisory committee. I think it's underutilized. Um And I think personality of the board, we probably are going to have to move to more than just one individual just based on how we operate and how we can get information. Those are my and I actually don't mind being off the board. I'll just sit in the audience. I just want to observe. Not off the board. I mean, not off the board. Yeah. I'll be out of the committee if it's problem. I don't care. But I'm going to sit in on those meetings and that's something that we've already I mean I I obviously as an observer will be um uh involved in the discussion but I will observe um quarterly meetings right now. Yeah. I mean that's what the bylaws say. That's what the bylaws say. What I would anticipate is I mean you you guys have experienced and granted we've been chasing um admittedly chasing this year with all things budget. Um it I don't know that I'd meter them out that way to be honest with you. I think there's a lot of heavy lifting that comes in the fall as you're preparing for the next year's but even the revised you're getting audit data. you're you're working on a revised budget. You're working on the following years. I think there's a lot of heavy lifting that probably could happen up until January. Then once it kind of gets released to the board as far as decision making and budget and da da da, then they might honestly kind of take a hiatus for a little while because their work is sort of done and it's handed off to the board. Okay. I mean, so I don't know that I'd meter it that way is my point. Dr. Holmes. Um, and then as we're going through this now that there a vacancy and then upcoming vacancies, I was going to say we do have a board member or we do have a member of this that has not honestly shown up for two years. So I think that we I think we have at least two seats open plus whatever pops open in June. And I think what what it would strengthen for me, what we learned through this last process is hammering out what that interview process or what the what the the information submission for candidates is and how it gets to the board before we appoint members. And just to be clear, this is a board this is a board committee. So unless you want me involved with the application pro, that would need to change. Otherwise, I'm hands off. Yeah. And I am merely Well, I guess that's why I'm then I'll talk to everybody because when we went through this, um Caroline and one of our um now seated members had some really productive conversation about what was missing in the application process and how the information got to us as board directors. So, it was pretty and I asked actually asked her to send her listening because she came and spoke at listening hour, too. And so, I reached out and said, "Can you submit those those comments?" And so, I mean, it's really good stuff for us to work through and think about. I would be interested in how what your role has been before because again, the two districts that I've been pretty intimately involved with the finance advisory council, it really has been led by it's been led by the finance person and that's what I'm used to. But that's not what the bylaws Yeah, that's my point. I mean you are our expert in finance. Yes, I would hope so. Yes. That's my belief as well. So if when we if when we are reviewing the bylaws and deciding what makes sense if we decide what makes sense is that you get to determine the skills I mean criteria. I think we can language that into grants to be able to do that. Dr. Long, I was going to ask, could we get recommendations from you that we could look at as we're looking through? Of course. Of course. Happy to do that. Start. Well, um I'm glad we're doing this. I think recommendations from you are going to be really, really good, Kristen, to get those recommendations. And I think the board members need to sit with the document for a while, you know. Um, and it's not about personality. And because it's been the treasurer's role, that's also been a point of contention, but it's it's like people feel like they can't say anything about the finances if the treasur didn't say it. That's the climate that has been around here for a little minute. And I had no idea the person's been missing for a year or two or however long the person's been gone. I had no idea because never came back to the board. So I just think it's a good idea that we're looking at it. Thank you Kristen for taking some lead and uh you know being willing to kind of help us with it and I think you can sit with it and come up with some recommendations and thank you Caroline for doing some research and find out what others are doing. And alls I'd ask is that there is a decision made before the end of the fiscal year because right now the the the advisory council like we're we're in policy work now, right? Like that got sent and we we can carry on and again back to the timing of all things budget, but we're going to hit June and we're going to start talking about levy again, right? Like it's it's going to start. We're going to be looking at 10ear LTFM plans and all the things and away we go. And so I we have a few months, but I don't want to wait too long because then now we're behind on that committee work again. I agree. And I would just say too, I think that whenever we get to the place where we if we are recruiting, I think that the caliber of the people that we're recruiting, where we put, how we push it out because if if the word in the street is that well, they don't really do anything. They don't have anything to do. So why go? Because they said that to me, too. you know, so um that'll make a difference. Thank you. Thank you. All right. We look forward to hearing from your giving your input on that and open. All right. The very last thing on our agenda is what was ordered on the last meeting to have a brief discussion on policy 524 and that policy is internet technology and cell phone acceptable use and safety. So, so does anyone have any things they want to discuss about that? Yes, she's grabbing her binder. I have some things too. Good night. Good night. Good night. Thank you. This is not on the procedures. It's just policy. So, we understand. Okay. when you're ready. Um, again, I'm going to pull up this policy stuff. The gist of mine is I don't think the board has given this policy the discussion that it deserves in terms of things we want to make sure are incorporated so procedures are effective and convey the role of the board. um specifically the feedback of all of the stakeholders that this impacts and um I say that because we started talking about policies that come forward ones that are controversial. That's how we've been labeling them. So I'm going to label it instead of controversial more discussion just in terms of our role with the community and how it's going to impact students and the feedback and making sure it's all there. And the ones I was looking at St. Paul did I think most of the districts in all honesty have been doing multiple meetings and conversations around this policy and even are incorporating some of the language what it means to be a digital citizen that learning component that Caroline talked about um and how it relates to this policy. Sorry I'm just getting to this. So I want to talk a little bit more detail about how it came and I think I touched on it before. So it started becoming an issue. We obviously all know that cell phones are distraction and screens are a problem and can hinder class focus. Um and we had staff starting to come and speak to that and a policy. It didn't do any I I don't know what was in place and how it was around it. Maybe you do if it was just generic. Um, but what happened is we didn't put a policy. I don't again I don't know if one was in but it wasn't sufficient. So then administrators and learning leaders got together and created some administrative procedures and that was gosh it must have been over the summer of 203. Sure. Yeah. Is and rolled it out. And there was some push back that year and I don't know if you all recall we had some listening hours. Why did you do this in a policy the board blah blah blah and that's why it hit our radar. Um we never really focused on it, never really had a work session on it after that and then the legislation came out with the deadline for it. Um and the statute cell phone policy I think by March 15, 2025 that's what it says. That's all it says. The school district or charter school must adopt a policy on students possession and use of cell phones in school by March 15, 2025. That's the statute. There's been back and forth and I know it was mentioned in one of our first pol or the first policy meetings that I attended that um there was discussion about potentially banning cell phones. Um and so I found some um NPR articles on that and that's not solidified. They're still going back and forth themselves. Um, so I just want to have this policy make sense to us and I think we could strengthen the language in it. So, we've had all kinds of information and I just it's all been covered to us. There was a cell phone toolkit that came out. I think we all got it in our email. Um, and then Director Basset, you passed on some information from MSBA on who's doing what. and I get the gist of it. What we're doing in terms of um the different grade or the different, you know, secondary versus elementary, that's all there. I don't know if everybody's familiar with that. Completely gone for elementary and then away for the day. So that's I just the learning component is missing and I think it needs to be in the policy language itself. Hope that just made sense. So what are administrators or teachers or parents giving for feedback to you superintendent about policy? Are you hearing nothing? When was this policy passed? I didn't hear that. November. November of 2020. It was. So it's it's already been passed recently. It's not like an old policy. It was passed So it says June 2024 revised in November. So the the language was updated and then it was passed. We had a bunch of policies coming through at that time. So it was lumped together with no discussion. Um and it just the the memo under it or the I guess the quantitative language around it was legislative updates. Um and so it passed with no discussion. in in terms of what people are saying, we've never really given them the opportunity to address what they want to see in a policy. What are their expectations? Um there are safety and security concerns here. There are concerns about I know we have the the push out that um if you need to get in touch with your child, you know, you reach out to the office and I've also heard that it's really hard to get in touch with the front office. So, there are all just a a wealth of things out there that I think requires a full topic like this and it's not tonight because you all just wanted to hear why I was bringing it here. I think we need to give it a little bit more attention and I would agree after looking at you know some of the other districts their kind of cell phone policies and also listening to the lawyer at MSBA which I had shared during my board report and some of the things that they are suggesting. I you know we really need to look at our students as this is their digital literacy and what are we teaching them about that right and that needs to be included in that in the policy there isn't anything in there about that and I and not just for this policy I I've said this before for all of our policies there should be something that what are we teaching our kids because really we're teaching them how to be citizens in our community and in our larger society and that should also be addressed in here. Okay. But because there should be times when, especially for high school students, that electronic devices should be used. That's something that I teach my students all the time. I teach them when we do math. We don't just do that computation in our head. That's what our phone is for. We use it, you know, when we're listening to a book, we're going to listen to it on our phone. Let's let's this this tool is magical, you know, like right now I've been using it to be the timekeeper this whole meeting, you know. Am I using it inappropriately? No, I'm not checking messages. I'm not texting people, but I'm using my digital literacy skills to use it in an appropriate manner. Like, why can't our policy also address some of that? In the policy, it says the superintendent and school ad administration will establish rules and procedures regarding student possession and use of cell phones in schools. Um, these rules should seek to minimize the impact of cell phones on student behavior, mental health, and academic attainment. Um, may they may be designed for specific school buildings, grade levels, or similar criteria. So the policy leaves it up to the administrators and the buildings and I think that makes sense. I have two questions. Um that's okay. one is um you know do putting something into the policy we're telling teachers what to teach and I'm not sure if that's I I don't know I don't know that to me that doesn't seem appropriate but I I will acknowledge my my limited scope of understanding but um so that that is a little bit um it seems a little out of place to I guess is what I'm saying and now I can't remember my second question so it doesn't matter but so that was just a question or something to consider. Are you sorry? Yeah I think the language that was just read by board chair I think gives the administrative power to Dr. and the team to decide on buildings, grade levels, you know, what happens to cell phone. Um, when I I also did a little research on like the St. Paul school district, it depends on the school, it depends on the grade in which they are, right? And I think it will be almost unnecessary for the school board to make that determination, right? versus principles in the schools in consultation with the superintendent deciding that okay from you know fourth grade they they have the mental capability during mathematics to have their cell phones out versus we want them to be able to actually read from a book so during reading they should put it away right that's not something I have the potential to monitor but I'm sure super secret superintendent and the teachers will do. So again it comes down to governing versus managing it. It sounds to me like we have the governing wedge in the policy right. So then it's if we are hearing things from the community that doesn't seem like the administrative piece is being managed properly then that should be you know phone call to superintendent or to the administrators and say hey this is what we are hearing not as a power of the board to try and change that versus contributing as a community member. That would just be my also they have their onetoone devices to do the computations on. Um I remember my other question is just should this be at should this really be something I know we've talked about it at policy committee or where we can suggest language and bring it because right now we're just saying this isn't adequate but I don't know what this like specific suggestions are. That was my second question. Thank you Dr. Holmes. So many things I St. Paul And part of it right now, they have purpose and values in this one. And this policy is grounded in the following values community members have expressed. One, clarity, consistency, and enforcability are important. Two, student safety is paramount. Three, two-way communication with the school and a way to reach their students must be clearly available to parents and guardians. Four, students should not be excluded from learning as a result of personal electronic device use. Five, students should be empowered to learn to responsibly manage personal electronic devices. That's very important language to kick it to the policy committee. This is important. This is the board conversation in general. Um, again, I don't think we've put the time into it. It's not management and governance. That's not it. And you don't think that that's procedures? No, I do not. It says the policy is grounded in I do not. Can I just Can I just follow that? So just a little followup sir. Thank you. So during I actually asked this question at the forum to a student in one of our high schools um since the last board meeting when you mentioned that it's one of those policies that we wanted to discuss and the information I gathered from the response there is not the fact that the policy is not strong enough it's the fact that in individual classrooms different teachers manage manage differently these policies differently right and if you and I face the fact you and I don't really have one the mandate or the power to control those environments right so the the the language exists the policies exist the advice now is going to be on the teachers in the classrooms to enforce that I don't think it's on the teachers alone because you have an administrative component that we talked talked about at length and the parameters that are being put in. It's it's bringing all stakeholder voice to the table, right? But that's not things that you and that's you and I disagree on that. That's you and I disagree on that because there's an accountability factor and what has come to this board. And so help me understand what you all think then the role is is just to have the MSBA policy and generic language and then we turn it over to the superintendent. And this is the same conversation we were having in the ad hoc committee too. So if there's a problem then we send it up through the principal and we assume that the principal is going to route it to the superintendent. Well I think that if we if we study this carefully you and I or the I should use the word the board right the board can decide that at grade level four during mathematics they can have their phones out. If teacher A enforces that and teacher B does not enforce that, you and I do not have that control. It will fall on administrative processes and procedures to enforce that. Would we agree with that? Keep going. Right. So if you agree with that, then the specific language at the individual school levels I don't think is up to us as a board to have. That is up to the instructional leaders, the principles and the superintendent to formulate that. We can still formulate it if we want, but the enforcement is not on us and we have little to no control over that if any at all. Yeah, I Yeah, I don't agree with that. I mean, you know, because that was one of the things too that I brought up that needed to be in policy is that it can't just be reliant on the educator to do it. And a lot of these are when you look at the other part of it. So that's why it also needs to be in policy that like this needs to be a schoolwide reinforcement because it just can't when I'm in a classroom and you just rely on it just for me to be enforcing it. I'm gonna turn into one of those teachers be like, I don't care because I'm done with the argument of this and nobody else around here is supporting me and then you tell me to go tell the superintendent and go tell the school board. So then why why don't we be proactive and have it in our policy that it's everybody's responsibility that it's the principal's responsibility to reinforce what the teacher saying about it. That's the superintendent's responsibility to reinforce what the and it's not in there. And in other ones like here, even in Minneapolis, they have general policy for high school students, general policy for middle school students, general policy for KA students, and they even talk about here in the policy how it can be used for educational purposes or times when it shouldn't be used for educational purposes. I'm talking about let's be proactive in this policy. Let's not just leave it out there. the other we've heard from teachers who've come here and said this like why why do I reinforce this when it's all on me that ends up creating a bad bad relationship with me and these kids that I have to sit there and argue with them every day about these cell phones and and then there's not that reinforcement from admin or whoever else it might be. So let's figure out what needs to be in there. I think that that we should have this discussion. Dr. Bowman, we have got to separate procedure from policy or we're going to always include policy with procedure. In my opinion, the things that are being discussed are procedural and that's where you start to push the power down into the building. The board says you're going to have a policy to manage this and it's going to be done to the superintendent's office. That's the direction of the board. That's our responsibility sort of at that point. The the specifics that have been named right here right now are procedural in nature and and we may disagree with them but it doesn't alter the fact that it's procedural in nature. So that's my biggest concern. Whatever we can do to I think the policy as it stands right now works. I haven't heard any complaints from anybody. I haven't heard complaints from teachers. I haven't heard complaints from students. That's sort of the measurement of policies. When you've got problems with it, they surface up to the top. When you don't have problems with it, either of everyone's ignoring it or or it really isn't a problem. And that's the other thing that I'm concerned about when we talk about some of these policies. Is it a problem? I don't know. But again, I don't want, you know, we have to be clear what's procedure and what's policy. What's our responsibility and what's the superintendent's responsibility? So, I will stick to I think this says what the board needs to say about policy. Okay. Director Basset and then Director Hill. My thing is to ask Terry what you think. You know what I mean? because I I'm not going to be in the classroom. But um and when I heard you say I was really interested in your answer to that is to sound like you haven't stand up and come to you and said this is a problem. So the policy that we're living under now is one that would you say it's working? Well, and again there's probably a lot of things that people don't come to me about, right? So but I know I mean the simplistic but Yeah. Yeah. Are you going to get all rearranged like that? No, no, no, no, no. I I So, quite frankly, and this is like a So, I want to open up this can of worms, right? But I'm not apparently. Um, so what what I'm getting used to and I think is going to be part of as a policy committee what we ultimately determine. Um, I am used to MSBA. I am used to the there's very few APS separated from policy and and I can do I I'll do this either way, whatever the will board is in terms of separating or not separating. Um, I think I think that the Yeah. So, I think it was just passed. I totally understand the concerns about it in November being passed. Has it been implemented and are there changes that already need to be made? I think are are the questions and the priority of it probably. Uh let's see. Pass it and then move. Well, I mean, the only thing I would say is that thank you for that. The only thing that I would add is I do I do think that there's some utility in having some um secondary versus elementary thinking, you know, because some of it's just Yeah. sort itself out, which is what we have. Yeah. I mean, I'm just saying that I think that that is good and I think and I do I mean I don't know what's talking about. I mean, I think phones and technology are getting demonized in a lot of ways. And because that was one of the things the kids said that night, too, is in in classrooms where they can use it for learning, they're using it. Yeah. It's allowed, right? It's allowed. Yeah. And I think that's that's the other piece of it is if we don't teach kids how to use it responsibly and that's beyond policy. Okay. So my my question it just comes down to to me and I guess this is sort of like with the FAC is what is the purpose of the policy committee? Because in my mind the policy committee wrestles with these things comes up with some suggested language and then brings it to the board. doesn't just say this doesn't work, fix it, and then kind of throw it out there cuz right now we have no like we're not we're just sort of discussing the concept instead of working towards resolving something. And so that's really what comes down to me is that that's why you have a policy committee and then we work that out in policy committee. I was told not to bring that up tonight. Okay. Well, nobody I I don't speak to anybody outside the meeting so I don't I don't know anything else. No, I was at the table. Oh, okay. Well, I I don't know what to say because I don't recall hearing that. But my point is that that seems to me the be the place that you would wrestle with that and bring and even if we don't agree, bring multiple suggestions and have the board wrestle between them. But right now, it's just sort of like more admiring the problem than trying to resolve the problem. And I I feel like and and anybody can correct me if I'm wrong, the policy committee is the place to do that. And I'm happy to do the work. It's not that I have a question concern about the work. I just don't know how we're going to resolve it here without any suggestions because then because the other thing that we've talked about is this board is that is really to go with the majority of of the whole the governance by the whole because um it never fails. It goes to policy and then it comes to to the board itself and then it gets you know Yes, it it we what happens is all the work that was done at the policy committee is just shoved off the cliff because at that point it doesn't count. So that's the gap that I've experienced being on this policy committee for two years is that early on when we did have a couple of robust discussions, believe me, the whole policy committee dissolved into nothing for 12 months. But when we did have those things, then we bring them back to the board and all of the work would go to waste. So we either need to make a decision that we're going to work with. My view of it is two things. Terry's always going to have a policy committee on the administrative side because she's going to have always those policies in the day-to-day. The HR department's got their policies. They manage those policies. They're not ours. We have the 200 and 300 set of policies. That's the only thing that we manage as policies. So, so that's sort of the reality of it. What we do afterwards is we're either governed at uh those reviews by a full board or if we go with the policy committee thing, then this board needs to uh agree to the process which would be policy committee comes out says boom boom boom boom boom. Board discusses those things either sends it back to the policy committee or makes the vote. the vote. That's how it's supposed to work. But at this point, you are it was absolutely incorrect to question what am I doing here? Because we spin we've been spinning our wheels in that committee. So, it is a board decision that needs to be made is how do we want to set up that committee? and and we either are going to set that up or we're not going to. Either way, it'll be a decision, but it's not working the way it's set up right now because it's we're not we're not abiding by how a committee works with a whole. So, I think we should just go to the all of our policy work should just be done with the whole board until we can fe until we either build trust or we however that works. But I'm not willing to do the work twice. No, I'm kind of lost. I am not willing to do the work twice. I'm not willing to spend another night out at the meeting when I know when we come back to the table all of our work will just be out the door. So, we're not willing to do it. No, we have been expressing that for a while. Let me tell you that. This Wait, excuse me. She just acknled. I know, but wait. I've been having this done all the way through. I We weren't. And so we have talked about some of these policy problems before and how we've not done it right and it falls in dead ears. So say it's not uh is more of the affront to the work that I've done as a policy person as a board member. So thank you. Go ahead. I praise the policy committee on a number of occasions. Well, this director Holmes, from what I can decipher from the the train of paperwork, this did not have a robust discussion in the policy committee. It was just I can answer that though. I do have some background information on that that I didn't have. So, excuse me. No, it was there was an answer to it. Just wanted to say that passed on that date, November 6, in bulk with a whole bunch of policies. There were questions that were started that didn't get addressed and it was provided that it was just a legislative update. If anybody can produce to me the work that went into it, gathering the feedback and summarizing which staff did come. We had people coming to us talking about pouches because of the enforcability factor, you know, across the board. So it was done because there was a deadline put in place. We had to be in compliance. This is a complex issue with many layers that we haven't given the board's attention to. That's what I'm saying. That is true. In fact, when the when the procedures weren't in place, Renee, you emailed the assistant superintendent and said you were blindsided by it because of the board and how we were getting um people coming and talking to us and complaining at listening hours. How long ago was that? But that's what I'm saying. That's when it started. I'm tying it now. And if you want to go all the way back, we were all blindsided. Okay? We were all blindsided by what we're talking about the failed process that we as a board should have done. And I'm asking for a conversation on this important policy that can take our students into account, our families who are concerned about their students, our staff who need to be teaching and the distraction is legitimate and real, but they also need the backup of the schoolwide or the district-wide expectations and implementation. It hasn't been working this way. And that's why I think stronger language is required in the policy itself. That's what we rely on for accountability. I just want to add one point and that is the policy was written by an attorney. The policy what is the purpose of the No, I'm excuse me when you say the things that it's not you say this policy was not vetted. The policy was not vetted maybe by this board, but the policy itself. Okay. Well, then I guess you know better. And I'm not saying I'm saying putting the word and you can just say what you want to say about it, but it was vetted legally. Great. So, let's just be clear on that. It was clear before. All right. Stop. Director Long. So, I would just like to state um district 287. They kind of do some policy work where they get information from community and from students. They actually even create lesson plans for the teachers to teach as a way of getting feedback from students on different policies that are coming up. I, you know, we keep talking about that about how to get more student voice into some of these things. Um, so I wanted to just throw that out there because it popped into my head. I think the more voices the marrier. We just haven't figured out how can we just send it back to the policy committee. Tell the policy committee to write the policy that they want to see and then we'll bring it back to the board because at this point what are we going to do? Discuss it. It's over the policy committee. Concerns about the policy committee that I was not allowed to bring up tonight. So that's a bigger discussion. That's a whole another discussion. We were here just to discuss this policy. You just recommended it go to the policy. Yeah, I'm recommending go. I have concerns with it and how it's rolling. Great. Then write a new one and bring it to the whole board. I'm serious. I mean because I'm taking orders from you because the reality is is I don't know what it is. This is spinning wheels. This belongs to her to do. One, two, and I see your hand. Amy, she's ready. Amy. All right. We the move was to have the motion was to have a discussion. We have a direction to go to. Okay. You said the policy. You said policy committee. Maybe we could make this one work. Who knows? We got some resetting to do on the policy. I didn't know that. Yeah. We're have a new administrator take it over and we're gonna we're gonna set it up right so it runs and functions really really well. Policy meetings are cancelled this month. Director Long. So I had brought up at agenda setting that there had been a request from board members to talk about the overall policy committee. Oh and then Terry had brought up that Amy's going to be starting it. So there's going to be some revamping that will be done within the committee itself. So just in full transparency, that's kind of where we left our discussion at at agenda setting. So I don't know if it needs to come back as a full discussion for the board or what what needs what I mean trans if there's concern. Let's send it to the policy committee. Reban I sent you my it's going to sit in lingo limbo for a while. So, so the there's a meeting scheduled for the 9th. We're not ready. We had spring break, so we didn't have get a chance to be ready. And then the next meeting is the 22nd scheduled for the 22nd, which now is the board meeting. So, the next one is the 7th. So, if we get things together to bring to the policy committee before that, we will. And otherwise, we will on the 7th. 7th of May. Yeah. Oh well, I mean I think we can live. Yeah. Okay. I don't think we're out of work. Isn't I know isn't our policy committee is that you you and you. Mhm. But that does remind me just on a separate note that we need to talk we need to do committee assignments and so I'm happy that that just I'm already on two. I'm happy to give that to but I think he's a fine. Thank you for the alert. Okay, now it is. Yes, it is. So, we're going to bring it to the policy committee, the reand policy committee and work through. Okay. All right. It will be the number one. It will be the first agenda. All right. I believe we have exhausted our agenda for our work session and I know the rest of us are exhausted working this win. Hold on.