This school board met in November at a work session to review district data, parent community survey, student data, and a variety of input from across our system to identify our our priority issues, whether we're currently working on them or we need to be in the future.

These are the three propos proposed schoolboard goals that you have for 202526. Excellence in well-being, connection and belonging, excellence in student learning and support, and excellence in leadership and organizational support.

I think it's just more of a comment when I look at um the goals. Obviously, they're they're we've talked about them a lot. These are long-term goals that we've kind of been adding to and uh but it's more and more and more the more that we're in schools, the more that we're seeing. Um, I think we're seeing the effects of of of the stability of those goals and continuing to add on to them.

I was just kind of thinking about whether or not it should be more called out in here. I don't know where I don't know where it would be, but it just kind of occurred to me that that came up in that meeting.

The last time that the state did this was 15 years ago. The next time a board here could be considering this type of action could be in 2040. So, we just got 30 minutes summarizing how t you know 15 years of standards are moving forward. What what you did allowing our teachers June 10th to get these materials and it felt last minute. We heard from our community. you saw that we were using the year and we we were working with a company to get that those materials on site as soon as possible the same time that the entire state is trying to get materials on site and in the hands of teachers. So kudos to our team for getting uh stuff here on time but this is this is some of the most important work a school district can do ensuring all students can read. It's not easy. You saw in that presentation, it was a lot to follow all the things that go into reading. But, uh, what you're moving forward tonight is our teachers getting materials in hand and then we'll formally approve the purchase and implementation.

Our goal has really been to have broad involvement and really a deep meaningful review to make sure that we were making good choices to ensure the level of rigor and the expectations we have for our students here in Minnetonka would be upheld through these updates and these changes.

The goal is to have every child starting in kindergarten um reading at grade level and supporting those multilingual learners and students receiving special education in achieving their individualized reading goals in order to meet grade level proficiency. Right? So part of this readact goal is that districts must provide evidence-based reading instruction by 2026 2027 school year.

When we think about discussion and exchanging ideas in terms of computers, there's a lot more that really address that and we'll chat about that just in a minute. Uh the other pieces they really focused on the college and career readiness goals and we'll give you a sense of kind of what those are in a minute as well.

Under the current statutes, we don't have any further capacity to increase the operating referendum other than receiving annual inflation increases. And we all know that, but it's important to keep saying that. We got to keep pounding away on it because it would re it would really be important to us because just even a little flexibility in there means we wouldn't be going through this budget reduction exercise for a number of years even with $300 per pupil or $500 per pupil.

We're in the bottom 5%. Actually, about the bottom 3%. The state aid average is 12,448 and we're at 10,254. That's $2,194 per pupil. Okay, $2,194 per pupil. If we just were at the state aid average and the state aid average is actually up about 144 because there's um uh you know, if you if you rank the state aid as a school district, but if we were at the state aid average, we'd be getting approximately another $25 million in state aid.

Can you talk a little bit about that? Um and what potential options there are for the use of that and what cautions there are for that?

I think I think just looking at that unassigned fund balance, that's my that's my primary concern looking at our long-term forecast because even even if we're operating at a break even pace every year, you know, expenditures are going to be rising due to inflation and contracts and things like that. So that unassigned fund balance as a percentage is going to just passively creep down even if we don't have to touch it. So, I mean, I I don't know what the answer is, but it but it it seems like an imperative in the next few years that we've got to figure out a way to start topping that off and making sure that we keep that in a healthy place.

This decision doesn't need to be made until August. Um, but we'll talk tonight about the ability to do a significant improvement in facilities and not ask our community for any tax increase, leaving all of that potential tax increase for future operating referendum. It it's some financial wizardry uh having reviewed this once. Um, but it it also is what our community asked for to improve our facilities and what the board asked for to leave room to raise for operating.

So, we were able to to we were able to come up with and to design and it is legitimate a no net tax impact option. And the reason I say no net tax impact is because people are you can't tell people, well, we're buying doing $85 million worth of bonds and you're not paying taxes. you. Yeah, of course you're paying them off, but the point is is we're asking people to pay the same for long for what we have outstanding on our geo bonds, but not more than what they're currently paying.

So you're still paying the same amount, but it's not impacting the rest of your home budget, right? And so, you still can buy the same amount of groceries and stuff because you're paying the same amount to pay your two cars off over time. So, it's just kind of it's similar just kind of similar to that.