Uh good evening. Good evening everybody. Welcome to the August 21st, 2025 Minnotonka School Board study session. Uh we have two items on the agenda for this evening. Uh well, three, I guess. Uh it's uh time for citizen input. uh citizen input is an opportunity for the public to address the school board on any topic in accordance with the guidelines printed below and I don't think we have anybody wishing to address the board good we will move move on to our update on OPEB trust fund superintendent law >> acting chair members of the board um and members of the public oped trust fund is other postmployee benefits Tonight, executive director of finance and operations, Mr. Paul Rajois, is going to talk through the what this trust fund is, a little bit of history about it, our current status, and some projections for the purpose of informing the board and the public about this fund and and how some things have changed over the last 6 months or 12 months based on some changes in employee behavior, former employee behavior, and other statutory change. Mr. Bourgeois, >> thank you, Superintendent Law. Uh, Mr. chair, members of the board. Actually, I look back and the last time I did a board presentation on this was a couple years ago. So, it's appropriate to just check in on everything. The fund is doing fine. It's doing what it's intended to do, but it's, uh, probably worth a little bit of a refresher. So, uh, little bit of a history and a purpose on it. Back in 2008, the legislature, uh, passed Minnesota statute 41.675. And that was something that allowed uh public entities including school districts to basically uh start a trust fund for other post-employment benefits. uh the and so OPED for short, the OPED liabilities were primarily lifetime health insurance benefits that were paid to retirees that had been negotiated in bargaining unit contracts. Uh in in the late late uh 1980s, 1990s in particular, the latter part of the 20th century, uh those numbers got pretty big. There were some places that had hundreds of millions of dollars of of liability. And if you don't have something set up to uh earn earn some money itself to help pay for that, all that would come out of operations in the future. So uh but to establish a truck, so that's why the the statutes were passed to give give a vehicle for entities to be able to handle all of those uh post-employment benefits, which primarily lifetime health benefits. Uh in other words, we pay your your insurance premium for the rest of your life. uh they had to be capped by July 1st of 2002 and then you could and uh the trust could be funded then by the issuance of general obligation bonds. So the other thing is the legislature allowed the choice of two types of trust. One is an irrevocable trust and that locks in the funds for paying retirey benefits into perpetuity and and only only retirey benefits. A revocable trust allows more flexibility to use the funds if the investment of the funds does better than anticipated or produces more assets over the liability. In that case, there's some very strict criteria, but in that case, uh the board has the school board has the ability to utilize excess assets for any anything that they deem appropriate. Um so because of these three reasons though um we knew wh did I I missed a slide? Yeah. We chose to establish a revocable trust because we knew excess assets were likely to acrue. uh when we were starting through this, I directed the actuaries to use a conservative 3% discount rate to calculate the initial liability because we wanted to make sure that we actually had enough and we didn't want to uh be able to we were didn't want to have to worry that we would be short of funds even in an economic downturn. And also at that time 3% was what the district could earn on its own with what we were investing in cash which actually like we're handling our cash that way now. We're getting 3%. So very conservative in that regard, but uh and and we didn't know exactly how we were going to handle it. Uh one of the options was for the district to just keep all of our assets in cash and make that 3%. But then they also allowed for us to to uh work with financial professionals to very carefully manage the investments and possibly make a little bit more. But we knew also that with a fixed set of participants receiving benefits over time, there were 615 um that um over time normal mortality would result in a liability decreasing significantly. But as I'll talk about a little bit later, it will never go away because there's something called an explicit liability for what you actually pay for. Uh and then there's an implicit liability because retirees are actually eligible to stay on retirement uh or on health insurance for the district if they pay for their own premiums. So um but because of those three reasons, we knew that there was a chance of excess assets occurring over time. Uh we established it in 2008 with a 17.7 million li dollar liability and u uh 615 participants. uh we did a selection process and Wells Fargo Fargo Private Wealth Management was selected as our our investment manager. And so by utilizing them, we're basically able to invest in all of the same investment vehicles that the TRA um uh well the state board of investment does for the uh teachers retirement association, for the public employees retirement association, for the state of Minnesota retirement association. So um from 2008 to 2025 actually $10 million 10.8 almost $10.9 million has been dispersed to the general fund to pay for retirey health benefit expenditures. The interesting thing about that is, you know, little things make doing some of the little things make a big difference in terms of the financial health of of the district in terms of having somewhat of a fund balance because if you if you look at it um you know, we're always trying to balance the budget and we're trying to expend as much as we can on on on instructional operations. Well, you know, so we're trying to budget a a surplus of less than a million dollars, just really tight, you know, and spend 99.9% of the dollars. Well, a couple of these things make a big difference because uh if we had not been able to transfer $10.8 million or $10.9 million from the OPED fund to the general fund to pay for retirey benefits over that time period, our our current fund balance instead of being the projected actual uh we we're not closed officially yet, but then the estimated closing amount of 17.4 4 million would actually only be about 6.5 million. So there's little things that we do that make a big difference uh in terms of of you know the decisions that the school board has made uh to keep the district financially sound. Um so on this is a little bit of a background though because at one we did at one point in time have excess assets several years ago and the board made the decision to invest that in a long lived asset. So it back on June 30th of 2021 we the assets had grown to 28 million and the liability had declined to 10.9 just under 11 and uh participants had had declined from 615 in 2008 down to two uh down to 209 and so uh the the this part of the subdivision statute there I have it listed out uh allowing the school board to determine hey there's excess assets we might want to use them for for another purpose. uh the school board approved the use of $7 million in excess assets uh to you to construct the strategic asset of the Vantage Momentum building. And then uh in in October of 21 and then on June 2nd, 2022 after bids came in higher than estimated due to uh construction inflation uh calendar 22 was the year that actually inflation peaked across the country at 8%. But we needed another $2.85 million. So we put $9.85 $85 million, pull them out of the market, out of the investments, and put it into the um completion of the Vantage Momentum uh building. And actually turned out to be a pretty uh good move at the time though because right after that, the market actually dropped considerably uh by about 30%. So we actually money that would have just disappeared with a with a market drop. We basically were able to put into 100 million or 100 million a 100redyear asset. Um, now here's the issue of what's called the revocable trust liability components. There's two components of the liability. Explicit, as I mentioned, and then implicit. So implicit. So the explicit amounts are specifically contracted dollar amounts that were in effect for persons employed before July 1st, 2002. So these are dollar amounts specified in the contract. You're going to get X amount per month for the rest of your life. Um, and again, these this portion of the benefits will eventually end due to mortality. And then there's an implicit amount, and that's related to the fact that under Minnesota statute, a person retiring from a school district um can stay on them and their dependent can stay on the school district's insurance plan, provided that they pay the premiums themselves. So, um the thing is is older persons are more expensive for health insurance uh cost purposes. Uh you know, so like I'm more expensive than a brand new teacher because I need a little more maintenance, a lot more maintenance. Um but uh so the thing is is uh Minnesota statutes require that premiums not be age related. So I can't get charged more than a new teacher uh for the same coverage. Right? So um so premiums for younger employees are technically higher than than they would be uh if they were just assessed by the actual age. And the premiums of older employees are actually a little bit lower or um they're technically lower than they would be if it was if we were just you know charged out by age. So that's how you get the the same level same level um premium and uh and but that that is what's called the implicit because the the retirees are brought down and act active employees are brought up. So that's the implicit subsidy of active employees going up. So, um that's how the implicit liability uh is is determined. And the the thing about that is these benefits will never end due to mortality because uh the ability to stay on on a district's health plan is is in statute. And uh so this is a um this is a little bit harder way to look at it and I'm I'm going to try to point it but this is actually the actual ter aerial table pulled right out of the cbiz actuary calculation of our current acred liability and uh so it's a little bit hard to read but on the left side it says the plan you're beginning July 1st 2024 which is so u at the beginning of the year the total plan value was um or uh unfunded liability was 10,3 $33,000, which is the number at the upper right. And you can see how that that dwindles out over time. It goes out to 20 uh 23. And you can see how it it's disappear. It it gradually disappears. Um now, but and in fact, you'll see that most of that is actually going to be the implicit liability by 203, but they project out that there will be uh people still hanging in there um who are part of the explicit liability. So this is the explicit liability and you can see right now as of the plan year of of July 1st 2024 fiscal 25 so as of June 30th 5.2 million of that 10.3 is the explicit liability. In other words that's how much for the people were paying cash out for the promises to pay their premiums every month. And you see how by 203 it keeps going down down down. it gets down to 469,000 and eventually by probably about 2060 it actually will probably get to zero. Um u because there's going to be some oxytogenerians and septtogenarians and hanging in there you know um so that's a good thing but um but it it eventually dwindles down. So there's not and there there's not a separate table uh that shows implicit but you can get the implicit by just doing the math. So the implicit liability is at 5 million versus the 5.2. So it's about 49%. But eventually because of mortality, the explicit will drop to zero and the implicit will go to grow to 100%. But they're saying, okay, by by 203, which was the end of the or the current estimate, um the implicit liability of that 2 million, the implicit's going to be 1.6 and the explicit's 4.469,000. But the thing about that is is is that that overall implicit liability though is still going to be considerably lower than it is now. Um although but it could go up if more people decide to stay on. And we're actually studying that a little bit because we have had a situation where we thought our our liability was our liability was going to be about down about $9 million, but it was calculated at 10.3 because there were 12 retirees and seven dependents that stayed on our health insurance plan rather than going to uh most people go to UKare and um and also they're on Medicare, right? So there's there's Medicare and we get we get the Medicare benefit for people who are retired and still on our plan. There's Medicare's calculated into it. So Medicare still does that their part, but then we do anything above Medicare. But the thing is is just those 19 people actually increase the estimated liability by about $1.2 million up to 10.3. So because they're relatively young, relative, you know, for well relatively young for retired people and they're going to be hanging in there for a while. So that's that's kind of the way it works. But eventually that liability does decline over time. And so if we just keep doing um well the the charts I'm going to show you next are just um some history and then what it might look like assuming we just would earn our steady 3%. Uh conservatively and if we do better than that we'll do better than that. But uh the the I you're going to see that we need the level of of assets we have now to fund the annual withdrawal. So this is a history uh from fiscal year 10. Uh we we started we sold the bonds in the fiscal year 2009, but we really just held tight uh and didn't do much with them and until the financial meltdown kind of uh basically just, you know, got a little bit more settled. And so then we started slowly investing them. And so you can see that we've had years where we haven't where we actually lost assets in terms of the investment return, but most years we're actually making uh uh reasonable investment returns. And so for fiscal 25, we made 1.3 million. Fiscal 21, that was the year when when uh the stock market was just, you know, doing very well and we didn't do anything different than we did the year before, but we made 4,750,000 in that year. And that's the year the assets got up to 28 million. So our annual average return has been 5.9% if you take all that all the ups and downs and um we've made 5.9% on average. Uh and uh so that's the way that that's what that looks like. Uh here's our withdrawals uh from the beginning uh our annual withdrawals and that's been calculated by we just take what the acturial number is and withdraw that every year. And uh uh again you can see through FY25 again I mentioned 10.9 million withdrawn. Our general operating fund balance is 17.4. So again a a good point part of that could be attributed to the fact that hey we didn't have to pay uh these retire health benefits out of funds that we could use for classroom instruction or anything else. Or it's like or that might be in the difference between us having a surplus in a given year versus not. And so, you know, that really those benefit withdrawals kind of you could say they make up about uh roughly twothirds of the current general operate unassigned fund balance. And then on this one, I have FY26 is estimated at $895,000 withdrawal. So, this is kind of a busy thing, but uh it it shows our our our liability is in blue. Uh the assets, and those come right off the charts that CBiz Biz handles or puts together for us. Our assets are um and this is historical. Our assets are in orange and then the excess assets are um the blue and basically blue and orange uh turns into green. Uh the um uh although what happens is in calculating excess assets, not only do I just do what the current assets uh and the current liability is, I also include as part of the liability the ability to or the need to make that next withdrawal because it's within 12 months. And so that's a current liability. So I count I I don't I count that as part of not as part of the liability as opposed to um not being part of the excess assets at any given date. That's a little more conservative way to approach it. And so you can see after FY21, that's when we uh pulled out the 9.85 million for the uh the Vantage building. And um I'm just I'm just going to go actually I'm going to go back because so yeah, when we when we got up to out to here, we pulled money out before all this bad stuff happened right there. Um so it was it was fortuitous move on our part in that regard. So this is just what the liability looks like. uh you know going calculating from where it is you can see the jump from 9.3 up to 10.3 uh and so that's where I mentioned the 12 retires and seven dependents uh so uh CBS said it's a third year of that they noticed that condition so we've contracted CBIS to do a comprehensive uh valuation study which is actually a little deeper study than just calculating you know just kind of rolling everything over and updating the numbers so uh they're they're uh going to put that in process for us. But this is the way that you see the total liability going down. And I have it going down through 2039. Uh it's small enough to fit on the chart. But also 2039 just happens to be 30 years after we issued the bonds. And that's when the last bonds are paid off. So um now the bonds are paid off actually by a levy that the taxpayers used to pay the bonds off. But still it's it just kind of to show that that we are still going to have a liability when the bonds are paid off. Uh but we're also going to have assets when the bonds are paid off. So, these are annual projected future benefit withdrawals. Um, so from for fiscal 26, which is what we're in right now through fiscal 39, uh, we're currently projected to pull out another $9 million out of there. That would be $9 million that if we didn't have this fund would have to basically come out of the general fund. It wouldn't be available for instructional operations. And then this is um projected future investment earnings being very very conservative but uh so these next slides I just do uh assuming the three that we're just going for our 3%. We invested you know reasonably conservative and uh so you know uh we had a decent year in FY25 but uh we've had years where we've been less than that. So if we just hand hang in at 3% you see the see it drops a little bit because the the payments coming out are are higher than the earnings at 3%. Uh and then our projected future asset balance at 3% annual returns. Uh we actually are still end up at fiscal 39 with still about 11.6 million in in assets. Uh we're slowly drawing it down though if we just make 3% returns. But the thing is is our excess assets actually go up because the liability is dropping actually more than we're withdrawing the excess assets. So uh here we're showing how the the excess assets would grow from the current level of about uh 3.6 million up to about 5.9 million. So that puts all those three prior charts together. You can see the uh the assets slowly going down but the liability going down faster which means the excess assets rise. But it doesn't, you know, that's not a lot of money. It doesn't take a few million dollars one way or the other to actually really tip that. And uh if you know if we say hey let's pull you know $5 million out of the assets right now um to take it down exactly to 100% of the liability all of a sudden you're basically turning this fund into a sinking fund but it has to continue on because of the implicit liability has to continue on after fiscal year 39. So um again our net results after 17 years uh 17.7 million invested. If you take everything that we've withdrawn, we've actually pulled out 20.7 million of what I'm calling dividends, the uh benefit withdrawal dividends and the investment in our 100-year asset. And we have 14.7 million remaining. Uh uh the uh net result after 14 years, if we make our 3% annual returns, we'll have about 5.5 million uh in investment earnings. will actually pull out about $9 million of dividends uh to cover the the uh the the benefits that have been b paid out and then we'll have um 11.7 million in assets remaining. Uh and about of that amount about 5.9 million would be excess assets at that time. So that's just a summary of of kind of where we're at and it's we're just kind of steady as she goes and just trying to be conservative and you know if hey the stock market goes nuts and goes up to 70,000 maybe there'll be another opportunity there you know but we're not counting on that. We're counting on making sure that we can cover the benefits but the school board has the option if if we're the the uh benefactors of good fortune in that regard. There might be an opportunity at some point in time. I can't say there will ever will be but there might be. you know. So anyway, but the the fund is doing what it's supposed to do and it's where it's supposed to be. The the um assets are producing enough revenue to basically cover uh the rema remainder of that liability. >> Thank you, Mr. Bourgeoa. Um any questions or comments from the board? I know we had some fe That's next. Okay. Um I know we have some board members not attending, but um we have some feedback on the next item. D >> um how how exactly is the implicit liability calculated? >> Is that is that just a matter of art by the actuaries? >> It's all actuaries. Yeah. >> Yeah. You know, so if there's I can't do it. >> Um and but if if I'm understanding this correctly, explicit liabilities were the retirees who were eligible for this fund when the fund was established. Correct. um they were people who were eligible under the contracts where the benefits were capped. So let's say I was a brand new teacher on uh in January of 2002 because they had to be capped by July 1st of 2002. I have rights to that old contract for the rest of my career. So let's say I was 22 and it's two and it's 20 and I'm going to work till 2042. >> Mhm. and then I'm going to retire and I'm going to be around till hopefully 2062, right? I mean, I might be 82 or 90. So, there are some people that are still in the system and they have the rights for whatever dollar amount that is. And for teachers, it happens to be $210. >> Um, but >> and that's the that's the explicit liability. And then the implicit is any of our staff, >> correct? >> Can elect and and then we have to kick in. So it stands to reason that as our district has grown because our district has grown a lot since this fund was established and presumably yes our staff has grown a lot since the fund was has established the implicit liability has also ballooned over time because there are more people who are eligible for that benefit. Um well they only they only have been doing it um they have only looked at actual projections of people staying in. So the implicit liability is based on kind of the historical use okay >> as opposed to people going to UKare. Um, so my understanding is what the the way the actuaries are going to work on looking at that comprehensively is they're going to try to look at that and they're going to go okay because it's still not a majority of people that are staying on our plan. It's just more than had been the vast majority of our people basically go to UKare. I'm just I'm just trying to think around like how prudent we need to be with this fund because looking at it through the the Vantage momentum lens, you know, we withdrew $7 million and then there were cost overruns that necessitated another dispersement of 2.85 and we've got an $85 million bond measure we're putting in front of the community for a bunch of construction this fall. Um but it sounds like it wouldn't be prudent to make any withdrawals from this fund to cover anything on that front, right? >> No. That because the thing is is um well, you can't the the quoteunquote cost overruns were it was a bid. The bids came in higher. Okay. Because of inflation. It wasn't once the bid was in, we did not run over cost, >> but the bid estimate was higher because everything was going crazy at that time. >> Yeah. I just I just trying to wrap my head around how prudent we need to be given what's on the on you know in the near term. So, >> right, that makes sense. >> But but from a construction standpoint, we shouldn't have to um pull money out of this fund to to do any of those other projects. Um and the discussion has always been with the board even before um I think member Battal, you're the you're the great back of the gorilla clan or whatever kind of right. Um, so you've been around the longest, but even even before that, um, the uh um uh the discussion was always if we're going to pull money out of there, it has to be for something that's going to benefit the district for a long time, it has to be really meaningful. It's like we're not going to they weren't going to pull money out to like, oh, we're going to balance the budget for one year and kind of fritter it away. that's never been, you know, that's always been a discussion of really and and the reality of it is is the fact that, you know, the stock market jumped gosh, you know, about 10 or 12,000 points like in a very short period of time and that's why everybody's assets were way up and and so it actually um the people who are on also on our our our oped committee are investment people that uh work for we have one of them John Groten is investment manager for Thrive. Um but uh it was you know they they looked at they said yeah well it's a good time probably to take some money off the table whether we use it for the OPED fund or not but it's like let's pull money out of the market and and reduce our risk and we did and it turned out we got a 100red-year asset for it that we otherwise wouldn't have and we didn't have to charge the taxpayers for it. So that that's a calculation that went into making that decision to pull that money out out at that time. >> Right. Thank you. Mike, >> uh Paul, you said the uh one of the um one of the reasons why we had the little sort of miscalculation recently was because uh there weren't as many people who were on that implicit bi uh implicit pathway that didn't go to UKare like was anticipated like most people do. Do we know why that was? Is that are we anti- and and are we anticipating that that is going to stay consistent in the future that there will be there will continue to be people going to UKare and not staying on our insurance plan or was that like a matter of like for for those people they felt it was more convenient for them to stay on rather than have to switch around and change things up? >> Well, one one of the things is um we have retirees on this plan who live all across the country. Uh we also have active dependents who are because you can be a dependent till age 26, right? So we have dependent all across the country. So I work real hard to make sure that there's really a really good network uh for our self- insurance plan for everybody across the country. But if you retire, let's say Arizona or or Florida or I don't know, Montana, uh you can stay on our plan. I don't know if there's more people doing that or not, but because to be on UKare, you have to be a resident in the state and maintain that residency, but the vast majority of people are still doing that, are still going there. It's just that not quite as many. So that that may mean that people are moving out of state a little bit more. Uh so like like as I mentioned, the actuaries have said that they saw this trend for three years and this this last year was just a bigger one. But a bigger bigger year doesn't make mean it's going to stay that level. Uh so that's why they're going to study it and that's why we pay that's why we pay them enough to do that. >> So it's still yet to be determined whether or not this is going to be a >> Yeah. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Um I don't it you know most people retire they tend to stay around their families. Uh you know but you just if I knew I would probably be you know I'd be a really wealthy guy. know if I had figured out how to do that. But uh no. >> Well, based on the previous slide, I mean, it looks like your uh if I'm reading the the slide correctly, the amount that has that was originally invested, if you add the cumulative benefits and our remaining amount, then you've actually we've doubled >> Oh, right here. >> the initial investment. >> Yes. Yeah. We basically doubled the investment because we've actually pulled more out between the benefit withdrawals and then the the one-time excess assets uh in that for Banmo. Um we've actually you know that's um you know we've been able to do that. So yeah, and there's still $14 million of assets remaining. >> So you may not be able to predict all the future, but it looks like this was a pretty good prediction that this was a good investment to make back in 2008. So >> yeah and yeah. So so we are yeah and and we're solid. We we should be able to you know even at 3% we should be able to fund the actuar's current calculation of benefits. Um if we keep hitting our 5.9 you know the historical that might be some excess benefits. So if the implicit does keep rising we should be able to cover it. But I I don't really want to. We know we can make 3% in worst case by just putting money into the things that we can invest in, you know, super super conservatively. Um, but we've been doing about 5.9 with a very conservative portfolio compared to not the same as being all in cash, right? But um, uh, it it's in about as solid a position as you can as you can get it. So, um, you know, people will be able to if we if we just kind of stay the course, I think just be conservative and we if there's an opportunity for some future use besides in uh besides utilizing it for benefits, you never know. But when that would be, you never know. But the main thing is is making the main thing the main thing is that this fund is set up to fund the benefits that are going to be acrewing over the next 30 or 40 years. So, it won't be coming out of the general fund. Thank you and thank for all the questions. And I know you talked a little bit about this, but can you talk a little bit? We have a committee that that is meeting and looking at this fund. Board member Olsen sits on that. I think it meets quarterly, twice a year. >> Did you already did you already go through that? I'm sorry. No. >> But I just want to shout out to the OPED committee. Um I know you talked about Mr. Groten and I don't know all the other names uh uh from that standpoint but just from the community standpoint that this is a board committee typically the treasurer sits on that so it's something that we look at four times per year look at investment results and keep all all of that going. So, I just wanted to make that me mention. Make sure >> two more members a shout out to Dan Seagerson is a uh investment advisor for Focus Financial. And then uh Pat Schmidt is a certified public accountant uh and he's he's retired now, but he had Schmidt CPAs um and he's retired, but the both Dan and Pat have actually been on the committee since its inception. >> Great. and a shout out to you uh uh for recognizing this and jumping on it all those years ago. Uh something that we can see and um uh board member Remall talked about a great investment and um we've the past boards have been able to use that for a great investment. So, thank you. Appreciate it. >> Y thanks. >> Uh next up uh is discussion on changes to open meeting law. Superintendent Law, >> Mr. Chair, members of the board, as you're aware, prior to this board meeting, I shared an update to the Minnesota statute 13D.02, specifically related to remote participation for for government bodies or specifically in our case, school boards to board meetings. Um, it it's timely tonight because we we would have had a quorum, but you know, board members have other jobs. Some of our board members sit on other boards that meet on the same night. Uh sometimes uh there are medical emergencies. Sometimes there are family emergencies. This statute changed what was currently allowed prior to this legislative session, which was if a board member wasn't going to attend a board meeting, they had to be in a public place that was noted with opportunities for other members of the public to join that public or that board member at that location. um through the pandemic and remote meetings, flexibility was encouraged and the legislation passed our legislature passed this change and I'll read through the uh pertinent members or uh pertinent items for members of the public. Um a meeting governed by this section and or by 13D.01 01 may be conducted by interactive technology so long as all members of the body participating in the meeting whether physically in the boardroom wherever or any other place can hear and see one another and can hear and see all discussion and testimony presented at any location in which at least one board member is present. So if only one board member was here, all other board members would need to be seen and see each other and would all have to see the presentations happening at the boardroom. Members of the public present at the regular meeting location of the body can hear and see all discussion and testimony and all votes of the members of the body. So people in this room would be able to have to see everyone hear of them and their votes. At least one member would have to be in this room. All votes have to be conducted by roll call so that each member's vote on each issue can be identified and recorded. And each location at which a member of the body is present in is open. Um, so this room would have to be open to the public. So that those are the big changes away from being everyone would have to be in a public location to these changes rather than just make a discussion or a decision about this. This board has decided to have a public discussion about it and uh tonight's a timely discussion. So, I had sent this information to board members in advance and I want to share some feedback from uh board member Leo Howerin and from board member Salinger who were unable to attend tonight. Um board member Leo Howerin shared we should if we take advantage of this we should notice make a notice to our public using the statuto language so that the public members are not surprised when they come and notice that someone is remote. That was the recommendation. More importantly or as importantly, make sure our technology is set up so that wherever someone is at, there's high-speed internet that everyone can be seen and heard, everyone can see and hear all participants, and board members who are participating remotely would not be interrupted um during the meeting. Board member Leo Helerin said, "I value the inerson engagement the board. We don't need to be shy about using remote options when necessary or useful to allow more full participation an issue that when board issues arise that would be where we'd value all board member discussion. Um so he shared that he he what he um the statute does not cover remote participation by members of the public. he acknowledges that that um he it's not allowable under the statute. That could be a different discussion. So that was uh board member Leo Helen. Board member Celinger shared um it's important to be explicit with our community about this option. However that would be whether it be by policy or notice. I don't think we should be using it frequently. It would be nice to have as an option in unique situations. Make sure the technology is is available to display members of the board. Um, and presenters, she's also curious how other board members are other school districts are using this policy. So both of these I would summarize as having an openness to this policy, making sure our technology is uh fully accessible and making sure we're fully transparent with members of the community that this is an option should it need to be used. And I would say um certainly we're not making a decision tonight. I would say both of them uh think it would be valuable if there's important issues that the board is discussing and a roll call vote would be beneficial to the public. With that, I'd open up to board members in the room. >> Yeah. Thank you, Superintendent Law, and thank you for gathering uh board member feedback. Uh any um questions, comments, discussion uh from board members or I can go, uh if you guys are thinking. Yeah. Um uh just a couple of things. Um it's very similar to what we had to do during CO. I mean it was uh very similar. So we had um uh typically the chair was here uh with members of the administration in this room and then we were all remote from from that standpoint and so we couldn't be in public places and all of those things. So out of necessity so it feels a this policy a lot like that. Um so and as I think about this um I'm definitely open to it. I like um um member cylinder's comments that um you know personally I I think it should as well should be used in very special cases and and communicated appropriately as as much as we can. But we've had um lots of interesting meetings or that that have come up out of necessity where we have emergency meetings or doing other things or we really need to make a decision or do different things. And there's probably going to be things like that. Um, and if we need to get to a quorum or other things, I I think uh we need we should have the flexibility and have a policy like this. um uh be to so that we're prepared for that just in case and thinking about the technology pieces thinking although from that standpoint uh and and then I go to the other side where um I wouldn't want and and and I don't know that we get to control this again I value the in-person uh nature of this I you know um board meetings are in public for the public uh uh so that they can uh see us and see us interacting and I um I understand you can do that in technology. So um I wouldn't want it personally to be the norm. Um you know if board members have to miss that's that's I think that's fine and that's part of the the deal. Um so I don't know that I'd want to lean on this just to get everybody into a meeting um from that standpoint. But if you have emergency things, there's probably controversial topics or things that are very maybe not controversial, just very important to the public that they want to hear from all board members. I I think there's various reasons to be supportive of this and investigate it more. So that's kind of my long drawn out uh thoughts. >> Dan, >> I I pretty much concur with everything you said like it except it being the exception rather than the rule. seems like a good approach, but it it seems very prudent to have a plan for how we would implement that um if the use case arose. You know, I think a couple a couple factors I have to consider are, you know, um is it, you know, like you said, important ones where it would be for the public's benefit to bring people in remotely. We should absolutely consider it if there's someone that can't be there. if that like in addition to all the factors you listed, if the board member is they're on a work trip or something like that, but they really want to participate remotely, I think we should honor that. And then I don't know if it's something we need to do in study sessions or not. We might differentiate between the type of meeting that we're having as to whether we want to implement that or or bring that to the table or not. Um I think uh couple my couple thoughts on it. Uh number one uh when I first saw this my first question was do we need a policy and it seems like as far as state statute is concerned we don't need a policy per se. Uh the Minnesota School Board Association does not have a model policy at least at this point related to it. Obviously, this just kind of came around, so I wouldn't be surprised if they're working on it, but they also can crank those out pretty quickly when they when there is need for it. So, um I think if we were to have a policy for it, it would probably be more along around the idea of sort of code of conduct concepts rather than uh specific requirements that reflect the the way the statute works. Um outside that, I think I think I agree with everything that's been said so far and the comments. Um, I think this is something that I I would like to think that at least the current board would not be leaning on that like abusing that in other words in order to to not have to be present in the room. I think we're all very interested and invested in in coming and being present whenever we possibly can. Uh the other the other question we might want to address more of a as a culture sort of issue around this subject is when people are absent do we make sure they know that unless there is something driving them to attend online then their absence is call it an excused absence. they don't need to go out of their way to be present on an online basis unless it's again something that they they want to participate. >> Uh great feedback. Yeah. And maybe there's a a question and for everyone here is what are the drawbacks or unintended consequences? I know we talked about leaning on it or um I don't I don't know that you could say boards would abuse it. I don't know that there's abuse of having board members in a meeting, but I mean, of course, if we value the imperson, you could see it that way, I guess. I don't know. Is there other unintended consequences or things we're not thinking about with this? So, as I've been thinking about this in the board discussion, certainly, you know, the likeliest thing to happen is some very unexpected thing happens between now and September 4th, our first board meeting. and we don't have an established protocol or policy in place and we need to use this to get a quorum something crazy like that it's allowable by statute it can happen so in the in the short term but in the absence of that I think we could come back at a September work session with a you know one of the things that our policy does and we can look at existing policy or standalone policy that acknowledges as a as this as a practice but it starts with a belief statement like many of state statement like many of our policies do that would say it's the belief of the Mitaka School Board that in-person engagement is a priority for all board members and it's understandable that some board members have to miss for other reasons and are unable to attend in person or remotely. But in the event that there are opportunities for board members to participate remotely and yet they're unable to physically be in the room topics of importance in the community or otherwise, you know, we can draft that belief statement. This board um accepts and will follow the this statute. we we can draft something up. I know uh general counsel Angie Flowers enjoys a good challenge and so we can talk about where where that might be fitting in policy and bring that back for another discussion with the understanding that this is I mean it's the law today so it's allowable but we will try to capture that and I think that captures what these board members said about let's be transparent about what our aspirations are and what when when we might use this if that makes sense. Um, hold on. Um, what one thing I think you I heard you say is an unintended consequence might be the community's view of this and what the board thinks about it. And so addressing that in a um in a policy or a statement or something um you know would help. We're always striving to be transparent and uh public trust and has been a goal for the last couple years. So, I think that is a is a good take. I'm sorry, Mike. >> I think the only other thing we need to consider um is some of the stipulations in the statute talk specifically about the the technical aspect. And so, we would probably need to make sure that our fantastic technical director in the booth is is able to provide what is set forth in that statute so that we can make sure that we aren't um providing or producing something that isn't acceptable. We will be working on that right now. >> And the budgetary ramifications if any. >> Thank you. Of course. >> Great. Any other comments? All right. Uh thank you board members and anybody listening online and everybody in the audience. Uh we are done. Thank you.