Hello everyone. I'm David Law, superintendent of Minnetonka Public Schools. >> And I'm Sally Brown, Minnitanka School Board Treasurer. >> We're glad you're able to join us for our school board recognitions program. We begin most of our regular board meetings with recognitions to highlight the positive impact that so many different people make in our district. >> Tonight we are recognizing state science and engineering fair state qualifiers. High school allstate music qualifiers from band, jazz band, choir and orchestra. National German exam honores. Math team state champions. Healthcare Students of America international qualifiers, Economics Challenge State Qualifiers, District Service Center Honored Artists from our middle schools, and National Board Certified Teachers for 2026. Every spring, the Minnesota Academy of Sciences hosts the state science and engineering fair. Students from across Minnesota compete at regional science fairs for the opportunity to share their projects at the state level. This year we had 37 high school students qualify for the state science fair from the regional science fair. >> One student has qualified for the international science and engineering fair which will be held in Arizona later this month. Congratulations Milan Dari for accomplishing this outstanding accomplishment. >> Two students were also named as alternates for the international fair. Anthony Dose and Jacob Lee. Our Minnetonka research students have been supported by teachers Kevin Burns, Caitlyn Mcder, Allison Peterson, and Patricia Price. Let's hear more about our researchers accomplishments. >> Researchers, thank you so much for joining us today as we recognize your qualification for the 2026 Minnesota State Science and Engineering Fair. This is a prestigious achievement that recognizes not only the curiosity, effort, dedication, and care you've demonstrated this year to pursue answers for your scientific inquiries, but also your ability to communicate clearly about complex topics with a wide range of audiences. We are excited to share some statistics about the success you achieved this year. Combined, you earned numerous awards at Twin Cities Regional Science Fair. We also had one Minnotonka research student qualify as a finalist and two alternates for the 2026 International Science and Engineering Fair. Congratulations again to each of our science fair participants. We are so proud of and inspired by you. >> My name is Matias Merdik and I'm a 12th grader at Minnitankka High School and so is my lab partner Maximus Ren in Mitaka Research. And in Minnitaka research, we spent the year investigating AI alignment, which is the study of how well large language models correspond to human morals and how well they obey instructions. We used sparse autoenccoders, which are relatively new training algorithms in the machine learning world, in order to isolate specific features, which we call neurons, which correspond to a given concept. And by using a novel approach with cross-lingual contrasting pairs, we were able to generate or find more accurately features which corresponded to the concepts of blackmail, murder, and test awareness. And by turning these neurons artificially up and down, we were able to selectively uh change model behavior in a partially novel way. And we are doing more investigations mainly into how to develop more efficient sparse autoenccoder training techniques to lower the barrier of entry to doing such types of alignment research. And our researchers from Minnetonka High School include Lux Bodell, Oliver Breen, Samuel Daniels, Milan Darie, Anthony Dose, Megan Eisenman, Noah Farnum, Jacqueline Fitzgibbons, Emma Goldsmith, Lucas Granucci, >> Anelie Janti, Stella Kellaher, Mihar Kurana, Eric Kowalsski, Kiona Lawrence, Grayson Lee, Jacob Lee, Allison Lei, Isabelle Lura, Samuel Mchugh, >> Amelia Moreno, Matias Murdock, Marine Najib, Aniroot Fulvati, Jish Ready, Maximus Ren, Ethan Rosner, Isaac Rose, Dia Saglar, Salon Civatam, >> Liam Sullivan, Annie Tan, Kendrick Tin, Birdie Walsh, Michael White, Isaiah Yerna, and Eva Simone Zorn. >> Congratulations again to each of you. >> High school musicians in our band, choir, and orchestra programs have several opportunities to qualify for state level honors ensembles throughout the school year. As part of these all-state and extracurricular groups, students have opportunities to connect with their peers from across Minnesota as they deepen their music practice. >> Let's learn more about these experiences. >> Hi, I am Miss Finn Somerfeld and I'm the orchestra teacher for Minnotonka High School. On behalf of myself, Mr. Kindle, our band teacher, and Mr. Kors, our choir teacher, I'd like to say how proud I am of our music students for achieving this all-state recognition. It takes a lot of dedication and drive to audition for and take part in these ensembles beyond the school day and our students have done an amazing job as part of this program. Great work to each of you. We look forward to seeing the great things you will do in the future and thank you for everything you bring to the Minnetonka music program. >> Congrats everyone. >> Congratulations to the following students for their outstanding musical achievements. From band and jazz band, we recognize Brady Ginsburg, Micah Herman, Lydia Hal, Johannes Linden, Samantha Patuis, and Riverstein. From choir we recognize Audrey Babe, Lana Cole, Kira Izzo, Addison Fogerty, Tate Life, Sadi Lindamman, Mingchi Math, Annabelle Mintz, Amelia Moser, Braden Puit, and Julia Smith. And from orchestra we recognize Allison Britzius, Angelie Janti, Jacob Lee, Becca Rowan, and Grace Joe. >> We would also like to thank our high school music teachers for their work to encourage and challenge students to reach their potential. Those teachers are Aaron Kors, choir, Kevin Kleindel, band, and Sarah Finn Somerfeld, Orchestra. Thank you. This year, seven Minnotonka High School students earned high marks on the National German Exam. >> The exam is administered each year to more than 12,000 high school students and serves as a benchmark of German language knowledge. >> Our students were advised by Angela Fairbro who is a German language instructor at Minnotonka High School. >> Let's hear more about the honor. >> Hi, my name is Angela Fairbrother and I am the German language instructor at Minnitankka High School. Each year, German students take the AATG National German exam to measure their German ability and compare it with other German students in the nation. This year, seven high school students scored exceptionally well on the exam, earning two bronze awards, a lice award, and four gold awards, which places them in the top of all national test takers. One student, Ellie Morris, placed in the top 36 out of 12,000 in the country to earn an all expense paid study trip to Germany this summer. She is the third Minnitanka student to earn this award. Congratulations to all our honores. We are incredibly proud of your hard work and dedication to learning the German language. Thank you. >> Congratulations to the following students for their national German exam honors. Gavin Durant, John FTH, Matteline Gamble, Megan Lindall, Ellie Morris, David Pyant, and Eliza Shuckman. >> Great work. >> The Minnetonka High School math team had an outstanding season this year. Students qualified for the state tournament where they defended their state championship title to earn their first place for the second year in a row. The math team is coached by teacher Tanner Holt. Let's learn more about the season. >> Congratulations to the Skippers math team on another fantastic season this year. Very proud of you guys winning the division, the section, and the state tournament. Awesome to see. I want to shout out especially how deep the math team was this year. Out of the top 50 individuals in the entire state, we had 10 of the highest individual scorers. Very, very cool. Plus, our entire season long across all team events, we had a perfect combined score. That was awesome to see in all the teamwork events as well. Um, last thing I want to shout out is my most important thing. I was so proud of you guys as competitors, uh, as members of your community in the math league. You guys had such positive connections with other teams. Uh, and that's what was was most important to see was to see all of that sportsmanship on display. So, congratulations again and go skippers. >> Congratulations to the following math team state champions. Max Millian Kenny, Jacob Lee, Eric Lu, Michael Lu, Alex Ren, Addison Shei, Nicholas Trillo, Evan Trong, Andreas Wallikson, Siron Woo, and Isa Urinar. Next, we will recognize international qualifiers from Healthc Care Students of America or HOSA. >> HOSA is a global studentled organization that provides leadership development and recognition specifically for students interested in healthcare careers. The competition events program allows students to be recognized for their competencies they've developed in a range of disciplines from behavioral health and sports medicine to epidemiology, environmental health, CPR, first aid, and more. During the state leadership conference in March, the 15 students placed in the top three of their events, qualifying them for the international leadership conference in Indianapolis this June. >> HOSA is advised by Minnetonka High School science teachers Stephanie Nelson and Amy Summers. Let's learn more about this opportunity. >> Hi, I'm Stephanie Nelson. >> And I'm Amy Summers. We'd like to congratulate our HOSA club on a great season and give a shout out to our members who qualified for the International Leadership Conference which will be held in Indianapolis June 2026. HOSA is a health sciences focused club where members compete in individual events as well as team skills events like medical assisting, CPR, and first aid. Students can complete can compete individually or as a team. Problem solving and health prep preparedness skills are emphasized. >> Our students qualified for ILC in the following events. Community awareness, CPR first aid and hostable. Individual event qualifications included environmental health, behavioral health, healthc care administration, pathofysiology, healthc care photography, medical assisting, and epidemiology. Congratulations on a great season. Way to go. Hello, my name is Haron Choy, a junior at the Minnotonka High School as you know and I qualified for the international competition for HOSA that is being held in June with a friend through our community awareness project on Alzheimer's disease. I think the biggest achievement that we achieved with this was being able to raise awareness about Alzheimer's disease in our school um and also in our community and being able to kind of win at state and qualify for internationals was really just like a big step forward because now we're able to share awareness internationally with people from around the world. um which is really exciting and I think the biggest impact with this is just getting the younger generation to know about the prevalence of Alzheimer's disease and its impacts on us and just being able to have them make a difference, maybe create a passion in them through our community awareness project. So, I'm super excited for international competition to further continue our progress on raising awareness on Alzheimer's disease. Thank you. >> Congratulations to the following international qualifiers. Lily Alvarez, Olivia Babe, Avery Bombstead, Heron Choi, Jquelyn Fitzgibbons, Audrey Get Olia Kamsa, Nikita Natraj, >> Kayla Utaro, Arouch Pumar, Karishma Rabbelloo, Owen Sandberg, Henry Schuler, Salony Sidatam, and Ari Yesvilleman. >> A team of four Minnotonka High School students qualified for the state economics challenge this year. >> The economics challenge is a quizbowl style competition on economics knowledge. >> The team is coached by high school teacher Joel Coleman. Let's hear more about the challenge. >> I want to say congratulations to the 2026 Minnotonka State Economics Challenge team who finished second in state at a competition at University of Minnesota. Uh economics challenge is a competition where students present in front of professors of economics uh as well as do a quiz bowl to test their knowledge of economics. I had a team of four students this year that just work so hard uh really fantastic. Uh and they were just even one question short from getting first place. Uh I have to have also special credit to Arouch Pomar uh who helped start the club officially at the high school. This year we had a total of 44 students participate in the economics challenge. Congrats again uh on second place finish at states uh to a fantastic team of four. >> Congratulations to the following state qualifiers. Jikri Ready, Oracle Renin, Andrew Siaan, and Brendan Stockman. >> Great work all. We will now recognize a group of our middle school student artists. >> Each year, our art teachers select pieces to display at the Minnetonka Schools District Service Center. This is one way we celebrate the work of our students and our commitment to a fine arts education. >> These pieces will be on display now through the end of May. >> Student artists, thank you for sharing your work with us. Your artistic talent and creativity brightens the district service center. >> We would also like to thank and recognize our middle school art teachers for their work to encourage and inspire our community. They are Renee Rolls and Katie Friends from Minnitonka Middle School East and Emily Swaggel and Jessica Carlson from Minnitankka Middle School West. >> Our teachers will now read the names of each student artist as their works are displayed. >> The Minnotonka Middle School art teachers are so excited to recognize our 2026 District Service Centered Honored Artists. As part of the DSSE honored artist showcase, our students work has been chosen by their art teachers to represent the amazing pieces created by middle school students this year. Artwork is now being displayed at the district service center. From painting and drawing to sculpture, ceramics, photography, and digital art, our students have truly used a wide range of techniques and mediums to add beauty to our district. >> Being part of this group is an honor, and we applaud each of you for your effort. We will celebrate now by showing images of your artwork as we read your names. >> Hello, I'm Renee Rolls, the art teacher at Minnetonka Middle School East. I will be reading the names for my students. Nora Cooling, Alice Foresight, Logan Crush, Angela Lee, Juniper Froberg, Martinez, Jackson Popin, Tracy Smith, Santa, Hayden Steckel, and Audrey Wacker. I will now be reading the names for Miss Friend's students. Maxon Brinley, Lily Serac, Lana Ednet, Audrey Fletcher, Freya Ham, Maggie Mccan, Rosemary Moore, Sophia Olay, Sen N Lola Perilo, Ingred Post, Olivia Wormling, Camila Wilson, and Casey Vanderwinkle. >> Hi, I'm Emily Swaggel, art teacher at Minnotonka Middle School West. I will be reading the names of the students from art classes here at MMW. Kea Ali, Kyler Berickman, Elsa Baron, Leila Delaney, Eli Durant, Elen Gilbertson, Liam Harkus, Vena A Mano Cartik Arand, Maline Kosrev, Charlie Kyper, Anders Colemmyer, Zoe Lewis, Michelle Pachco, Noah P Ryland Star Tacus Lauren Wallenfelt Frankie Williamson. I'm Jess Carlson. I'll be reading names from Minnotonka Middle School West. Mason Barnes, Tate Dixon, Sophia Dixon, Everett Heralding, SA Fwell, Elise Grriber, Amaya Lions, Charlie Severson, Clara Wilkins. Congratulations again, artists. We are so proud of you. >> Thank you again to each of you for sharing your talent, hard work, and inspiration with us. Our final recognition for this evening celebrates several of our staff members for their achievements this year. >> Minnitanka schools is proud to recognize three staff members who have become national board certified teachers during the 202526 school year. National Board Certification is a voluntary advanced certification that allows teachers to demonstrate excellence in teaching within their content areas. To earn this distinction, each teacher completed a rigorous application and testing process facilitated by the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards. >> The following teachers have earned National Board Certification. Courtney Davis, school counselor, Clear Springs Elementary. Dr. Tracy Ivy, American Sign Language teacher, Minnotonka High School, and Anette Johnson, school counselor, Excelsier Elementary. >> Congratulations to each of you for achieving this professional milestone. >> That concludes our recognition program for this evening. Thank you again for celebrating with us. >> The school board meeting will begin shortly. Good evening. Welcome to the May 7th, 2026 Minnitanka Public Schools board meeting. I would like to call this meeting to order. May we all stand for the pledge to the flag, please. >> [clears throat] >> May I please have a motion to adopt the agenda? >> So moved. >> Dan, may I have a second? >> Second. >> Second. >> Karen. All those in favor? >> I >> I. >> Any opposed? We have an agenda. Moving forward. Approval of fiscal year 2027 fees. Superintendent law. >> Madame chair, members of the board, at our study session in April, executive director in finance and operations, Mr. Paul Bourgeois summarized all of the proposed fee changes for the upcoming school year. Those fee changes I'll give him a chance to briefly summarize again tonight during the board meeting. But prior tonight to tonight's board meeting, there was a pro public hearing where he presented those fees and gave members of the public a chance to provide input. Tonight, there were no people in attendance who provided input for those proposed fees. Mr. Bourgeois will share those fees again for you one more time and give you the chance to formally approve them. Mr. Bourgeois, >> thank you, Superintendent Law, Madam Chair, members of the board. Uh, this is not Groundhog Day and I am not Bill Murray, but I have to repeat what we just went over a few minutes ago. Uh so every year we are required by law to have a public hearing on fees. As superintendent law indicated, there are a handful of proposed fees for this fiscal year. Coming up, the elementary school level has no proposed fee changes for fiscal year 27. At the middle school level, there's one fee change proposed by principal Dimit and principal Shermacher. Uh for family and consumer sciences fashion design class, the fee is proposed to increase by $2 from $8 to 10 to keep up with the cost of rising materials for those classes. At the high school level, activities director Ted Schultz has recommended the following fee increases. Increase the participation fee by $7 from $83 to 90. Increase the co-curricular activities fee by $30 across all activities. Uh cheerleading has requested an additional $50 for the activity for uniform replacement as recommended by the coach. And then youth and government has requested a new $50 fee for the 2-year-old program. uh this uh these increases per uh activities director Ted Schultz would keep us just above the bottom of our our peers in the lake conference uh we would just we'd be about $4 above on average Buffalo but we'd be a minimum of 10% but more over like about 30% to in fact almost over double for a couple of the other districts so uh still very competitive in terms of our fees and on the on the low end of the scale and then uh for our dome every year we do increase um costs to keep up with inflation. Uh the uh Tonka Dome fees are recommended to increase by $10 for full fuel reservations for an hour and then $5 across the board for all other reservation categories. Uh the Tonka Dome fees do increase every year just a little bit um to keep up with inflation. There's steadily rising costs for electricity and natural gas that increase every year and of course we have dome management. But as a result of our management of it, the Tonka Dome has fees have kept pace with inflation, they've been able to keep the dome breaking even every year and uh actually with enough revenues in to cover the last several bonded debt payments of the last of which will be in 2029. So the Tonka dome basically is a break even funded by participants and and renters and no impact on our local taxpayers. Thank you. >> Thank you. May I have a motion to approve the fiscal year 27 fees? >> So moved. >> Tanya, may I have a second? >> Second. >> Mike, any discussion? Karen. >> Uh, thank you, Mr. Bgeoa. Uh, just a quick question to clarify. If someone with these new fees, if someone's not able to afford these fees, we do offer scholarships and it's they're readily available and it's >> Yes, that is correct. and and at the beginning of every year uh uh director um shows make sure that that's included in all the information packets to people so that they know they're aware of it. >> Okay. Thank you >> Dan. And um thank you Paul and David alluded to this but we discussed this at the April 23rd study session which was streamed and recorded for the public and I think we had a more robust conversation around it then including um what Karen talked about with scholarships available for people who may not be be able to afford these. So if anyone's interested you can find that discussion there. >> We have a motion and a second. All those in favor say I. >> I. >> Any opposed? Motion carries. Thank you, Mr. Raja. >> Okay, next up, one of my favorites, we have the preview for the celebration of excellence. Superintendent Law. >> Madam Chair, members of the board, and for the members of the public who are new to this topic. Minnitanka has a long tradition of celebrating the amazing things happening in our system. everything from staff who have served for decades to staff who have served and gone above and beyond for our students. Leading up to this event, I'll just uh remind the public that we in all of our buildings, we host a celebration of service where we recognize employees who have served 5 years, 10 years, or 15 years. Board members have joined me in those events. We we celebrate all of our staff. But at the celebration of excellence, you're going to see that we do more than um just years of service. We do a variety of awards. Executive Director of Communications Dr. Jackie Getty will give us a preview. Dr. Getty. >> Thank you, Superintendent Law. Madam Chair, members of the board. This is one of our favorite events to put on. Our whole team comes together um along with people across the district to really help make this special. And I want to give a shout out right off the top to the Minnotonka Public Schools Foundation, which has chosen to sponsor this event this year and for the next two years, which allows us to continue to give beautiful awards to the award honores. So, thank you to the foundation. Um, this event takes place on May 14th. It's a Thursday. It's in the art center at the high school and it is an opportunity to celebrate the school volunteers, the teachers, and the employees that make this district so special and just a handful of them. We would love to honor every single one. So, these are representatives of of the people in our buildings who are doing such an amazing job. Um, we also live stream it. So, we fill the theater, but we also offer an opportunity to live stream it. So if people want to watch from home uh or send a link out to family and friends across the country, they across the world, they certainly can. So we'll share that on the district homepage of the website um the day of the event. So in addition to the years of service, we we honor 20, 25, 30, 35. And this year we have two teachers celebrating 40 years with the district. If you watch our recent podcast of the district, we showcased them and that was really fun to speak with both of them. Um, we also honor an employee for excellence in elementary education with our Bradley G. Board award. Uh, we have a Joyce Gustoson Memorial Award. We have the Judy Erdall memorial award and several Sper awards. And those awards are honored to school volunteers um to people who volunteer and support our schools in different ways. Uh we have a community education youth programs, adult programs, ECFM preschool volunteer award, and also a community education business partner award that night. We honor a partner who is a gold partner for the Vantage program. The same for the momentum program. Um and we also uh at the end of the program of all the teachers, one from each building who is honored for a teacher award for their building, uh someone is selected on the elementary level and on the secondary level to represent the school district um in the Minnesota uh teacher of the year program for next year. So that's exciting. And we also honor employees from across the district. So we have someone who um uh well you'll see at the event. So, um, Andy Smith, our videographer, has put together a little preview of the, uh, awards program and we'd love to see it now. >> Makes everything about the children. [music] He is so lighthearted. He is so real. >> Reminding each child that they are a leader [music] and a valued participant in their community. >> Finds ways to connect with you that most people can't. He gives you so many different [music] learning opportunities and he makes it so fun. >> I think she just has a huge passion for teaching and you can see it in what she does. The care and the intentionality [music] that she exhibits is remarkable to me. >> She tries to bring uh learning [music] to to life with real life projects. Everything she does comes from her just this wonderful [music] heart that she has. She just looks at you and smiles and gets you. She always is [music] able to see the unfulfilled potential each student that they have. >> Full of integrity, deep knowledge and [music] passion for what she does. >> See you is funny and feisty. He's awesome. >> Very kind, funny, and open [music] to ideas. So that's a little taste of both the people that you'll see there being honored and also the video. We have amazing videos. So it's it's a program that's peppered with first a reception out in the lobby and then we go into the theater and the award honores come up on stage. We run videos that really showcase all that they're contributing to the district. They get a beautiful award. We take photos. It goes pretty fast and it's a it's a really fun event. You'll just be surprised at how quickly it goes by. And um we hear good things every year of people having a good experience. So we're excited to honor the many amazing people that make our district so spectacular and everyone is welcome. It's a free event and everyone is welcome to watch the live stream as well. So I look forward to seeing you all there and to seeing the public. >> Thank you Dr. Getty. Congratulations to the honores and also I wanted to a special thank you to your team because the amount of work that goes into this is extraordinary. So, thank you and I'm looking forward to being there at the event. Any comments or questions from the board? >> No. >> Thanks so much. >> Thank you. >> Okay. Next up, we have the approval of long-term facilities maintenance 10-year plan. Superintendent Law. Madam Chair, members of the board, Minnesota statute requires that every public school district previews 10 years of proposed maintenance before approving the plan. And really what we're approving is the projects that will be done in the summer of 2027. But in order to get there, we'll show the plan or what's going to be happening over the uh long term. It's critical to do this routine maintenance to we do the best we can to keep our buildings in good shape. And these are the boilers and the windows and the parking lots and those things. Last week we had an unfortunate event where a very aging system collapsed and it shut down one of our schools at Manawasha for two days to repair that. If we weren't proactive like this, those types of things would be much more common. So tonight, executive director of finance and operations, Paul Bourgeois, is going to review what was previewed for the board at this day session in April. Mr. Bourgeois, thank you, Superintendent Law, Madam Chair, members of the board. Uh, every year we are required to do a update of our rolling 10-year plan of uh for long-term facilities maintenance. The district has been in this uh program since 2004. And uh actually if you take everything that we did starting in 2004 and you add up what we have planned in the next 10 years through 2036 over those uh what is that 32 years it's a total of $222 million. That sounds like a lot but our buildings are insured for a replacement value of almost $900 million. And we don't have places to go and build a new school or even space on a site to build a new school next to the the an old one and tear it down like they used to do back in the you know the early part of the past century. There's pictures of that happening with old wooden school houses, right? But so it's really important for us to keep these up. Uh our buildings all have good bones. They are uh built to last. And so uh by maintaining them, we're also paying it forward for future generations. I think that um well I' I've had comments from a lot of people in terms of over the years walking through Minnetonka High School and they can't believe that it was built in 1952 because you know as an example of things we catch up uh we've kept up we have about almost 1.9 million square feet and actually 81% of that is is uh 27 years old or older and uh if you think of of if if you've ever had the opportunity to own a house you know starts getting into those ages of 20 years of use and roof got to be replaced you know, plumbing, etc., etc., windows. So, this is the same the same thing, but we also have over a million square feet that's 59 years old or older. Um, all the way to the 1929 three-story office tower of or office tower of um Excelsure Elementary School, which is 97 years old. Uh, so we um have steadily put dollars into into the buildings. Uh the um update of the long-term maintenance plan for the remaining uh de for the next decade from fiscal 27 to fiscal 26 has projects listed out uh that total about $66 million. And uh there's there's significant components um uh uh ongoing in uh to completed in 2029. But after that, we actually kind of uh uh look at tapering off a little bit, not stopping ever. you never stop replacing roofs and and uh and and parking lots in Minnesota, but uh we will have replaced a lot of the major components that last 30 and 40 and 50 years and uh don't have to be replaced for another 30 or 40 or 50 years. So our the plan that we reviewed at the study session, it's um uh $66 million in total. Uh there are um cooling tower replacements and ice ice rink replacement at Paggel uh ice arena in 2031 that are included in the plan. Um I'm not going to go through the plan page by page. Uh we did that uh at the at the study session, but uh it's available for uh anybody to view if they would like to see the detail on for each year. >> Thank you. May I have a motion to approve the long-term facilities maintenance tenure plan, please? >> So moved. >> Karen, may I have a second? >> Second. >> Sally, any discussion? >> Karen, Mr. Baja, I just want to thank you um and your team for keeping up on the maintenance. I know that that is what's kept our buildings in the good shape and been very fiscally responsible. So really a shout out to you and your team for doing that. Thank you. >> Just keep rolling the vote. Thank you. Any other discussion? Okay, we have a motion and a second. All those in favor say I. >> I. I. >> Any opposed? >> All right. Approval. Motion carries. Thank you, Mr. Baja. All right. Moving along here. Um, next we have authorization of sale of 2026E general obligation building bonds. Superintendent Law. >> Madam Chair, members of the board, we will go through the next two items with one introduction. Mr. Ru, I'm going to call you back up. U, one of the ways we do the improvements that we're we are talking about doing is that we sell bonds. Um, so I'm going to ask executive director of finance and operations, Mr. Paul Bourgeoa, to describe these bonds and the purpose of these bonds for board approval. Mr. Bourgeois. >> Thank you, Superintendent Law. Um, I lost my uh Are we on agenda item X? Okay. Uh, long-term maintenance bonds. >> No, general obligation bonds. >> The general oblig say sorry I have there was some different numbers and I'm I'm ready. Okay. Um, thank you, Superintendent Lob, Madam Chair, members of the board. Our um uh our request here is to sell uh 2026 general obligation bonds. The uh these bonds are actually the second trunch of the 30 of $30 million that we talked to the public about during the operating referendum. I'm sorry, the building bond referendum. And u at that time we had looked at at spacing these bonds out and issuing them in 2027 because we would then start construction in 2028 on all the other projects other than the two middle schools. And we needed to do that based on the information we had at that time and property values in the district and making that work. That was the schedule that would work to allow us to have no property tax impact from these bonds on our taxpayers. Well, uh those calculations were done with mainly 2023 values. We now have 2025 values of all the property in the district and it has there's there's been an uh increase in in valuation and new construction. Uh that's almost 9% in those two years. So we have more parcels to spread the the dollars amount the same dollars spread among more people. Uh so we can spread these we can sell the bonds sooner but yet still maintain that no tax impact from these referendum bonds. The advantage of selling that $30 million trunch uh this year is that uh we will be able to start construction on the all the remaining projects uh earlier. We'll be able to start actually in by the time we design them, it'll be summer of 2027, but they'll these are smaller projects and they'll finish by December of 2027. And uh we will basically avoid about 5% annual construction inflation on them. So they should be less expensive. Uh we'll also take the dollars and we'll put money uh put the cash in the bank and earn interest on that. So we'll have dollars for contingencies if we need need something or find bad soil or something of that nature that you can plan for. Uh so it really has at least about 2.3 to$2.5 million benefit to doing it earlier. Plus we're getting every the other projects a year earlier for use by the students. So uh this this request is to actually authorize us to uh issue the bonds. We would sell them in uh in August and then we would close in in October just after the property tax levy is set because they'd be set up where the first payment would be due with the next property tax levy a year from now. Uh so the the bond uh the bond resolution has been approved by or approved has been written by Dorsy and Whitney, our bond council, and we'd ask that you approve this so that we can start working on the the bond sale for the over the summer. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. May I have a motion to approve or to authorize the sale of 2026E general obligation school building bonds? >> So moved. >> Mike, may I have a second? >> Second. >> Second. >> Karen, any discussion? >> Okay. All those Oh, sorry, Dan. >> I mean, I I I think a bunch of us say this all the time, but again, a shout out to Paul and the finance department for their diligence and staying on top of changing economic factors in the district. were able to save money and pull construction forward. So, that's a win-win for everybody and thank you for the community to the community for uh supporting this measure and supporting these improvements in the first place. >> Thank you. All right, we have a motion and a second. All those in favor, please say I. >> I. I. >> Any opposed? >> Authorization of sale carries. Thank you, Mr. BJ. >> Thank you. Next up, we have the authorization of sale of 2026F general obligation long-term facilities maintenance bonds. Superintendent L. >> Thank you, Superintendent Law. Madam Chair, members of the board, uh this is the next step to do the next year on the 10-year plan that we just talked about. Uh we have 13.565 million in bond projects scheduled for fiscal year 28, which is summer of 2027. Uh we will uh work on completing all those projects according to our plan. Uh in this instance, we are going to actually look at uh at basically doing this work at the same time we're doing construction work in all the schools. So we'll get economies of scale and hopefully better bid prices. Uh so uh we are estimating to be able to sell these bonds at a 4.49% interest rate and uh again our author the authorizing resolution has been w written by Dorsy and Whitney. Thank you. >> Thank you. May I have a motion to approve the authorization of sale of 2026F general obligation long-term facilities maintenance bonds, please? >> So, uh, so moved. >> Tanya, may I have a second? >> Second. >> Second. >> Sorry, >> Dan. Any discussion? >> Okay, we have a motion and a second. All those in favor, please say I. >> I. >> Any opposed? Motion carries. Thank you, Mr. Bush. All right, up next, the approval of bid for phase one site work at MME. Superintendent Law, >> in the process of going from a voter approved bond to actually having the facility open, there are multiple phases. We have gone through several of them tonight. One of them is selling the bonds. Then the board approves the sale of the bonds and then we approve the bids to start the work and then we do the work. you have gone through those phases for MMW for the big part of that process. We're coming back for Mr. Bourgeoa to uh get the bids for MME started so that that will be on scheduleled to be completed in the time frame allowed. Mr. Bourgeois. >> Thank you, Superintendent Law. Madam Chair, members of the board, this is actually related primarily to reconfiguring the parking lot and reconfiguring the drop off and pickup zone at MME. uh we are going to be moving it to the front of the building and actually kind of extending the drop off and pickup zone. So, it's a it's not [snorts] necessarily the best comparison, but it's the best I can come up with. It's a little bit like like at the airport where you have multiple cars that can drive in and in and drive out and and get out. And then then this will also add two outbound lanes, one for one going east, one going west. The idea being that we will get better traffic flow, have a longer queue because we'll send cars all the way to the back of the site, but then bring them back around to the front. So, more cars moved off the road, and then that coupled with our our eventually with our bus corral, uh moving them out of the equation. Hopefully, we'll speed things up, and hopefully this will do two things. a speed things up, but b um if it's easier to get on site uh and and move through faster, we're hoping that more parents will not park in the neighborhoods and be able to come on site and pick up their students. We worked with the city of Minnitonka on this design and we had uh some uh we had uh uh WSB engineers help us look at different options and uh to came up with this this uh uh concept. And so the city's actually very excited for us to be able to do this. And if uh actually we're going to be doing this portion of the work this summer, so it'll be ready for September. So uh we did have two bids and the low bid was Urban Companies LLC for 393,000. Uh we had a budget estimate of $400,000. So this is the first part of the uh bond work at MME. >> Thank you. May I have a motion to for the acceptance of bid for site work at Minnetonka Middle School East, please? >> So moved. >> Karen, may I have a second? >> Second. >> Mike, any discussion? >> Tanya, um, while I was campaigning this fall, this is a problem I heard a lot about and um, I'm sure uh, Megan and Karen did as well. So, I'm happy to hear that we have a solution in the works. So, thank you for doing that. Thanks for the work there. Okay, we have a motion and a second. All those in favors, please say I. >> I. >> Any opposed? Motion carries. Thank you, Mr. Bourgeoa. >> Okay, next up is the consent agenda. May I please have a motion to approve the consent agenda? >> So moved. >> May I have a second? >> Second. >> All those in favor, please say I. I. >> I. I. >> Any opposed? Motion carries. Okay. Um, we are moving right along. So, next up, we're calling for any community comments, and we don't have any this evening. So, we're going to move through that. Next up, we have board reports. Do we have any board reports this evening, Dan? >> More of an announcement than a report. So maybe I'm jumping the gun agenda wise, but Kim Carlson with Minnitankka Community Education would like the community to know that we are looking for volunteers for the youth triathlon and tour to Tonka. The youth triathlon takes place on May 16th. Tour to Tonka takes place on August 1st and any folks who might be interested in volunteering can sign up at minnotonka communityucation.vunteerlocal.com/volunteer. We'd greatly appreciate it. >> Thank you, Tanya. I have a report from the teaching and learning committee. We met on Monday, May 4th, and we discussed three different things. The first thing, uh, our new American Indian educator, Angela Ward, came to introduce herself. Um, so we would like to welcome her to the district. Uh we also talked about um what the student committee is working on which is right now identifying um characteristics of what a Minnotonka grad looks like. So that was fun to hear what the students were saying. And then looking ahead we looked at all the different ways that social studies and the math standards will be changing particularly the social studies. And that implementation review will begin in the 2627 school year. >> Thank you so much. Any other board reports? Okay, Superintendent Law. >> Um, several updates. This end of the year really ramps up as a time of celebration uh of all things that are happening throughout the year across the district. Starting with uh scholarship breakfast at the high school. I want to give a shout out to the dozens and dozens of people who make donations to launch our students into their post-secary career. It's a fun event. It's in the morning and it's uh happening on the before our next board meeting. On Tuesday night next week, we are celebrating our retiring educators and there's typically about two dozen or so who are wrapping up their years of service in the district. And it's a chance for their family to come and have their formal goodbye from the district. It's heartfelt, wonderful, amazing stories about these educators and how sometimes pictures of their entire career, funny stories. Um, congratulations to those educators being celebrated. Next Thursday, we have the celebration of excellence. We talked about that tonight as a celebration. And then we start moving into our award recognitions at middle school, elementary school, uh, math contest winners, middle school, academic excellence, and then the graduations. So, between now and the first week of May, several nights a week, the board will be busy celebrating our students. Um, it's a fun time. I those events are all free. Uh, and so I encourage members of the community to tune in online or attend as they're interested. It is a ramp up to the end of the year that gets busy, but it's a very fun time. And just want to acknowledge the board. Thanks for your presence. I know that uh there was a polar plunge today out at Minnitanka Middle School West. I know at least one board member uh jumped in on on the polar plunges. >> What? >> I observed. [laughter] >> Oh, you observe. I observed. Sorry. >> But there were a lot of people there raising a lot of money for the Special Olympics. So, it was a really fun event. >> Yeah. It's a busy time and a time uh we look forward to that wrapping up the school year. So, thank you. Thank you. And an announcement. Um, I'd like to give another shout out to Dr. Getty's communications team. They did a wonderful job of acknowledging all of our teachers this week for teacher appreciation. And a lot of the board members were part of that, visiting all of the elementary, middle, and high schools, giving out lovely um teacher gifts and trying to make them feel acknowledged for all of the hard work that they do day in and day out. So, I'd like to thank your team for that as well. It's a really special time of year for everybody. And I just want to double down on thanking the communications team because I believe tomorrow, Friday, May 8th, is uh school communicators day. So, just kudos again to Jackie and Andy and the entire department for everything you folks do and for making us look so good. >> Announcements, Karen. Um, and I would like to do a little shout out um, also to the communications team um, and to the Minnitanka Public Schools Foundation that is um, helping with the support the award ceremony next week. And also shout out the grants that the last couple of weeks um, we have been visiting the schools. I they took me along um and we handed out some of those grants to the teachers and um it's very exciting to see what's coming up in the next year and just next year there'll be another grant process. So we and we will keep you posted on that but lots of great work this spring and very exciting. Thank you. >> Okay, superintendent. >> I I was remiss in not saying this. I referenced this earlier that last week a pipe burst a water mane at Minnetonka Middle School West and I found out about that about 6 on Monday and anecdotally I heard comments like that school's going to be closed for three months >> at Minowasha excuse me and Paul Bersois and team who really worked till late at night and early in the morning went from I don't know what happened to we're ready to open tomorrow in about 36 hours. So, shout out to all of our maintenance staff, our partners, Paul and his team for, you know, I was getting pictures of how deep the water was at 10 at night and in 6:00 in the morning, and then the next thing I see is this clean space and this clean school and space heaters to bridge the gap. So, thank you, Paul, and your team. It's amazing. I'm sure those parents were thrilled to get that note that we were back open last Thursday. I know I was, too. So, thank you. With that, may I have a motion to adjurnn? >> So moved. >> Tanya, we have a second, please. >> Second. >> Mike. All those in favor, please say I. >> I. >> Any opposed? >> All right, we are adjourned. Have a good evening, everyone.