Hello. Hello everyone. Welcome. >> Welcome. Wait. Am I on? >> Can you hear me everybody? >> Yes. >> Welcome everybody to the May 21st Minnetonka public schools study session. Welcome. And you know, I would like to say a special welcome to our student board representatives this evening. We have solely wrangle and Delila Walter. Welcome. It's a pleasure having everybody here tonight. The end of the school year. This evening we have our special high school guests and we would like for them to go first because it is a very busy time for our seniors especially. So we put them first. I would like to give a special welcome to Principal Ericson and turn it over to Superintendent Law. Madam chair, members of the board, members of the public, uh at the start of almost every board meeting, we have a school report that talks about what's happening in the school aligned to our school board goals. Tonight, we have from Mitanka High School, Principal Jeff Ericson, and it looks like a large cadray of high school students. I checked in with them earlier today. I'm excited to hear what they have to say. Principal Ericson. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Superintendent of Law, members of the board, it's my pleasure tonight to give an update the high school around the board goals and the work that's happening. And behind me are the stars of the show that'll be showcasing some specific projects that they've been working on. So the tonight highlighting as you all know the three goals related to belonging, student learning and support and organizational support. We're going to start with our work related to belonging and with a special presentation uh talking about a recent event and a new strand within the Vantage program. In each presentation, we we look at the formula on the screen around strong relationships, realizing that a sense of belonging, a sense of connection and strong relationships, plus the amazing instruction that happens at the high school every day, meaningful, deep, authentic, and challenging engagement with high expectations and high levels of support. Taking those two pieces together equals successful, respectful, curious, happy, and engaged students. And reminding not one or the other, it's both of those two elements equaling that outcome. And obviously [snorts] you look at the last part of that screen. We are just two weeks from today is graduation. So with that moment when they walk across the stage, those pieces coming together. So tonight I have the opportunity to have some students share from the Vantage program. Uh that formula in action, the strong sense of belonging plus an amazing academic experience. And uh I'm not going to say anymore because I want to take any thunder away from Talia and Ella are going to share about a recent event and overall talk about the new strand within the Vantage program. Also here tonight is Kaylee Wis, the new teacher within the program as well. So I'm gonna bring forward Talia Nella. [applause] >> Hi everybody. My name is Talia Tobin and I'm a junior at the high school. >> I'm Ella Olsson. I'm a senior at the high school >> and we're going to talk to you tonight a little bit about the recent runway show that happened at the high school. It was the inaugural event and we're hoping that this will come back every year to come. Um a little bit about Vantage Fashion. It is its first year, so if you don't know about it yet, that's okay. It's going to be here next year. Um, but for fashion design, we cover two different course loads in this class. Um, fashion design one and two, where we focus on styling, sketching, um, merchandising, and a little bit of marketing, too. There's a little bit of mix of everything. And then we also get to focus on global studies and economics throughout this class as well. And so if you weren't able to attend the event, this is a little bird's eye view of what it was looking like at the high school. This is in the commons area. Um, and we were able to sell out the show, which was 300 people in attendance, which was beyond our goal. It was beyond our expectations and it was really a positive event that we were able to hold. So with this project, we had um six groups that we all had. It's six group or six groups of five people were in it. Um and then we all kind of just worked together to create that one big whole project. Um we had little jobs that we did and one of them which is my group was external marketing and we kind of did the sales and kind of market that event that we had. Um and other things is like the event setup which played a big role because they set up they did a lot of setting up the event. Um, and then just everybody kind of contributed to modeling and even creating the outfits and kind of styling the models as well. >> This is an event that's never been seen at Vantage before or even the high school. We typically have a focus on company projects where you are assigned a small group and you work with a specific company. Um, but this was set up completely different for our strand this year and we had all of these individual company groups that we would work with individually on different um, focuses as Ella said. Um but we would all come together every week and have weekly meetings together to discuss how we were putting this on because we weren't just working as individual groups but we were working with a whole um bigger net of people for this event to be able to be a possibility. And so as you can see right here this was all that has gone into this event and everything required its own special attention. So each of these were almost as if they were their own singular company project within a company project. Um, so one thing I would love to point out is with the door prizes that we were able to sell at the event, um, that not only contributed to the ticketing and the uh, revenue that we were able to bring in. Um, but we had student representatives going out on their own time [snorts] to I know Rigidale and stores in Excelsier and other stores and building that network between people. not only like they were earning networking skills, but they were also just going up to the boutique owners or the store owners and asking if they would be willing to donate to this event, which was great marketing for our strand. And then it also I saw students in this class just come to life for this project. >> Um, another one that specifically stood out and kind of that made the whole show happen was a boutique partnership. Without them, this would have been a just we wouldn't have had this. And we're very fortunate that so many boutiques were so generous and lent us so many pieces of clothing items, accessories. Um, and they brought so much support there. Some of the owners or people who work, they were able to come and bring their support and show the kids or people who are walking down their appreciation for even marketing their or bringing brand awareness to their own um little boutiques. and that helped them out a lot as well. >> These were all of our project partners that donated either time or either the garments, food, or even the door prizes during this event. Um, and so you can see just how much went into this and how connected we are with the community through this project. Another um companies that kind of that really did help us out a lot were the virtual enterprise class at Manatona High School. They are one their companies were North Wine um Minnesota nice and they sold candles and other um products that they made from their class and they gave us like they gave us 20% of it um back to the organization and that helped fund what we have. Now, of course, there's all the business behind it and so we put in all of this effort right here to be able to create an event that looked like this. And so these are photos from our very own Andy Smith at the high school and then also one of the kids in our class was the photographer for this event. And you will notice on the screen that we were able to partner with the Best Buddies for this event um to be our models. And so we have models from Best Buddies, kids from our class that were modeling and then also the partners of the Best Buddies. And we didn't just have this as kind of like a business transaction. We had um multiple different meetings with the best buddies at the high school uh throughout the duration of this project to really form those relationships with them um so that this lasts longer than just the event and it wasn't something that was superficial. It really bonded us closer and got our got our high school more connected through that too. kind of like what Talia was saying, um students, we saw many students who wouldn't really interact with the class or even share that connection with people within their class and it was really great thing to see them kind of branch out and become friends with all of us. And I think the class overall really became a lot closer because of this. Um, and then tying back to even the buddies, like we have gained so many relationships with the buddies rather than just having them as like a working as a work partner. And that was a really great experience to have. >> And we are not the only ones that feel this way. Um, after the event happened, we had a reflection because we are hoping that this will come back in the future years. So we since this was the first year we created a whole blueprint and we wanted to hear from the students in the class what they thought about the whole show and everybody responded with positive feedback especially surrounding the best buddy relationships. So you can see here just a couple of the quotes from the students in our class surrounding this event. And then with this we raised about $5,000 to donate to the Best Buddies um organization. Uh beyond the money raised, the real impact came from the sense of belonging that flooded the commons as a student walked down the runway show. We think that this money is going to go to obviously a great cause and but the most important thing is that the connections that we gain from this and that feeling of giving the students um just being included and then also just feeling celebrated as they walk down that runway and then just feeling so confident and that was just really amazing to see. >> Thank you so much. >> Thank you. [applause] Thank you, Talia and Ella. And as I mentioned, Miss Wis is in the is in the audience. And then also Mr. Joel Coleman, who's the other teacher within the economic strand. So again, it's fashion and economics. And then also part of the mix was our new assistant principal for experiential learning, Brook McMaster. And it really was a spectacular event again on a Saturday afternoon. So I want to talk a little bit about our belonging work and some of the measurement parts. You heard in the presentation how it connects with the with our goal around belonging, the academic program. We've done a lot of work the past five years with the search institute. So I want to provide an update. We look at our work related to belonging. Uh one of our core values at the high school is intentionality. And so we look at two types of things happening lucky or leading. And so we look at our work around belonging and five years and looking at our data. What are the things that we are doing on the leading side that shows high results and also the ability to replicate what we're doing and a true compliment to our staff. Uh we recently had a group of teachers from South Africa Africa that were here part of our international studies program. I was debriefing with them and they were talking about all of their experiences in our classrooms and their takeaway was our teachers truly know our students unprompted and our work around belonging. Uh so I want to share some of the updates that we have. Again we've worked with the search institute as a staff. We focus on express care challenge growth. This year we added shared power. And so the charts here I would just highlight. You can see the growth over the years. The green means that we have grown. And if we look at uh the first element of express care, we can see the growth from 23 to 24 25. The growth from 67 to 72 and again 68 is a start of strong relationships and we've seen that growth. The far right where you see a negative 30% that's a closing of the perception gap of what students report and what teachers have shown. So in this column, negative is good. That is showing that it is in alignment with what students feel and what adults report. So you can see all the different areas from the from the last one about being warm and the growth from 68 to 78 and really want to complement the work of Matt Breen who helps us put all this together and assuring us as we look at that data as we look at that is a significant growth and the fact that we know the things that we're doing that we can replicate it. Back to the point about leading challenge growth. Again, you can see the areas of green where you see the growth in all of the specific areas. Expecting my best, hold me accountable, reflect on failure, stretch. You see the growth. One of the things that's been a benefit the past few years has been the additional professional development days. So, for example, several years ago when we were working on this in March, we had videos of our students talking about what does challenge growth look like? So taking a look at the questions, the prompts and having students talk about it on video and saying what does that look like and for teachers to hear that feedback from students. So having those days it allows us to be intentional with the work and it is just embedded with how we operate. Shared power was the focus this year. Not that we haven't focused on in the past but that's been intentional work with our staff and seeing the growth from 2023 to 2025 in the in the specific area of shared power. And then if you look at the different areas uh respect me, collaborate, include me and let me lead and you see the growth within all those specific areas, the overall growth and then within those specific areas. So this work I'm going to share with a little bit how we have information outside of the surveys in December. But at staff meetings and professional learning, we share out what does shared power look like. This for example this semester teachers at the start had to make a commitment about what they want to do in the area of shared power and what will that look like at the April staff meeting they shared out what were they doing in the classrooms in terms of sharing power so that intentionality and ability to replicate the strategies that we're doing so as you know in December the districtwide we do this the search institute survey the official survey through the search institute so the high school we've added other elements and other times to gather feedback so the first several years we looked at the global data within the school, we share that out through professional learning. The question from staff was, well, great, that's the overall data, but what does it look like within my classroom? So, right now, for example, I look on the other side with May because this is happening right now at the high school that all teachers are individually surveying their classes with those same questions and express care, challenge, growth, and share power. So, they have that specific information about how they're doing and can [snorts] look at that feedback. in August when we come back on the in the fall they will take a look at that data and analyze it this year last in August we did the same thing we looked at the previous year's data teachers looked at pivot tables with all the different reports and to figure out are they noticing any trends within their data within a specific student group they [snorts] want to take a look at so it's very much their own data and their own action plan we've done that for several years now twice a year so August we look at the data late October again this year we did this we survey the students in within the classrooms November we look at the data again. December is a district-wide survey through the church institute. February we look at the schoolwide data and then right now May we're collecting again. So that intentionality of coming back to it has had an impact on the work we're doing and staff really looking at their own data and finding out how am I doing and what are students saying and if you look at the timing October and May it is what I would call formative data because they can look at boy my students are saying this right now I can take steps to adjust it or affirm what I'm doing within the classroom. So a little around come taking that data into uh our work in terms of opportunities with all the programs and opportunities we have at our high school. The high one of the highest levels of the search institute data you see in the screen is inspire broaden horizons and connect. So if you look through those pieces so the highest level is in these specific areas. So if you have a high school student, you know that in January and February, we focus intentionally on registration. There's significant number of events. And the idea of being a school of opportunities, we showcase all those opportunities, but those opportunities are for all students. And how do we intentionally make sure that we're including all students in those opportunities? We look about expanding possibilities. The specific language as we encourage students to look at all those opportunities is, I believe you can do this, you should do this, and I'm going to be helping you along the way to support you in that. So the past several years focusing on how do we expand those possibilities for us all students and recognizing that if students have a strong sense of belonging feel a strong connection of staff and the staff are encouraging them they're going to feel they can take advantage of all those opportunities and so that intentional work of connecting belonging to the opportunities within the school. So tonight I'm just going to some highlight reels of what we've seen within our data and the trends the past few years. Obviously all the different opportunities that we have as a school and just showing for example the increase if you look at the the type taking one or more advanced class you can see the numbers from last year to this year and the percent uh increase in count. research had a significant amount of growth uh from 81 to 122 within that program. So that space is all six hours is is maxed out. Last night they just had an amazing symposium. We look at Vantage at 602 increasing to 664 and again you see the percent increase and then aviation has continued growth. Next year in aviation we are launching the aircraft maintenance and so we have a section of that class it is math and then certification toward aircraft maintenance. So, back to the goal of how do we look at specific student groups? And I'll give a couple different slides. And this is just a snapshot of where we see areas of growth by 9th grade, 12th grade, black students, Hispanic students in the specific areas. And looking at what increase in count we have in those areas to make sure that the courses that students are taking is reflective of our overall population within the school. back to that idea of students feeling a connection and at the same time taking advantage of all the opportunities that we have at the high school. So you can see the specific groups [snorts] then looking at vantage and this breaks down by different demographic groups. You can look at the number of students for example 25 26. Then the next column is a percent of overall students enrolled in the class. Then you look at the registration we just finished and again the percent of our students overall enrolled in the class. So our continual work is how do we make sure that we close any gap between the percent of students within the course and the overall reflection within the school and our continued growth. Uh this year we continued our work with our diversity task force making sure that we are encouraging all students recognizing that students word of mouth is the most powerful piece to say that this was a great experience but also making sure there is a strong community and students feel that connection. So that work continues and we continue to see growth and areas [snorts] of opportunity. Aviation is now in its fourth will be in its fourth year and you can look at the data here in the screen within again the different groups. You can see that in many areas it is uh uh higher than the reflective population within the school. Uh I would point out one interesting number where I would say we're not done is female. You see 32 to 52 that's a 6% increase. And looking today to see what is a percent of pilots that are female it's about 5 to 6%. So while we're certainly not where we want to be, our focus making sure it is reflective of our school population and see we see the growth within all of our subsets uh in within the program. So uh the work we have around student voice is the next part I want to talk about and to talk about the second annual uh student forum. Part of our work about building belonging, building community is that sense of student voice. There's lots of opportunities for student voice. Last year we had the inaugural student uh presentation. Tonight they're going to give a showcase of what it how it was different. So I'm going to have Ransa, Danielle, Bobby, and Rory come forward and showcase a little about the work that many of you were part of. [applause] Thank you, Mr. Eric. Good evening. My name is Daniel Trefov. I'm a junior at the high school. Little bit of background about our student forum. It originated last year. I'm sure many of the schoolboard members know because they went to it. And the goal is to empower students, to offer feedback, to learn more about what the goals of the high school were. And originally was really adult-led. We had a lot of presentations that were focused on adults talking from adults. And the goal this year was to transition it more into student leadership, as you can see with our captains behind me. And yeah, this year utilized student feedback from an initial forum, which we'll talk a little bit about too, to create topics that then later came into the later March forum. Hi, my name is Aransa. I'm also a junior and I'm going to talk more about the specific changes that happened. So, in order to have a successful 2026 student forum, we had to look at both negative and positive feedback that we got from last year, which included that the topic sessions were just too long with too many adults talking, just not enough student to student engagement. However, with wanting students to have that sense of belonging and importance that they get when talking to you guys, schoolboard representatives, we kind of set on a studentled forum as a goal instead, which was built on specific feedback from involved students, which were then the captains who also made specific questions, presentations, and let the conversations that were tailored specific to ta to students minds, which help emphasize the importance of student voices, which was also something that we made sure we emphasized. as throughout the whole forum. >> Thank you. My name is Pavia Gotham and I'm a junior at Minnotonka High School. Um here is a picture of what the student forum looked like to just get a visual. So we had tables, we had schoolboard members, students, and notetakers. So I'm going to be talking about the structure of the student forum. So on the screen you can see our agenda for the day. So, we included an introduction and then um a key element was really explaining to the audience the importance of the student forum and guiding them through how their feedback is going to be used, explaining what we just explained about how there was originally an adultled one and the changes we made for the next year. And um each of the captains um presented about what the three topics were about, which were academic integrity, the MHS counseling model, and anchor time, which were key elements that we wanted to um emphasize and get feedback on. Something that we really wanted to focus on is explaining the current school board school board goal surrounding the key topics and explaining why they may need to be updated. So me and my partner presented about academic integrity and how artificial intelligence is changing the goals that we may need to update surrounding academic integrity. So this is a slide I took straight from the student forum presentation that we presented about. Um me and my partner summarized what the schoolboard goal means and why it may need to be updated. Here is me and my partner presenting and I'll hand it off to Rory now to talk through the March student forum. Hi, I'm Rory Shown. I'm a senior at MHS. I'm almost done. Um, I have had the opportunity to be a part of this event for the past two years. And I just have to say seeing how much this event changed in organization and leadership in just such a short amount of time really think I think emphasizes the dedication that our school board, our school district and our high school is putting on including student voice. I would like to conclude the student aspect of this presentation with talking a little bit about the opportunities we provided students during the actual March forum. We had some student MC's. Their job was to open the event, close the event, and make sure transitions were moving smoothly. They also brought the energy to the room and they of course introduced the lunch break. Then we had student presenters like Bavia who introduced our topics of discussion. They had to do some research and create and prepare a presentation on our topics as we previous previously mentioned which were the counseling model AI and then anchor time. They also had to prepare some discussion questions that table groups would then discuss within. And then finally we had our student table captains who were the discussion leaders. They facilitated the discussion at the tables, made sure everyone got a say in what was going on, that everyone was speaking up, and that the conversation flowed smoothly. Um, clearly this event asked a lot of students, but I think my peers and I can all confidently say that we rose to the challenge and had a very successful March forum. Thank you. [applause] They did a superb job. One of the pieces, you can see the example of the discussion questions. All that was created by students and and the topics they wanted to talk about and then another photo from the event. So next steps so after that event uh some of the themes that came forward were AI artificial intelligence at an anchor time and counseling and so those three groups all the feedback they had were shared with the assistant principles who led led working groups are still leading working groups at high school with staff who are looking to these themes. students were given the opportunity who participated in the forum to be part of a subgroup to get feedback along the way and within each of these areas making recommendations for next year because the question is okay we have all this information now what and what can we do at the building level and then we're excited to think about 3.0 you know, next March to figure what that looks like and how we can continue to gather voice having you have an opportunity to work with students and for students to be in an environment to share their perspective and really positive feedback from the students and how they really took over the show. I want to acknowledge Emily Rosenrren, MK Broman were the assistant principles who worked with the students to help put this together and make it such a great day. As I mentioned, we're down to two weeks before graduation and just some celebrations. Um, this was from prom. We had over 1,400 students at prom Veterans Field. Uh spectacular night. We've had four proms at Veterans Field and it was a beautiful night. Fireworks and a chance for our community to come together and for our seniors to come together and juniors and it really was a special time to make that happen. This week we started the closing process with our seniors. Uh we had all about 880 seniors part of senior day. This is a trivia part of their program and it was a special time for them to come together and really feel connected as a class and that it's really important this time of year. It's really the second to last time before graduation they'll be together. We have a tradition of having a staff speaker who was the previous year's graduation speaker. So Steph Lulich was the class speaker gave an inspiring message and then something new this year is we announced who the staff speaker will be for the graduation in two weeks and also the name readers and as I shared earlier with some I've never seen so much excitement anticipation for who the readers were going to be. We've never done it this way to announce it at this event. So I milked it once I realized like they were really uh they were very interested in what was happening. And Jared King is our staff speaker. And then Steph Lich, Becky Johnson, Ben Witcom, and Tony Dorenzo are the name readers for graduation. So you can see the joy. Talk about connections, that sense of community and belonging. The joy they have for their teachers when they're announced as as the readers or the speaker was pretty evident. They signed the rock that day, the annual tradition. Uh I reminded seniors that that's how we're going to take attendance for the day is that we can look at the rock and I would verify all the signatures of those who sign who were marked excused for the afternoon. Uh but again a chance for them to come together and start to bring clothes. Uh few schools would want to bring all seniors together in one confined area with minimal adult supervision to take a class photo. Uh they were amazing and again a chance for them to come together. This photo has never been displayed. We just received it. So we'll be sharing this out from the senior class. a photo of their chance to be together and showcase what they're doing next year. The end, if we go back to the district's vision, mission, belief statement as we get ready for two weeks out, how do we produce graduates who are ready to contribute and thrive in a wide re future pursuits and engaged in lifelong learning? I can affirm the senior class has done an amazing job and is ready and has met this expectation. Thank you. [applause] Thank you so much, Principal Ericson, and all of the high school students. I know it's so busy for you right now. Thank you for taking time today to be here. >> Questions? >> Do we have any questions from the board for those great presentations? Megan, thank you all. Um, this is a huge room of a lot of people, so very brave to get up and speak. Um, I did have one question on the Vantage enrollments. Um, I should probably have the demographics memorized at this point, but I don't. Are we getting fairly close to the Vantage enrollment mirroring the student population? Are there still large gaps in some areas or what's the progress like on that? >> So I would point out um just I brought the percentages just in case. Uh so if it is uh for example Vantage looking I can go back to the slides but for black non-Hispanic this year for for next year it's 5.0 and the school population is 7.0. So we have a gap of 2% to close within that. Um, and so if I look at the first number, 1.7, it's 1.4 is a high school. Uh, 11.3, 7.0, I mentioned, Hispanic is 5.3. So, we have work in that area. And then last one is 75. >> Yep. Tanya, >> kind of piggybacking on that question, you had mentioned uh that you guys have a diversity task force. Can you just tell me a little bit about what that is? I've never heard of it before. >> So, we found one of the best ways for students to learn about the program is through hearing from students who are enrolled in the program. So, men and women of color would, for example, visit the site so they can learn about the program and hear from students enrolled in the program and give us guidance about how to best showcase it. So attending meetings, sharing it, the word is out really in the program and students sharing it has been the strongest way. But it's intentional ways to make make sure students are aware of all the opportunities. Many times we know all of them, all those opportunities, but making sure all of our students know what those opportunities are. Karen, >> I want to c I want to circle back to the Vantage fashion event and say I was able to attend it and one of the most heartwarming things was talking with some of the parents of your best buddies and just how they were comparing how their students maybe at the beginning of the year would not have gone out there and I mean they were really rocking some of those outfits. It was amazing to watch and I think it's really a testament to the work that you did. And then I was able to also circle back with some of the Excelsier boutiques which are I think ready to work with you again. They they were gushing about working with your team and I think I'm very proud very proud. >> It was over 10 to 12,000 worth of clothes that they lent us through all different boutique. So it was a tremendous partnership or more >> and congratulations on the $5,000 raise. That's fantastic you guys. It's wonderful. >> Anybody else from the board? Thank you so much for being here you guys. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> We'll be >> [applause] >> Okay, we will now be stopping the stream for citizen input. [snorts] Oh, okay. Okay. Here we go. Next up, we have further review of the 202728 calendar. Superintendent Law. >> Madam Chair, members of the board uh in March, the calendar committee made their first recommend recommendation to the school board for the 2027 2022 calendar. that calendar. Uh, as you know, with the start of school year linked to Labor Day, winter break length linked to when the winter holidays fall. I'll just wait till that door shuts. and other holidays. And recently the recommended edition of the Chinese New Year, the board asked some additional questions. Uh about almost two months time was given to gather questions and provide feedback. Tonight you're going to hear an update on some of those questions. And this item uh is proposed to come to the board again next week for a vote. Miss Flowers, executive director of HR, Angie. >> Thank you, Superintendent Law. Good evening, board members. Madam Chair, as the superintendent said, um I did some followup and the district did just on Chinese Lunar New Year and we'll be sharing that information with you based on the questions we received. Just wanted to ground us in the beginning with what is the Chinese Lunar New Year. As our young scholar said, it is the most significant holiday in Chinese and specific Asian cultures. It is the beginning of the new year on the lunar solar calendar. A 15-day celebration traditional with cultural practices and just celebrating with lots of family and friends. What does a district do to recognize the Chinese Lunar New Year? There are many school-based celebrations recognizing it. We have an annual community celebration at the high school, really large and well attended. Of course, students engage in different cultural learning in the classroom and not just limited to students enrolled in Chinese immersion. And importantly as well, we we avoid making testing or um assignments big projects. We encourage our teachers to do that on that date so that students aren't missing out or falling behind. What does our Chinese immersion program staff look like? We have paraprofessionals at the elementary level. We don't have any at the secondary level. So, there are seven teachers at the elementary level. In Chinese immersion, we have 30 and 10 at the secondary level. There was also questions on historical staff attendance. So, as you can see, we pulled the last three years in which the Chinese Lunar New Year landed within the school week. So, in 2022, on February 1st, there were 108 staff absences. That was in the range that week of 105 to 136. In 2025, on January 29th, 114 staff absences, and the range that week was 56 to 163. In February 17th of this year, 194 staff absences and the range was 168 to 226. So the amount of staff absences were within the range with no material difference and that included teachers and parents as well. And student attendance, of course, we wanted to to look at that. So in 2022 on February 1st 632 student absences and the range was 583 to 847. 2025 on January 29th 801 student absences with a range of 649 to 9000. And lastly this year on February 17th we had 912 student absences. And the range of absences that week was 846 to 1,085. Again, we didn't see any significant or material difference in student attendance. In looking up um some research locally just to see if other districts, other schools, if they're closed on Chinese New Year, the first day, um what what we found is most districts remain in session. There are some charter schools that close. G Ming, New Millennium Academy, and M Prep. And nationally, there are some states and districts that close for Chinese Lunar New Year as well. In New York, it's state law, so the school district is closed, all of them within New York. Um, and some districts close voluntarily in California, Washington, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Illinois, and Maryland. Many districts are open, but they do something with instructional observance, feedback from representative members. And this will not be as good as our young scholar. Of course, he spoke so well. Uh but this is from you know representative members on the calendar committee. Some of this has been shared with you previously. Chinese Lunar New Year again a major cultural celebration across multiple Asian communities Korean, Vietnamese, Chinese and likely again the most significant holiday. Lots of family gatherings and shared meals. Lots of emphasis on meals and time together. Travel out of state. So, not only locally, but people are going to to visit family and celebrate together across state lines. And the celebrations are very late into the night, which we heard very clearly on the calendar committee. How does it impact when there's school on Chinese Lunar New Year? It was shared with us that there's tension between cultural identity and school expectations because people are expected to make a choice in school-based celebrations. lots of support for that and how it's done and the cultural significance. But it was pointed out that that is very different from the personal and family observances that people would like to participate in. And lastly, just a few comments on some comparable cultural observances um examples of closures. Diwali, some states and some school districts close. Indigenous people's day the same. There are some states and districts that close on Junth. In Minnesota, it's a state holiday and school is not in session on Junth. Um, but the district is closed. And Independence Day would be another comparator. Again, school's not in session, but they would have that day according to some agreements. And no widespread closures for Dia de los Muertos Cinco de Mayo or M New Year. Also in talking to community education, there are activities um happening on Chinese Lunar New Year uh just like it was with Eid and Yamapor and families can sign their students up to attend and I'm told they have plenty of room. And that's the information I have for you. >> Thank you for the followup. We appreciate it. Questions from the board. Karen, >> Miss Flowers, thank you for that thorough presentation and the data that you covered. Um what I'm wondering, you know, as we look at the fact that there's no significant um absences for students and staff, you know, trying to get a a gauge for how many families that this does impact. I'm wondering a couple things. Um what if we start having cultural holidays as days off then it adds a day in June um or we have to start earlier to to get the days correct. We have a certain number of days that we have to be in school. >> Correct. >> Excuse me. >> Yeah. >> The threshold isn't days, it's hours at the high school level. That's the whole calendar. >> Um the number of days around us vary wildly district to district. And the way they get around that is by the number of of hours they put in their high school schedule. So, >> okay. But for us, it kind of comes down to days just because of the way the way our schedule work. But it's I I see what you're saying. It's hours if >> So, and and one of the things that could happen in Minnotonka regardless of what happens with this decision is some proposals to adjust our high school schedule briefly so that we don't have this crunch for weather related closures. Just I I share that because it's come up from time to time. It's an hours piece and just adding 10 minutes a day to our high school would give us a lot more flexibility in a year with really bad weather. So, but it's our I mean, >> okay, right. I see. That's good to know. So, I'm I guess I'm kind of wondering two things like um would it be, you know, as I talk to people in the community, I'm wondering, have we ever considered doing a survey around this? This adding cultural holidays is something new. And before we've had federal holidays and we've had religious holidays and now when we look at at adding cultural holidays, I'm just wondering what will we say to the next community members who come with a c cultural holiday that's incredibly important to them. What I I just, you know, as a schoolboard member, I just I think it's very important that we have some sort of criteria or something that community members for transparency and can see, you know, this is how we make these kind of decisions. Otherwise, it can feel, you know, somewhat arbitrary. So, I don't, you know, I don't know how we would set a policy like that or, you know, do a survey to see if there is support for adding this as a holiday. Um, I don't know what your thoughts are on that. >> Thank you. So, I I'll address the staff and student absences first. And what I've been told and on the committee is that because academics are so important to the community, they're making that choice to attend. So, that's the tension that they spoke about. Um, as far as other holidays coming, any suggestions or recommendations that we get, we discuss it thoroughly as a calendar committee and we do our best to have representation and we have again very thorough, transparent um, conversations. There aren't holidays that are added each year. Um, there was even discussion about this one the year before calendar and it wasn't brought forward. So the recommendations are not brought forward lightly and the surveys may not be impactful because there would be a large population not familiar with the holidays. So not sure how we could actually survey that data in our community. >> I will follow up with one thing to say though students do take days off routi. I mean, it's we would love to them have them 100% in the classroom, but it is not uncommon for students to miss because they're going to a DECA event or they're going a day early for spring break or they're choosing a holiday. I mean, that is an excused absence that students can take. Correct. >> It will be excused. Yes. >> Okay. Yeah. But I mean, it is a thing. I understand the tension cuz I want my student in the classroom, but sometimes you take them out to go early for a a vacation or a trip or a family wedding or you know religious celebration. So that I will say does happen and maybe we need to message to this community that that is an option so that to be sure that everyone knows that they could take an excused absence. >> Megan, >> um I would answer similarly. I like I don't really see the value in surveying when this is the express purpose of the calendar committee is to come together as a cross-section of the community and have these conversations. they get input from people bringing it to that committee. And I mean, I've heard that same feedback from families that um and it used to happen with some of the Jewish holidays and we were able to add those and that community has been very thankful to not have to make that choice for like what they consider their most important holiday. not not being forced into that position of either being with my family and getting the red envelope because that is a big deal for all the kids in that community um and or going to bed early and to get ready for school the next day. So I think that um I mean I would personally defer to the work that the committee did like I think that's why we have the committee. They spent a lot of time um they got us all these answers to the questions that we have and so I think you know to community members that might be concerned then like that the answer to me would be that the community is reflected in that committee. They had a very serious and weighty conversation around this and that's the recommendation they made at this time. It's not necessarily permanent and forever, but you know, I think that that I don't want to disregard the work that that committee did because that's why we have it. So, if they felt confident in making this recommendation and that they had kind of hashed this out and come to this agreement that this is the best course of action right now, then I I mean that's where I would tend to go with that. Yeah, I would say and I do appreciate the work of the committees. Our committees do a lot of work and it's not always easy and it is greatly appreciated. One thing I will say though that in the past the committees had unanimous and this committee am I correct on that that it used to be that this year the vote was split 16 to 11 >> in my time here. Yes. >> Okay. Um and and the other thing I will say is that we want I think that we look at what the community community committee members bring to us but we but we don't always take every single recommendation that is presented to us. Recently superintendent law and Mr. Bourgeoa presented us with open enrollment increasing 100 students and 100 students you know two years we had concerns about that. They came back with a different plan. So we don't always just take you know here's the recommendation. Sometimes it bubbles up questions and issues as we're looking at the recommendations and we tweak things. So I think that there is some room for us to consider that. That doesn't mean that we don't appreciate the work that's done by the committees. It's just that sometimes they bubble up questions that we have to wrestle with because our job I think is to look at the totality of it. We we sometimes also have information that maybe committees don't have just by virtue of the work that we do. Oh, Daniel. >> Um, I think I'm going to echo what I said last time kind of when this issue first came up and we were debating it and then sort of tabled it for a little more information, but um I I I'm not comfortable with the idea that uh something has to be unanimous before that we believe that a community finds value in that holiday. I think that's uh as slippery a slope as adding cultural holidays. And I think um as a district, we like to think that we're on the leading edge of things. We like to think that we're an innovative district. And sometimes that means that we've got to do things that we're not comfortable with. We may not be comfortable with the idea of pulling a bunch of iPads back from our kids' hands when our teachers and our children and our families have gotten used to them. And that might inconvenience some people and they might not be happy about it and it won't be unanimous. But if the research is telling us one thing and there's value in doing that and there's value in doing that for our children and that's what being an innovative district means, I'd like to think that we would lean into that. And I don't think that we can do that in one case and not another case when it comes to valuing holidays that are meaningful to a segment of our community. Um I don't think it should be a test based on numbers. I don't think it should be a test based on majority. We do have cultural holidays in our calendar already because federal holidays are basically cultural holidays that have been enshrined in our calendar over time. They weren't always, but they got there because someone took the time to recognize them at one point in time. So, I am also inclined to trust the calendar committee and vote for this to go forward. >> Thank you, Sally. >> Yeah. And I would just like to share I thank you also for bringing forth the data because my primary concern had been around um staff impact from this. We know we have these incredibly dedicated teachers who we have attracted to this district um for participation in our or to support to run our Chinese immersion program and who have felt this tension from not being able to participate in this celebration. So I actually feel more called towards responding to their needs even than to the needs of families that we don't have a really clear sense for. We heard from a, you know, wonderful student representative today on that topic. But we do know that we have staff who would absolutely be impacted by this. Um, and I just feel like I would, you know, like to take into consideration respect for that. And I I don't think there's any reason we can't revisit this again if it's, you know, if if it's not working when the calendar committee comes back in a future at a future date. Correct. >> Is that right? So >> I was just going to say it's a clear parameter that this board and the community has given the calendar committee and that uh Miss Flowers and I have talked about at length is the start of the school year and not going too late into June as a priority in the community. I will tell you, I've served the comm surveyed the community twice in my life on calendars and the answers were consistent both times. Start after Labor Day, get done as close to Memorial Day as possible. Two weeks at winter break, one week at spring break. I wish it was that clean, but I guarantee you if we survey the community again, you're going to get that exact same information. the parameters of the calendar committee about minimize the number of four day weeks or short weeks because we heard that loud and clear from the community start or start as late or start at typical time and end as early in June as possible. I think those are uh every time I've presented a calendar to the board those have been consistent and those would be and then the calendar committee can iron out the details of how do we honor all the pressures of our system and prioritize what our community has told us to be consistent. And so regardless of the vote on this, those will always be at the parameters of the calendar committee. Please finish early in June. Please minimize the number of disruptions of families in child care. Please um you know, two weeks at winter doesn't always happen based on the timing of the winter holidays and uh new year, but late start, lengthy break, early release. >> Karen, then Megan. Yeah, I think then for me I'd just like to know if we could try to solidify some sort of parameter like going forward like what do you say to people when they say I'd like to present this holiday or that holiday do we just I mean and that's maybe we can work that maybe is an offline conversation about how that looks but um just something that will everyone can look at it and say okay that that makes sense or I can apply that to my situation or something because I think um one of our expectations is that there's trust in the board and there's transparency and whenever possible when we can say here's how we do things I think that that helps people understand that we're making decisions that are thoughtful and that take a lot of things into consideration. So I would request and not that that has to happen tonight but something along those lines. I'd like to see something that's that's clear um as clear as possible and appreciate the survey. We just did the survey. I guess superintendent law it make No, I mean it makes I I hear what you're saying. I can I can hear what you're saying, but >> um I would piggy back on that that anybody can propose anything at any time through the committee, right? Like I could say I would like to have my cat's birthday off and send it to the committee and they'll I don't know my cat's birthday for the record. Um [laughter] but the committee could have a discussion about whether or not Megan's cat's birthday, you know, warrants a day off. So I I I think that's already in place that anything can be proposed through the committee and to be discussed. Um my question was so my biggest concern around this was having a a random Wednesday off because that was the biggest piece that I heard was like it's really hard for people who work full-time. Mondays and Fridays are a little easier generally because they're attached to a weekend and that a Wednesday is hard. So I'm really glad to hear that there are going to be some community ed offerings. Um my question would be around are there scholarships available for those types of things? Because my my my fear is that you know if there's a family with two working parents having this day off is really um difficult for them because they can't take the time off work but if they can't afford to pay the community ed fee for that like is there scholarship money avail or what's the process for that? our community ed program. I I got a nod in the back of the room that affirmed to me that there are opportunities for scholarships for families interested in program. >> Um I would just make I would want to make sure that we know that folks know that that's available because I think that is um going to be important to some families. >> Dan, >> yeah, just to add on that like I always think we can do a better job and try to improve how we communicate that out to folks. I don't know what we need to do to do it. I don't know if there needs to be a central place that says that's easily accessible and visible on the front page or anything that says need financial help with any facet of the district that then takes you everywhere you need to go. But I think that's one obligation we have is to make sure that people can find that information easily. >> It's a great idea. Okay, anybody else before we move forward? >> Thank you, Miss Flowers. >> Thank you. >> Appreciate your additional work on that. Thank you. Okay, next up, immersion data presentation. Superintendent law. >> Madam chair, members of the board, uh, a few times a year according to our schoolboard goals, we report out on our students progress and we love to share one of the, uh, highlights of our district is our robust immersion programs. In the fall, we do a summary of all academic data. As a reminder to the community, um, ahead of next year, we're doing a new MCA reading test. Those tests will be delayed. So, we won't, normally, we'd like to have that data in August and analyze it. They'll be released in September, but in the fall, we'll do our MCA data and and our Northwest Education Association, our MAP growth. In the spring, we do immersion data traditionally. So, tonight, we'll get an update on our Chinese and sp Spanish Spanish immersion student proficiency across our system. Associate Superintendent for Schools and Instruction, Amy Leoo. >> Good evening, Superintendent Law, Madame Chair, members of the board, thank you for the opportunity to be here to share some updates regarding our students academic progress. As you know, as a part of our board goal, excellence in student learning and support, uh we focus on monitoring that all students are receiving outstanding instruction and learning as we would expect and anticipate. And our student achievement data really is one of those markers that helps us know how are we doing and what opportunities do we have to grow and improve um or make shifts and adjustments as well as to celebrate the great work of our teachers and our students in our classroom. So tonight we're going to focus on as superintendent law said academic uh progress of students uh using available data disagregated from standardized assessments. Um, [clears throat] as we look at assessment data, one of the important things to do is to know what's the purpose for each of the assessments that we're using as a district, as well as how are we using that information. So, the first assessment we're going to talk about tonight is our Amira indicators of progress test. This was previously I station. um it's been slightly rebranded and the focus for this assessment is really looking at our Spanish immersion uh program and looking at how our students are doing with word recognition and language comprehension as you see by all the components of literacy listed. And then these results obviously are used within the program to help um identify areas of need and to provide practice. But more importantly, it guides our teachers instruction and allows them to interact with our students on real time data um that helps guide that instruction and allows us to target um or align it to specific student needs. The STAMP 4SE is a language proficiency um assessment again standardized addressing the three domains of reading, listening and speaking. And this is completed both for our Spanish immersion and our Chinese immersion students in grades three and grades five. Sorry, I'm a little horse more than usual tonight. Um [laughter] and then the stamp 4S um again assesses language proficiency for our immersion program for students in grade six and grade eight. And this one um is four areas reading, listening, adds writing and still includes speaking. So overall this data really allows us to say how are we doing as a system and provides that system view that we use as we think about program evaluation um and success as well as student learning outcomes overall. So, the data that'll be covered in K2 will be that cohort data, our fall to spring data by subtest, and a five-year fall subtest trend for first and second graders. Our stamp 4SE, we're going to address cohort comparisons for grades from grades three to grade five, as well as subtest trends from 2022 to 26. In grades six and eight, we're going to look at sixth, 8th, and 10th grade cohort comparisons and then again subtest trends. And then finally, we're going to end with some trends related to our bilingual seals um and h how students do earning that credential um or that currency through our system, not only in our immersion languages, but in any language um of proficiency that we have access to. So tonight to walk us through this data is Matt Breen, our director of research analysis and systemic improvement. Mr. Breen. >> Thank you Dr. Leoo. Superintendent Law. Madam Chair, members of the board, thank you for the opportunity to talk through some data with you this evening. Uh as a reminder, AMRA uh previously I station is an online platform that is not available in a paper pencil uh option. Um it provides assessment opportunities on a monthly basis. Um with the change to Amira, one thing that happened uh is it provided more of the ondemand assessment piece. So there was some second opportunities for students to take. Um that started to happen in the fall and we ended up keeping it on as teachers enjoyed that opportunity to assess students earlier in a month and maybe again later in a month. And so as we look at this data, there is still some May data coming in. um we did shift to be able to get enough spring data in the end, but you'll see that um some of our spring 26 data um there may be some changes to that moving forward as we get some more assessment data in. So looking first here at two cohorts of kindergarten, first 2 grade. So this is uh our current second graders on the right side, our current third graders on the left side. And what you'll see is uh pretty consistent throughout is naturally no two cohorts are exactly the same. Um some are influenced by just uh student group and some are influenced by certain instructional um outcomes or uh intentions in terms of the what the focus becomes in that >> [clears throat] >> um particular year. So you will see uh that vocabulary piece um was an area where they felt that students uh needed to get more comfortable with that earlier in order to really build the other areas. And so that has become an increased area of focus. And as we look at these percentiles um we are looking at a national percentile and it's a a program that is for both Spanish immersion students and for native speakers. And so we are um comparing in the earlier grades to uh pretty different groups in terms of their language journey. Um and and so a factor as you look at some of the percentiles as well. Looking fall to spring again um what is pretty consistent that you'll see in a lot of these tables is our fall data tends to be very different by cohort. the spring data tends to start to funnel to generally the same percentile averages across cohorts. So for instance, when you look at vocabulary there in the left half going from 54.9 to 55.8 up slightly. Um it started in a at a higher percentile this last fall ended still at a higher percentile than the previous spring. Um but again those sort of gravitated back to that same area as you see that across uh phmic and phological awareness as well. Um and then uh the written and reading communication or compre uh communication and comprehension, excuse me. Um both working to that same general area of 42nd to 43rd for the comprehension and the written communication being in that 47 to 48 for both cohorts. For second grade, this is again where you're going to see that rightmost number for spring of 2026 probably change a little bit over the next week still, but you see uh much of the same in terms of that the the slope of each individual fall to spring is a little different. If you focus just on those spring numbers, you'll see a lot more similarity between them with just slightly different journeys of how they got there. Um but again contin continuing to focus now seeing some of those areas from the previous year um that maybe didn't see a certain amount of growth um and trying to kind of even out some of those instructional paths for students to to ensure that while an there is an increased focus on vocabulary ultimately if we see areas that lag in written uh communication or reading comprehension that those also want to get their sort of refocus as they start to change their the uh shift through their points of emphasis. Here's a five-year trend. And again, this is now spring subtest for kindergarten. So, kindergarten does not start this until January. So, um part of the advantage of having enough spring data now is to be able to look at uh a 5-year trend with kindergarten. And again, what you're seeing is there was that sort of kind of banner year in 2025 um where it pops up a little bit, pops down a little bit into 2026. Again, at this point with the data that we have um from far left to far right, you'll see pretty similar throughout with that phmic and funological awareness having a little more of an increase. uh that as we've really had that focus on literacy and those foundational literacy skills, that is one that the teachers report that they expect to continue to see both a focus and hopefully growth in that over time. In grade one, uh again, this sort of uh kind of crossover from 24 to 25 as certain areas started to to shift in terms of points of emphasis. And back to that idea again of of as you saw that 24 to 25 drop in the written uh communication and reading comprehension sort of ensuring that we aren't losing sight of that as other points phological awareness and vocabulary get that increased emphasis. And then second grade you see that same sort of crossing over there with 24 to 25. They do add text fluency as a fifth subtest here. uh and so it does get a little busy. Again, that area of vocabulary being the big jump there from 24 to 25 and that funological and uh phmic awareness um being that light blue line that's running now pretty constant at the second grade level. Um one thing that happens and and some of you perhaps have experienced this as as parents in second grade, the students really start to lean into a mirror in their first grade experience. they get uh maybe a little too used to it in their second grade experience. So they do report a little attrition in the later part of second grade as students have used the tool for that longer period of time. So it's typical to see that first grade being really that most encouraging growth at least fall to spring. Moving to stamp 4 here, Chinese immersion. So first of all on the actual proficiency scale the goals that you see here for reading is to be novice high or a three by the spring of fifth grade. Uh for uh speaking and listening would be an an intermediate low of four. And what happens with these just to um point out is if a student scores a 4.9 that is a four. So everything rounds down. You do not reach that next level of proficiency until you reach that next whole number. So again, three for reading and four for speaking and listening. And here are our last couple of uh fifth grade cohorts from third to fifth. And again, those the three and the four are those fifth grade values. So you'll see in 2025 and 2026 being at or above in 2026, uh there were two scores that actually exceeded that goal by again one point value on the proficiency scale. Um and and of course growth and again differences in cohorts where you see a little different path from third grade um with that slight improvement in fifth grade. The grade three performance um trends. this again. Uh a lot of conversations about balance literacy and and the idea of um while listening has maybe taken the little dip. The focus being on reading and speaking, there have been some impacts um reported in terms of students who depending on what year they were uh learning remotely or teachers might have been wearing masks in the Chinese immersion and getting used to what um the the um mouth cadence movements looked like. um that there there may be some impact that we're seeing of that over time here. Um if you calculate out the years that would be most impacted and then the fifth grade and you can see pretty consistent performance across um again with a little uh more focus on the reading and speaking to bring them up to balance them out with the listening force in Spanish immersion. Now it's four for all three domains in terms of the goal. And what you'll see in Spanish immersion here is again a lot of exceeding those values. Um both cohorts being being quite similar with the speaking being up a little bit uh in that third grade year in our in our right side cohort, but again all achieving that four or higher of the fifth grade goal here. The speaking is the one that's really been picking up on the Spanish side. Uh there's been a lot of conversations this year around the development of the speaking of that skill in Spanish immersion. Um so certainly a focus area. And then in fifth grade seeing that same um that speaking of 6 growth over time for the 4S Chinese immersion. So this is sixth, eighth, and then 10th or possibly even 11th, 12th depending on on I'm wanting to earn a certain seal. So what you'll see on in Chinese immersion, reading and writing now with a four as a goal, speaking and listening is a five. And again, a lot of values that are at or above those goals. Very similar in cohort here from from their sixth to 8th grade year. And again that goal being four for reading and writing, five for speaking and listening. So you'll the uh light blue is the speaking. Um that strongest uh top one is the the listening and then a three uh administration cohort for 6th, 8th and 10th for our last two sophomore classes. Again, um the goals are written more for the idea of where to reach by eighth grade, but you see that continued growth for students in 10th grade and beyond as they continue to to work toward earning those seals. Five-year trend growth in those three domains while listening came back to even out over time. similar in eighth grade and then in 10th grade again continuing to grow in Chinese um across the domains for on the Spanish immersion side the goal is to be at a five in all four domains and here are those eighth grade numbers so while the 5.9 and 5.8s 8s would technically be a five as an individual score. Naturally quite close to being exceeding by an actful proficiency scale point or two in terms of level. And then that 10th grade group again. And those trends from 2022 to 2026 remaining pretty consistent with again some eb and flow in between. And then the biggest jump here being the listening is the green. And lastly, seeing that same jump for listening for 10th grade, reading being pretty consistent all the way across there at the second level, and then the uh writing and speaking right in that that low six area. Now, the culmination of this work in our district for many students ends with their bilingual seal that they earn upon graduation. And I want to just point out a couple um particular notes here. So this right here is from our last three graduating classes. Uh the total number of immersion students entering 9th grade. So you'll see that in the third to right column um the 64 and 199 is our current graduating class. You'll see uh over 95% or 94% at least of these students attempted to earn a seal. And you can see on the far right what percent did earn a seal. Uh and again it's platinum seal, gold seal, and then world certificate. And you'll see that there were some who in that 63 and 82 on the far right uh they did earn a world certificate just did not earn the platinum or gold seal. Uh and so um we will have some students here noted below. Uh three students who have a world language certificate right now who will have data coming in on an IB exam that may move them to a a gold or platinum seal and 17 students who are at a gold right now who have the opportunity to move to a platinum. Um and the the requirements for IB in the in language immersion, our students have such strong skill set that the state requirement is set where historically almost all of our students on the IB exam would would achieve the platinum level. Here are total number of seals earned over the last three graduating classes. And I want to just pause on this one um briefly. First of all, uh, a lot of work has been done by the district that preceded my time, and I learned a lot in my first couple of months about how, uh, intentional the district has been about removing barriers for students earning seals. There was an another district reached out to me early on wondering, how are we getting so many students to complete this? And um a lot of work about uh when we're testing um expense of testing um uh my assistant uh Mandy Stillman does a lot of work of trying to find how can we piece together an assessment from this company and assessment from this company to make sure we get all four domains to ensure that students have this opportunity. And I want to focus for a moment on the class of 2025. So, the class of 2025, uh, statewide, there were 4,128 students who earned a bilingual seal. 4,128 statewide. That was out of just under 62,000 graduates. So, statewide, about 6.7% of students earned a bilingual seal. The Minnotonka graduating class of 2025, 51.3% of students earned a bilingual seal. And so our our district accounted for 10 and a half% of the bilingual seals awarded upon graduation in 2025. And that was based on a number MDE just sent out on May 11th here. Um, one other part that struck me and Dr. Leoo was was speaking with we about this about the idea of our students building and earning currency in their time in Minnetonka. whether that be currency through advantage experience, momentum experience, an immersion experience and that opportunity that students embrace and that is offered in this district to build that currency and that that struck me even more. Last week I was speaking with a student who was from the class of 2023. Um he had studied in Barcelona last fall and he was over there with 20 of his friends who he said everybody had a little different goals in the experience but one that he wanted to do was to volunteer. And so he volunteered with a group of 13 and 14 year old students uh did not speak any English and he got he had that opportunity and embraced that opportunity and had a successful experience because he had gone through Spanish immersion and could communicate with these students. And so he spent time volunteering there. He said, "Of all the fun things that I did, it was great traveling Europe, but it was really cool as being the one person in our group of 20 who was volunteering with these students." I want to close here with just again that idea of turning to the story. Uh so here's from our graduating class. Here's what you would typically see from a student in Spanish or Chinese immersion. And this by typical using the average here. Um so student would be at the 71st percentile in NWA reading in the fall of third grade. 563 which is meets on the border of exceeds on their fifth grade MCA reading. 1061 meets again pretty close to exceeds on the 10th grade uh from fifth grade to 10th grade MCA reading. then that student is typically going to earn around a seven or an advanced low on their actful proficiency. Uh which would provide and and earn that opportunity of now graduating in a month well over a 3.0 GPA on average platinum or gold bilingual seal and having three to four Minscu semester credits. So not not credits but three to four semesters of credit uh which they say can vary from institution to institution. And one more student in closing. There was a student uh who's um a senior now was at the 20th percentile in fall of third grade on NWA reading. By fifth grade, that student was a 544 partially meets on the MCA. By 10th grade, she was a 1052 and meets on the MCA reading. In 10th grade, she also was an intermediate high on her stamp assessment. So, next month or in two weeks, I should say, she will graduate with well over a 3.0 GPA as a gold bilingual seal and we'll have three of those college semesters in credit. Thank you. Any questions? >> That's awesome. Thank you, Dr. Leoo and Mr. Breen. It's great. Any questions from the board? >> Yes. Um, so in terms of the testing that they do when they're younger and their proficiency in that language, I know for me, I don't think I learned really how to like read or write or practice those skills in English until third grade. So I'm wondering how do those test scores really apply and translate into their transition into middle school where all their classes are in English. >> Yes. So in terms of their performance in their English classes then ultimately what we typically typically would see is in that first year in third grade when there starts to be that transition of taking like a MAP test and a little more some more of the uh C curriculum based measures that there might be a fall and maybe even a winter where that data is lagging on average a little bit behind and in most cases that gap is closed by the spring of third grade or in that fourth grade school year. So, we've spent a lot of time looking at that. So, it's a great question that that um that typically we see that and really look at um different student groups, cohorts, and try to understand uh Spanish immersion versus Chinese immersion and what that timeline might be for, you know, when those skills get developed. But, um certainly leaving elementary, they tend to enter middle school with a similar experience. Now in middle school when they have less of, you know, a smaller portion of their day in their immersion setting, um the the scores in my mind would suggest that there's such a strong foundation being built that that they continue they might not be building that foundational level the same way, but they're building on their skills and continuing to ascend as we saw like in those sixth, 8th, 10th grade cohorts. Um, and so providing that opportunity to grow in both areas. Thank you, >> Megan. >> Um, thank you for all this. I like the student stories. It's kind of cool just to think about like a longitudinal piece. Um, question. Can you just talk really briefly about how students earn the bilingual seals because I think we have a bunch of fairly new board members [clears throat] and um, going to graduation and seeing the chords and whatnot. So can you just talk really briefly about kind of the criteria for that? >> Absolutely. Thank you. Uh and so this is set by the state and we do we we keep a page prominently on our website because it is a little complicated depending on um the first of all you can't uh earn the minu credits as a ninth grader. Um but as a as a ninth grader you can earn other opportunities like through an AP exam toward a seal. And so between AP exams, IB exams and stamp assessments, they have certain score thresholds for each. So platinum seal, uh, gold seal, and that world certificate that can be achieved. And so, um, a number of our students naturally will take a stamp assessment at some point in their high school experience, but will also take maybe an AP exam as a nth grader, an IB exam perhaps later on. And so it's tiered and it it's um a four for instance on an AP exam for platinum to a three um or four and a five um and then similarly IB exam does go down like I was saying on that IB language A will get down to a three to earn the seal and so it's um those assessments and um the other languages so um one there are some students who are were not in immersion who are taking an IB B course, IB language B course. So there are students who have that opportunity. Um little different criteria, a little higher threshold to earn um a bilingual seal as well. And then um we continue to talk about ways to get more and more students taking a stamp assessment who maybe um for instance are multilingual learners. Um and Jana Rafferty is is really instrumental in how we try to um market and get conversations going at the high school with our teachers there. Uh knowing that we still even have more opportunities to gather students from, you know, who are not in our immersion programming. Tanya, >> do all the SEALs. Okay, so the kids can go to college as a native speaker of Spanish in another country, right? Or is is one of those seals only for that? Like what does each seal get them or like >> So the the officially for the it's the minu credits that come in. Now there might be other colleges elsewhere that have certain um criteria but being that the bilingual seal is an MDE or is a Minnesota program so theirs is that part is minu minu school centric. >> Okay. >> Um but there uh I can't speak specifically to what they are but I know I've had conversations about opportunities that students have earned or achieved from their immersion experience at other colleges. >> Sure. >> Yeah. Sorry. >> No, that's that's okay. Thanks. >> Oh, sorry. Yeah, >> just I think I heard you say early in your presentation about that the Amira is available digitally only. Is that accurate? Okay. I just think it's important for us to keep that in mind as we're considering the intentionality of our technology is that right now some of the things we do are digital. Okay. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> All right. Thank you both. That was really good data. Appreciate it. Thank you. Okay, moving forward. Next up, we have review of policies 516, student medication, 516.1 overdose medication, and 517 recognition and treatment of anaphilaxis in the school setting. Superintendent law. >> Madam Chair, members of the board, there's been a lot of discussion at the legislature about how schools can support overdose and specifically should students have the ability to access overdose medication and give it at school. um that prompted a lot of discussion about our current medication policies and a review of you'll see three policies. Student medication, overdose medication, and recognition and treatment of anaplaxis in school settings. So, tonight uh health services director Annie Lumbar Benbson and executive director of HR and general counsel Angie Flowers will be summarizing these policy changes. Miss Flowers, >> thank you. Superintendent Law, members of the board, I will be deferring to our expert, Director of Health Services, Annie Lombard Benson, to talk through the changes we're proposing. Perfect. Madam Chair, Superintendent Love, members of the board, I'll just kind of walk through each piece and answer any questions that you might have. So, for policy 516, part four under uh letter C, just clarifying some language. Prescriptions are renewed, but orders are not renewed. they actually need to be completed annually or when a change occurs in the medication and or the administration. So that's reflected on letter C. For part K, it just adds uh and clearly delineates where the administration of the medication will be documented. Part four or section four part M number four just reformats the requirements in list form for the key pieces needed for consideration for a student to self- carry their inhaler. Part M number seven deletes the language of non- syringe injectors for epinephrine to epinephrine delivery systems as now there are a variety of systems available on the market including syringe auto injector and now nasal and then uh part just we we hadn't really clearly delineated the process for returning medications that are unclaimed at the end of the year. So, we just really wanted to be clear about the process that would happen, which is guided by Minnesota state statute both for controlled and non-controlled medications and indicates the frequency of when medications would be uh disposed of. Um, let's any questions? >> Okay. >> Oh, sure. Dr. Mike. >> Yep. >> Yes. Um just one question. The >> uh the item on I have to find it again. uh talking about the I believe it's the when new prescriptions oh yeah the written order uh such orders uh so part four requirements letter C such orders must be completed annually or andor whenever a change in the prescription requirements or requirements for administration occurs. Um, >> my apologies. I also realized I didn't add that we added a piece about um prescription cannabis not being able to be dispensed at school due to state law. Apologies that I missed that point. >> Um, my question was about it was actually about um, and maybe it's one of the other ones. The languages are very similar between some of these. Um, but it was a question about the timing of the order and now I can't now I can't find it. I was reading through it earlier and I'm now not I'm not having I'm not seeing what I was seeing before. So, give me a second here. on the wrong policy. Keep going. If I come up with it, I'll come back to it. >> All right. And then for policy 516.1, the only item that was added was on uh number two, the general statement adding the conditions under which the policy would be contingent upon. And we just added that number three that the nlloxxone supply would be contingent upon availability of funding either from outside sources or as approved by the school board to obtain and administer. The medication does expire. So there is an ongoing expense for obtaining, keeping and monitoring the overdose medication. So, we just added that language, but that's the only change on that policy. >> Tanya, >> uh, do all staff members get trained on this or just some? >> At this point, we have the health staff trained and then the emergency response teams trained to utilize Nlloxxone. And then moving on to policy 517. As I indicated, really the overall changes just reflect that language that any uh point in the policy where it said epinephrine auto- injectors to an epinephrine delivery system. So again, in section 3 part D definitions, that auto injector language was removed because we're recognizing that there are a number of different delivery systems available. In section 3 part E, it defines what the instructional day is. part or excuse me section four part B. It clearly delineates how we will obtain epinephrine. We currently get it for free through a program um called the EPI for schools section 4 part C because this is a prescription medication an order is needed for us to have it. Recently, some changes were made at the at the state level from the Minnesota Department of Health to allow for a standing order to ensure that we have the necessary components to be able to obtain this prescription. And then section 4, part D, we indicated that each building would have at least two doses of epinephrine and that doses would be appropriate for their population. Um, but it allowed us to then move the epinephrine between sites as needed if a dose was administered at one school and it needed immediate replacement while we wait for that order to [snorts] be filled. And then it also just makes clear that epinephrine would be available for the hours of operation that explorers club is happening. >> Question Sally. >> So mine is really more of a comment as a parent of a child who has an anapilaxis action plan. When we first had to do this now, many years ago, this was not the policy and it was really scary because at that time the policy was your kid's going to be accompanied by another child to the nurse's office or to health services, which would not work. So, this is just so so lovely to know that this is in place now. So, thank you for keeping this updated as as uh statute changes and and availability of other means of administration change. We ordered a new one today. [laughter] So, thank you Yes, Karen. >> Um, when you say that the epinephrine in the the buildings and probably this is for Dr. Remall over there. Um, the that so in like in the elementary buildings there would be children that would be probably have one dosage and then also adults and I mean the teachers and staff is this available for them if there's a an emergency? >> I'm sorry. Can you clarify the question? >> When you said that there's different dosage we have dosage for elementary. Yes. Sorry. a bungal right for the elementary students but then in every building we have you know adult staff is there is there is there something available for them >> our stock up and efin the doses are reflective of the student population so at our buildings that house those younger students we have doses that are junior doses along with adult doses and then in the middle schools and high schools they're all adult doses >> okay so in and this applies to students and adults if an adult hasn't >> correct yes so every basically Everyone in all of our buildings should be covered, protected. >> Correct. >> Dr. Mike, >> um just a uh formatting issue. Uh item or section three on this one. Uh the lettering needs to be adjusted for deleting letter [snorts] D, I believe. So E, F and G need to be moved up a letter. >> We'll get that corrected. D was stricken and not add it back. Thank you. Okay. Anybody else? Dr. >> board members, based on this conversation tonight, this will likely go to the consent agenda at the next board meeting. >> Okay, perfect. >> Thank you both. >> Thank you. Thanks. All right. Next up, we have review of the fiscal year 27 proposed budget. Superintendent Law. Madam chair, members of the board, one of the things that you have come to appreciate in Minnitonka is that we have a executive director of finance and operations that's ahead of schedule and well planned and in many districts this is a late June extended into June meeting to approve the budget. We are fortunate to be looking at the budget in late May for approval in next week's uh meeting which is the June meeting May 28th. So tonight, um, executive director in finance and operations will be able to summarize the forecast budget, including the proposed budget for FY27 for your first read and questions, including the most recently settled state um, legislative session. Mr. Bourgeois, >> thank you, Superintendent Law, Madam Chair, members of the board, and student board members. Um, you know, we all the great stuff that you've heard in the prior prior agenda items, uh, wouldn't happen without financing. I mean, I I have a a saying that's kind of trit, but no money, no mission, you know, and so we're not in business to make money. We're not in business to, you know, acrew a pile of money necessarily. If we do, it's to support education. And that's what we're here all about. And of course, I get a frog in my throat. as soon as I start talking. Excuse me. Okay. Um, first slide is uh something I put in just to keep track of of this because for us our operating referendum is such an important chunk of our funding. And we have been struggling since fighting and struggling since fiscal year 17 uh to for calendar 17 to actually get it get it increased at the legislature on a per pupil basis because that was the last time we ran um an election in 2015 where we actually were able to get a per pupil increase. And uh we've been able to extend our our operating referendum but we have not been able to increase it. And so but we have to keep trying. We just have to win once, right? So we just got to keep trying, keep trying. But under the current statutes, uh, we're at a statemandated operating referendum cap. And you're going to see as we go through these things how in some respects the state has us fighting with one hand behind tied behind our back on a f from a financing standpoint. This next slide is one that I've kept track from a historical standpoint and and those of you who have been on the board for a while, you know it well, but uh on the left hand side was uh the the approximately 10 years when uh the state took over most of the funding instead of having it be funded locally. And uh so the district went through kind of a rougher period of a lot of uh red numbers is of zeros are deficit spending but no budget cuts and then budget cuts are red numbers. And uh so we started our immersion program which you heard some of the wonderful stuff that's happening in that uh just a little while ago uh in 2007 with kindergarten and first grade students and then built that up and uh along with our referendum and and the other things we did with student enrollment. We had an 18-year run of no budget reductions and then um we pretty much ran that string out as far as we could for a while. We uh uh did not grow for a while in enrollment. uh and um so we have had two years of of budget reductions, but for fiscal year 27 uh we have have not had to have budget reductions. In fact, we've been able to add some uh teaching staff back and uh so hopefully we'll start another string, right? Uh this slide is just to give you an idea of the the per pupil funding formulas that result in a lot most of our revenue in the general operating fund. We have multiple funds for specific things and all those funds are basically balanced within a certain amount of money for a certain project or a certain type of expenditure and those things basically balance out and as long as they're zero above their fine. The general operating fund is is kind of like a a a family's you know bank account that they have uh you know you need money in the bank account for just about everything that might come up. The general operating fund is that it keeps track of all the expenditures and revenues coming in and out, but it's also where you try to need have some dollars available for common term as a rainy day fund, right? General education revenue is up about $22 to $7,658 per student. Local optional revenue is another uh chunk of dollars that we get per pupil. And ironically, that $724 for our district actually came off of our operating referendum in two chunks. While other districts around the state got new money, they transferred some of our operating referendum over to local optional revenue and and said, "Well, you don't have to get get run a referendum to that was what we got out of it. We didn't have to run a referendum to keep it." So, but we didn't get any new money. In theory, if they had not done that, we'd have another $724 in in operating referendum revenue. Then referendum revenues is up to $2,340 per pupil. Um, oh, local option, by the way, has been frozen. Basically, most of it, $400 of it has been frozen since 2014 and when it was instituted in for fiscal year 15. And uh the $300 was instituted for fiscal 19 and that's been frozen for seven years. So, we keep losing against inflation, and you'll hear that with a lot of these other remaining [clears throat] formulas. $260 for Q uh Q comp revenue. That's for teacher development and and additional work that they do. That's been frozen for a long long time. I I can't even tell you exactly when. Equity revenue is a a dollar amount that floats up and down based on uh the number of of students of certain categories that we have. Transition revenue has been $155 for like about 35 years. Gifted and talented revenue is $13 and that's been frozen forever. Safe schools revenue $36, frozen for a long time. Library aid and student support aid are are relatively new dollar allocations, but those also basically have had flat funding. We also get something called operating revenue uh capital for other uses. Uh everything from it can be for technology or textbooks or you know buying a lawnmower for the ground crew. um lease levy is something that we've used to provide additional space for our students. So our general operating fund proposed budget is up to $185 million in revenues for uh fiscal year 27 and 183 million just under that for uh expenditures and we're budgeting a net surplus of $2.4 million. That would uh leave us with an unassigned fund balance as of the end of the that 27 fiscal year of about 24 million. And that's a lot of money individually to all of us, but basically it's it's about, you know, if we're spending about $15 million a month, that's about maybe six weeks or so of operating dollars. And people go, "Well, why would you need six weeks or I'm um and um there was a time in the in it was before I came to Minnesota, but there was a time in the 1980s when the state was in really bad trouble and they were actually taking money back from the state. So, there was a time when they took money back and people had to live off whatever they had in their fund balance. A few other tidbits there. We're looking at 11,57 E12 enrollment um for October 1st, which is about 12,600 weighted pupil units. The the operating our basic revenue went up about 2.69% for $22. operating referendum was about $74 up and then 825.7 teacher FTES and uh we have all of the uh any any uh compensation package we have uh for a unit that's settled is in there but right now it's really only the bargaining unit for the MTA are settled for fiscal 27 and then we have 3% for anybody any up unit that has not settled yet as a as a as some we have to put something into recognizing that the compensation will go up don't want to have it put up too high because that wouldn't necessarily work out great in negotiations. So, um try to have a reasonable a reasonable target in there. Average teacher salary and benefits are 136,886 for FY27 and average new hire teacher salary and benefits are $110,86. Just some quick slides. You can see the biggest chunk of revenues is our general education revenue. Uh that's $7683. operating referendum is about 30 point $30 million. Uh categorical aid is about $40 million of which the vast majority of that about twothirds of that is special education. Federal revenue is only $3 million. We we are actually very low on uh federal revenue compared to a lot of other districts. Uh and then local optional revenue is at that $724 is 9.3 million. Percentage-wise, you can see the percentages there of 52% for u general education revenue and operating referendum 16.4%. So, uh you know, in terms of things that are going up with the rate of inflation on our budget, general education revenue, if we get a an inflation increase, and there have been years when the state did not give us an inflation increase, uh that would go up and operating referendum goes up with the rate of inflation as calculated by the state. So about 66% or 68% of our budget goes up with um with uh inflation uh and then up to a cap of 3%. Uh for the general ed revenue, but the rest of it basically is for the most part flat. So it's a interesting dichotomy there. Teacher salaries and benefits are the vast majority of what we spend our dollars on in the general operating fund. And of course that's what we're supposed to be doing. we're supposed to be putting teachers in front of kids. So, um, $121 million, just under$122 million. And then paras are about 13.5 million. So, between those two, it's about $135 million that we spend out of 185 million on people who have the most contact with students. Of course, in including teachers, our counselors, and um psychologists and and nurses and other other people are part of that bargaining unit. And you can see uh we don't transportation is about 8.3 million. Purchase services is a pop paria of things. Uh and then all other salaries and benefits is of 24 million. You know those are percentages. So 66.7% for teacher salary and benefits and another seven and a half for pair professionals. So about 74% of everything that we spend three out of$4 dollars goes towards the people who have the most direct contract contact with students. This is just a longitudinal of of bottom kind of a bottom line number on uh from a a chart that we keep internally that I'll flash in front of you, but it's so small you can't read it. But uh this for fiscal 27 shows a $2.4 million uh surplus budgeted. We take all that and we project it out and we project conservatively. Um but uh also most of our our expenditures go up with the rate of inflation. Almost 100% of our expenditures go up with the rate of inflation. But then our revenues, you know, 64% go up with the rate of inflation. So there's an automatic uh pull against being balanced unless you find a way to to um get additional revenues. And again, for many years for that 18-year run, we had additional students coming in and the incremental cost to educate them was more than was less than the revenue that they brought in. But also um uh we were able to do additional operating referendum dollars and those things. So those things, you know, the operating referendum has been been shut off or that tools been taken out of our out of our toolbox. So long-term uh in in other words to eventually by for the next five years after this we would have to cut approximately $1.7 million annually every year if we did it steadily to basically balance out because if you make a budget reduction in one year it's like like pulling out a layer of uh of Tetris at the bottom you know you move the layer out of Tetris and everything drops down right so if you actually do budget reductions you'd end up um uh affecting all five years. The thing is is um of course our job is to try to do whatever we can to not have that happen, try to stay balanced and uh so um that's why we're always pounding away at the legislature trying to get more operating referendum capacity or get local optional revenue increase for inflation which would give us about $3.6 million a year. And uh we've we've asked the legislature to restore um the $300 $300 that they took away one year um out of the local optional or to local optional revenue and we haven't made any headway there, but that'd be another $3.6 million. If we ever rolled Yatsi and got those two, we'd really be close to being balanced for the next five to six years. So this is this the the detailed spreadsheet. I just do that to prove that there's actually a lot whole lot more numbers behind it. and and this there's actually about 20 pages behind this too. So this is a status of our general operating fund on assigned fund balance and it just it does provide stability. We don't have to do cash flow borrowing uh because we keep a mod it's modest again about six weeks worth of of cash uh and and so it's it's a cornerstone. We have a AAA bond rating with with uh Moody's investor service. So what that means is AAA is is commonly called it's the top of 23 bond ratings that the rating agencies have. So if we borrow money, uh, we get the best rates. And, uh, back in the day that when they actually, um, uh, sold bonds, they bonds, the bonds of the best companies actually had a little bit of gold around the edge. They call them guilt edge bonds. And so AAA is actually known in the nomenclature of the bond markets still as as being a guilt edge bond. So, uh, we whenever we issue sell bonds for building projects, um, we they sell out really fast. You can see how we climbed uh to fiscal 20. Then COVID hit and we had some COVID years and we were we were basically one of the few districts that actually had all of our elementary students in in class 5 days a week and uh our middle school students were in class four days a week. Um and u so hopefully that helped them in the long run. Um and then uh uh but we still had a little bit of deficit spending but now we're turning it around balancing out for the projected fiscal 26. we look like we're coming in uh above above uh you know above water and and again for fiscal 27. So um just the other thing that I always make make a point of is uh we we got a really we have a really good uh budgeting staff and accounting staff. Ash Mooney is our coordinator of budget and financial services and uh he's really the lynch pin of of of keeping everything in track and and helping me with projections and all that and um uh but you can be basically you can be 99 99 and a half% accurate on your revenues and 99 and a half% accurate on your expenditures and if you miss them by that half percent both the wrong way you're $2 million off. So, we try to be very conservative um and uh do the best we can. Just a couple of quick general operating fund items. Again, just different ways to look at the the numbers. I have a few things on these slides. I'm not going to read every single one of them, but uh you can kind of get a breakdown of the dollars that general education revenue uh coming in is from resident pupils and then how much from open enrolled students. The interesting thing about our open enrolled students is I keep track every year of what their incremental cost is and then what their incremental revenue is. And every year open enrolled students bring in enough dollars to cover themselves. And there's enough money left over that there is literally thousands of dollars available for every resident student that we would not have had if we were just a standalone district. And uh so last year uh it well in we haven't done fiscal 26 yet because it's not closed but fiscal 25 it it was actually an increase of 30% in terms of the general operating funds for resident students that were available because we had open enroll students. 30% more for regular instruction. So um that's pretty powerful. Uh just a couple of other dollar amounts. Again just seeing them different way mentioned how they're frozen. At the bottom though, there's some interesting notes and every year there's something called Minnesota profiles that comes out and uh there's 329 school districts in the state and so you can pull up we I pulled down the database and sorted and uh we are our 329 with number one being the best uh in terms of general fund state aid per pupil. We are at 319 out of 329. So we are way down here. Um, and we get less state aid. Um, and and what's frustrating about that then is is but then we're hamstrung at how much we can can basically try to make up locally. So we uh in in the last dollars that or dollar uh in fiscal years that were available, Minnotonka got $10,725 per pupil for general operating funds. And that's $2333 less than the state average of 13,058. And actually most of the districts in the metro area, there's a few other ones that are down there with us, some of our neighbors, but most of the districts in the metro area are above the state average. So, uh, that's interesting in itself right there. But at if we were just getting the state average, uh, you we would basically be pulling in about two $29.3 million and we wouldn't be talking about, you know, gez, how would we balance the budget for the next five years? So, uh, it's it the the funding, you know, um, the the legislature way back in 1859, uh, the first thing they did after saying, "Hey, we're setting up the governor, we're setting up the legislature, we're setting up the judiciary in article after they did that in articles 1 through seven in article 8, they said that the their next main thing that the government's responsible for was for an equitable system of public education. So, we've got the system of public education. So, I guess we can always have a lot of chat over the coffee table about whether it's equitable or not. But the thing is is our operating referendum is so important for us. Uh so, uh the uh we're just above the median. Um and uh I'm sorry, I left a one out there. We're at 159. So, we're ju we're just above the median of the middle of the pack uh thanks to the operating reference. So, that money is really really important. On the expenditure side, again, there's our salaries and benefits, purchase services, a list of things, utilities, maintenance, repairs, property liability insurance. We've done everything we can to try to stretch dollars. We actually formed our own consortium for property liability insurance, and we've saved a lot of money since we did that with six other school districts. Um, uh, supplies, instructional supplies is the biggest chunk of that. Um, fuel for heating, transportation is, uh, about 4.6% So, that gets us to nutrition services, and I'll try to pick up the pace on these here and just kind of scan through them, but uh nutrition services is looking at operating at a net surplus for FY27. They do a really good job breaking even or better. Uh they have about a $4 million fund balance. We make sure that uh any surplus that we have, we plowed back into the the uh kitchens in terms of the type of equipment, more efficient equipment, uh you know, uh air fryers and uh combi ovens and all those types of things. uh and just so we can make different things. Uh that allows us to make different things and prepare food a different way. And then um but then the other important thing about that is is it doesn't the nutrition services fund does not require a subsidy from the general fund. And in many school districts in the state, the general fund is actually subsidized nutrition services because they're not able to break even. Community services fund is another big success story for the district. About 15.9 million in revenues and 16.4 million in expenditures. So, we're they're going to use a little bit of that fund balance, but they still have a about a $6.9 million fund balance. This is a very entrepreneurial type of fund in this in the from the aspect of where they get their dollars. They get very few dollars that come from local tax revenue, federal tax revenue, state tax revenue. And basically 87% is b offering a service, putting something out there and off saying, "Hey, it's going to cost this much." And people have to make a decision. Is that a good price or not? Is it a fair deal for the service? And if it is, then they decide to buy the service, right? Just like any other private entity. So, um, over the years, our our district has done a good job and is continuing to do a good job of, uh, figuring out what our public likes to take part in in terms of classes or take advantage of in terms of services such as Explorers Club and preschool and all that kind of stuff. And, uh, so they're able to, for most years, they're operating at a surplus. Once in a while, they spend some dollars down because of of some equipment purchases and things like that. Capital expenditures is a uh something that includes what's called lease levy. That's actually bond payments and some of the buildings we built, some of the additions we built for when we were growing the district during that 18-year uh run of no budget reductions. And uh our operating capital revenue though is is one of those poperies of things that can be spent out of there that is other than salaries and benefits. And uh that actually has been frozen for since 2010. uh and uh except it does go up by a tiny amount based on the age of of their buildings, but the the the core chunk of that uh funding formally has been frozen since 2010 as and least levy revenue has been frozen since 2014 also at $212. Uh health and safety is is um actually things related to like fire alarms and sprinklers and inspections and all those types of things. So it's not the type of thing that related to the um our nurses and and you know or or physical health like that. Uh so those are those dollars. That's why it's in this capital area. Debt service uh we actually uh have revenues about 13.4 million and we have expenditures from about 9.8 million. We actually have some timing differences on some payments. So it looks looks good. But that fund balance is does accumulate actually at 5% every year. And so that 5.4 4 million will actually be used for future bond payments. Uh fiduciary funds, uh these are actually a whole bunch of little tiny little trust funds that we have where somebody donates money for a specific purpose and and uh they say, "Okay, school board, we'd like to donate money for this." And then you accept it every every uh regular board meeting. And then we have to go out and spend the money on what they say. I've used the example of Dr. Peterson. He's had the scholarship fund since he's actually since before he retired. And so he donates money for scholarships. And so we have to use so we hold that money in trust and then we spend it on scholarships because that's what the the uh the agreement it was. Athletic equipment fund. Uh we get $90 per participant as a participation fee and that goes to activities operations. Um but then any any amount per activity goes into the athletic equipment fund. So, this basically covers uniforms, soccer goals, all you know, balls and shuttlecocks and all that kind of stuff. Um, for for athletics, self- insurance. We are self-insured for health insurance. Um, so we have a very strong health insurance program and if you have something really bad, you can get the mail without getting a without even getting a referral. You can just call them and if they take you, you can go. So, we try to make sure we take care of our people that way. uh we have about 2 2400 covered lives of our employees and their dependents uh and spouses and dependents and uh so we've been doing this since 2001 and uh we have 11.25 premium increase in FY27 but even with that the average premium increase has been 4.15%. So we've been well below the national trend for all those years. So we're looking at being approximately break even knock on wood fiscal 27 be really healthy and we'll come in under that and do a little better. Uh but that it's there, you know, we have a a healthy fund balance so and that's there in case you know somebody some some years we get we've gotten hit with like a lot of cancers and things like that and you just never know but we have a backs stop there for our employees. Then the art center is uh about a $955,000 budget and uh revenue from ticket sales actually goes to cover the cost of the plays and anything else uh that's left over on from that goes into a an equipment replacement trust. So, if they decide that they want want to do a play that requires more cast members and they need more microphones or they want to do special construction for a special set, they can pull money out of the equipment equipment replacement trust fund and and do what they need to do to have a great play. And of course, they do amazing plays. But the uh it has a $255,000 uh fund balance and then staff and daily operations are supported with a transfer from the general fund. Our dome is about $385,000 a year. It the expenditures are they the biggest expenditures are actually um related to electricity and natural gas. And we use a lot of it to keep the dome up and lighted and warm in the winter when it's you know below zero. U but we actually make enough money to to make the bond payment on the dome. So this it does there's no money that comes out of the general operating fund and it's so it's a great facility for everybody. We have two more payments and then the dome will be paid off. We have a little bit of money in a little trust fund balance there about $20,000. We use that to make repairs or if somebody says, "Hey, I want to hang another line because we're going to divide up a batting cage into two batting cages or something." We can do it out of that fund. Um aquatics program about 1.2 million expenditures is 1.15 million and they actually uh run a surplus to cover a bond payment that we used when we built the aquatics center. uh onto Minnotonka or Middle School East back in 2008. That used to be a sixlane pool. We knocked out the wall and added enough space to turn into an eight lane pool and a diving wheel and made it a fast pool. And one day when we have more time, I'll tell you how you can make a fast pool. But there's four things you need to do. Uh and we did them because the first time they actually started using the pool, everybody who was trying to get to state actually they ran out of tickets to state. They had to start writing them on a piece of paper. um Paggel Center operations budget. Uh this one looks odd because it's a we get reimbursed for the cost of expenditures over the um that are over the revenues. Uh ice arenas are hard to make money on and hard to break even on, but it's a it so they're basically subsidized by the local your local city or county. We're only one of we're one of only 13 school districts in the state that own our own and uh but we actually have that negative fund balance is the is two years worth of reimbursements that are in process. The way it works is we end up getting a certain amount of revenues. We get $100,000 from uh Pagel uh that we lease it to them and it's a it's a good deal to lease it to them but then they can have the programs for all of our students who are part of the ice or uh the skating program and the MHA program for all their levels. Uh and then um uh but we submit the the difference between that $100,000 which is the the only revenue that we get uh against what the expenditures were for the year. We put it on the levy and then it gets levied and then the second year gets reimbured. So that 1.3 million is about 660,000 of annual reimbursements for the last two fiscal years that are in process. And then long-term facilities maintenance. This is how we keep up our buildings. the average age of our buildings is actually um uh pretty significantly uh advanced and we have a um like for instance Minnotanka High School was originally built in 1952 so it's 74 years old but hopefully we've kept it up and you wouldn't think that um and so this is how we just keep our buildings up and uh they have good bones we want to keep ping money into them so we put put money into our 1.9 million square feet of buildings every year to make them make sure that they last for future generations And then our construction fund uh revenues from bond proceeds you're going to see coming in. That's what we're expecting to get from the revenues of the of the second tranch of the building bonds. And uh the expenditures of 46 million are actually coming out of um out of mainly out of the bonds that we issued for 2026A for that first run for MME and MMW because those are the projects that are in pro are going to be in process in FY27 in terms of having been designed and permitted and then we'll be spending the dollars. Okay. with um in the 32 million we're going to be utilizing that to actually do the design work during fiscal 27 and most of that work will be done in fiscal 28 which starts on July 1st of 2027 capital projects technology 11 million and uh 10,900,000 in expenditures this covers everything from our network costs to our server costs to iPads to um you know cell phones to actually the um some security things such as the Epic system in some of the other schools that we're putting in uh over the next few years. So, it's a it's really crucial uh piece of revenue for us and uh you know without this we wouldn't have been able to do a lot of the programs that we've done over the years. Then we finally have something called OPEC trust fund which is actually a uh a trust fund that was set up in 200 and 8 in December of 2008 and into 2009. And um uh but we had a liability on the books at that time of about $17 million for retirey health benefits uh payments in the future. And so the state actually allowed us to issue bonds to fund it. So, we've been able to fund the bonds uh and and we can earn investments on it, but every year we've been able to pull out dollars to cover the cost of the retirey benefits that had been promised for everybody up to July 1st, 2002. So, we the the state cut off having post-employment benefits at that time from uh from bargaining units, but they allowed um uh for them to be funded out of this particular mechanism. So, so far we've actually pulled about $23.5 million in I call them dividends out of this trust fund and um it actually has a fund balance as of uh 63027 we're projecting it to be 15.3 million although actually last month it was actually at 15.3 million. Um so we might be really a little bit conservative on that but our liability is going down every year because u you know time takes its toll and so as the number of people who are entitled to that benefit um you know earn their internally reward um uh the liability goes down. So about fiscal year 39 uh the actually the bond payments are going to be done in terms of the original funding. But about that time uh mo the actuary dollar amounts are going to fall to a very low level and uh so there will be probably the ability for school board at that time to be able to look at this and go okay we're going to be able to pull some dollars out of this to fund other operations. So, um, we are able to do that because we were one of the districts that decided to do a re what's called a revocable trust. I revocable trust wouldn't let us do that, but a revocable trust allows the school board under statute at that point in time to pull excess assets out. We actually pulled about 9.8 million in excess assets out um from the Vanmo building. Uh, that was after the stock market had run up uh from about 16,000 to 32,000 or so in the mid the mid2010s. And um actually we pulled this money out before the stock market actually really went down when COVID hit. So it worked out pretty well actually. Um in that regard we kind of protected it, put it into a long-term asset that hopefully is going to be used for 100 years or more. Um but uh we've put 13.7 million to the general operating fund and if we had not done that, our unassigned fund balance of 24 million would be a lot lot smaller. And then we have debt service on it. We have um that's going to be paid off in 2038. So, those are all the funds of the district. Um, when we ask you to approve the budget, we won't go through every one of them, but I wanted to walk through every one of them because there's there's over 320 million of financial activity with all the funds. The general fund is about 185 million in revenue. All the other funds uh when you total them all up, it's about $320 million. So, it's important that you just have the big picture of what's going on with all of them. >> Thank you, Mr. Bourgeoa. Questions, comments from the board. Dr. Mike. >> Uh Paul, I think I've been listening to your presentations now for um almost seven years and your attention to detail is just always amazing. I I always want to wonder if we've got some funding set aside for a cloning program so that when you are ready to retire, we've got someone immediately ready to replace you. >> That's why we did Minnotonka research. >> Right. Exactly. [laughter] Um, but yeah, your attention to detail details like, oh, say policy 516, section 4, letter M, number seven, which could probably use a statement related to students who get new prescriptions during the school year. Um, some something. >> Yeah. Yeah. Um, but yeah, you're you're so appreciated and thank you for all the work you do. Megan. >> Um, I just wanted to point out that in our packet there's a more detailed breakdown of the technology budget and I think that that's something that we need to be thinking about. Um, I I got a question earlier this week. How do you guys spend $11 million on iPads every year? And I was like, okay, wait, but the technology budget is not just iPads. Like it includes professional development around it. It includes infrastructure and security. And so I do think that um as we start getting asked those questions as this is a big topic in our community um just to be aware that like even right now there's a textbook line item in there and there's um you know software hardware infrastructure um so there's a whole all there's a lot of other things that go into that technology budget rather than just simply iPads and that even taking like if we were to take away one to one iPads entirely that budget wouldn't all shift to paper or something else because there's so much of it that we can't get rid of. And so it's um it's just something I wanted to point out so that all the board members are aware of that because I think that that detailed breakdown is actually kind of helpful as we start to field questions about this >> with >> I was just going to say you know particularly when we do a re renew the levy and stuff we we do a lot of talking about it and uh but we always have we do have a good story to tell so we can work with Dr. getting especially now it's becoming a a a topic of discussion again and again just another thing to remember is the actual name of it is the capital projects fund which technology is one part of what we can spend it on but it's become the tech fund because we spend most of it on tech but it's not the only thing that we spend on >> it's a good point Dan >> um I'm just curious if when we're looking forward to future years have there been any significant changes to any of our assumptions based on what we've been doing traditionally. >> Um well, uh right now, you know, um we're picking up like $5,000 more in in um the um compreh um compensatory levy or compensatory aid, I'm sorry, at least for another year, but we're expecting that to go away. Uh there's an assumption because it's actually in law still that special ed is going to be reduced in the next bianium by $250 million. So we have that that'd be a layer of about 1.6 million in the first year carrying forward and then another 1.6 billion in the second year dropping. But so we have those two 1.6 million layers being taken out. And so that's actually what tips our next year's balance into minus 400,000. If it was not for that special education reduction, we would be showing a $1.6 million surplus or $1.2 million surplus for next year. So yeah, we we try to make our best guess and you know, who knows where inflation's going to be. um we use inflation factors on both the operating referendum and the uh general education revenue that actually the state of Minnesota calculates out and puts out inflation factors based you know with offsite management budget. So we we have we pull out what the other people you know project and we try to then apply it. >> Sally >> yeah thank you for that. I was actually just going to ask the same question around the especially the compensatory and the special education. I didn't spot whether that was specifically called out in any of your commentary here. And if not, could it be? Just so we don't lose sight of that. >> I mean, yeah, sure. In like in the in the board document. >> Yeah. >> Yeah, I can we can add that. Sure. >> Thank you. >> Absolutely. It's a good call. >> Okay. Uh Tanya, >> um on page 47 in the board packet, I was very excited about the uh transportation budget. You specified here that we because we spend less uh than other districts on transportation. We've saved almost $5.7 million, which has um funded 51 full-time teaching positions. So, thank you for that. Yes. And well, the other thing is is we also spend way less about $2.5 million less per year if we were just spending at the state average uh on maintenance. So, we've been, you know, all the we've just tried to do what we can to push money towards construction. >> All right. Thank you very much. Next up, we will have the review of proposed Minnitanka High School East Side Parking Edition and Scenic. >> Oh, sorry. There was a question on the last topic. This will come back for approval next week. >> Can I make a request then? Um Mr. Bourgeoa, when you um present this next week, could we highlight that technology piece just since it's so prominent right now? Could you um when you present it at the board meeting next week, just make sure to kind of >> call out the things besides just iPads because we can't get rid of teaching laptops and we can't get rid of TVs and classrooms and some of those things that are se you know the infra the networking even like we have our own network which is a big expense. [clears throat] So I think that would be really helpful for the public just to like have a little more information around that. >> Thank you. >> Absolutely. want to take a break. >> Oh, does anybody need a break? We have about 20 minutes left. >> You want to keep rolling? >> Power through. Here we go. Review of proposed high school um east side parking edition and scenic Heights driveway loop to superintendent lock. >> Madam Chair, members of the board, uh earlier tonight, it was referenced that the district is uh one of the ways we're solving our financial challenges [clears throat] is by adding some students. and this board said, "Please do everything you can to address the concerns of the community related to facilities." Two of those concerns are um parking and parent drop off and pickup and parking at the high school. Tonight, you're going to hear two proposals that are coming back to you based on your recommendations about how do we do a better job with uh parent drop off and pickup, specifically Scenic Heights Elementary and parking at the high school. Mr. Gwis. >> Okay. Thank you, Superintendent Lock. Madam chair, members of the board, um these are two that again percolated up and and actually one kind of the the city heights one was actually uh broached also by the city of Minnetonka which you'll hear about in a little bit. So uh superintendent law mentioned the 5050 plan and um so proportionally the growth of 250 students would be about 77 additional students every year at Minnitonka High School and three teaching staff. So, we put together a design. You know, what can we do uh for additional parking? Well, we actually purchased land. Uh a year ago, we purchased 5264 Michelle Lane. Uh 10 years ago, we purchased 5258 Michelle Lane. And I wish we'd have been able to purchase more, but uh we were able to put purchase ones that came up close and and uh so we're looking at at a parking lot there that would expand the number of spots available at Minnitonka High School by about 9 and a quarter% if the state state I'm sorry if the city lets us build them all. So because oftentimes we'll go in and we'll propose a certain amount and they'll say well they start redesigning it for us. But anyway, so we'll see what we hopefully we can get them all. But um but a major consideration is going to be buffering the neighborhood. So uh these are parcels that we acquired uh 2016. The one that actually has all the trees on it uh we acquired in 206 and we actually cleared that out and they're actually using it for a dog park a lot and you know walking the dogs. So neighbors are happy with that and um you know so we'll be able to retain a lot of that particularly on the east side of that. And then uh the uh the one that is is highlighted but not without trees on it. That's when we just purchased 6264. In fact, we just finished abating uh all the asbestous out of that 1960s house um today. Uh so uh we're estimating it's going to cost $1,950,000 because we've got a lot of excavation that we're going to have to do. We're going to have to do an underground storm water pond. Um, and so again, we'd uh pay for a COP bond out of operating capital. That's where we've done some of the classroom additions over the years, but also every parking addition that we've done all around the the uh the district as we've grown everywhere, uh we've we've had a number of bond payments out of there and we were able to make that work and kind of fit in with all the other bonds. Uh so we'd have to uh do design and permitting in July uh through February and we're hoping to construct in September 27 and have it available or summer 27 and have it available for use. So uh and it will take all 12 months to get through the city. So um we actually um trying to get the Northwest parking lot. We still don't have the permit on it. They actually sent it to the watershed district, the Army Corps of Engineers, uh the uh uh soil and um water and soil resource board, um the DNR, and I'm actually missing two more, but there's six other entities that have to like weigh in on it. So, um it just it just takes time to go through that that, you know, the the bureaucracy get permitting. So, we're ready to go as soon as they give us give us the, you know, say everybody signed off. Um, but this would allow for staff to park on the east side of the high school and that would free up more spaces on the northwest side for student and visitor parking. So, this is a conceptual design. And uh it's a little bit hard to see on here, but on the left hand side, that's actually the east parking lot. kind of off to the kind of an angling line up in Bell. That's actually where the building starts kind of on the other side, very in the upper corner there. But, uh, so we would basically tack on with a driveway, uh, up to the it's a it's a higher level and we don't necessarily want to tear it all down because it probably take about $2 million to take all that dirt out of there. So, we just want to ramp up and go up there. We can fit 111 spots and this is designed I asked them to double the the setbacks that the city has. There's always uh they have setbacks between parcels and usually it's like 20 feet. And so this basically has 40 foot or more setbacks all the way around except on the one side on the northwest side east sorry north east side it has uh just kind of a more normal setback but that's basically just wooded and and nobody and it's far away from the the house at 5252. So, we would basically stay far away, make sure we do really good buffering, transplant a lot of those trees that we put around um my favorite uh Black Hill Spruce and um uh and and just make sure that and and whatever else the city wants us to do and just, you know, buffer everything out. But again, so that would again allow staff to move over and then free up space for students on the and visitors on the front side. So that that's the concept. Uh then with Scenic Heights Elementary School, we were contacted by representatives of the city and Bolton and Mink, the city's engineer. They're planning to rebuild Excelsier Boulevard in 2027. And uh they want to put a roundabout at the intersection of Excelsier Boulevard and Scenic Heights Drive. And right now Scenic Heights auto quue for drop off and pickup and particularly for u actually it's both both in the morning but and it's really long in the afternoon too but uh it actually extends because they try to have everybody coming from the north so it extends out the parking lot up city kites drive and actually out onto Excelsia Boulevard and that that won't make a roundabout just won't work if you have you know a queue uh extending through it. So, they were encouraging us to try to do something. And, you know, I've been we've been thinking about this and looking at it because um the when I first got here, there was a fire lane around the the south and west sides, but it was just grass and like with rudded tracks from the lawnmowers and stuff. And we then I put had them put gravel on it just to make it better, but then we paved it. And uh it's not wide enough by itself to make a uh without with improvements to make a driveway, but with enough dollars, you could make a second driveway and pull everybody off. And actually, Bolton Mink had thought about the same thing. And they showed up to our meeting and had a diagram saying, "Hey, can you run them around the south, the west, and the south side for a second queue?" And we have two cues uh for autos and two different pickup zones at several elementary schools. at Excelsier. We have the um uh we have the front area that's off of Highway 19 or Oak Avenue, right? But uh a number of years back, Lyman Lumber went broke and I suggested to Dr. Peterson that we buy that uh because it was their they're bankrupt and you've got it really cheap and then we built that ramp down the backside off of George Street and so people come around there and so we have they unload in the back. We have two unloading places and then at uh Groveland uh people all come in the same spot but we have two unloading places to help the traffic move a little faster. So one on the east side and one on the front side and you you basically divide it up by grades and you try to have the younger student go with the older student if they're siblings. Uh so and and it works well at those places. So uh this would give us basically a second a second place to do that. So, it's a little bit hard to see, but this is actually the drawing that Bolton Men came in. And uh there is a there's a driveway. I I did put in your packet, though, but yeah, there's So, we'd still have everybody coming in, but we we'd have two lanes coming in instead of one lane coming in. Right now, we have one lane coming in and two going out. We'd have two lanes coming in. And then the people who are going to go to the current pickup spot which is just circling around right at the gym on the on the upper left or you know northwest north yeah northwest corner uh and then kind of going down to the front of the building. That's the current single pickup spot. But the second lane would come in on the on the outside and it would then right at the corner of that northwest gym, we'd basically have them uh just cut off and then route around the west side and around the south side uh to basically the souththeast corner. So a big long queue and uh the calculations from Bowlanth is that that would basically get the car queue off of Scenic Heights Drive. So it' be safer. There's still car cues, but at least you're not worried about somebody, you know, rear ending you at 40 miles an hour if you're lined up on the road. And uh so that's the proposal. And uh we it'll require widening the the fire lane though to make it more drivable. Uh the current conditions are a little bit narrow and there's steep slopes. I mean, you know, it's not like you're looking over El Capitan or something, but um or half dome, but um it, you know, it it's if you especially in the winter, if you like accidentally drive off there and get a couple wheels down the slope, you may get stuck and then that would be it. Um even with you, even with, you know, front-wheel drive or four-wheel drive. So, we'd want to widen it by about six feet and um then, uh put, you know, we'd have to have a railing on top of it and we'd have to put underground storm water pond. We put that down at the lower level because water flows downhill. That just kind of gives you an idea of of the slope there. So we would basically widen that out kind of put a retaining wall infill behind it with you know the proper soils and then just widen it by that extra six feet so there's plenty of room so people feel real comfortable and you know that's the corner. And um putting also putting a a retaining wall with a fence would kind of help them just remember slow down. Uh, and then this is as you come up to the front. So, we would just widen that out again with a retaining wall railing on top. And we would clear that by basically probably we have some things that we have some big snowblowers that could blow snow over. We also have some big front end loaders with these big big wings and blades on them that 20 foot wide that kind of make like a box and just scoop everything up. It might even be big enough to just push everything to the other end and down the hill. But anyway, snow removal would not be a problem even though we had a a retaining wall and a and a fence. So, this is a little bit bigger closeup of that. And so, I'm just showing that there's storm water pond down below. So, we would end up tearing up a lot of that field. So, we'll end up having to rebuild it somewhat. So, um if we are tearing it up, I'd like to see if there's a way uh to improve that field. It's always kind of bumpy and ruddy. if if we come in under budget or any something like that, maybe there's a chance to actually put some synthetic turf there and make a better field that people could use more often and longer um for more parts of the year. Uh so we'll see. I mean that's not the goal. It's just, you know, but it's like if there's an opportunity to make that better too, we'll try to do it if the money's available. I mean that well that's a proposal I should say. So again, 1,950,000, same thing, COP bond, 111 parking spots, underground storm water pond, and the same same schedule because we'd like to have it available for use for September of 27. And then the city could also then continue on with their planned roundabout construction at the intersection. >> It Paul is rebuilding the fields included in your budget? >> No. >> Okay. So that would be separate. >> That's just kind of a wishful thinking. >> Yeah. Okay. Got it. Any questions? >> Okay, sure. >> So, I went to Scenic Heights Elementary School, so it's kind of cool to see like the uh innovations and stuff that you are adding on. Just for clarification, uh the grade three through fifth proposed pickup zone, would they use the trail alongside like the sidewalk that students using the buses use to get to the main entrance or is there a different door that they would use >> on the ones on the southeast corner? You mean where? Yeah, there's a there's a separate door at the very southeast corner and we would route them there and we'd make sure we'd have to we'd modify the the uh area there. There's a sidewalk and there's some mulch and stuff, but we'd widen that out in probably a big concrete pad so that they could go out there and then in nicer weather they could kind of congregate out there also so they wouldn't be inside. Um, and yeah, and make it more more kid-friendly and more pickup friendly. >> Yeah, thank you. >> That's a good question, >> Megan. >> Two quick ones. The first one I think I know the answer to. Um the Michelle Lane houses, they they would not be impacted by traffic because the entrance is coming off the existing parking lot. Correct. >> Yes. >> Okay. And then um would the sledding be impacted at Scenic Heights because I mean that'll be [laughter] >> Yes, it will. But there'll still be some slope on the other side of the path going down. >> So, >> okay. Thank you. This this will come back for approval of the COP bonds >> at some point. >> Next week. >> Next week. >> Okay, cool. >> All right. Thank you, Mr. Baja. I think you're still up for our next and final item, further review of the perpetual endowment trust fund. Superintendent Law. Madam chair, members of the board, our goal of long-term financial stability and really checking every box in terms of what are the things we can do to make sure this year's kindergarters in the fall of 26 will have the same experience as this year's graduates, class of 26. One of the unexplored items is to create a perpetual trust endowment trust fund that will likely not impact for most of us serving for you the terms you're on. we won't see the benefit or have to create a board to manage this or any of those things or any committees. This is really five or 10 years down the road having a potential other funding stream. So, we've talked about this month tonight. We're going to hear some more details about how will we get this started? How will we work with the parameters and again we don't we don't need to create a committee to do anything with this. Um, we need donations assuming that we get it launched and then hopefully the donations are substantial enough that five or 10 years we can start talking about how this can support our funding. Mr. Bourgeois. >> Okay. Thank you, Superintendent Law, Madam Chair, members of the board. Most of the slides are the same ones that you saw. I'm going to go through them quickly for our our new board members in the room. Um, and uh uh but in the process we have some additional detail about like next steps and some of the procedures. So, uh, as as we talked about, we were not we have not been successful at the legislature and the legislature has not been open to doing things that would seem to help us get additional revenue. And so, our district in 20 years ago, they said, "Hey, you know, let's try to get open enrollment. We got to do something." and uh you know so we don't have a lot of other things but one of the things about Minnetonka is of course I places I go when people find out I work for Minnotonka if they're a graduate or they have a student who graduated from there they go hey I'm I'm a graduate or my child graduated from there or whatever very very enthusiastic about the district so I think that we might have the ability to actually do do something that a university would do and not probably many other public school districts would have the ability to do but we got such a giving population. We might be able to set up a perpetual endowment trust. And again, um the idea is we already have community donations to to individual tiny trusts in our in support of uh various initiatives as I mentioned before during the the bond uh not the bond but the budget process and um you know we have uh Minnotonka public schools gives us kind of current year usage grants and all kinds of donations but it's a million and a half annually is pretty incredible and we got a lot we have a lot of alumni pride and a community community pride. So uh we've had strong community pride and support as evidenced for various referendum over the last couple of decades at minimum of 65% and more on most of them. So um we thrived by within the rules thinking outside the box. So we did a referendum design tax neutral in 2007 and the first two-step referendum in 2015. declining enrollment turned around and near annual budget reductions uh wi with uh unique educational programs uh so that it will benefit resident districts and we provided revenue for those by leveraging our operating capital and lease levy revenue to provide space for additional students to get additional revenue. Uh you've seen these charts again. The growth in students helped us and and the number of bond referendums or build not bond uh operating referendums that we ran actually uh allowed for that a long run with no budget reduction so we could just focus on what's best for kids and helping every kid thrive and you know and and go as far as they can go. So, um, during that time, again, this is a a metaphor, but, uh, 747 with four engines, everybody gets state aid in revenue formulas. They have that engine. Every district has local levy revenue formulas, but we had open enrollment growth averaging 223 per year, and we had operating referendum cap increases uh, passed by by the local the local populace. So, those four engines helped us to have that incredible string. So we also were able then to develop out of out of the ordinary programs uh and those programs take additional dollars but we have the resources to do it and these are examples of them. They're just some of them but uh we have an incredible array of programs and those are the things that we really want to keep because um those are the things that make Minnotonka unique. It helps students stay interested, stay in school, keep learning, graduate, you know, go on and cure cancer. So, um, the thing is is the last couple of years, uh, we had open enrollment growth. That's been been that engine's been somewhat shut down. We we've opened it up a little bit with our our 50 student per year plan, but the operating referendum, we've been trying and trying and trying, but the legislature won't let us restart that engine. And I always show this because it's a it's a it actually is a very appropriate metaphor is you build the best sand castle you possibly can and you fight as hard as you can to keep the tide from washing it away for as long as you can. And we we've been fighting and fighting and we're doing okay. School districts are allowed to have trust funds. This is an excerpt from our our accounting manual and it says, "Hey, you can do trust funds." That's basically what that says. Um and uh so the characteristics of our culture and our community in terms of how education is highly valued and enthusiastically supported really gives us the conditions where we probably have the ability to set up a perpetual endowment trust fund and actually and and if everything else in Minnetonka continues as it is it in the long run it'll be successful and we will be able to maintain all the things that make Minnotonka unique and a special place. So we're it's like if there's any place in public schools that would be it. So the concept is provide fundings that make Minnotonka Union special. The goal is to fund several million dollars worth of programs every year. Some of those unique programs because those are things that other districts they end up pairing away as they decline in enrollment or as their budgets decline or the as as the cuts stack up. They all pair back to just the basics that the state provides funding for. And um so this would be different though than uh than like a a donation that we currently get for like scholarships or things like that where you're spending it right away. You'd want to have the donations be perpetual. The corpus, the body that the person of dollars that the person has donated will never be touched. It'll be invested and the earnings on that will be partially reinvested. So you keep compounding. Albert Einstein said one of the ma most magical things he was never able to figure out was the magic of compounding interest. Uh so they keep compounding and then but another chunk of the of the earnings are withdrawn every year to help to be able to keep those special things. So the focus is on legacy giving. It's a different focus than funding immediate needs or grants. So, we're not competing with anybody else, but we're asking people, you know, hey, you know, if you put us in your will, uh, you know, if you think your student did good at in our schools, are you interested in, you know, giving a perpetual donation, your money will be working a 100red years from now, 200 years from now. So, we'd be able to invest right now as allowed in Minnesota statutes 11804 and and our policy 705 has has uh uh has these uh actually 11804 actually has more more options and and the reality of it is is we could invest longer term the right now we just invest in shorter term things because it's our our operating cash but if we have a perpetual dollar amount we can invest in like 30-year treasuries and 30-year treasuries are earning five and about 5 point well they close on the 13th at 5 point um 38 5.038% I mean they're you know making over 5%. Um but we could these are investments that are allowed in in 118A so I listed them out there uh government bonds from the United States or its agencies or any instrumentalities or organizations created by acts of congress that's uh things like far federal farm credit union and those types of things uh state and local security. So, uh, basically anybody with a taxing power rated A or better. Um, state and local securities for, uh, re revenue obligation bonds and then, uh, general obligation bonds for the Minnesota Housing Finance Agency. So, those are those are actually right out of 1184. Uh, so the general steps are, uh, we develop a perpetual endowment trust fund similar to existing OPED revocable trust. Uh, we'd ask the school board to approve the perpetual endowment trust fund. um inclusive of its founding documents. So there's going to be a series of steps that we would bring forward to you as we put as we build this and have you have you approve them so that as we as we create it and build it. Uh the perpetual endowment trust fund we'd want to uh try to do an uh advisory committee. Uh ultimately we probably want to select a professional wealth management firm to assist with investments at if we if as it gets bigger and we do that uh we would probably be a good idea at that time to go to the legislature and and ask to have uh special legislation for an endowment fund of a public school district to be able if professionally managed to be able to invest in the same things that the state board of investment can invest in. That's what our oped funds read because they're long-term investments. So we have wealth Wells Fargo private wealth management investing those funds and so they can invest in a whole wide range and you know we're we're basically making about 7% on on that every year. So but that would take a change in statute but to get started we can still do pretty dog on good with what we're already allowed to do. So we get started and as we start you know start accumulating some funds we would want to maybe try to make you know thinking long term make that look make that ask. Um so we we'd also want to uh do uh policies to establish uh thing all the policies related to growth and withdrawal levels of dividends and at different stages of the corpus and the earnings growth as well as use of dividends. So, uh, we want to have, uh, uh, policy for long-term investments, uh, geared toward making some interest earnings on operating cash. I'm sorry, policy 705 is geared toward making interest earnings on operating cash and the vest investments are short-term in nature. Policy 735 would be related to making long-term investments like 30-year treasuries. Ju just sit there and and uh, right now again, 30-year treasuries making over 5%. If you had [snorts] $10 million invested in 30-year treasuries, you do something called well, it's still referred to as clipping coupons from the days when bonds were paper and they had coupons and you sent the coupons in to get your interest. But you um you basically would sit back and create and and collect half a million dollars a year on interest for 30 years. So we could do that with this and but we want to have a policy that basically refers to 1184 and and you know aligns with that. And then our perpetual endowment acceptance of gifts and donations. I was I was the treasurer for the ICA food shelf for 10 years uh and when we were growing and and we got a lot of donations of stock and some donations of land but we had a policy that said what we wanted to do is we didn't want to me we didn't want to you know um manage land we didn't want to manage house or apartment house or rental house and so if we got a a an asset of that type or stock individual stocks [laughter] um we basically sold it and then we in we turned into a cat into cash. Uh, and now now we were more short-term immediate needs to feed people, but that would be a wise thing for us to do because we would still take that money and turn it into something that's really safe even though it's a 30-year investment. Um, so, uh, you know, that would be a policy to look at if we get something other than cash, let's look at converting it to cash and then invest it and and, uh, so we don't we don't have to worry about, oh, there's a housing crash and now nobody's renting our house, right? Um and then uh the annual disbbursements of a portion of investments and uh you want to try to do something probably initially where some of the dollars are able to be taken out but some of the dollars stay in in terms of the earnings. Of course the corpus always stays in but you want to be able to make sure that you kind of get it's like old like one of those old steam locomos. They start real slow and then they build and they build and they build and they go faster faster faster faster. That's what we want to try to get going here. And uh the the the thing about this though is at a [snorts] point in time, these are policies set by the school board within the law and the statutes. So the school board as the trustees of this trust can always make a decision going, you know what, we're taking out 50% but we can afford to take out 75%. Or yeah, maybe we want to go down to 40% because we want to build up a little faster, you know, but so these are all things that can be adjusted, but they're guiding guard rails for for the for the future. So, but the whole thing is is you as trustees would be making all the decisions related to that and um you know we we'd look at in at um uh trying to get an an investment um private wealth management to help us out because they spend all their time doing that and plus you'd probably need somebody with access to go hey you know let's look at this Treasury bill came out or oh school district X just issued bonds at 6% and they're rated double A let's buy some of type of thing. So, you need an agent to do that anyway. But the thing is is um you can um you know, you're going to you're going to pick that person. I we're going to pick them. We'd recommend them, but the board will actually contract with them. That's the way it worked with when we set up the uh OP trust. So, um you know, the other next steps, finance and operations and communications, we'll work with Dr. Getty to try to start working on plans for informing alumni and others about legacy giving opportunities and uh we'd want to make sure we give you updates and stuff. In fact, I typed some things into the cabinet agenda this morning for like August 6th if case you might approve this. Um and uh and we also then again have uh Dorsy do the trust document. So we got a draft trust just to give you an idea of what it looks like and that was drafted basing on kind of a template from OPED. We're going to take that and give it to Dorsy and say, "Now, make this really rock solid." Like, we want our trust to be rock solid. And of course, this is my my favorite thing from last week. The mightest of redwoods come from the tiniest of seeds. The seeds aren't the cones. The seeds are those little tiny things between their fingers. So, the other thing is we did we did take a little bit of license to try to come up with a logo. [snorts] And the idea behind this is uh it's the eternal flame. Uh it's a you know, keep it burning. uh you have Minnotonka is in kind of solid block letters to show permanence and you know and uh solidness and longevity and it's on the foundation of the perpetual endowment trust fund. So >> thank you Mr. Mua. >> That's a proposal [laughter] >> comments and questions from the board. Karen, >> thank you Mr. Bourgeoa. That's um that's great. So just so I understand the corpus people donate whether they donate land whatever we we would put that into cash that corpus never is touched we earn interest and then we decide what percentage of the interest only like if someone donates something they're not able we're not able to touch that corpus that we just use that to earn money right and then we [clears throat] when you talked about we could decide what percent it's percentages only of the interest we will never touch the original >> yeah the idea of a perpetual trust is you tell you you tell it's the deal you're making with the people. So like again Dr. Peterson gives us some dollars says hey I want these dollars to go to student scholarships and we as a school board accept it. So the deal is >> he's giving us money and we're telling them we'll spend it on scholarships and so we got to spend it on scholarships. >> In this situation it' be it's a perpetual trust. you give us, you donate us money for student, you know, for the student activities and all the other things and the special programs that we want to preserve. But you donate, you know, $1,000, that $1,000 will never be touched. It's just going to go to work forever. And every year it's going to earn some interest or investment earnings depending on, you know, how it's run, but it's going to earn have some earnings and a portion of those earnings are going to be used to keep those special programs. And uh so it will never go away. And so the more donations you get, the more investments you earn, the more investments you earn, it just keeps growing. And uh yeah, but but but the the commitment we're making by saying it's a perpetual trust is that we are not ever going to spend the money they gave us because they're giving us the dollars to to go forever. >> I mean, that's kind of attract I I personally think that's kind of attractive. >> It's amazing. Yeah, it's amazing. It's amazing. Yep. And right now the we can do it. We don't have to go to the legislature. I would be a little hesitant to go to the legislature anytime sooner than we have to go to the legislature to talk about our other financing. >> Yeah. Yeah. We don't have to go to the legislature on any of this. I was just noting that it's like at a future point in time. I think it's really important to get the trust established under the existing laws and and once and it's established, it'll never go away because it's the law, right? And and it's within the law. I'm just saying that at a point in time um it would it would it might become advantageous for us to try to be able to have the funds invested in the same manner as all the pension funds uh of the state uh which are um you know professionally managed and that's what we that's what the OPEC funds allow us to do. They allow us to with a a wealth management firm like we interviewed three. We did US Bank and uh and Wells Fargo and I can't remember the other one back in 2010 but anyway we did three and we selected Wells Fargo. Um but uh then they can they can invest in all kinds of stuff and you have a kind of a portfolio like a lot of us might have in our own private life. Um, but it's still safe and conservative and all that and uh and you manage it and so because we you like we we could probably make get a lot of get get fives fives and halves. Um if we get it professionally managed at some point in time you could probably push that up to the seven seven and a half eights like we get on the OPED fund many years. >> Perfect. Thank you. >> But that would take special legislation but I think it's better get it established. It's like hi we're here and you know so we've done everything according to oil and and that's the worst case it would be the worst case is we've got this trust fund we're going to pick up you know five 6% a year with really you know with the investments that are allowed under 118A and and that would be amazing. So, you know, it'll be that'll be something that a future board probably will evaluate in several not something like where let's run to go do that next >> and this will come back to the board. David, >> next week for approval. >> Okay, Dan. Yeah, I think the I think the point about communications around this is really really important because um you know we already have a a perception and a storytelling issue when we go to the legislature and we let them know our financial situation. We ask them to fund us. Like we just want to preserve what we have. It's fantastic. We want our kindergarters now to have this when they're in high school because we all think Minnetonka is what public education should look like in this state. And um I think we just need to be cautious that we're creating another perception that that we have enough money to create an endowment fund. So someone in the legislature could look at us and say, "Well, you guys are doing fine. You've got an endowment. What do we need to do for you?" Um, I'm not saying that this is a bad idea. I think it's an intriguing idea. I think if we have the capacity, we should do it and it's something we can leave to next generations. But I do think we have to be very mindful of the communication and the optics around it. >> Dr. Law, >> I Dan, I think that's a very fair point. you. My first step out of the gate after tonight's presentation would be we're currently about $30 million short of state average. Our endowment fund has the potential to close that gap in 10 years to be $29,900,000 short. So, we've still got some ground to gain. >> Yeah, we we're not trying to we're going we're trying to avoid going quietly into the night. We're trying to you know, we're fighting with everything we got. This is our last tool in the in the toolbox. I I want to concur with you uh vice chair Olsen that we do want to be we want to make it work but we want to make sure that everyone's well aware that even if we someday have a nice endow we can't touch that corpus. I think that's very important that even if it somebody gets to a certain point that isn't money that's not a savings account that we can pull out of. I think we need to always be cognizant of talking about it that way that it's only the interest because it could get you know someday to be a big amount and we don't want people to be like well there's your money. It just needs to be very intentional. I think is a >> um similar to the messaging piece, I think um making really clear too that these are not directed donations. So like for folks that want their money to go to something specific, we already have an avenue for that. This is you're giving with the expectation that it's there for a long time, but you don't get to earmark it necessarily like you do with another kind. So, I think just making sure that that's transparent I think is important. >> Tanya, >> and this was said last time we talked about this, but this is a way we're showing the public we're really trying to do everything we can because the state is not helping us where we need it. And so, we really are doing everything. >> All right. Thank you for all your work so far done on this. And I like the logo. I think it's cool. >> Yeah, >> I like it. Well, actually bunch of people had Jackie and Daniel and David too. >> So, [laughter] >> right. >> I tried to put the [laughter] >> I tried to put the flame in on the top of the M like a cauldron or whatever, but Jack reminded me we can't modify the M. >> Yeah. [laughter] >> With that, thank you everyone for be staying late tonight. Have a good evening. Thank you.