Now, sorry. First up, we have discussion on financial support for national trips. Superintendent Law. Madam Chair, members of the board, this is a new topic for the board since I've been on the board, or since I've been in the district, excuse me. And this is on how we reimburse students who qualify to participate at the national level. The activities director, Schulz, tonight is going to give a history of Minnetonka's efforts to support students who have these opportunities, the financial impact, some changes in practice moving forward, and really a landscape of what this looks like around our conference. Mr. Schulz. Great. Thanks, Superintendent Law, Madam Chair, board. Thanks for having me. A little background with this national trips. We offer programming for our clubs and activities, and our goal is to sustain those for all the clubs and activities at the high school. What we've seen over the years is costs have increased and more opportunities have been made. We run into that budget versus opportunity discussion, and that's kind of what I'm here just to briefly outline. There's not too much here tonight to share with. But to get in the background a little bit, my first year was 2010, so I can only speak to what happened then. But at that point, very little national trip experience for students. DECA might've been the only one back in those days, and the philosophy of the board as well as the superintendent at that time, "Let's fund it all. Great opportunity. Let's go get it." And that's what happened for those first four years of my tenure here. As we got into the mid-tenure, 2015 to '20, just because as the cost and more opportunities started to go, we started choosing, "Hey, we're going to support either travel costs for the students or where they're going to stay," in terms of the student experience. Now, we still cover entry fees. We feel like if someone qualifies for nationals, they should get it paid for. They shouldn't have to pay for the chance to participate. As well as our advisors or leaders, they should be able to go as well, and we've covered those. So, that was kind of the first adjustment we made from full funding back in the days. And then right about '20 to '24, as those numbers grew from two to three to the eight to 10, it just kept increasing and increasing, and we still would cover one or the other. And that led me to last year, or '25, '26, of saying, "Look, we need to start limiting this in terms of the budget that we have." And we made a policy that we put into practice where if you stayed three nights, you got $300, or less nights. If you were four or more, you got $400 per student to apply to travel and/or stay with that. Now, back up a little bit, what does an activities budget look like? We pretty much cover the advisor. That is about what the budgeting process we have. We do have some funds for travel, for buses if they need it. I've built those in over the years. But that's pretty much it. If they have some supplies, we find that over the years in our process and build that in. So it really gets us to the point of what are we going to do moving forward as we get into this last year we had 12 groups reach out for this national thing. And it's great. Students, great opportunity for them. We want to promote them. But as you see, it got to be a cost that was much larger that we really didn't have a budget for. So if you look at, those are the trips that went last year. Awesome. Really cool for the students to go. The starred budgets are ones where there are no budget at all for any type of national travel. So I just fill in different areas to cover that $300 to $400 per student stipend that they would have with that. DECA, because of the longevity of that, has some good funds built in over the years. But robotics, debate, and quiz bowl, it was kind of piecing it together to even get enough, although there were some travel monies built in there. And the rest of them just didn't have any travels monies built in for those opportunities. But we continue to apply the practice that I had put in place this last year. And that came to a cost of about $64,000. Again, not amazingly high, but still pretty high when you look at you have the stipend for the director or the leader, and then you have a little travel money in there. That money goes pretty quick as you look at it. So a little background. What are our friends in the Lake Conference doing? That's the conference we compete in at both athletically, activities, and then we compare academics with them. So as you can see, when we asked this question, not all the schools replied. One didn't, but of the six that replied, only one other school covers the entry fees. So check, we do that. None of the other schools cover any type of travel of any type of stay that was involved with that, so we were above the fold on that and doing that. And we had really, if you see the history, had done a really good job of that over the years. Not only one of six would cover their own advisors. Otherwise, that would have to be fundraised for them to go on the travel there. So, that's a little snapshot of what other schools are doing with some of the like issues that we have with ours. So it really looks at I'm looking for direction in terms of what do we do moving forward. We can continue what we're doing, what we did last year, the $300, $400 thing. But is there a move to more fundraising that is going to have to occur that is there? We want to look at trying to provide as equally as we can to all the clubs and activities. That's a goal of mine. One of the huge challenges that we've faced is if we get a 1% or 2% increase to the travel budget, and we have the late timing. Okay, you qualify two weeks before nationals. Everybody knows when you try to travel two weeks before an event, what the airline tickets do, what the lodging is at that point. It's way up there as opposed to planning out nine months, but you can't plan out nine months if you don't qualify. And some of ours hit that as well. So, what we've seen with the increase to 10 to 12 back from the one or two or three we used to have is they just come on spur of the moment. Within a month, we have to be round trip of getting it planned, paid for, fundraised, and return back home. So I'm looking at a way to continue to reduce and sustain that budget for everything that we have with the fiscal responsibility that you guys have been through, as well as we have over the last few years. And so my thought is moving forward, or the proposal I have, is just to reduce that down next year to a $200 per student. It can be applied to lodging and/or the travel that they want to help them continue that experience. But then knowing that as a board, we do need a long-term solution. If we want to create a fund for national trips, great. Let's create a fund that would pay for it all. But I feel like moving forward, that $200 adjustment would cut that 64,000-ish down to about 30, which again, is more sustainable in the activities budget that I have. So, again, great opportunities for students. That's a little bit of the evolution that we've been through in the 17 years I've been leading the activities programs here. So, wanted to share that with you and take any questions that you have. Or this isn't a formal policy, this has just been a procedure that the district has adopted. It's an update for the board members, in case community members ask about it. Your next steps could be as simple as understanding this, then we'll continue to monitor it. It could be to formally study it, make a decision that you want to create a funding stream for it. Although, I'll tell you that we're doing more funding stream cutting than adding. Yes. So, this is a chance to ask any questions. Absent anything significant tonight, we would implement the $200 per student for the current school year. Thank you, Mr. Schultz. Questions from the board? Karen? Thank you, Mr. Schultz, for that. Appreciate the background and everything. Gosh, it's really hard to think of our students having amazing opportunities and not having a way to go do those things or participate. I've always believed that students should participate in the top level of whatever their sport, club, or activity is. So I'm wondering, could more be done around fundraising? Say you're in DECA. You don't know that you're going to go to nationals or internationals or whatever, but maybe they're constantly fundraising because at some point they will be going. Mm-hmm. Does that happen or something? Yeah. I want to see our kids go and do the top level of whatever it is they qualify for. And I think that's the shift of exactly where I would see it going is if an athletic team has a winter trip and they go three days to go skiing up at a lodge or something, they fundraise for that knowing that's coming. These activities would have to adopt that same thing. Hey, we know Quiz Bowl's going to go every year to Atlanta, Georgia. Okay? So let's do a fundraiser in the summer. Let's get some money saved up for that to do that. And it's just a mind shift, and that's why I've kind of been weaning from full to one to three to 400 to 200, then eventually it might get to just being fundraised to keep it sustainable. Do I think they can do that? I do. It just is, hey, here's the plan. Clearly communicate, this is what it's going to be going forward. Let your families know. And what I've found out, as long as things are clearly communicated, the community does respond to that. Megan? Thank you. I have a just kind of similar question. I guess, my worry is always that there is going to be a student who is unable to attend for financial reasons. And so I find myself kind of wondering, for a lot of students, that 200, it's great, but maybe not necessary. And so I'm just wondering, is there any precedent for doing a need-based type of application? We do that for other activities in the district. Because what I was thinking about as I read this is, if we didn't give 200 to every student, but we were able to give 800 to certain students who demonstrated need in some way, that maybe that would allow a student to go who otherwise wouldn't be able to. So, just something to throw out there. I don't know if there is any precedent for that or if there are legal ramifications that I'm totally unaware of, but that's always my concern, is that there's somebody out there who qualified, but the cost is prohibitive enough that they'll stay home. Yeah. And so I was just trying to think of, just speaking for myself personally, the 200 would be helpful, but if you think about that, it's a fraction of a flight or one room. Right. And for a lot of families in our district, they'll still be able to go. It's not going to keep them from going whether or not they get that 200. But there are some that really that might not be enough. And so I was just trying to think about, I don't know what that would look like, but... I think there's an option to say check this box if I'd like this co-contribution go to a student in need. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Certainly there's an avenue. That's a great pivot. I like that idea. I guess what I've seen in the past, I can just speak to that, is when there's been a student in need, there's been outside-the-box thinking to make that happen, whether it's a registration fee, whether it's a trip. I have a few cards I can play and lay down to try and help that, and directions to push people. And so we obviously want everybody who can go to go and find a way, and that's not even written anywhere, but that's the practice we've done, so. I like that idea, though, because even in elementary school field trips, when you pay the field trip fee, there's also an option to add an extra student or whatever. So I think there's some creative thinking around diverting funds to those in need would just be something to consider. Sally? And kind of in that same vein, what's rattling around my brain is that this isn't even necessarily a socioeconomic thing, but that not every student is in a position to fundraise. So if we can maybe explore how not to make the fundraising student-specific and more group, like the group fundraises and helps everybody out as best they can. My own example, I had a lot of kids, and my family got really tired of pitching in, right? And so it became more difficult to do fundraising, and most of it ended up coming out of pocket. So, just something to noodle on. Dan Yeah, my mind basically went, sadly, I think that's a great idea as well. My mind went to the same place Megan's did pretty much immediately. So I think just looking at that or how we can expand that or utilize our funds in a different way to be more sustainable, I think that makes a lot of sense to me, especially if, as you're saying, kids don't have a particularly difficult job doing the fundraising piece if it's usually successful. It makes a lot of sense. Karen? I just had a follow-up. I'm just kind of thinking it through. For sure if a student can't afford it, we want to make sure. But if, say, and I'm just processing this, if we're going and everyone else is paying for their own, and I am the one who's getting the fund, is there a way that then people realize who's getting supported and not? You know what I mean? We wouldn't want anything like that to happen. But would it be more successful if the entire team or the entire group was like, "We're fundraising." What's going to be, do you think, the most likely way to get people to fundraise and- Yeah ... to, like, "Hey, as a group, we all want to go there, and we're all fundraising." And then still have check the box if you can't afford it, then whoever can't afford it- Mm-hmm ... gets extra. Yeah. Generally, they are group fundraisers in terms of like, we're doing a car wash. We're going to do a group sale. We're all going to ask for donations. The booster club, a lot of them are booster club-based. We're going to invoice each family, and then that's where you can, if there's, put a little extra in for the coverage that they need. And so there's a lot of different ways to do it, and we can give them any direction that they need. But our groups have been pretty resourceful, and that's still a part of a lot of what these groups are doing right now as well, is more of the group mentality. Rarely do they say it on like, "You need to sell 20 candy bars or you're in trouble." But... Good. Some good ideas to think about. Tanya? Yeah, I like the group idea, and you kind of answered a little bit of what I was going to ask you, which is what other kind of fundraising have you thought of, or how can we differentiate for clubs? I know softball sells mulch in the spring, or football does the activity cards now. So our community can have an array of different things maybe- I think ... they can be a part of, so we're not always doing the activity cards or whatever. So any other, or maybe you can share later on with us some other fundraising things that you guys have come across. Yeah. The one thing I've known, being in this role for 17 years in the community, they are creative, and- Yeah ... if you think about it, they're going to do it. And that's really a credit to the community. They find those creative ways to do something different, not repeat, to not I need to... We buy candy. But continue to encourage that. You're right on the right track, is for sure. Yeah, Megan. I would just also add, I think our community is really responsive to seeing students out and about in the community. Like, when the teams do a car wash or bag groceries at Cub. Yeah. Like, people are really generous for the teams that do it. And so I think, versus selling stuff, it seems like people get tapped out really quick on sales. But I feel like when people are out, students are out and doing things in the community, people are, in our community, very supportive. So I think it's totally useful. It's a great team bonding activity as it is, but it's not a replacement for... You're never going to cover 100% of the cost, so it kind of has to be like a yes and situation. Yeah. All right. Thank you, everybody. Thanks a lot, Ted. Yep. Good things to think about. Appreciate it. Okay, next up, review of some policies on the endowment trust. Superintendent Law. Madam Chair, this board had a chance to hear several explanations and opportunities to create the first of its kind, perpetual endowment fund that will sometime in the future fund operations for the school district off the interest. Tonight, we're going to see a preview of some policies that you'll formally approve in September, if things go well, on how that fund will be developed, managed, and used. Executive Director of Finance and Operations, Mr. Bourgeois. Thank you, Superintendent Law, and Madam Chair, members of the board. This is our first cut in terms of how we would work, in terms of investments, gifts and donations, and then the use of the earnings. And these are set in policy so that they will not be set in stone for the duration as we go through the development of the trust fund and are able to kind of get a little bit of experience in the saddle, so to speak. We'll be able to look at things and adjust them if we need to. So I don't want you to think that this is the be-all and end-all of these policies, but it's a first cut, and as we get operating, we'll give it a try, and we'll see how that works. And then we'll adjust as we go and hopefully improve if we need to. So the first policy is investment of the perpetual endowment trust fund corpus. And the main thing about this is it really very much mimics our investment policy for regular funds. But the investments in the perpetual trust fund are limited to investments authorized under Minnesota Statutes 118A.04. Those are actually the same funds that our regular cash is allowed to be invested in by that same statute. So right now, we are bound to this particular statute. If at some point in time, as we develop additional resources in this fund, it would behoove us to try to be able to get our perpetual endowment trust fund to be moved into eligibility to be invested in the same type of investments that our OPEB trust fund is able to be done. That's governed under Minnesota Section 356A.06, I believe, and that allows you to have a financial advisor invest in the same range of investments that the State Board of Investments We'll invest for the TRA, PRA, MSRS funds and be able to basically generate additional income. And that's what our OPEB trust fund, which we are going to be talking about a little bit later, is able to be invested in. So we're able to get an average return there investing conservatively of about 6.9%. Under 118A.04, something more in the mid-threes to 4% is probably what we expect. So it's still good and safe. And that's what we get on the funds that we have in cash for the district and that we oversee internally for investments every year, actually every month. In terms of gifts and donations, Policy 736, the big item there is that we will obviously get cash, and that's pretty simple. But we're saying, "Hey, we will take stock, we'll take vehicles, we'll take real estate," really any asset. And this is actually a little bit of a mimic of when I served on the board of ICA Food Shelf as a treasurer. I did that for 10 years. But we had a policy that said, "Okay, you can donate that, but we need to turn it into a cash investment because we're not in the business of managing or selling the vehicles ourselves or maintaining vehicles or real estate." If somebody said, "Hey, I'm going to donate a house to you," we're not in the business of maintaining that. We want to turn that into assets that can be invested much more quickly. And so, this basically just lays out the parameters of saying, if you do give us stock, vehicles, real estate, or other assets, we will look then to immediately turn those into liquid cash that can then be invested and managed. So, and then finally, I have the... Sorry, get my fingers to work here. Just the use of the investment earnings, and this is a first cut of what we've talked about. And so if we're earning funds, what are we going to be able to do with the payoff? And basically, this mentions that these would be something where we would want to have additional work on in terms of developing programs of significance. But this policy is worded generically so that if you are saying, "This is what we're investing in," that can be a whole separate discussion, and you don't have to change a policy. Because you, as a board, are the trustees of this fund, but you will be able to have discussions about, okay, well, this one should be added, or this one should be taken off. But the idea is that these funds would be used primarily to sustain programs of significance in the future, things that most other districts might not have, more or less outside the core. Because the state of Minnesota, in theory, should be funding reading, writing, arithmetic for the most part. But funding the unique things that we have to be able to continue to keep people interested in school and continuing to show up. And then the suggestion is at the bottom for item C, 3C, is that we would have a distribution of investments take that would take place in any year in which the investment earnings are $250,000 or greater. So the board would actually set the annual percentage of investment earnings to be distributed to the general operating fund. So this doesn't actually set that dollar amount. That would be another decision that you would determine after discussion, and have that be, in essence, more of a procedure than the policy. So you set how much gets pulled out, you set what it gets used for, and that's the way it should be as the trustees of the fund. So now we also have, this is not specifically to this, but we've got the final version of our actual perpetual endowment trust document. It's been reviewed and modified by Katrina Wesbecher from Dorsey, who's the head of their trust department. And there's just a few minor wording tweaks after I reviewed it, and so I sent it back to her and to send us a clean document to be able to bring forward for your review and approval on September 10th. So we're close to having the structure set, not set in stone, but set in paper at least, or electrons. And we are actually working behind the scenes. Dr. Getty and her staff have been putting promotional items, materials, web page information together. We're going to start looking at rolling those out once we get a final document in place for the trust. So hopefully, well, we'll see. I'm pretty sure, I can't say this definitively, but from what I know, I think we probably have the first school district in the state of Minnesota with a perpetual endowment fund. So we're boldly going where no school district has gone before. Thank you, Mr. Bourgeois. Do we have any questions from the board? Megan? Thanks for this. It's really exciting to see it kind of getting into life. I had a question, and somebody had asked me that I just wanted to clarify. So the current allowed investments through statute are only in things like bonds where there's no loss of principal, correct? It's like the corpus could never go down below the original start amount. Well, we would be investing in things like treasuries or AAA-rated bonds. Okay. And the thing is, when you invest in bonds, if you actually hold the bonds to maturity, you never lose the corpus. But there's this thing that it's an accounting standard that requires you every year to mark them to market. So what happens is, because the assumption is that people aren't going to hold them to maturity and that you're going to sell them, and so what's the market value of a particular bond? So you in theory, can have a paper loss as a bond gets dropped in terms of market value. But again, if you hold it to maturity, you never have a corpus loss. Mm-hmm. Okay, so you would never have to take a loss. It's not like investing in a stock where it's going to fluctuate wildly and the principal could plummet and you lose that corpus. Yes. It's going to maintain. Yeah. If any of you would have bonds in your 401 or 403 or whatever you might have, you would notice that you have a value of your bonds- Mm-hmm ... X thousand dollars, but the market value might be X thousand minus a certain amount. But again, if you hold it to maturity, the closer you get to maturity, the more that market value actually ends up being back to the face value. Mm-hmm. And so then when it matures, you get the face value. Okay. I just wanted to make sure we were all able to answer that if people asked us- Yeah, absolutely. Mm-hmm ... what would happen to their money if they put it in here. Right. Yes. Thank you. Dan? A couple of quick things. When we talk about OPEB later tonight, it might be nice to look at the risk allocation of the funds in OPEB, where we'd eventually like to invest these sort of funds versus what we're allowed to do now, just sort of like- Mm-hmm ... side-by-side ballpark them as best as we can. And then as far as 737 use of earnings, future boards, will they be contractually precluded from withdrawing more than the earnings every year, right? They will be, right? Well, technically, no. You're setting a policy to do that. But the thing is, if you commit, if the promise to your donors is that you will never touch the corpus, then you are obligated to not touch the corpus. Yeah. Okay. But there could be a year when you don't earn as much, but you could draw out a little bit because it was still above the corpus. It was previous earnings that hadn't been disbursed or something like that. Yes, correct. Yes. Yeah. No, I think future boards, they might just want to consider how they go about it and if touching past earnings in leaner times is something that they want to do, or if it's better preserved. Mm-hmm. Sarah? Still in that same policy, in requirement C, which has the $250,000 or greater in earnings, can you just speak to where that amount comes from? What's the rationale behind 250K? Just the idea behind that dollar amount is to be able to have enough to make a significant difference. Okay. So let's say if you earn 250,000, you say, "Hey, let's take 50% of it," well, that'll pay for a teacher approximately. Whereas if you earned 100,000 and you pull out 50, you can do something with it, but you probably can't save a position. That's just the thought behind it, so for better or worse. But there's nothing set in stone about that number. It's not magic- Okay ... it's just a suggestion. Okay. And that's why it's in here for discussion and consideration, but if you think a different number is better or you just say, "Hey, every year, let's just pull some out," that's all good, too. Okay. Yeah. And that seems kind of reasonable, too, because if you do quick math, you'd have to have an $8 million fund earn 3% to make $250,000, or a $6 million fund earn 4%. It also forces the fund to grow for enough time until it's substantial before folks can start to tap into it. Mm-hmm. Just to prove that I really read this thoroughly, in 735- Mm-hmm ... just before it comes back before the board under 3B, there's a quotation at the end of that paragraph that is extraneous. Oh. Yep, thank you. Tanya? You had mentioned Katrina, right, will get the final paperwork, whatever, September 10th. Is that when you want to start a committee, or how do we decide? In here it says that we'll have a three-member advisory committee. So is that about the time when we want to think about that, or- Yeah. Well, you could do it any time. When we decide? Just a thought was it's like, okay, all the documents are in place- Yeah ... so now the next step would be let's... Because we won't have a lot of funds to- Sure ... to talk about yet. Sure. But the thing would be to try then maybe recruit a committee was the thought process behind that, but we could start that any time. Okay. Yeah. Any other questions? It's exciting. Especially that you think we're maybe the only school district around, so that's great. Yeah. Thank you, Paul. Thank you. Okay. Next up is- Let's see if I can get this thing to work ... I think it's still you. Update on building bond construction progress, Superintendent Law. Okay. Madam Chair, members of the board, this will feel very fresh to you because we just put shovels into the dirt for a groundbreaking at MME a few hours ago. But we have a commitment. Our community was generous enough to make a substantial contribution towards the future of the district in their facilities. Tonight, we're going to get an update on where we are on that bond-related construction- Okay, wow ... with some visual updates and some forecasting on what's going to happen over the next 12 months. As soon as this screen is ready. Yeah, we're okay here. Yeah, cast. Okay. Screen green? Screen's green, yep And there we go. 2807. You got to click in there. I'm sorry. Sorry, I got booted out by Ted, so I got to get back in. Connect. It should be popping up for you. Uh-huh. All right. And then now you can start your slideshow from the beginning. Yeah. Well, of course it- It looks like we're ready, Mr. Bruesewitt. All right. There we go. You got it. We are back in business. Okay. So we've had a lot of activity over the last X number of months. It doesn't seem like it, because we've been designing. But we have actually got our two middle schools out to bid. And in fact, we open bids today at 2:00 on MMW for the building portion. Remember, we did bids on the initial facilities items that had to get done a few months back. And so with our bid today, we had a very good bid process and good bids submitted. And if you take the combination of bid one and bid two, we are about a million dollars under our allocation of the bonds that were allocated for construction for that project, which is a good thing. So hopefully there'll be some money left over, but we got to get out of the ground first, because there's always excitement with what you might find underneath our grass and everything where we're digging and doing foundation work. But it's a good start. So knock on wood, we'll see how we do next week. We're going to be doing August 25th, the MME bid. But we're off to a good start in terms of our bids, and I'm actually running on four hours of sleep, because I was just so nervous about this bid. Because construction inflation's been running at 13.5%. So anyway, we're in the right spot. So this is the prioritization list, and the items in green were the things that were selected and moved forward, including a new cafeteria. It was just such a big need that materialized, particularly after the high school switched from six lunches to three. And the Epic security system, which is going to be deployed very smoothly just like a SpaceX rocket next week at the high school. So, that's what we have in process. But as we've worked to make the plans operational, we've also looked for other ways to include items on the list in some way, if possible. So there's a couple things that we've done over the last several months or since the bond issue was put together and run that were not on the list, but we were able to do some things related to it. And so as with the high school, more loft-style spaces, Principal Erickson was wanting to get his loft back. That's where aviation had moved into. And we did a project to basically subdivide the physical health center and moved Aviation one down to that lower level. It's a great space if you ever get a chance to go look at it, and still keep the physical health center actually probably more rightly sized now. And so the loft is back in operation for the high school. And do they still want more loft-style spaces? Yes, but we were able to basically give them back the ones that they had that they like so much. And then, it said relocate the fitness center. Well, we didn't have to relocate the fitness center. We just modified it. We split a 4,500 square foot space into halves so we can keep the fitness center there rather than moving it into the basement. Excelsior, they're looking for a larger nurse's space and a lobby reconfiguration. Those didn't make the initial list, but as we're looking at doing Excelsior, we looked at putting the small group spaces, you'll see it later, but we looked at putting the small group spaces initially on the back. But as we started getting into the detail on that, it was really going to take out a lot of the playground, and they don't have a huge playground there. So we said, "Well, let's look at what happens if we just move the office out and then convert the office into small group spaces." And so we started looking at that, and it's the same dollar amount, would be a better solution. And as part of that, we get a larger nurse's space, and so the lobby's reconfigured. So again, if we can get other things done as byproducts or as something makes sense, we're working to do that. And there's projects in process. This is Aviation one, just some pictures there. Oh, sorry. There we go. So middle schools. So, we had some unique challenges at the Minnetonka Middle School. At West, this is the layout of the site from, we used to say bird's-eye view, now it's satellite view. But we needed to do phase one, relocate and rebuild the physical education main field and track. And then so site preparation is going to be, well, it's going on from June until November. All that stuff will be done. But additional site preparation that needed to be done now was relocating student drop-off and pick-up driveway, stormwater retention pond, stormwater retention pond for the science wing. So they've been driving up behind on the west side and doing a little bit of digging there. And then we've had to do a lot of relocation of electrical and natural gas lines and prepare the construction staging site. So these are some pictures, and of course, we were there a couple weeks ago. Pictures in process. So that's the base. It's kind of interesting, but we actually have granite underneath our synthetic turf fields. But they have a little bit more bounce with the stuff they put on top. But you can see the driveway being relocated in the upper right. You take a straight in, go straight, and then take a turn, because the The gymnasium is going to be built, and performance area is going to be built right there, and this is going to be construction staging. So actually, all this will be construction staging. So we relocated the driveway, and then that's just a picture from right on the corner, kind of looks like a fisheye view a little bit. And this is just an overall overview of phase one, actually, and phase two. But you can see, so we're looking at the soccer field, 120 yards long by 72 wide. We have the track. The retaining wall is actually going in this week, and so they're making good progress. And again, you can see how the driveway's relocated to basically have people come straight down and then still go to their normal unloading spot. We've got the two additions that will be going in, and this is an above-ground stormwater pond. If for some reason we ever need additional space or want to build something on that site, we could figure out a way to put that underground and increase the capacity and all that. But that was something that actually worked in the budget right now. So phase two, actually, the bid was opened today, as I mentioned. So we're going to mobilize in September and work through December. We're guaranteed December, but if we get good results and good weather and all that kind of stuff, maybe we'll beat that. But we're guaranteed by the end of December, so that you can move in and start utilizing it the second semester of '27, '28. Internal modifications, you've heard these before, but staff restrooms, small group rooms, and media center modifications. We're also going to do, with all these projects, we're doing long-term facility maintenance work for economies of scale. And in this case, we're kind of getting a twofer because we have older steam piping and water piping. It needed to be increased, so we're going to do that and replace the original piping. Same thing with the 1964 headend electrical cabinet. In fact, those we're going to order ourselves here in another few weeks. We're just getting the specifications set together, and we're going to bring those into the district, and we're going to store them at the warehouse because we want to make sure they're here because the headend requires shutdown of everything, and we're going to do that the week before the Fourth of July in the summer. So we want to have it on-site, ready to go, so we can just knock it out on the week before the Fourth of July. So, and then we have some more. The next phase will be some more LTFM work in June 2028, August 28, summer 2028. So replacing the original stucco, do the woodshop HVAC system, and there's always roofs and paving everywhere. So there you go. That's the familiar picture. And the other thing is just to mention, someday, maybe if people say, "Hey, we want more gyms," or whatever, there's actually space for educational space or, in theory, three more of these things can fit in that space. So it wasn't designed that way. That's just the way it actually laid out by taking the driveway straight. But we looked at it and go, "Okay, well if they ever decide they want a field house for activities in the future, there you go." It's one of the few places we could probably actually do something like that. Dan? Just real quick, since we're on MMW, when we drove out there a couple weeks ago for the groundbreaking, I noticed some temporary stoplights at- Yes ... the intersection there with 41 that weren't yet operational. Mm-hmm. Do we know when those are going to- They are now. They are now? Yeah. And how long are they there? They are going to be there for approximately two years, and the state installed them for the duration of the Highway 5 project because they're soon going to be closing Highway 5 to widen the causeway and put a bridge across Lake Minnewashta. And so they're going to be routing all the Highway 5 traffic up Highway 41. And so they put these temporary lights there, and of course, the ironic thing is that we've asked twice in the past- Yeah ... to have lights put there, and they said, "Well, there's not enough volume," right? Mm-hmm. And then we've done the roundabout, right? And so we put $400,000 to the roundabout, and they wanted to do that last year before the Highway 5 project started. But the city didn't bid it out until March of 2025, and they want it to be done in June. Well, so of course, the price was just through the roof, and so they had to reject all bids. So now where this temporary stoplight is in, the city of Chanhassen still wants to do the roundabout after it's done. But maybe if this works really well, we might be able to lobby to go, "Hey, could we just leave it?" Or even if we paid for the stoplights, it'd be cheaper than actually paying for part of the roundabout- Right ... to put them in and have it be there permanently. But anyway, maybe there's an opportunity. But anyway, so good question. No, great. Thank you. Yeah. So, okay. Minnetonka Middle School East. So we had to do some work with replacing the main sanitary line from the building to the Met Council sanitary main, which was about 460 feet out into the field, and that pipe was made out of clay tile. And after 72 years, it was actually after about 69 years, it was starting to fail, and we were repairing and repairing because we knew something was going to happen or we would do this, something like this. So we pulled it out and replaced it, and then we reconfigured the student drop-off and pick-up circulation at the request of the city. And so we're looking at reconfiguring the parking lots, actually, just to pick up the new circulation pattern and also pick up some additional spots. So These are just some photos of the operation to put in the new sanitary line. This particular thing is a water pump, and it's hard to tell from that, but there was so much water as they excavated for the pipe, the water would just gush right in because the water table was so high, right? So they had to actually bring in more pumps, and that is an eight-inch diameter flexible water pipe going out, and it went over to a manhole receptacle into the water main that actually goes for the field that goes into the Met Council system. But that thing, when it was pumping, it was just gushing water. It sounded like a waterfall or like a fire hose. There was so much water coming in. So that thing is actually hooked up. The thing coming out the front, there was all these pipes all along that were driven down about 10 feet and just sucking all the water out. But they were able to have dry ground to be able to work. But the water table, it's a little bit hard to see, but you can kind of see a little bit of gradient change. The water table's about three feet below the surface, where you start running into damp soil. And anyway, so that's what we're going to be dealing with, actually, when we're digging the foundation for the gymnasium performance area because we're going to have to put down a whole bunch of pilings that go down, actually, through the water table down to bedrock. So we'll be opening next week, and keep our fingers crossed. So they'll be mobilizing in September also and doing the same internal modifications, same internal long-term facility maintenance work. Actually, at both places, we're also replacing the cafeteria flooring, and then again, exterior work in summer of '28 to just really finish gussying up the building. You don't hear that term used very often anymore. So this is, again, the layout. So where we were standing with the tent for today's groundbreaking was right about here. So that's how big that roundabout is. It has to be for the buses. It's the dance of the elephants when you have them all in there, and they just take up a lot of space. But again, don't forget, we'll also have a lot of nice dual striping for additional use for after-hours and weekends. At the high school, we're working, actually, just starting the process to reconfigure the counseling area to provide better space and office areas for all forms of counseling. So we have psychiatrists and sociologists. And I actually met with Jeff on Friday, and he was taking headcounts. There's 24 people that they want to put in there, which almost doubles the number of people that are housed there right now. But we are going to be able to do that because we're going to double the space utilized for counseling from about 3,000 square feet to 6,200. We are thinking we might have to phase it, maybe not. So this was based on prior to meeting with Jeff and talking about relocations and things like that. So this says phase one, phase two, but we might be able to just do it all at once. But it depends how we can relocate him. He might relocate his counselors up to the loft, and if that's the case, we could just go June 27, November 2027. But what we're looking at doing, actually, is just trying to reconfigure some things and open up the area along the commons, so it can get kind of reflected light coming in from the clerestories. But also kind of reconfiguring and having a main street going east and west, and then we'd be able to put some big windows on the south end that gets light off of a courtyard to cross from the cafeteria, just to bring more natural light in there and make it just seem a little more bright and kind of a happy place. It was nice and it's worked well, but it's a dark space with no really natural light, and so hopefully that will make it a better place. And then the cafeteria and staff restrooms, so we're going to be adding a 3,000-square-foot addition to the cafeteria. If you're familiar with the cafeteria space, there's some big columns that kind of signify an addition that was done in 1998, so we're going to be putting on another addition of approximately that size. And we say June 2027 to December 2027, just guesstimating that we'll be able to actually knock that thing out a bit faster because it literally is of just a big open space. So you paint the walls, you hang the lights, paint everything up, put the floor in and stuff, and you're ready to go. So we might be able to turn that around a little bit quicker. And then we have the east parking lot addition, approximately 110 parking spaces, and that would increase approximately 10% in the available parking on the campus. If we can get it through the city of Minnetonka operative word there is if. No. Actually, a neighbor has notified them, and maybe they've watched on TV, but they have asked to have a meeting with us, and that's fine because we're starting on the design work, and we were going to call them and have a meeting with them anyway quickly. But they reached out to us actually just today and said, "Hey, I hear you're going to be building a parking lot. Can you come over and talk about it?" And so we're going to do that. But that would be about a five to six-month process. Although, actually, because it's kind of out of the way, if there's a way that we can start earlier in June, we'd have to manage the trucks going in and out of that bus driveway. But if we can actually start it earlier than June, we would do that, and then if that's the case, maybe we'd luck out and be able to have it ready for September of '27. So we'll see. But that's the guaranteed time, assuming we get our permits. So that's where the cafeteria addition is going, approximately. And then this is the space that we're working with. And actually, Jeff asked us to include this classroom, which was created in the 2009 student union project, where we added 14 classrooms and connected the two courtyards, and turned that into the commons/student union. It was originally called student union, but everybody called it the commons, so it's commons. And yeah, so what we're talking about is these are some ventilation shafts to the upper level, and we can't take those out. But I was talking to Dave and Jeff about capturing some space here with glass, knocking this wall out, capturing some space here with glass. And actually, this looks right down outdoor 14. And so actually, you can see all the way out from there to the light, plus the light from the... And also to give it more of a presence, because this is just like a little back eddy in the river of people. And so that would be one area to get into the place, and then this would all be storefront and more light. But then as we move people around, that gives us the ability to go down to this area here and put some nice big windows in, so we would have light coming in from all over. We're also going to be roofing, replacing the JV baseball field, and we are going to accommodate the change for six lunch periods down to three, and then some more exterior work. And then actually, it's time to replace the upper turf field in a summer from now. Elementary schools. So at Minnewashta, media center addition, and I put phase one on here just because the existing media center can't be changed until really we move into the new media center. So we would start construction in June and hopefully, not hopefully, but we should be able to finish by December. And then along with that, we'll replace the last windows that need to be replaced in the building on the north wing. We'll do some pavement mill and overlaying, which they're due, and then we'll also replace the cafeteria flooring. Actually, that one doesn't have to be done because I was able to actually get it done a year ahead of time, so I should've took that off. But so that's done already. So if you actually go see the cafeteria flooring, it actually looks like a wood floor gym, but it's no-wax stuff and looks pretty cool. We've done that at several of our elementary schools, and we're working our way around. And then we'll do the small group and staff restrooms in phase two, because those are all going to go into the existing media center. And so we would do that in June of 2028, just simply because if we move into the new media center mid-year, it's a lot of noise and construction and that type of thing, and so we would just do those over the summer, because it's right in the middle of the building. So the media center's going to go out the back. We have to relocate the driveway to provide for the Excelsior Fire District trucks, if they have to get back there, and emergency vehicles. But we still will be able to maintain the baseball field, and that mainly is T-ball for younger students or younger ballplayers. So if anything gets out of there on the fly, sign that kid up. So most of those balls are on the ground, and if they get out of the infield, it's been quite a hit. So just a little bit of a... This is actually literally the same size as the Groveland, and almost the exact same configuration as the Groveland Media Center, which is a template. That's one we actually won an award for. But we're going to work with the staff to fix it up and put their own touches on it and work on the inside. But it also fits on the site, and the nice thing about it is there's this massive stormwater drain that goes out to the pond in the back, and we don't want to move that or change it, and it actually happens to just fit. It fits just right. And we're going to improve the handicapped access a little bit, so there'll be a more gentler slope, because actually that media center's going to be 16 inches lower than the music room. But it'll be a gentle slope and then a nice vestibule, a nice bigger vestibule for handicapped students coming in and out. And then the lower level is where we would look at putting phase two. The second part of this is doing small group rooms, and they actually could get a... Minnewashta's actually tight on small group rooms compared to most places. And so we actually have got, what? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight of them there and still fit in the staff restrooms. Their staff restrooms spread out all around the place, and there's one here. But one of the staff restrooms is actually also the custodial closet. But there's plumbing right here, so we can go across and just really economically add those two additional staff restrooms. Plus, those are in a good location if teachers need to use the restroom and they got to go check at the office or go into the staff lounge and things like that. So it's a good location. Excelsior Elementary, here's front office addition, convert the current offices to small group and restrooms. So we preserve playground space. And similar timelines, and most of that could be completed, a lot could be completed in the summer. And then also we're working on replacing cabinets. We started replacing cabinets this year, but we're going to do about half the cabinets in the 1929 building, basically the first floor and a few of the places where we're working on the second and third floor, and then we'll be doing the rest on the second and third floor in the 1929 building in Next to the summer after, but what that does is it allows us to have the 1929 building open for explorers, because we want to replace some windows in the 1958 building. So we're just trying to coordinate that and sequence it properly. So we'd be looking at the addition would be right out the front. And actually, we met with Principal Smals, and when she saw this, she was really enthusiastic. Whoops. I'm kind of... Yeah. So there we go. So again, the current office is right here. And actually, this is an existing room, that's an existing room, it's the AP office. And this is the reception area. And then the nurse's office is actually much smaller, it's about like this. So we'd increase the size of the nurse's office and move the principal out, AP out, secure entry with all the appropriate buzz in, buzz out, can't get through here. Got to come in here so you can get out of the snow, get buzzed in, recognized, get your badge, then get buzzed out. And also we've got some further work on this. We actually have another conference room for the principal, principal's conference room right there. And Principal Smals is very enthusiastic about that too, which is always a good thing. And so that's what we would do. And then in terms of making this addition, we'd look at make it match the 1929 building. And this is just the first cut at it. So this is what it looks like right now, but when we do this addition... When we built the 2013 cafeteria and gymnasium addition, we mimicked the architecture and the little rondelle at the top, just a nice little touch of the 1929 buildings. And so this is what it would look like, although we've got a different version of this where we're actually making this out of the same color as the 1929 building. And it says Excelsior Elementary in the same font because that's a Roman font with serif. And we're going to put that on the front too. But we would tie it in conceptually, we'd tie it in, we could do the rondelle and stuff, and just tie the building together a little bit. So let's see. Groveland Elementary School music room, small group, staff restroom, circulation addition. Similar timelines for the staff restrooms. We have to do an underground stormwater pond in the bus corral, and that has to happen in the summer. We'll be doing some LTFM work at the same time, so the whole front of the building will get new windows. And this is one of the cafeteria floors we haven't replaced yet. So we'll get them the basketball court-y looking stuff that's no wax and put those in. And some parking lot work. And because of so much heavy construction and where the addition is, it's really difficult to have the explorers going back and forth off to the playground. So we would close that, and the Groveland explorers would go to Deephaven. We put a ton of work into Deephaven this summer, and so basically, we've hit all the LTFM work that they need. They're just ready to go. And so they'd be able to take explorers for a year, and then Groveland explorers can go back to Groveland in summer '28. So that's where the addition is going. Oh, I forgot to add the layout. Okay. Well, sorry about that. This is going to be a music room. This is going to be a second hallway, because right now it gets very congested in this area. And because there's one hallway that comes down this way, and then the whole north South thing. So with all the lunch and gym and all that stuff there, this is always just a traffic jam of students. So we would basically tap into the... There's a north-south hallway here, tap into that, put a hallway along the north edge, but it'd be a glass hallway so that these classrooms can still see out. So it'll still be like looking out the window through the hallway, but still, it'll work out fine. And then we have a second room here that's approximately a classroom size room, but we're going to put small groups in there. But if at some point in time they ever wanted to convert that into a future use for students, it could be, but it's going to be a small group room, a collection of small group rooms, three small group rooms in that one. So that's the addition work there. Then we have Scenic Heights, so we're coming to the end of the presentation here pretty quick. Small group and staff restrooms were the key things that they needed. All of our schools have had a lot of additions over the years. And with their size, the committee didn't feel there was a need for additional larger spaces. But the second driveway, City of Minnetonka, maybe I should use that quotation mark here, "requested." Suggested maybe, how's that? But today we found out that because we had our staff go meet with the City of Minnetonka actually this morning. I couldn't go because I was working on another issue. But they want us to have a 20-foot wide driveway. So that'll be interesting to make sure that that fits into the budget. But we'll also be replacing a lot of windows on the east, which is the front of the building in the south wing, cafeteria floor. So this building will also be closed because of heavy construction, and we'll send them over to Clear Springs for one summer. And Clear Springs is in really good shape. It's had heavy LTFM work. And then a year from now, explorers would go back to Scenic Heights. But at that point in time, we just have to replace some windows on the center wing, and really, we're going to be done there with a lot of the LTFM for a long time. So our small group rooms, we'll put them out the back, and then actually we're doing a staff restroom here and a staff restroom here. It just works well with where the other staff restrooms are. And then we will be coming around the back with our driveway. We're going to have to reconfigure this a little bit. But they want 20 foot wide, so we might have to move some of the playground big toy stuff. But 20 foot wide all the way around, be able to unload back here. Or they could unload multiple places depending on how they want to do it. But it'll be set up and ready to go. Hopefully, we get the okay on the driveway project to be able to start constructing that, and construct it over the summer of '27. But I think we will get the okay on that because they really want us to have that done while they're building their roundabout on... Or before they build their roundabout on Highway, or on Excelsior Boulevard and City Heights Drive. So this is just kind of a layout of how the small group rooms would work. And it doesn't mean there's ever going to be any more rooms, but we've kind of master planned it that if there were other rooms, you'd be able to plug in the middle and create another courtyard off the media center there, if for some reason they needed to do something in the future. Okay, then Clear Springs Elementary School, we need it for explorers for one summer. And so we would actually, because we're sending explorers over there, we would do this project in summer of 2028. And the other thing about it is it's not a super complicated project, but where we'd have to stage, we'd be right in the playground, and if you've got explorers there, it's just not going to mix. So, we got a little bit of LTFM work. We got four windows that need to be replaced on the west side of the courtyard. And we've been doing some work on the kitchen floors of all the cafeterias, or all the kitchen floors adjacent to the cafeterias, redoing the Terrazzo and adding space for a second combi oven. So they're the Swiss army knife of food services. And so we'd be adding staff restrooms in the corner of the... This is a change. The initial concept was put everything in the courtyard. But as we looked at it, it's like that's a lot of expensive construction, and it really changes the nature of that courtyard. And it also, because of the space, the more you're redoing back there, the more it might encroach on just the daily school operation. And so a couple of bathrooms, we think we could knock that out easily during the summer. And then we sort of look at putting this four small group rooms. When we built this gym, we added small group rooms here, and we left space for future. And so we're looking at putting small group rooms added onto the existing ones on the gym right in that corner. So it'd be very efficient. That in that location with being able to just work on the build, staging off of the cul-de-sac to the east would be able to knock that out. They probably could finish that over the summer because it's not a super big addition. So that's approximately what it would look like. And then Deep Haven, since it's needed for explorers and also it's one of the more interesting and challenging sites, we would look at doing the gymnasium small group and mobilize for that and start construction June of '28 and be done by December '28, along with staff restrooms. So we've got a lot of difficult terrain there, because most of the remaining site's a wetland. We actually have a photo of before there was a school there, and to the lower level was actually a wetland with a creek going out into Carson's Bay. So, we're looking at things, but I think it's still... Well, there it is, yeah. So all this area here is, well, there's a school, but this area is, that's the baseball field. So they let them infill a baseball field and make it a baseball field. If they hadn't done that back then, if it was now, they'd say, "Forget it." But we have it, so we get to keep it. Just a couple other things. You could see where they filled it in and did a couple baseball fields. And this is where they started doing the playground. One of the things I've been thinking about is there's talk about doing a Miracle Playground because of the special ed students there. This doesn't lend itself to, because it's multiple levels and stuff. And so one thought that we're exploring is possibly, well, because the original concept was to do this and try to build a large retaining wall, but this area here is probably all soggy and swampy underneath from those aerial photos. So one of the things that might work that I just want to look at because we have time to look at it, is turning that gym, instead of running it this way, turning it like this and taking this playground and put it all up on one flat level. And then you'd have your Miracle Playground right there and not behind the gym. And so it'd be much more accessible for the neighborhood and everything too. So that's just another version for us to explore. But yeah, so right now, this was the initial concept during the task force where we were brainstorming on things and just trying to get cost estimates. And so our cost estimates are good and we have the spaces, but when you actually start looking at it and going, okay, now you're really getting into the details, it's like sometimes you need to adjust, kind of like what we've done at Excelsior. So, I mentioned the construction environment, it's challenging. The builders' cost index, I was just so overjoyed this afternoon because the builders' cost index went up 13.5% from June of '25 when you say, "Yeah, let's go run the referendum," until June of '26. But we're going to work hard to deliver what was promised and stay within our 85 million. We issued the 2026A bonds. We had a really good appetite for it, so we picked up 2.41 million in premium. So that's still sitting there. And we're investing the funds, and so far we've got another 1.85 million locked in. I think that by the time we actually do all these projects and stuff, I think we're going to have actually some of these term in November, December, and January. And a lot of those I'll be able to roll over again. And if interest rates stay up, I might be able to get as much as 4% for them. But we should pick up possibly another $1 million on that before we actually use the cash. So, hopefully our bids next week will come in just as well. I was just totally amazed. But, we're looking at selling the next bonds. And so it's too early to tell how things will work, but the core mission is to deliver what was promised. But if we get to the end of the line of these projects, or we have a much better idea of okay, here's what we've got. We're going to be selling our bonds next week on the 26th, so we're looking to sell those at a premium. Given that 13.5%, you think it's got to show up eventually. So we're looking at trying to issue those at premium also because just want to make sure that we can deliver what we promised no matter what, even if the economy starts going crazy. It just seems like in inflation wants... Sorry, I don't want to do that yet. Well, I have to. So we'll see. But, I'm hoping that if everything works out in a perfect world, we might have a chunk of dollars in 2028 where you can go, "Hey, we have some things extra. What do we want to do with it?" So, we'll see if we can make that happen. But the main thing is the main thing, which is delivering what was promised. And so hopefully inflation doesn't take off and we can do that. But if inflation does take off, we're trying to just hedge ourselves so that we have the resources to make sure we deliver what we promised. So that's where construction's at. So, thank you for putting up with me for that long. Well, thank you. And it always amazes me how you're always thinking around all of these things and saving every literally penny around this massive project. There's so many projects that are going on at the same time, and I was just thinking how I went and visited you a couple of weeks ago to sign some documents, and you were saying, "Okay, I'm off to go look at all of the projects that are happening." So it's- Oh. ... you're just so on top of things all of the time, and that's just as a board, we're so grateful for that because- Oh ... you're just on top of all of the money and the projects and everything. So do we have comments or questions from the board? Dan? Right. I'm just curious about the scenic second driveway and the city's request on that. How wide did we originally plan for that to be, and what's the rationale behind the city pushing it to 20 feet? And I wasn't in that meeting with the city, but the landscape architect, Ron Spoden, was there, and he told me they said that their standard for circumference drive... They're calling it a fire lane already, but it's about maybe 10 or 12 feet wide. And we thought we might have to have it go out another three or four feet, but we're probably going to have to have it go out eight feet. And so the ramifications there because of the slope is higher retaining wall, more than double the fill. Yeah. So, I think we still have enough money in the bond to do it. I hope. Fallback is that's a betterment, so if there's money left over in the general obligation bond funds, that would be able to complete it. But, that's their standard they said. And they typically don't make variances off of things that they have a standard. Yeah. All right, thanks. Megan? I just have a practical logistical question. So the firms that bid for the West project- Mm-hmm ... they're not all going to get it. Can they also bid the East project next week? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Okay. So in fact, it wouldn't surprise me that there's five firms that bid, and actually, the range of bids was from 13.8 million up to, 14.8. So it was about a million dollars, which is actually pretty tight on a project that size. Pretty tight range of bids. But they'll all look at what everybody else did, and so much of it's identical. They're all going back and sharpening their pencils. I think we should have a really good bidding environment next week. That's great. That's what I was thinking, that there's going to be four that are still hungry for- Mm-hmm ... a project. So that bodes well, I would say, for next week. Well, and we deliberately want to do MMW first because it's the smaller of the two. Mm-hmm. And just get everybody even a little bit hungrier on the bigger of the two. Mm-hmm. In theory. I don't know. Sally. So I remember when we were first talking about the proposed projects, I asked a question about what the long-term implications to staffing might be for our facilities staff, for example. Mm-hmm. How about during the construction phase? Do we anticipate that the construction itself or the movement of explorers from one site to another or anything like that could have staffing implications that we should be prepared to see come through in the budget? Mm-hmm. If we're going to be moving people, say, in December of 2027, what we'll do is we will... It's kind of an all-hands-on-deck thing, and we've done this before also when we were building 30 classrooms one summer and all this, is we just have all of our maintenance staff, we'll surge them to a spot and just get everything moved, and then we'll surge them to another spot. And do it that way. Of course, we talked about, particularly at the middle schools, the size of the additions. We are probably going to need a couple of full-time custodians. One of the things is we actually have two open positions for our utility people, but we can't hire utility people because every mechanical contractor is paying double what we pay. So I'm going to be talking to HR and Superintendent Law about possibly just converting them to a couple of the positions that we need for the future and bringing them on now, so we have them in the budget, but we can fill them, and that'll be part of the equation. In terms of Explorers, they're pretty good at staffing up every summer. In fact, they turn over so many people. So for them, they're pretty flexible. We've had other years in the past where we had to relocate them from one building to another, and it's the same thing. We just surge people to help them move if they have a lot of supplies to do that. But they're actually amazingly flexible and can do a pretty good job of just reconstituting a program from one building to the next. So I don't see that as being a big problem, but that doesn't mean that there might not be anything that I can't foresee. But for the most part, I think we'll be okay. And Deephaven, when we add a gymnasium to Deephaven, we'll probably need another person, because gyms are so heavily used, especially elementary gyms. Because at the high school, they're heavily used for varsity and all that other stuff, and community use. But the elementary gyms, community use is just heavy rotation. Thank you. But then the Explorer staff, that's all out of the community ed fund, right? And not general operating? Yes. Yeah. Yes. So they're good team players. They're part of the district, part of the solution, and so they always pitch in. Sam? I just have a clarifying question, and I know you're not quite done with the Deephaven gym and configuration of that part. Will they lose any playground space, or it's just going to change shape? We're going to try for them not to lose playground space. Great. Thanks. Yeah. So one of the things that we looked at is if we do the current configuration is it starts squeezing those basketball courts. Yeah. But those are something that we might be able, because you don't need to build a big thick runway to land an airplane on. We might be able to build that down at the lower level and replace them that way. Sure. So we're looking at trying to maintain what we have. And yeah. I wish we had more land, but the only place they're making more land is on the island of Hawaii, by the volcano. So... Okay. Thank you. Thank you again for all of that information. Yeah. Thank you. That's awesome. Next up, we have update on OPEB Trust Fund. Superintendent Law. Madam Chair, members of the board, you're familiar with this, but for the public who's watching and might not be, OPEB is Other Post-Employee Benefits fund. It's something that Minnetonka took advantage of when there was a legislative window to do so. It's not currently available for school districts, but on an annual basis, we like to give an update to the board on how that fund is managing future obligations for retirees and their post-employee benefits, and the opportunities we may have with any slush fund 25 years from now. Mr. Bourgeois. Thank you, Superintendent Law, Madam Chair. And one of the reasons I also thought it was a good idea to do this right now is because in some respects, it gives you a little bit of a lens in what might be with the perpetual endowment fund, too. So maybe we get double bubble eventually having this plus the endowment fund, and it would be a couple of very powerful assets for the district. So, and most of you, I think you've all seen this, actually. So I'm not going to go through every single thing, but the 2008 legislature passed a statute that allowed a district to fund a trust for these other post-employment liabilities that had... There had been some pretty significant ones. Some entities had hundreds of millions of dollars of post-employment liabilities. We didn't have that, but as long as these were capped, they allowed a trust to be funded by the issuance of general obligation bonds, and you could do an irrevocable or a revocable trust. The thing about revocable, it allows flexibility to utilize the funds for other uses at the discretion of the trustees, which is a school board, if the funds produce more assets over liability over time. So we chose to do that one. So most of the districts, I think there might be one or two others who are like that, but most of the districts that actually took advantage of this chose the irrevocable. So they'll be locked into using it for post-employment benefits, and that's it. So just mention that. So, and had the actuaries use a 3% discount rate, because that at the time, and kind of like now, is what we could make managing our own funds. But we also knew though, that with a fixed set of participants receiving the benefits over time, their liability would decrease, and it has. So because of those reasons, we knew we had a chance of excess assets accruing over time. So we established with a liability of 17... Oh, I still have my X's in here, sorry. $17,742,555 for 615 participants. And we issued about $22 million worth of bonds to fund it at the time because at Well, we capitalized some interest on the bonds the first couple of years because at that time, we were also issuing some more debt related to the expansion of our schools with 30 classrooms and then another 10, and we were issuing debt for that, and that was coming on the property tax levy to impact the property tax levy. So we capitalized some interest to smooth that impact out. And so from 2008 to 2026, about 13,963,000 has been disbursed to the general fund. And actually, I've got this on another slide, but our estimated ending fund balance would be down at about $11 million if we didn't have that. So, this is one time where the board took advantage of the revocable trust. Our assets had grown with the run-up in the market in the late 2010s, had grown to 28 million, and the liability had declined to 10 million, 10.9 million. So we pulled $7 million out, and then it turned out we needed another 2.8 million, but we pulled a 9.85 million total to fund a chunk of the Vantage Momentum building, which was the first brand-new building in the district to be constructed since 1967. And we'd also did a $7 million bond. So between these two resources, we were able to construct the Vantage Momentum building. So, there's a couple of components. There's an explicit liability, which is the cash that actually is paid out, and then there's implicit amounts for retirees who are still on the plan, and that implicit amount is an estimate of how much more health insurance everybody is paying in to basically have the same premiums for everybody, because by law, we can't charge retirees on our plan more than brand-new employees and vice versa. So there's that implicit liability, and that one is never going away. Oh, I keep hitting... Sorry. Oh, I know what I'm doing. I'm hitting my pad. Sorry. So, it's hard to read, but you can see how this is our latest projection of our actual accrued liability. It's about $10.3 million last year. It's going to continue to drop, the total liability is. And of that amount, it's made up of two components, but the explicit ability is going to continue to decline. So this is the explicit, and you can see how it declines down to almost nothing by 2053, just steadily declining. And that's because of mortality, right? And then the implicit liability does decline, but the difference between the explicit and the total is the implicit. And so there's about 5 million still of implicit liability. That does decline, but it gets down to about 1.6 million in 2054. So it declines a lot, but this will never go away. There will always be some of that. But most of that $17 million initial liability is going to be gone. So you'll still be pulling some money out every year into the general fund for the implicit liability, but it's going to be a much smaller amount. So this is our history of returns, and we returned-- Actually, I put an email out with the initial, just where did the cash end up as of June 30th. I put that out early. But then they finished closing the books at Wells Fargo, and there were some other trades in process that needed to settle, and those settled. We actually end up with 1,479,000 this year. So you can see, again, they're investing in Minnesota Statutes 356A.06, which lets them invest in stocks, bonds, real estate, all kinds of different things. Same thing that the State Board of Investment does. So it's professionally managed. And so you can get some pretty good returns. You do have the potential for risk. The interesting thing about this is this is the year where we actually lost the most money ever because there was a major drop in the stock market. But we pulled out our 9.85 million here, so that money didn't lose because we took it and put it into a fixed asset for Vantage Momentum. So these are the percentages, and you can see the annual average return if you include the first-- We were really cautious the first year because that was where the Great Recession hit, and everything was just up in the air. So we didn't quite bury it in a tin can in the backyard, but almost. And so we were just really cautious. And then we started investing again and started earning, and a few smaller ups and downs, and that was the percentage of the bad year. But you can see the average annual return, excluding startup, is 6.53. And then this is just the withdrawals for benefit payments, so about 11,782,000 through fiscal '25. I updated it through fiscal '26. It's actually more than the other amount that I mentioned. And then these are just to show you long-term. This is how things went so far. So you can see how our excess assets climbed, and then they dropped after we pulled the 9.8 million out. But we still had excess assets, and our excess assets are lower, but our liability, it got reassessed actually with some new regulations. It had been declining steadily, got reassessed, bumped up a little bit, but it's again continuing to decline. And it was reassessed based on the... I can't remember what the name of the actuarial organization is. Like the Government Accounting Standards Board, but there's one for actuarial. And they said, "Oh, you need to look at these liabilities a different way." So everybody had to get reassessed a few years back, in the early '20s. So, this is what our total liability is, and how it declines. So just to show you that, I'm not going to go over each number. This is our projected future benefit withdrawal. So between now and FY39, and why FY39? Well, that's when the last bond payment is, so it's kind of like amortizing the bond payment off and then where are we at with the liability and benefit withdrawals and all that through the bond payment. Because once a bond payment is gone, that's often in general long-term debt, but it's kind of like matching. When we originally set up the fund, the board was talking about trying to be very judicious with pulling money out for anything else, until the bond was paid off. But they made the decision when we had just that massive run-up in that one year to pull money out to basically fund the Van Schaack momentum building, and that's the only thing that we've done other than regular benefit withdrawals so far. But, this is my projection of future investment earnings at 3%, very conservative. That'd be if we were managing it. And so the earnings decline because the fund balance declines if we're only earning 3%, but the future asset balance does also decline. But because the liability keeps declining faster, the excess assets actually climb all the way to fiscal '39. And so this just puts all those together so you can see the assets actually slightly declining as we're pulling money out to the general fund. The liability, though, continuing to decline actually faster than the assets decline, so the excess assets actually grow steadily. So that's kind of a worst-case scenario. But after 17 years, here we are. 17.7 million invested, 22.1 cumulative dividends paid, so 12,326,000 in benefit withdrawals through FY26, and then the 9,850,000. And we had, on June 30th, 15.6 million in assets remaining. Over the next 13 years-- And I just want to back up on that. 50,642,000 in assets remaining as of June 30th, 2026, but the 9,850,000 is still sitting over there permanently in that building. So, we have more assets in essence still serving the district than when we initially invested them. Then over the next 13 years, we would be picking up another 5.6 million in investment earnings at 3%, and withdrawing about 8.1 million. So it's lower withdrawals because the annual liability estimate is dropping and the annual estimate of the withdrawals is dropping. But we'd have $13 million of assets remaining on June 30th of 2039. And the excess assets would be about 7.3 million. So just a couple more slides here. So now, what happens if we keep making our 6.5%? Okay. So, if we keep making our 6.5%, we made a little over 10 in FY26. So if we just hit our 6.5, we'd be making those earnings every year. That's based on the fact that we're still pulling out our scheduled payments to the general fund. And our future asset balance would continue to climb, so we'd actually would grow at about 23.6 million in FY39. And so over the next 13 years, we'd actually make $60 million of investment earnings if we can keep hitting that 6.5. We still pull out that same 8 million of benefit withdrawals. We'd have 23.6 million in assets remaining, but the excess assets would be 17.8. So, you can see how things start going and so hopefully if things work out, maybe the perpetual endowment fund will have the same kind of track. We'll see. So that's just kind of where we're at, and this fund is doing what it's supposed to be doing. It's got a lot of potential in front of it, and so that's the update. Thank you. Thank you for that more detailed explanation. Do we have questions from the board? Karen, then Dan. Not really a question, but I want to say thank you for all the work that you've done on OPEB and when the decision was made, when there were other districts that took advantage of the revocable trust versus irrevocable, that- Yeah. I- ... that was very thoughtful of you. Well, it just seemed to make sense. The temptation with a revocable trust is like, "Oh, well," because you literally could sweep out all of it and then just start doing pay-as-you-go, which would be very detrimental to the general fund. But our board has always been very financially astute and conservative and good money managers, and so it was easy to recommend a revocable trust. Yeah. Well, thank you, Mr. Bourgeois. You constantly amaze us with the work that you do- Jeez ... and we appreciate it. We really do appreciate it. Not at all. I think I can speak for the rest of the board when I say that we really appreciate it. That's very kind of you to say. I agree. Dan? I'm curious, the Educators Group Insurance Plan, this proposal that's kicking around the legislature right now. Mm-hmm. If that were to go through, does that have any implications on OPEB and any of our liabilities? That's a good question. So if that happens, and we're on that, all of our retirees would go on that also. Mm-hmm. So that may result in this particular benefit being different. The thing is, we're still going to be paying premiums, and retirees have to pay premiums in, but the people who are still on the plan from initial inception, and who are still alive, we would continue to be paying them. So we would still pull money out of our OPEB fund. It's just instead of putting money for their premiums in our self-insurance trust fund, we'd be sending it to the state fund. So, that wouldn't change, but the dollar amounts would probably change compared to putting the money into our own self-insurance fund. Mm-hmm. Okay. Mm-hmm. Thank you for all the work that- All right. Thank you ... you were on stage all night, so thank you for doing that for us. Yes. We appreciate it. All right. With that, that's it. All right. Thank you, guys. Thanks, everybody. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks, cabinet. Administration. See you after scooter starts. Yeah. All right.