Hello everyone. I'm David Law, superintendent of Minnitonka Public Schools. And I'm Chris Fatali, Minnetonka School Board Clerk. We're glad you're able to join us for our schoolboard recognitions program. It's important to take the time to acknowledge and celebrate the outstanding accomplishments of our students, staff, and community members. We begin most of our regular board meetings with recognitions to highlight the positive impact that so many different people make in our district. This month is our last schoolboard recognitions program for the 202425 school year. We are celebrating student achievements in athletics, activities, academics, and the arts, as well as some of the staff achievements and district-wide honors. Tonight we are recognizing adapted bowling state qualifiers, Scholastic Art and Writing Award honores, robotics state qualifiers, LRON concour French exam medal winners, American Coral Directors Association state honor choir qualifiers, the National Association of Music Merchants Best Communities for Music Education Award, a Borla Gruan intern, a Scripps National Spelling Bee qualifier, and a learn network award for Minnetonka community education. We will begin by recognizing our adapted bowl of team. Many members qualified for the state competition this year where they had a lot of fun and competed well. One student, Brady Mallay, finished in fourth place overall as an individual in the PI division. Great work, Brady. The team is led by coaches Mary Schaefer and Jesse Nelson. Before we recognize each player by name, let's learn more about their season. Hey, this is coach Jesse Nelson from the Minnitonka Lakers bowling team. I just want to say I'm so proud of our team this season and we had 10 Minnitankka students that made the state tournament this year. So special special shout out to Eli Rolf, Carson Penn, Donnie Burns, Joey Pullen, Grace Zida, Ben Bowman, Rachel Rather, Violet Le, Lucas Shrup, and a very special shout out to senior Brady Malay who took fourth in the state tournament this year in bowling. This is his third placement in the last three years. So, so proud of all of our students and uh all the players and participants on the team. You guys had a great season. Proud of you. Can't wait till next year. Great job. I am Benjamin Bman. I'm a singer of Manitaka High School. [Music] My favorite thing about bowling is when my friends family cheers for me. Hi, my name is Carson Penn and I I am and a reader at MMW. I play for the wicers and I qualified for the adapted Bing six tournament. I put in both the doubles and team events. During the doubles event, I start with a a few cotto balls, but ended up pulling a personal record high of 107. I was very proud of myself because recourse never give up. Thank you to my coaches and teammates. I love bowling on the recourse team for Lakers. Congratulations to the following adapted bowling state qualifiers. Benjamin Bowman, Donovan Burns, Violet Lees, Brady Molly, Carson Penn, Joseph Polland, Rachel Rathther, Elijah Rolf, Lucas Shrup, and Gray Zida. Great work all. Since 1923, the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards Program has provided opportunities for teens to be recognized on a state and national level, earn scholarships, and have their artwork and writing exhibited and published. The competition is open to students in grades 7 through 12. All submissions are judged on originality, technical skill, and the emergence of a persona, vision, or voice. We are pleased that so many Minnitonka students submit original creative work to the program every year. This year, 24 Minnotonka students have earned top honors for art, including 21 honorable mention awards, nine silver keys, and seven gold keys. 12 students earned awards for writing, including eight honorable mention awards, six silver keys, and five gold keys. Let's learn more about these honors. My name is Ra Gomez. I'm ninth grade this year and I received disclassic writing award for my novel excerpt Against She Rises. Again, she rises is a story that's about healing and about cultural identity and where you come from, where you might go and who you are. And for me, writing is really about sharing our stories and giving us ideas to them. And so as I was writing the story covering different like ideas and who people are and where they develop, I hope that I can continue to use writing as a tool to share these stories with the world. Thank you. Congratulations to the following scholastic art honores. Salma Ali, Paige Barhoover, Naomi Berg, Tieran Bodnar, Klene, Cavia Czecha, Chloe Chot, Bryce Clark, Cole Click, Clara Curry, Sula Dunkerk, Matthew Fry, Elizabeth Hayes, Leighton Johnson, Vivian Gorsac, Bailey Matson, Charlotte Midwinter, Isa Moheit, Vivian Wen, Naomi Newton, Laya Rashus, Brody Sorenson, Kiara Squires, Satie Walters and Lauren Wian. Congratulations to the following Scholastic writing honores. Tyler Dodge, Reika Gomez, Abigail Hudson, Gabriella Hudson, Samara Khan, Mason Kyper, Isa Moheit, Alexandra Nelson, Christenza Nielsen, Eleanor North, Sophia Parmaly, and Yasmin Pai. And congratulations as well to the following high school teachers who have supported our students in their creative endeavors. Sarah Young, Meg Kaner, Daniel Murphy, Rebecca Marx, Paul Olsen, Steve Nent, Christa Hitchcock, and Shannon Pushner. Our robotics team, Chickenbot Pie, had quite a special year. They did well in many competitions and qualified for the Minnesota State Tournament. Robotics provides students with an opportunity to work collaboratively and solve challenges using science, technology, engineering, and mathematical skills. The team is advised by Celeste Hill. Let's learn more about the season. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Woo! [Music] My name is Amelia Moreno and I am currently a sophomore. What has impacted me the most about being on the robotics team is the way the team has worked collaboratively and devoted countless hours to making the best robot possible. Through this experience, we have not only gained technical knowledge, but also invaluable teamwork and skills. One award we gained at a regional competition was the innovation controls award. It highlights a creative approach to designing control systems which made me particularly proud. Furthermore, qualifying for the state competition provided an amazing opportunity to meet some of Minnesota's top robotics teams. Hi, my name is Aisha Adam. I'm a junior at Minnitonka High School and recently my robotics team qualified for the robotic state championships. At this event, I had to personally compete for the first time, and it was really a struggle doing it for the first time and being in such a fast-paced environment. However, by the end of the competition, I learned a lot about what it means to work as a team and was awarded rookie of the year for my enthusiasm and performance. Robotics team members include Aisha Adam, Laura Colon Ortiz, Kyle Drew, Caleb Flores, Evan Ginter, Lucas Granucci, Elliot Hill, Ellen Ingam, Rowan Ay, Keegan Johansson, Elliot Jones, Oliver Jones, Curtis Lindall, Kelly McFarland, Drew Mal, John Malvin, Huxton Marcus, Mingchi, Matherur, Samuel McHugh, John Paul, Mary, Camden, Mona, Emilio Moreno, Oscar Post, Cade Rabby, Manuel Romero Maspoli, Rainey Ryan, Blake Sarcia, Paxton Smolcowski, Connor Smith, Eve Sander, Tan, Amelio Torano, Kenrik Trin, and Torstston Zebarth. This year, 15 Minnotonka High School students have earned high marks in the national French contest called Lagrron Concur. They earned bronze, silver, and gold medals for French levels. The contest is an exam administered each year to French language students to measure their language knowledge. Let's learn more about the opportunity. Atus, my name is Beth Elto. I am one of the French teachers at Minnitanka High School. Today we are congratulating students who participated in the National French Contest, LRO Conor. It's an annual contest that is sponsored by the American Association of Teachers of French. Students in French uh grades 1 through 12 uh in all 50 states and abroad u spend 1 hour to 75 minutes in the higher levels answering multiple choice questions based on audio recordings and readings. Um, our students compete for state and national rankings against other students with similar language backgrounds and levels. The students recognized today are our bronze, silver, and gold medal recipients. Congratulations to the following students for their French language achievements. Grace Gablehouse, Matteline Vasic, Olivia Babe, Avery Boss, Ellen Ingham, Joshua Wider, Sarah Duffy, Cole Frick, Bobby Gautam, Casey Schllo, Leanne Sorar, Victoria Wyatt, Olivia Duhart, Skyler Percy, David Lozano. Congratulations as well to French language instructors Beth Anne Alto, Jonathan Brol, and Susan Campbell for supporting students in this achievement. Next, we'll recognize the elementary and middle school students who were selected to represent Minnotonka as part of the statewide American Coral Directors Association Honors Choir. Let's learn more about this experience. Hi, I'm Gina Mankey and I teach grades six through eight choir at MMW and I'm here to talk a little bit about ACDA, the American Coral Directors Association. ACDA is one of the largest professional organizations for coral directors in the world and every year ACDA of Minnesota provides seven different honor choir opportunities for students in grades fourth, fifth, 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th and 10th. and coral directors have the opportunity to encourage students to audition for these honor choirs. In grades four through eight alone, Minnitankka public schools had 28 students selected for these prestigious honor choirs. That is incredible. So on behalf of those directors and students, I say a hearty congratulations. They went through a very rigorous audition process and went through many rehearsals and performance. So that's fantastic. Thank you for this recognition. Hi, my name is Lucy Higgins and I'm a sixth grader at MMW. I moved from Maryland to Minnesota about a year ago with my family and I am very passionate about singing. When the opportunity came up to be in the ACDA Minnesota State Honor Choir, I was super excited. Um, and when I got selected, I was overjoyed, me and my family. Um, this entire school year, my choir teacher, Miss Carlson, has been a huge help. She encouraged me to to try out for the Minnesota State Honor Choir. So, I'm super thankful for her. Thank you for this amazing opportunity. Hi, my name is B and I'm a sixth grader in MMW. I participated in the ACA choir. It was a great experience. I absolutely loved it. It was a full day commitment, but the concert ended up being great. I was nervous to try out, but my parents encouraged me a lot, and I think you'll love it, too. From the grades four, five, and six choir, we recognize Alice Foresight, Kraton Long, Wesley Long, Eye McCyver, Emily Valancort, Noel Graves, Isa Pylon, Sylvia Anderson, Arya Deutsch, Sebastian Gerju, Drexler, Tanya Conderc, Adeline Buckner, Elizabeth Buffington, Bin Gavin, Gavin Grund, Lucy Higgins, Amelana Clolobachar, Isabelle Kunish, Tatum Maddie, and Paige Stall. We also recognize the following Minnitonka teachers who served as grade four, five, and six state honor choir directors. Sarah Abson, Seth Boyd, Carol Carlson, Joel Goats, Jennifer Hazen, Melanie McCyver, and Gina Mankey. From the grade seven eight choir, we recognize Ryan Dosk, Kira Arazzo, Petra Friedrien, Zarya Moamba, Noah Puk, Jameson Sigreeds, Julia Smith, and Aurora Stabley. We also recognize the following Minnetonka teachers who served as grade 78 state honors choir directors. Seth Boyd, Carol Carlson, Jennifer Hazen, and Gina Mankey. Next, we'll celebrate an award given out by the National Association of Music Merchants or NAM. Each year, NAM recognizes the best communities for music education. This spring, Minnotonka public schools received the designation for the 12th year in a row. We make music education a priority at Minnitonka schools. Students in our district are able to explore the gift of music and performance through band, orchestra, coral, and classroom music. They achieve great success with the support of their families, teachers, and the community. Gina Mankey, a district music department chair, shared more about this honor with us. Hi, I'm Gina Mankey and I teach grades sixth through 8th choir at MMW and also the MMW honor choir and I'm also the vocal department chair for the district. And on behalf of the Minnitanka Public Schools music department, I am honored to accept the NM Foundation best communities for music education award for the 12th consecutive year. It is always such a joy to reflect upon the vast opportunities that the music department offers our students every year and Minnitanka's commitment to music education. So, thank you to the NM Foundation for acknowledging these efforts and thank you to the Minnotonka administration. Thank you to parents, community members, and our students for their commitment to music education. Thank you. Thank you so much, Gina. We would now like to recognize our K12 music teachers who each play a role in making Minnetonka a top community for music education. Sarah Abson, Mike Anderson, Mona Anderson, Liz Anderson, Becky Ash, Jackie Boyd, Seth Boyd, Heidi Bundy, Carol Carlson, Dan Ericson, Sarah Finn Somerfeld, Jace Ginkle, Sarah Gorski, Joel Goats, Karen Goats, Jen Hazen, Mary Beth Hutland, Michael Janning, Jenny Kimble, Kevin Kleindel, Aaron Kors, Wade Lutterbine, Melanie Mccyver, Gina Mankey, Miles Mortonson, Nicholas Ramandi, Paul Rosen, Melanie Schwarz, Trisha Stoulles, Lissa Thomas, Rachel Tisdale, and Jason Jiang. Thank you to each of you for your work to inspire and support our students. Minnitanka High School senior Maya Sandy has been selected as a Borlo Ron International for the World Food Prize Foundation. Maya is one of only 16 students from around the world to be chosen for the opportunity this year. As part of this initiative, students engage in projects with experts at top agricultural institutions in six different countries. This summer, Maya will be researching and learning at Earth University in Costa Rica. Congratulations again, Maya. Wade Selby, a fifth grader from Scenic Heights Elementary, has qualified to represent the state of Minnesota at the Scripps National Spelling Bee this spring. WDE's path to nationals started when he won the school level spelling bee at Scenic Heights. From there, he competed at semi-regionals and regionals, which he won in March. This led him to the national event in National Harbor, Maryland, which has been taking place this week. Wade is only one of nine students from Minnesota at the event. Congratulations again, Wade. Outstanding work. Our final recognition for this evening is one for our community education team. This spring, Minnotonka Community Education was named as a top 10 community program in North America by the learning resource network or learn. The award recognizes the depth and quality of our community education programming. From events and enrichment classes to early childhood and family education, preschool and before and after school care through our explorers program, Minnotonka Community Ed has truly amazing opportunities for every person in our district to connect, learn, and have fun. Let's hear a bit more about the award from our community education team. We are honored and excited to be recognized as one of the top 10 community education programs in North America by the Learning Resources Network for the third year in a row. Minnitanka Community Education serves the educational, social, and recreational needs of our entire community. From early childhood and preschool programs to Project Soore, Explorers, youth and adult enrichment, recreation, community events, and so much more. We believe in lifelong learning for all, birth through adulthood, and partnerships that support and strengthen the community, schools, and our families. The national recognition from learn is based on three criteria: excellence, innovation, and sharing expertise. This award not only celebrates our work, it fuels our passion to keep learning, improving, and creating great programming for the community. Thank you to Lauren, the Minnitankka school board, our MCE staff, and our entire community for your support of Minnitankka Community Education. We honored to receive this award. Congratulations to the entire community education team for this honor and for earning it for the third year in a row. We are proud of the team's national caliber programming and look forward to another great year in 2025-26. That concludes our last recognition program for the 2024-25 school year. Thank you so much for celebrating with us each month all year long. We look forward to another year of recognitions to begin in September. The school board meeting will begin shortly. I'll now call the May 29th, 2025 meeting of the Minnitonka School Board to order. Let's say the pledge to the flag to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. May I have a motion to adopt the agenda? So moved. Mike, may I have a second? Second, Dan. All right. Any discussion, questions, additions? Seeing none, all those in favor, please say I. I. I. Any opposed? Agenda is adopted. First item on that agenda is a school report for Miniwashta. Superintendent Law. Mr. Mr. Chair, members of the board, as you're aware, each month principles from across the district come to the board meeting to share an update on what's happening in their school, typically related to our schoolboard goals of excellence in student well-being and belonging, academic excellence, and organ leadership and organizational support. Batting cleanup this year, the last hitter in the lineup is principal from Minowashta Elementary, Cindy Andress. Welcome. Thank you. Um, thank you all for letting me be here. I've been better, what did you call me? Last line, last in the lineup for 21 years. This is my 21st time and we look forward to this meeting every year and try to plan at the beginning of the year what we're going to share with you not in detail but the concept. So, uh, I am super excited to be here for many reasons. So, thank you for welcoming me. So, here's our group plan. We're going to share a little bit about excellence and student well-being, connection, and belonging, mainly through sharing stories of students with you. And then what we do with serving, which is similar to what we do every year. So, at Menowashta this year, uh I'm going back to last year because what we did this year is based on what we learned from our students last year. So, as we shared with you last year, our data that the students gave us helped us determine what our focus in our work would be in three areas. One of them, adults consciously smiling more. Adults consciously using an inviting tone of voice with attention and adults helping kids feel like they're making time for them even in the bustle of a school day. So, kids are telling us this is what we need to do. So, this is for all adults at school, not just the teachers. We set out to do that this year with our learning uh our our second step collaborative learning we've been doing this year. Our focus was on banking time with students, writing notes of encouragement, doing a warm welcome at the start of each day, elevating our morning circles or morning meetings, and then ultimately all of this again stems from the students voice and what they told us we could do to help them feel connected and like they belonged at school. Relationship growth uh in those areas of being warm and u believe in me. So looking that here's what our survey told us this year and that enjoy being with me this year's data shows an improvement with student perceptions rising uh to 79% and closing that gap by four percentage points so that what the students were reporting and what the staff were reporting are coming more closely and alignment and then challenge growth expect my best was the the indicator and we maintain maintained a strong alignment of 98% and 94% in student voices. So we feel like we did make some gains in that particular area this year and that's where these stories are coming from. I'm trying not to be biased, but my teaching life was spent in special education. And as we reflect back on tonight, you're going to hear a lot about those particular students at school. Um because when I look back, there were there's this thread of connection there that I wanted to show you just through a story. And so Ivan is that young man in the in the cinder. And Ivan came to us at Menowasha at the beginning of last year and couldn't leave the Atlas room. He stayed in the Atlas room most of the time. And this year he stays in his third grade classroom a lot of the time. And the heartwarming part of that is is watching Ivan go from being isolated and not knowing how to relate to sitting at a table with his third grade classmates doing third grade work and them collaborating on it and celebrating that together. And when I saw that start to happen this year, that was really great because last year, like I said, he wasn't able to do those things. And not only was he not able to do that, he wasn't received by students that are typical students because of some of the things that that were a part of his life. And that smile just lights your heart now because that's who he is. And so up in the the right hand corner that he has social stories, books that his teacher makes for him. And one of them was us giving him a thumbs up, you know, as part of that social story. Down in that right hand corner, that photo talks about another student in kindergarten who also um has some real struggles and some real needs. But to see her interacting and uh running a pizza, they were running like a cafe that day and um inviting people to come by and have pizza and sat down and she was working on some communication and skills and to see the other kids just being so excited and receptive. I feel like we're really are making some gains for everyone, being more connected and feeling like they're they're belonging. The other teacher um Mr. Mash in there. That is his Halloween costume. And to see a kiddo wear the same costume because she predicted he'd have something like that on also makes me ch I have a couple of videos that I wanted to use. Andy, if you could show uh the one on the left, I want to give a little setup. What we're looking at is listening to following directions. It's kind of the listening part right now, right? showing expected behaviors, safe walking in the hallways. I do remember one time when we did this, then I interrupted you before we did the three more thing when I So he's rating himself on being respectful to friends and adults and the definition is there. He's reflecting on his day. What? Smooth. Smooth speech. Smooth speech. Doing his job. Completing schoolwork. Participating in class. Completing wings work. Am I? So, how about the rest of it? Three. All right. Here we go. And four. Oh, so four for reading the room in reading or reading the room in math? Both. Both. Okay. All right. What's next? What's this one for? So, he rates himself in the classroom. He rates himself at recess and then he rates himself. Um, oh, I just went blank on the other part of the day. So, we do this three times and he rates himself. We use different color of markers. He comes in and does that with me about twice. a week today. And Andy, I think you can stop that. I think we have the gist of this video. But the reason it it's pretty exciting is because when we started that with him last year, again, he was mo mostly in isolation. This year, uh, we know him a lot better. He's actually a Wings student as well. And these things have helped him get out and connect. And um I had to leave town quickly last week for a few days. So when I was doing my meeting with him, which I think actually was this day, uh before I left, I told him if he could have three days while I was gone, of speech, which is something he's working on to help him connect more, that I would double his points when I got back. Well, he was very happy to see me Wednesday and could hardly wait to check out. he had 40 points. Um, which you can see on the sheet, you're only supposed to get 13. So, we've added things and one of the things that his mom wanted to be sure and teach her that you knew is that we've flexed this plan. So, at the beginning of the year, we didn't have a a bonus for a perfect day or for a truth point. You know, at a few times at recess, he wasn't taking responsibility for his safe hands or being respectful. So, we added those things in. And then when you get a truth point, he suddenly can be truthful about everything. Um really fun um kiddo. But the reason again he's feeling connected to his peers and his peers are feeling connected to him. Do they all still make social mistakes? Absolutely. But this is a vehicle that's helping him feel connected and his peers feel connected. the video on the right. Good morning. Today is Tuesday, May 27, 2025. Our weather will be mostly cloudy with a chance of rain starting around 3:00 p.m. Make it a smile a smile with green choice day. Joy the chore week signing off from the Atlas weather station wash. Oh. Oh. Now Claire started making these videos only for her home room and um again she wasn't a kid that was going to her home room last year. She spent a lot alone and uh she started making these videos and her class really enjoys it. So every morning for the last two weeks she has made a video for them. Um, this was the first one she started to sing in though. So, usually she just kind of writes a script and reads the script, but this one she was uh and she had to do it twice because the first time she said her last name, so we asked her to go back and take her last name off of it. Again, a a kid that's feeling really connected and her class looks forward to this little thing every day and um it really makes my my heart feel really good. Um, so those are some of the stories. In the second part of that packet, the next page I I don't have on a slide because this is top secret and not known to the staff yet. So, um, this particular class has illustrated a book that they're having printed and the parents are putting in the Library of Congress and it tells a story about many different countries and their perspectives and it it's it weaves their teachers and their their um adults and their lives into the story. Um, again, there's a um a student in the Atlas room in this um classroom and the parent is the one that's really driving helping this connection. So, I I um these just came in today and so I was like, I want to put these in. This last one I've never seen in my 21 years where a bus driver actually wrote a positive uh school bus misbehavior report, but he wanted us to know or she wanted us to know how how what a difference the student is making on the bus. Um, and before he he holds the door open for the kids every day, the bus driver lets him open it evidently and he stands there and greets everybody as they get off and lets them all get off first. And so we got this positive bus report. So Jenny then writes a response. We call the parents and the teacher and everyone kind of makes a big deal about this. And then we learn not only is he feeling connected here, but when he goes out other places, he's pointing out like the good stuff that people are doing in our community and again helping kids feel like they belong and um not only feel like it, but actually making it where they do. That's kind of been the highlight of the year for me. And in reflecting um on the year, I didn't mean to do that. Direction. There we go. Um I I want to keep it short and just focus on those stories with you. The the rest of this you could see we continue to serve the greater good. Um we continue to be a peace site. Uh all led by um our students. This week on Tuesday we had tropical zone orchestra there. The students were out dancing. We had to have peace sites by two grade levels at a time and um the fifth grade students were the ones that actually led that. Again, there's a little video clip but I think you get the idea of how students are feeling connected and how we're well just a little bit Andy and then we'll stop it. [Music] [Music] So, you can't tell, but the gym's full of of kids around there as they're leading that. My favorite part of that is if you notice that the teacher had her shoe off as she's playing the piano, which I thought was really pretty funny. Um the rest of this again is all of the ways that the kids have been serving their projects that they do. Uh whether we're asked to from the high school, which is the Tonka serves, or or whether it's gathering food for the A food shelf. And um I'll just kind of scroll through those. Um it's a great place to be. Um even when it's not a great place to be, it's still a great place to be. It's not a perfect thing, but the kids have told us what it what it will take for them to feel connected to us, which seems to be making them feel more connected to each other. And that's mainly what I wanted to leave with you. So, I appreciate that goal. I hope that's one of the goals you're still going to be asking us to do. I know that's on the the docket for tonight, but I feel like um serving the greater good and belonging, they're very connected and the way that we're approaching it, I hope is connected for you. So, happy to answer any questions, but thank you for the opportunity. Thank you. Uh board members, any questions or comments? Thank you, principal, for that fantastic report. Love to see the stories of connection and positivity. Thank you very much. Yeah. All right, next item on our agenda. It's reached the time for community comments. Community comments is an opportunity for the public to address the school board on an item included in this agenda in accordance with the guidelines printed on the reverse of the agenda. Do we have anyone here who wishes to address the board in community comments? Seeing none, we'll move on to the next item on our agenda, which is the presentation by Chilean student teachers. Superintendent Law. Mr. Chair, members of the board, when you have immersion programming at every elementary school, you have an opportunity to bring incredible opportunities to our students like an an exchange partnership with Chile where students come here to do their student teaching and and work with University of St. Thomas. Tonight, executive director of human resources and general counsel Angie Flowers will give a summary of that experience, invite up those student teachers to talk about their experience. Miss Flowers. Thank you, Superintendent Law. Good evening, Mr. Chair and board members. I am so excited to introduce you to our five student teachers from the University of Chile in Conpsion, Chile. Javier Vata representing Clear Springs Elementary. Anita Sto representing Deep Haven Elementary, Amalia Kabas representing Minawashta Elementary, Sophia Logos representing Minnotonka Middle School East, and Amelio Chavez representing the high school. These wonderful educators are the second group to visit Minnetonka schools since we relaunched the program last year in 2024. Our student teachers work alongside a cooperating teacher in our Spanish immersion classrooms for a 20week experience and they live with a volunteer host family in the district during this time. The student teachers also complete their practicum at the University of St. Thomas that is our local partner school for this program and they provide our immersion students an authentic cultural and linguistic experience that is truly unique to Minnetonka schools. The program would not be possible without the support of our partner universities, our very generous host families, our amazing and talented cooperating teachers, and everyone just continuing to support it um at the district and at the universities. Um tonight our student teachers will be sharing how this experience has impacted them and their students and what role their experience this will play in their um experience as future educators. And I also want to just thank Amy Hilstrom for all of her support in this program and all the coordination that she does. So with that we will begin with Amalia. All right, get the work. Maybe because he's back there. Keep changes. Keep changes. There we go. There we go. [Applause] Good evening everyone. My name is Somalia Cavesa and this evening with my Chileian colleagues and I uh I would like to present our learnings and reflections for the fury in Chile uh about in our Mitanka student teaching experience. Throughout the presentation we will respond to these three questions. What have we learned about teaching or learning? What have we learned about the students or the classroom environment? And how will this impact when we return to CHI? Um, I'm a student teaching teacher student teacher from Minoashta in a kindergarten classroom. And what I've learned here is about differentiation in learning where is where the childrens can can go with their own rhythm and that doesn't that makes them that doesn't make them feel um lost in their learning. Uh and we work in similar levels levels of knowledge and with lesson plans adjust to the different way. And another fun thing is the family particip participation. It could be in math math centers uh where the family can sign to stay for an hour uh playing math games in center for each uh 15 minutes each. And the mystery readers, my favorite, where the parents can sign up to read a book or two while giving them clues to the class and they have to guess who the reader is. And today we had TC Bear from the twins, like the actual bear. So it was super fun. Uh the bear sign us cards and give us stickers. And I don't know the clues where I'm Harry. I live outside. my name have two letters or if it's apparent my favorite um sport club or something are the Vikings or my I have brown hair and then the children recognize the things about their families and we vote like oh I think it's my parent I think it's my grandma and it's super fun. Yeah. Hello, my name is Javier Vara and my experience was in a first grade classroom at Clear Springs Elementary. So, uh I first want to start with um what I brought from Chile. So, um one of the most important things for me was to bring a little bit of my culture from Chile to the classroom here. That was like my main goal. But I started to think, how can I do that in first grade? Like they don't even like understand some complex uh um words like culture. It's so big and broad. So it just came to my mind exactly how I did it as a first grader with songs and with fun and with um things that made Spanish like the learning of Spanish make sense for them. So I brought uh songs by how you can see and Masapan which are two big things from my childhood. Um and I started using them in the classroom um in two different ways. One way it was to give them brain breaks to just stop for a second during the day and just enjoy a song or enjoy a video. But the second part was they were still learning Spanish. We were in an immersion classroom. So even when we were resting, we were still practicing. And right now we have been with the songs for like I would say like two three months and they start singing out of nowhere and it's really fun because they enjoy the language. And on the other side what I'm taking back to Chile is just I just had this whole experience with learning about the everyday life in the classroom. here it is very different from uh the everyday classroom life that we have in Chile. So I learned for example that in elementary school they have like the same structure of the day every day and I really like that it's very predictable for the kids and they are ready to learn when they come in. I really enjoy seeing uh the um morning meetings for example. It's a great way for them to connect with their community to greet each other and to start the day like in the right mood to learn. They are ready for it after. Hello, my name is Anita Sto. Uh my experience was in third grade at Deep Haven Elementary School. I will talk about collaboration between teachers. I work specifically with three third grade Spanish immersion teachers. We use the same planning but the differentiation depending on the students in each classroom. So what is the advantage of having a work team? First one bit advantage is that we can charge the world. As teachers, we often have a lot to do. But working as a team helps us divid responsibilities. For example, in our case, one teacher planned math, another planned language art, and so on. Also, all third grade teachers knew every student. This helped the kids feel safe and understood no matter which teacher they were with. It also made it easier to find solution together. Since we knew the students well, we call come up with creative and personalities strategies whether it was to help them learn better or to support them emotionally or socially. Good evening. My name is Emilio Chavez, a Spanish student teacher at Minadanga High School. Well, war language department was my home during this week, this month's story. Um, I met many teachers of other language was amazing. Uh, share and working with them. I enjoy a lot my experience at our language department. She is Yodi Seagel, my covering teacher and and the Greek green hat in the in the group photo. Well, I am so so grateful with them. The they are great teachers. Thanks for her support and for teaching me be teacher. Sorry. Um well h learning through games. My class was honor Spanish and merchant Spanish humanities. H we teach about literature, grammar, music, grammar and more grammar. So um to engagement my students with Yodi and Natalie we use games uh to motivate them at morning 8 a.m. 8 a.m. is a great work for us. And so and they play and they have fun with the activities and almost all time quiet students win the game and share and compare the answers with their classmate. technology is a great friend for us as teacher. Minunga schools offers different tools to to include technology in our classroom. For example, in in my case, schooly, grade book, uh, Canva, Google and Microsoft uh software. Those tools make our work efficient because we can have all information, test, worksheet and everything in one place. It's fantastic and h technology is grateful to communicating with the families and the students. It's easier for us. And to finish with my my words, uh, thank you Minadena High School and Madanga schools to for that experience. That experience opened the door for the world for me and thank you very much. Um, good evening everyone. My name is Sophia Lagos and I'll talk about my teaching experience and seven and eighth grade and middle school east. So I had to learn different topics about global and American social studies uh to teach them because my speciality is in language arts in Spanish. And of course it was a challenge at first but then I started to enjoy it and be confident in the classroom. So I was able to concentrate in using different strategies to teach and create a learning environment where the students learn different ways to participate individually and as a group respectfully. So when this happened I started to feel as a real teacher also. Um during my experience here, my cooperative teacher Yosha Guosski was very supportive and encouraging and I learned from him so many things that I'm taking to Chile. But the three main ones are first how to be a more reflective teacher so I can be conscious about my practice as a teacher. second, how to be more communicative with the families because I didn't know how to do it. Um, at first and also with his example, I started to create my own way to create a healthy relationship with the students. Um, establishing boundaries but at the same time being as reliable as I can be so they can reach out for help. And third, when I create a lesson plan, he teach me to do it um thinking in three students. The first one is a student with high capacity. The second is a student who needs more help and the se the third student is a student who doesn't want to be in the classroom. Um then to answer the last question about how will this impact this when we return to Chile. We didn't know each other at first when before coming here and now I think we are attached for life through this experience because we get together every weekend to talk about our week and reflect about how it was when we give tips to each other and we've been supporting each other where there has been challenges in this experience of being a student teacher here in the states and one thing we all have implemented and it was Javier's idea is a strategy to create silence in their classroom but the Chileian way. So we say tit and then and then the students has to say lele. So we create chile and then they have to make silence and how will this impact all of us when we return to Chile? Well the first thing is that it will expand our job opportunities. um this experience will have a big impact in our curriculum in our whole career now going forward. So we are very excited about that and we will also have a broader understanding of what it means to be a teacher because uh before we only have met teachers from Chile and now we have met teachers from I would say all around the world not even just from the states. So that's very nurturing and we are very excited and grateful for that. Um yeah with that we are finishing our presentation. Thank you so much for listening to us. [Applause] Thank you. Any questions? Board members, thank you all for the wonderful report. Thank you for your service to the students of the district and uh safe travels home whenever you depart. Thank you. Thank you. Next item on our agenda is the annual update on recruitment and retention. Superintendent Law. Mr. Chair, members of the board, the Minnitankka School Board has had the goal of filling all of our open positions with the highest caliber of candidate possible. To further that, our HR department does an annual report to the board on their efforts to fill open positions and new ways that they're recruiting and in retaining staff. Executive Director of HR and General Counsel Angie Flowers will be presenting this soon. Thank you again, Superintendent Law and board members. excited to present our annual human resources summary on recruitment and retention. This is one of the the board goals excellence in leadership and organizational support. Enhance the district's focus on recruitment and retention of exceptional teachers and staff to include efforts to create a representative workforce that will enrich enrich the learning environment for all students. I'll begin with recruitment. The first thing I'd like to share is some of our recruiting resources that we use. There are a host of sites that we actively recruit with. Um, the majority of our applicants as we look through this are found through our careers page that we launched last year and our human resources page. We also get a good amount of referrals. So, please tell all your friends about job opportunities and to look at our website. Um, we continue to utilize LinkedIn and diversity and ed. Diversity and ed has had a has a nice feature now that allows us to really filter down um to candidates actually principles. They can filter down by state lensure area um and it'll just give them a host of of applicants if they wanted to reach out to them. And we also just use um LinkedIn to of course feature job opportunities which I'll show in a little bit. Sahan Journal. So we started advertising and recruiting with Sahan Journal last year and we continue to have a presence with them. Um we've run ads in all four languages English, Somali, Mong and Spanish. Right now, we have English and Somali as our current ads, and that is just part of our more long-term recruitment strategy. Um, and to to further our reach and I just want to thank uh Daniel Campbell for his work on these on these ads, LinkedIn features and recognition partnership again with the communications department, Mary Cornelius. So we use this not only for promoting career opportunities but we celebrate employee achievements and we do this throughout the year. Um what you'll see now is our assistant principal career opportunity over advantage momentum and also celebrating our national board certified teachers. I'd like to share our LinkedIn results from May of 2024 through May 2025. We feature the position such as the assistant principal that I just shared with you. We did that for the principal position at Scenic Heights and we got 35 applications which is a high number for a principal position. And for the assistant principal positions, it's even more popular. Um, we got 130 applicants for the assistant principal there. So, there was a lot of great talent in that pool. Our annual results, we continue to see steady growth in our reach and our engagement. And that just really shows us that people are looking at our stories, they're sharing them, they're talking about them, and that's really, really great for our strategy. Our content garnered about 150,000 impressions over the past year, up 25%. So, we love that we're seeing that. Over 71,000 members reach. That's up over 20% from last year. And our engagement rate increased another 1% over the last year to 10.8% from 9.83. The average LinkedIn rate is 3.16. and we have 5,685 followers increase of 19.65 um%. Um we added another 929 since the last board report. This is our annual circa report card. This is a a snap a snapshot of our job postings activity. uh we had over 15,000 jobs sent to our community organizations and over 300 jobs sent through our uh linkage agents which is directed at certain um community organizations. So it circa does a really good job of getting our jobs out there and getting us the exposure that we want. our first quarter report card from CIRCA. We're we're starting off really well. Um it's at 2,645 jobs sent to community organizations already. So we are appreciative of those results. Of course, another way that we recruit is through our job fairs. Uh Bethl University, one of our our university partners attended that job fair. You can see Sandy Shoa in HR and our wonderful assistant principal from the high school, Emily, and also we have Andrew Gilbertson um from Grovin Elementary. So, our principles have really uh been great about joining us at job fairs and helping to represent and recruit and we really we really appreciate that. Two virtual job fairs were attended um Handshake through University of Minnesota And again, the job fairs are also a long-term strategy. We do get some hires out of those, but we just want to maintain a presence. So, 166 interactions with educator candidates. We feel good about that. And we have our own job fair, our favorite one. So, this is this is our school operations job fair from last year. Um, there aren't that many job fairs out there for the operational position. So we decided to do our own and invite people here. So alongside me in this photo is our wonderful um HR director Robin Clinker and she really manages most of those operations positions. Um also we had community ed here in the middle. Um and Sucha Mahenali the HR specialist. She leads the job fair in organizing it. And I believe board director Foss attended the job fair last year and brought some folks with her. So we were happy. We were happy to see that. At the first job fair we had 30 attendees and last year we had over 60. So we we doubled it. We were pretty full. It was very active in here. Um, another unique thing that we did because we do recruit reserves and substitutes through the job fair is that we started a teaching licensing expert booth and that was really popular. We saw that with the first one there were a lot of questions about lensure people that you know had been teachers but they want to get relicensed again. So that was um something else that we added. We do employee features for the job fair. So, we have two of our wonderful staff here. Again, we put that on LinkedIn. Um, and that's part of our recruitment campaign just to show what it's like to be an employee at Minnatonka from the employees voice versus us saying that. Shameless plug. Our upcoming job fair um is on July 24th, 3 to six o'clock and that will be at the Minnotonka Education Center off of Highway 7. So, please, you know, send people over, spread the word. We're looking again for those non-eing positions. Moving on to reserve and substitute data. Um, I think this is important to share because it really is something to support our teachers in the classroom and to continue learning um when there's absences. So, we continue to recruit reserve teachers and pair of professional substitutes throughout the year. New hires were at 46 for reserve teachers this year and 28 paraprofessional substitutes and 10 proctors. Out of that pool, 81 have worked multiple times per week, three to four times per week. Um, and 26 of them are new hires. So, we continue to look at how to fill and alleviate teachers being being pulled from PREP, but also expanding our focus now to improve our par substitute focus. We're looking at that a lot more closely. Uh we just started a new report that really drills down to tell us not just how many paras are uh how many paras are absent or what the fill rate is but what type of parah and that is really significant especially for the special education paras. So we're happy to have that information. Our fill rate is stronger this year even though we had more teacher absences. February was again our highest month for absences. Our six week building floats we have those are reserve floats that they stay on for six weeks and they may continue or they may be another one but it provides consistency. We have two teacher reserve floats at the elementary and we have three at the secondary that has really helped us to to stabilize and get the coverage. Not only that, but have a substitute teacher in front of students um and we also have it for paras that they're familiar with and who they know. So that's really really good. Uh 100% coverage um for teachers we've seen many weeks um a good amount of that you can see if you look at the not needed that means that we are doing that through internal coverage. Um, sometimes because we may not have a substitute, other times it may be just an hour that needs to be filled and it's just more fiscally responsible to do it that way versus getting someone for for half a day. So, we are liking the way that we are trending in our reserve coverage for our paraprofessional staffing. 96.4.4 24 of our budgeted professional positions were filled this year. So that was 57 paraprofessional new hires. Another thing that we did this year is to make sure that all our special education paraprofessionals substitutes and regular were highly qualified. That is something that came from the state that in order to pay with those funds the parents needed to be highly qualified. So, they need to have an associate degree, 60 semester college credits, or pass an assessment. And huge thanks to our special education department. They held live assessments and testing um and trainings last fall. And we do that throughout the year now for anybody new um so that so that they're getting that. And fortunate for us, we were using a system for our PAR education um that had one of the assessments. So, it wasn't that big of a change for us. 42 have obtained highly qualified status by taking the PAR assessment. Um 35 tested last summer and seven took the test during the year upon hiring. for our teacher staffing. Um some recruitment and hiring statistics, 97 positions posted. We are at 74.23 filled and 25% unfilled. Um it's last year we were at only 20% unfilled, but the report came later in June. So we expect to to get there by June. We think we're really on track. And the average years of experience for our teachers hired in 2024 and this year is about nine years. So some very experienced talented people joining the district. Moving on through intent retention through engagement and professional development and growth. So, one of the things we did this year is that the the DSSE and Tech Center um was charged with charitable giving, specifically human resources, and we g we raised $13,182 and yes, one cent. And it was insisted that we include that one cent because it counts. But we wanted to recognize and engage our employees while contributing to our community and to others community. And retention really is about creating that welcoming culture um where we can have fun and give back. We had record participation with 53 employees. There were contests, picture costume contest, jean days, decorating pumpkins, um fall potluck and activities. Taylor Denal was really the creative force with the ideas um our HR assistant. But as you can see here, um, Suchetta and Mary getting some some henna. Um, giant Jenga is there and I believe Superintendent Law is drawing a pumpkin blindfolded, right? It was pretty good. So, we had a lot of fun. We were able to raise money and we were able to do that with donations and resources that we already had. Also, our reserves and substitutes. I think one of the unique things is that we really do everything we can to recognize them. They all go through um an interview screening. They have a full orientation and we offer PD um in a welcome event welcoming them back in the fall. So, as you see here, this picture is superintendent law greeting our reserves and substitutes. And I think that is absolutely wonderful for them to see that and have you know the superintendent there. They have thanked us a lot for for that and have appreciated it. So we will continue that for the third year. Um along with techn technology resources they get training on that during that PD and during orientation. We just try to ensure that we have timely communication um address any concerns, specialized training and opportunities for reserves and paraprofessional substitutes. So they do have access to master teacher courses. We have it for teachers and for paraprofessionals. And this is something we can also use if someone is struggling in a certain area and we've done that and we've had some good results. Uh, another great thing was Scott Gerlicker did security training with them because they may be, you know, in the classroom. So, that went over really well. Um, and I mentioned the highly qualified piece. This is something new this year. Our custodial maintenance lensure and nutrition services certifications. human resources has taken a proactive approach to help them get licenses or the next certification. Um there are financial incentives that come with that and it's just it's just really rewarding. I know there are some people that were really hesitant. Um I know we had one one of our custodial staff who just did not want to do the testing. Was like, you know, I I'm not good at testing. I can't do it. We're like, we're just looking for for you to try and providing providing supports and scored 94% and was bragging to everybody. So, so that that was a good one. Um, and we do that. We have a form we created in in Skyward to really track track that. And we're working with the union. This is something they wanted as well. So just looking closely and monitoring, you know, how that's going and who who might need more um and just making sure they're connected with the right supervisors. Um and nutrition staffing the same, just giving them that that attention. Also re overall retention for all staff. um recognition of staff through appreciation week such as you know teacher appreciation going out to the buildings doing cookies and different things annual professional development for our par profofessionals that will continue with workshops in August October and January and that is a retention piece that I'm really proud of because we have really improved our professional learning for for paras and they do feel more respected and they have given us a lot of great feed feedback for that and we're giving them the the professional learning that matters and has an impact. We continue our full professional learning days for teachers with your support. Uh we've negotiated fair and competitive contracts so we can attract top talent. All six bargaining groups were settled by October 10th. We will be starting with teacher negotiations next month. Looking at market studies um for in particular our Minnotonka community ed positions. We noticed that they were out of alignment. So we did a really deep dive into that. Um and of course internal promotions, job growth, celebrating staff and we continue to do our new hire exit and retention surveys. and we are looking to gather even more information from those. So, we will be launching a new survey next year. And with that, I will go over the survey results from this year. So, we had 33 respondents this year versus 29 last year. It's still good to see that increase. Quality orientation for that question approximately 60% of the people agree or strongly agree that they got quality orientation which is similar to last year which was at 69%. Are there quality staff development opportunities? Approximately 65% of persons agree or strongly agree. Last year was pretty identical at 64%. worldclass education and highest aspirations. Those results are slightly higher than last year and and the weighted averages from from prior. Is Minnetonka a good employer and would I consider working for the district again? 50% of respondents believe that the district was a good employer and would return again compared to 57% last year. the majority of the respondents had worked for the district for about 1 to four years versus 20 years um of service for the people who really responded last year. So that might be some of the reason um and the difference in those answers. Again, the majority of our respondents were teachers or pair of professionals. Belonging was a question that we launched last year with respondents answering that 79% felt like they belong. That was um down a bit this year at 67%. Also important to know that 32 people answered this question this year versus 11 people last year. So that could be the cause of some of that difference. But of course um when we see things like that, we're looking into it further. Uh the types of positions um we got teachers, uh paras, community education, nutrition services, and an office assistant. And we also want to know why people are leaving. Most people left due to other employment or due to other. And if they select other um there really is no specific reason as to why they did that. Of course, employment was the number one. Then there was retirement and then followed by personal reasons and relocation. Deep Haven didn't have anyone who completed the survey, so that's why their results aren't in here. Um, but the last building um at the high school, oh, the last building where most worked at was the high school followed by Scenic Heights, which makes sense given the size of those buildings. So most of them work at the high school or scenic heights. It's not an indication of turnover for those buildings. And for other questions here, are you aware of the district's vision, mission, and board goals? We had a significant drop here in 2023 to 55% versus 81% in 2022. We are rebounding in that area because we are now at a 70% indicator. Now that that messaging um seems to really be being heard and it's it's it's rebounding for students receiving highquality education, the overwhelming majority clearly agreed and strongly agreed at 90%. And the strongly agree is double that of the agree with only one disagree. And again, the majority of staff believe that they were treated respectfully. uh the percentages of people who strongly agree and agree um that we have benefits and wages are competitive um are competitive that spiked to 69% last year versus 54% the year prior. We have stabilized again at 58% and it's not surprising um that it spiked during a time of no contracts. Lastly, these survey questions starting with timely and accurate communication regarding issues that affect you. The number of people who strongly agree and agree is identical to last year at 42%. We did see a drop in morale from 52% to 38%. But it's also again anticipated when we're in budget cuts um in h in budget deficit. Um, last year was also a spike. It was only at 28% the year prior. So, we did see that spike and sometimes we just see a level back off. Clear performance expectations is at 50% which is a drop from last year from 76%. But an increase from two years ago at 45%. Do employees feel they have input on decisions that impact them? identical to last year at 37%. Overall, the results continue to be strong in the quality of education provided to our students and the professional development that we provide to staff. We do want to keep an eye on providing clear expectations and making sure that morale is, you know, at a strong place along with with belonging. So even though we saw some drops, we do believe there is some stabilization there and we're we're having still some really really good outcomes. And that is the annual update. Thank you. Thank you very much. Board members, comments, questions, Sally. Thank you for your report. And I just wanted to observe that those uh fresh efforts that you have implemented over the last couple of years are taking root and it's really nice to see the results that you're getting both in the recruiting and retention. So, thank you for sharing those. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next up, we have the approval of 2026 27 calendar. Superintendent Law. Mr. Mr. Chair, members of the board, you have seen this calendar several times. Tonight, executive director of HR and General Counsel Angie Flowers will present for approval the 2627 school year calendar. Miss Flowers, thank you again, Superintendent Law, and board members. I'm happy to present the calendar recommendation for 2026 2027 school year. We stay one year ahead and we already have a calendar in place for 202526. The calendar committee consists of parents, students, administrators and educators. So we really do have broad representation and we try to ensure that we have parent representation at all the levels, elementary, middle school and the high school calendar committee meets um for some lengthy discussions twice a year. We met on February 24th and April 14th and we discussed the entire calendar at length. We really take a deep dive and we had discussions at two study sessions really reviewing those details and and why we were making the recommendations that we were making. The initial recommendation to the board was revised by the committee to have schools start before Labor Day in 2026. Labor Day falls a bit later um in September of that year. So, we thought there could be if there was an adjustment, it was really popular if we qualified to do so. So, beginning school before Labor Day will allow us to have a more traditional last day of school. So, it's not going so far um into the middle of June. That is not very popular with people. In this calendar recommendation, the last day of school for students will be June 9th, 2027 and the first day of school will be September 1st, 2026. So, still starting in September, which is familiar to families and staff. Beginning before Labor Day, we'll also allow winter break to begin on December 23rd instead of December 24th, which was very popular. And this calendar also reflects our switch to full non- studentent contact days for professional learning for educators. In order to begin before Labor Day, a school must have at least 400,000 in construction that year and our ongoing regularly scheduled summer maintenance hits that number. So we do believe that we qualify and we will be seeking that waiver so that we can start before Labor Day. Lastly, I'd like to provide a sincere thanks to everyone on the calendar committee for their time, their input, all the robust discussion, and the recommendation we have before you meets our contractual and statutory requirements. And I am asking that you accept this calendar as recommended for 2026 27. Thank you. So, I'd entertain a motion to adopt the recommended 2627 calendar. So moved, Chris. A second. Second, Mike. All right, board members. Any discussion? We've, as Superintendent Law mentioned, we've seen this several times and discussed it public publicly on several occasions. And uh thank you for reminding the public of the reasons that we're allowed to start earlier. And that was the only question I had for you. So, uh, seeing no further questions or discussions, all those in favor, please say, "I." I. Any opposed? Motion carries. Thank you. All right. Next item on our agenda is a preview of the tour to Tonka. Superintendent Ma. Mr. Chair, members of the board, uh, Tour to Tonka is a premier event across the state of Minnesota. It's Minnesota's bike ride. On an annual basis, our community education department does a brief preview for the board of what to expect for this year's tour. I believe this is an anniversary year. Tonight, presenting is executive director of community education, Kim Carlson. Miss Carlson. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chair, school board members, Superintendent Law. Um I'm here tonight um to yeah to go over this. We're really excited. I wanted to um Yep. As you know, it is our 20th year, so we're excited about that. and we have some good things coming up and we'll share that with you. But first of all, a a huge shout out to our uh community education staff. It's a big lift and we've been working on it. Since I walked into the door, they were already planning it. And so just their incredible work and attention to detail as you can imagine what it takes to to put this type of event on and make it successful. So thanks to our team and then um the Minnetonka police too. We've been meeting with them um off they've been offering us suggestions, input and you know of course safety is our number one concern. So they've been great to work with and we continue to meet with them. And then of course our other partners, City of Minnotonka Food Shelf First Student, it is a big ask for our community to support this event and uh they've been great to work together with us on this. And then our sponsors. So we get sponsorship every year. So, we've got some people that are returning and some new people on there and without, you know, we do some great work and they just allow us to do a little extra and also they're either out on the routes or they're contributing uh financially and uh volunteering and of course, you know, some good pizzas along the way from some of the others. So, yes, this is our 20th and we're going to have some fun stuff around that. We have some special 20th anniversary merch and Anna is one of our program managers has been working on that. We are going to have archive display booth at our vendor fair. So kind of a th taking a look down memory lane if you will and grabbing some of that. So we're working on that. We is and Zach I think over here. But um we have a legacy rider group and for those of you who know what that is that's the folks that have been riding for 19 years. this will be their 20th year and it looks like we have about 49 people that are coming back um to to do that ride. So, we're excited about that and we're going to honor them by having a photo together at the arch. And then here is our new writers shirt and it's kind of an homage to 2006, the first year. So, Louise Weir has been doing fantastic work and took over the design of it and so we're excited to do that. And something kind of different this year, we brought in um new vendors and gave them the opportunity to bid on the t-shirts. We did some of the t-shirts came from overseas and so we brought a local group in and we're happy to say that we picked Northstar who is a local group and we've used them before. They've been great to work with and Louise has had really good um experience with them so far. So, we're excited to see that. And now uh Zach Mink is here. He's my office assistant uh extraordinaire and he's also all things tour data and without him I would be completely lost on what to do next on tour but the team um has such great um experience with running this event. So it's been really successful so far in all the planning. He's going to talk registration and a little bit about um our routes. So Zach come on up. Hello. Good evening. Uh, thank you for the introduction. Um, so yeah, as Kim said, we've had a team since September that has just been firing on all cylinders. I mean, we are excited. She's unleashed creativity, new ideas, suggestions. Um, it's been a lot of fun. It's been a lot of work, too. Um but we our guiding principle was we want to create an event that serves the needs and demands of the community and also shines a spotlight on this district. That's that's what this is all about. Um registration opened in March and it's been really exciting and validating that we are at 835 riders. We track registration every day uh going back year-over-year. So, we're up this year 7%. Um, again, registration goes from March until the day of the event. So, it's a long push, but that's just uh it's really exciting to see that people are responding to the event, what we've been planning, the marketing, uh just everything. Again, a really diverse set of writers, uh 16 different states, uh and 113 Minnesota cities. So what's neat about that is it's just a privilege that we get to create a space where all these people get to come together and experience community, but not just community, this community as well. So that's that's why we show all these these data pieces and and these numbers. So that's that's really neat. Uh those 800 something riders, uh this is what it looks like right now among our five different routes. We're offering a 16, 24, 40, 58, and 100 mile this year. It changes a little bit each year depending on uh demand and road construction too, exactly where we can and can't go. Uh so we track this every day. Big thing about this event is a lot of our riders are late registrants. So we expect each year about a third of our wrership register the week of the event. So any year if you look back that could be between 700 and a thousand writers that wait till the week of. So we keep an eye on it. We're really patient. Again, it's a long game, but uh this is where we're at now. Uh like I said, these are our five routes. Uh we wanted to be really respectful of the resources of our community, our community partners, the district, and community education. So, we never want to take for granted for the fact that these four counties and 25 cities that they welcome us uh into their world. You know, we we do all the prep work, we get everything ready, the uh the permits, the applications, but at the end of the day, if they don't feel like this is a benefit for them uh and their communities, well, that's it. We we can't come through their their areas. So, just like last year, four counties, 25 cities, uh we're going to have people riding on 143 unique road and trail miles. And from a bird's eye view, that's what that looks like, if that makes any sense at all. Uh on our website, we've got detailed GPS maps, uh each route broken down that you can take a look at, uh just for fun. But that's on August 2nd. That's what's going to be going on uh in our community and the and the communities around us. Uh, and now, uh, I'm going to introduce Alyssa Peak. Uh, she's our adult programs manager, uh, for Toritona. She's our route captain coordinator, and, uh, she's also in the middle of her community education director internship. Thank you, Alyssa. Thanks, Zach. I told him just to keep rattling titles off for me, so he's got about six more after this. Um, so I'm here to talk about volunteers. Uh, I, as the route captain coordinator, work very, uh, close with the volunteers. Um, so we need about a little over 6,000 vol or 6,000, oh my gosh, that would be insane. 600 volunteers to uh, make this event happen. Uh, huge shout out to Lauren Ryel in our office. She is really the main person that deals uh with putting everyone in their spots. Zach and I help with that, but that's really all Lauren. Um and so we need about like I said 600 people to get this done. There's many uh jobs you can do. uh from three-hour shifts of packet pickup and registration all the way to working with me as the route captain coordinator and being in charge of part of the route uh throughout the ride, putting out the signs, making sure everyone's safe. Um so we do need people in all of those uh categories. So if you want to whip your phones out, please and scan that QR code and let us know where you'd like to help. Big shout out to Jackie who has already uh signed up to volunteer this year. Uh we really appreciate that. And we are also excited uh Lauren and Louise in our office have been working really hard on new volunteer software uh called volunteer local um to kind of streamline the process of uh assigning volunteers and making sure they know where they're going, what their duties are. Um so that has been super awesome. And then another big part of Tour to Tanka is giving back to the community. Obviously, um that's what community ed's all about. Uh is giving back and offering great programs to the community. So since 2006, uh TDT has raised over $100,000 for the A food shelf. Uh and that is one thing that Louise, we are a marketing specialist, is really working on this year is to make that impact even greater. Um, so she's got some things in the works to uh make that $100,000 number shoot way up after this 20th year. And now I believe, yep, it is Kim's turn again. Just thanking you guys um for supporting the event and also thanks again to our law enforcement and safety partners. Every year we also survey um the ridership and we get a lot of great feedback from them and that's how we make decisions about routes and all the all the stuff along the way. But this was some of the quotes from our people just thanking um law enforcement, our safety partners. So we're looking forward to another great year. As you can see, we're in good hands. We have great staff that are putting it on. And again, we'll see you at the tour to Tonka on the August 2nd. Did you have any questions of where where we're at or what we're up to? Board members, thanks for the great preview. Yeah, thanks. Looking forward to it. Next on our agenda, we have approval of waiverss of physical education requirements. Superintendent Law, Mr. Chair, members of the board, since 2007, the school board has been approving physical education wafers provided students meet certain requirements. Jeff Ericson, principal of Minnitankka High School, certifies that the students listed on the attached document have met those requirements in order to be granted this waiver. It's my recommendation that the school board would approve the physical education waiverss for the attached list of students. May I have a motion to approve the recommended resolution? Uh Megan, may I have a second? Second, Sally. Uh discussion. Chris. Oh, thought you had a question. Nope. All right. See no questions or discussion. All those in favor, please say I. I. Any opposed? The motion carries. Next on the agenda, we have acceptance of MHS class of 2025 graduates. Superintendent Law. Mr. Chair, members of the board, in one week we will be at the US Bank uh celebrating all of the names of students attached. They have met the requirements required for graduation of the state of Minnesota and you will have the chance to confer those diplomas in a week. Tonight, it's my recommendation that you approve all the names submitted by principal at Nanka High School, Jeff Ericson, for graduation in 2025. Thank you. Superintendent Law may have a motion to approve the name submitted by uh Principal Ericson. So move. Chris, may I have a second? Second. Mike. Any discussion? Hearing none. Um we have a motion and a second. All those in favor, please say I. I. Any opposed? The motion carries. Congratulations to the recommended graduates. Next item on the agenda is the approval of 202526 school board goals. Superintendent Law. Mr. Chair, members of the board, you have had the chance to work on these gore goals and meet them since November, most recently at the last work session. Tonight, executive director of communications, Dr. Jackie Getty will give a brief summary of the goals for your approval. Dr. Getty. Superintendent Law. Mr. Chair, members of the board, the goals will be here for your approval. I know you've discussed these several times and we went through a final draft at the last study session which was also live streamed for the public. So, um I'll present what you have thus far. Okay. Maybe. Yeah. Um the process that we followed that you followed. The school board reviews the district's progress in achieving the year's current goals and then considers input and feedback that you receive throughout the year. And that's from presentations as well as from student, staff, families, and the broader community through surveys, assessments, activities, and other data. You then hold your planning meetings. You had one in November, again in May, and then we shared the draft, as I said, um well, first in January 7th, and then again, um on May 22nd. And so now this is the final draft for your approval. There we go. The three board goals, uh, excellence in well-being, connection, and belonging, excellence in student learning and support, and excellence in leadership and organizational support. Under excellence and well-being, connection, and belonging, there were several action items. The first to foster and maintain a welcoming, inclusive, and safe environment for all students and employees. And to do this by deepening the implementation of belonging efforts, to provide professional learning for staff on best practices to build connections, to gather student data and identify, analyze, monitor, and respond to student trends. And to identify and address barriers to belonging that affect student demographic groups. Another key action item is to cultivate social and emotional well-being and to implement best practices in school-based mental health support. To do this by strengthening students social and emotional well-being through continued implementation of the multi-tered systems of support processes and structures to advance student awareness and support the diverse developmental, cultural, and mental health needs of students. to screen students annually to identify to ensure identification of students who may need additional support, to continue our Jed Foundation partnership focused on mental health of high school students, including suicide prevention, and to confer with the mental health advisory and implement their recommendations as appropriate. And finally, under this goal, one more action step to consistently implement and communicate bullying prevention efforts. And to do this by maintaining a high level of student and parent awareness of our existing bullying prevention efforts and then to monitor the impact of those efforts through various reports and data. Under the second goal, excellence in student learning and support, an action step to ensure all students receive outstanding instruction. and to do this in several ways. Focusing on high quality universal instruction in all courses. Leveraging teacher collaboration to ensure responsive instruction and progress monitoring. To provide staff development throughout the year to address the priority areas identified using student data and teacher feedback. To increase the impact of teacher collaboration by providing consistent administrative guidance and support throughout the year. to continuously monitor the effectiveness of district programming at all levels, curricular areas to ensure the district is meeting the needs of all students and to take steps toward providing a continuous improvement process that considers the unique needs of programs that serve students receiving special education services, students learning English, and students participating in Tonka online. Another action step to prioritize student literacy improvement efforts and to do this by continuing to implement updated literacy plans which include the teacher training for effective practices in foundational and disciplinary reading and writing instruction. To implement the board approved core and supplemental literacy materials aligned to researchbased best practices. to ensure all students are screened for barriers to literacy early in their educational process and to monitor student growth to determine if core instruction, including interventions or acceleration positively impact student outcomes. And a final action step here to implement new middle school programming to launch the new programming and then to monitor implementation of it to ensure that the updated program meets goals and is also financially sustainable. Under the goal of excellence in leadership and organizational support, the first action step is to ensure long-term financial stability and sustainability for the district and to do this by implementing board approved reductions for the 2025-26 school year and to monitor the financial forecast and recommend adjustments to improve short and long-term financial stability. Dr. G, you might want to advance the slide. Oh, thank you. A second action step to ensure facilities meet the current and future needs of students using the facility study task force recommendations to consider securing funding through a capital projects bond and then if the board moves forward with that to ensure the community is well informed about it. You went backwards. Oh, go ahead. Yes. Yes. Uh to recruit and retain the highest quality staff. Am I there? Yes. uh to continue to focus on recruitment and retention of exceptional staff and teachers and to include efforts to create a representative workforce to enrich learning for students and to meet the needs of our increasingly diverse student body. Make sure yes to build strong relationships with all stakeholders. Also under this goal by supporting in-person engagement opportunities for stakeholders to engage with district leaders to survey our residents, families, students, and staff regarding their experiences and sentiments to launch the pilot of the model for providing student voice to the school board and then to provide a spring update on that pilot. And then district-wide committees which include stakeholders will present an annual update to the board. Another action step to provide the highest quality meals possible to continue to implement nocost meal legislation including breakfast at every site and within the parameter breakfast at every site and and lunch within the parameters of the federal nutrition guidelines and then to gather stakeholder input including from the nutrition services advisory council and to implement those strategies to increase the variety and quality of meals. So, those are the goals as you have them drafted and as you've discussed and finalized them and when approved, they would then be shared with parents, students, and staff via schoolboard news and then also posted to the district website to be implemented as of July 1st. That's what I have for you today. Thank you, Dr. Getty. Um board members, why don't we start with uh entertaining a motion to adopt uh the proposed 202526 board goals? So move. Chris, may I have a second? Second. Megan, any discussion? We've had a long iterative process for these goals that uh Dr. Getty just well described and I think we've had a lot of opportunities for our own thoughtful consideration of these goals uh in public. Hopefully that interested members have paid attention. I know they have because they've given us some feedback and some and we've incorporated that as much as we can. So with that uh we have a motion and a second. All those in favor please say I. I I. Any opposed? Motion carries. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Next item on our agenda. We have uh approval of non-renewals. Superintendent Law. Mr. Chair, members of the board, Minnesota law provides that during the probationary period, any annual contract with any teacher may or may not be renewed, provided, however, that the school board shall give any such teacher whose contract it declines to renew for the following school year written notice to that effect before July 1st. This law applies to all teachers and administrators who are required to have a license as a requirement for their position. The reasons for termination of probationary staff are varied. It is my recommendation that the board act upon the attached resolutions for non-renewal. Thank you, Superintendent Law. Board members, I'll remind you that we have uh carrying action at the desk with the updated list and the resolution. And I would entertain a motion to adopt the resolution as presented in those materials. So moved. Sally, may I have a second? Second, Dan. All right, we have a motion and a second. Uh, I don't believe we typically have discussion on these. Uh, seeing none, all those in favor, please say I. I. I. Any opposed? Uh the resolution is passed. Thank you very much. Next item on our agenda is the approval of resolution calling November 4th uh school board election. Superintendent law. Mr. Chair, members of the board, something you're very familiar with. This is a school board election year. Uh in order to start that process, the school board must approve a resolution calling for an election. Tonight, executive director of finance and operations, Mr. Paul Bourgeois, who has overseen those elections for many years, will provide a summary and make a recommendation. Mr. Bourgeoa. Thank you, Superintendent Law. Um, actually, I'm batting cleanup today. We had a lot of home runs, so I get to bat cleanup. And long time ago, I batted cleanup once in a while. Um, so this uh resolution for the school board election uh basically lays out the filing period of July 29th through August 12, 2025. and it sets um and the deadline for that is August 14th, 2025. We which we will actually have to officially read in the next resolution or in the next uh uh board item. Uh but election day is Tuesday, November 4th. Uh and so we're required to call an election in whole or in part no long later than 84 days before the election. Uh so this is well in advance of that. Again, we have three uh positions open on the school board. So the uh uh uh at legal legal council Kudson Flynn and Deans uh we use them just to review all of our our uh election related items and they put together the resolution for us and so we'd recommend that you uh approve the resolution to call the election. Thank you. Mr. Bourgeois, uh may I have a motion to adopt the recommended resolution? So moved. Dan, may I have a second? Second. Mike. Any discussion or questions? Seeing none, all those in favor, please say I. I. Any opposed? Uh, the motion carries. Next item on the agenda is the uh notice of school board election filing period. Superintendent Law. Mr. Chair, members of the board, part of the adelection process is the board must formally give notice of the filing period for elections. Tonight, Mr. Bourgeois will look at that update. Mr. Bourgeois. Thank you, Superintendent Law. Uh, the seven seats of the Minnotonka School Board are for terms of four years and elections for the seats are held every two years with either three seats or four seats up for election. On November 4th, 2025, three seats are up for election. Filing for the office of school board member of ISD number 276 begins at 8 am Tuesday, July 29th, 2025 and ends at 5:00 pm Tuesday, August 12th, 2025. Affidavit of candidacy are available from the school district clerk at the district service center at 5621 County Road 101, Minnotonka, M Minnesota. The filing fee is $2. A candidate for this office must be eligible to vote in the state of Minnesota, be 21 years of age or more upon assuming office, have maintained residence in the district at least 30 days before the election, have not filed for another office in the upcoming election, and have not been convicted of an offense for which they are required to register as a predatory offender under Minnesota statutes 243.166. this this the notice of this filing period is for the public's information. So, thank you very much. Uh we no further action required on that. Then we will move on to the next item which is authorization to sell uh some general obligation bonds. Superintendent law. Mr. Mr. Chair, members of the board, um, another agenda item was related to this, but you probably wouldn't make a connection unless I told you about it. Miss Flowers shared that we can have an early start to school if we do more than $400,000 of construction over the given summer, and we have to apply for a waiver from the state. In order to do that construction next summer, we need to sell bonds to the community. You'll notice that tonight's total is $14.2 million. So more than that $400,000 threshold, but executive director of finance and operations is going to talk through the process of formally selling bonds to fund that maintenance next summer. Mr. Bourgeois, thank you, Superintendent Law, Mr. Chair, members of the board. Uh we try to get out in advance and be the early bird uh um you know, catching the worm uh to get the best pricing for our long-term facility maintenance. uh our 10-year plan, which you you've approved once and actually you'll have to approve again in a statemandated format uh once they send out the official form, which hasn't been sent out yet, but on on June 26th, um we are are doing 14,285,000 of necessary projects for fiscal year 27, which really is then over the summer before that. So, some of it actually starts a little bit before in fiscal 26 in June. Uh but uh we are asking for authority to bond and of course uh we are still waiting for uh final Minnesota Department of Education to review our 10-year plan in their format uh as required and they'll give us an approval letter uh they've have in the past. So uh but they they'll be scheduled to give us an approval letter uh sometime in in August. Uh and then so this is actually a contingent the authorizing revolution resolution is contingent upon uh approval receiving approval from the commissioner. Uh and uh so the I'm kind of stumbling here. The the bond itself is actually or the the resolution has been approved and and form formalized and approved by Dorsy and Whitney uh our bond council. So, by approving this, you'll give us the ability to actually do some preliminary work so that when we do get our approval letter, we'll be able to sell right away and uh then get this on the next uh uh preliminary levy in September of 2020 um five. So, uh that's long story short. We'd ask you to approve this uh uh the the authorization so that we can start those activities and move ahead. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Bourgeoa. May I have a motion to adopt the uh recommended resolution approving the authorizing resolution? So moved. Mike, may I have a second? Second. Dan, any discussion or questions from the board? Seeing none, we have a motion and a second. All those in favor, please say I. I. Any opposed? Motion carries. Thank you. Uh, next item is our consent agenda. May I have a motion to adopt the consent agenda? So moved. Second. Uh Dan and Chris. Uh we have a motion to second. All those in favor, please say I. I. Any opposed? Motion carries. Next item is board reports. Superintendent. Well, any board reports, not super Dan. Real quickly, finance committee met earlier this week. Uh we were able to talk through the budget report that we all saw last week and the no tax credit no tax increase bonding measure proposal that we all saw last week and the room was very responsive and um our enrollment is trending it up up at this point. It's some of the highest enrollment we've ever seen. So we're in as good a place as we can be on the revenue side. Thank you, Dan. Any other board reports? Now, superintendent's report. Superintendent Law. Mr. Chair, members of the board, I'm just going to give a shout out to our very recently recognized communication department for receiving national recognition from the National School Public Relations Association. The highest level report for annual publications, seven different publications received that honor. A total of 12 recognitions. Those will come back for board recognitions. But everything that you see tonight and that that our our district puts out for the public comes from a talented communications department. [Applause] Congratulations. Any announcements? All right. May I have a motion to adjurnn? So moved. Megan, may I have a second? Second. Mike, all those in favor, please say I. I. I. Any opposed? Motion carries. It's 8:41. We're adjourned.