Welcome, welcome everybody to the May 22nd, 2025 Minnetonka School Board study session. Uh we'll jump right in. First item on the agenda is a review of 202526 school board goals. Superintendent Law. Mr. chair, members of the board. Uh the first item tonight is the school board goals. Uh as you look at our agenda, several of the items on tonight's agenda are current school year board goals. Just a reminder to the public that when we set goals, there's frequent reports publicly about those items. This school board met in November at a work session to review district data, parent community survey, student data, and a variety of input from across our system to identify our our priority issues, whether we're currently working on them or we need to be in the future. We read these publicly in January. We had another goal session just over a week ago, and tonight we're previewing these goals again at a work session or study session before we approve them next month. Executive Director Jackie Getty of Communications will preview those goals tonight. Thank you, Superintendent Law. Uh Mr. Is this on? Mr. Chair and members of the board. Um I wanted to first just touch really quickly on the process that Superintendent Law um outlined so that we can recap it with a screen for the public. Um, you reviewed the district's progress in achieving our current goals, considered input and feedback received throughout the the school year from board presentations and as well as from staff and families and students and the broader community. Uh, you reviewed student outcomes including all the assessments, activities, and survey data that was available to you, held your planning meetings as superintendent law noted um most recently on the 12th of May. And then this draft uh went out in the um in publicly to the community back in January. And now it's here for you today um to review for your final approval. These are the three propos proposed schoolboard goals that you have for 202526. Excellence in well-being, connection and belonging, excellence in student learning and support, and excellence in leadership and organizational support. Okay. Under excellence and well-being, connection, and belonging, the first action item you have is foster and maintaining a welcoming, inclusive, and safe environment for all students and employees. And you can see the steps that are listed under that uh that the district is asked to do. Deepen the implementation of belonging efforts. Provide professional learning for staff on the best practices for building connections. Gathering student input and identifying, analyzing, monitoring, and responding to student trends that we see and identifying and addressing barriers to belonging affecting student demographic groups. A second action item is to cultivate social and emotional well-being and implement best practices in school-based mental health support. To do this, the action steps are to strengthen students social and emotional well-being through continued implementation of MTSS processes and structures, advance student awareness and support the diverse developmental, cultural, and mental health needs of our students. Screen students annually to ensure identification of students who may need additional support. continue the Jed Foundation partnership focused on the mental health of high school students including suicide prevention and to confer with the mental health advisory and implement recommendations from that group as appropriate. And a third step in action step within excellence in well-being connection and belonging is to consistently implement and communicate our bullying prevention efforts districtwide. Maintaining a high level of student impair awareness of our existing bullying prevention efforts and monitoring the impact of bullying prevention efforts through various reports and data. Another goal under excellence in in student learning and support an action item under that is to ensure all students receive outstanding instruction. There are several substeps under this. To focus on high-quality universal instruction in all courses to leverage 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 across curricular areas to ensure the district is meeting the needs of our 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 is to prioritize student literacy improvement efforts and to do so by continuing to implement updated literacy plan which provides teacher training for effective practices in foundational and disciplinary reading and writing instruction. To implement board approved core and supplemental literacy materials aligned to our research best practices. To ensure all students are screened for barriers to literacy early in the educational process. and to monitor student growth to determine if core instruction, including interventions or accelerations, positively impact our student outcomes. Another action step is to implement the new middle school programming, to launch the new programming and monitor implementation of it to ensure the updated program meets our goals and is financially sustainable. And to monitor implementation to ensure updated pro program meets the goals and is sustainable. We really mean that one. I'll take out the double. Um, also an excellence in leadership and organizational support to ensure long-term financial stability and sustainability for the district and to do so by implementing board approved reductions for the 202526 school year and to monitor financial forecast and recommend adjustments to improve short and long-term financial stability to ensure facilities meet the current and future needs of our students. Using the facility study task force recommendations, consider securing funding through a capital projects bond if the board moves forward. Ensure the community is well informed and to recruit and retain the highest quality staff. Continuing to focus on recruitment and retention of exceptional teachers and staff, including efforts to represent to create a representative workforce to enrich learning for students and to meet the needs of our increasingly diverse student body. to build strong relationships with all stakeholders. To support in-person engagement opportunities for stakeholders to engage with district leaders, to survey residents, families, students, and staff regarding their experience and sentiments. To launch a pilot of a model for providing student voice to the school board and to provide an update on that pilot in the spring. To uh have district-wide committees, which include stakeholders, to present an annual update to the board and to provide the highest quality meals possible. to do so by continuing to implement the no-cost meal legislation, including breakfast at every site within the parameters of the federal nutrition guidance, and to gather stakeholder input, including from the nutrition services advisory council, and to implement strategies to increase the variety and quality of meals. And those are the goals as you have them drafted. And so then next steps would be that um we would share these final draft of the goals um in schoolboard news and any feedback would be shared with the board and a final draft um would be brought back to you to be voted on um at the at the next meeting which would be May 29th if you still plan to go forward with that process. Okay. Board members, we've had several conversations about this iteration. Anything we want to further discuss at the moment. Any questions, Chris? I think it's just more of a comment when I look at um the goals. Obviously, they're they're we've talked about them a lot. These are long-term goals that we've kind of been adding to and uh but it's more and more and more the more that we're in schools, the more that we're seeing. Um, I think we're seeing the effects of of of the stability of those goals and continuing to add on to them. I mean, our um, we talked a little bit about our student listening session at MMW and we really talked about how we've gone from bullying to mental health awareness to well-being and now belonging and connection and starting to see that with with the students when we started talking about social media and how they see different things. We're talking about cell phone policy and stuff like that and and they're like it's not really, you know, they don't see the bullying over social media. Again, it's a room of 15 eighth graders, but still it it's really fun to see that that it's just I mean there wasn't really anybody in there that wasn't like h you know, I'm that that social media is a big problem to them. And so I think maybe societyy's having an effect, but I think we are having an effect. work on MTSS are bringing this this forward, the district's hard work. So, I mean, I love seeing that. I don't know why I'm going on my horse here, but we'll continue to go. Um, and so I just I really appreciate the the work that the board has done, that the administration has done, and we're starting to see it. Obviously, um the the tonkaed up uh lunch service that that we got out outside and just seeing what we are consistently able to do when we um set goals that that uh we work together with we work with administration um that we continue to uh um move these things forward and provide that stability. And so love that we're have been working on these all year even though we're not approving them till then. And I I just think we're seeing really good results from that. So So I'm done with it. I'm more than happy to to bring these forward. Okay. Any other comments from the board? Megan? Um I just wanted to add so something came up in the um PTA meeting last week since this and it was um a little bit talking about the seat committee's work on like anti-abbleism or uh just teaching people about what it means to be abbleist and we do have the word abbleism in the definition of belonging. Um, but if that is something that's being worked on in one of our committees, I'm I was just kind of thinking about whether or not it should be more called out in here. I don't know where I don't know where it would be, but it just kind of occurred to me that that came up in that meeting. Um, and if I had thought about this before right now, I would have figured out where it better fit, but it didn't didn't strike me. Um can you talk more about how it came up in the meeting? Um that just like the education component about what it means to be ableist. So for some of our special ed students, how important it is to foster their kind of independence and um not assume that they can't do things um and that there's going to be kind of some uh work around that next year within that committee. Um, so I don't know. It may be just in the inclusive I don't know where that really I don't know where I mean it sounds like part of the belonging goal for sure. Um, and so maybe what what committee is working on that seek? So as the rep to seek, I've been in their meetings that I actually have not heard the term abbleist used in that group. What has come up is partnership with the PTO PTAs to make sure that events are inclusive and responsive. Um that's more the language that I've heard. I that is not meant to be a disagreement with what you're suggesting here that if there's an opportunity perhaps to emphasize that um just wanted to clarify that maybe this is I mean I don't want to discard it but maybe there's a chance that committee can work on how that might work into the goal. Yeah. Or I was thinking too like it may just be a piece of that number one in and making sure that like field trips or um that there's a and I think it is reflected provide professional learning for staff on be best practices to build connections with and among students and each other to make sure all students are a able to be included in something. I don't know. But yeah, maybe it maybe we do throw it to the committee. I mean, wouldn't um and and if it's something that we want to call out specifically, but if you go and you look at the um the definition of of well-being that we put in there, which the lens for everything that we're doing should be measured against, right? I think we're pretty clear on those things. I mean, yes, if there's something specific that we need to call out or that the board wants to be done, but you know, I think we're pretty clear um with our definition of well-being and um ability is in in or sorry, totally wrong belonging um you know with um sexual orientation, country of origin, ability andor associate, right? And so I I think we are calling that out. Um I agree that if the the committee or wants to bring something to us. But I don't know that it for me it would rise to something where I hey if there's an easy change that we can include it sure but um I think we've looked and and brought through this and I don't know that we've seen other than that comment other things that you know other pieces of information um uh that that this isn't hitting the mark. Well, and I still think I like it I've heard that term through seek the day I attended. I think it's a good, you know, it's a good charge for that committee to look at our board goals from the lens of how is there is there an easy way and we I mean since it's in action and it's in definition, we can let's I did a quick look at short of identifying every group that we're trying to connect with. there's not an easy place to insert it currently. So, not to dismiss it, but just maybe look at it as and just one one more kind of wrap-up comment on that from me would be what was cool about the fact that it was the representatives on the seat committee being in relationship with PTO PTA leaders in their own local sites is that it is a more organic process, right? It is parents and stakeholders talking to each other. So, they don't need necessarily need us to tell to set that as their objective. they're actually setting it as their objective, which I thought was neat. Dan, um, yeah, I think what Chris is getting at, and I agree with him, is is this is a a great set of goals, and we're doing all the work for these, I think, really well. I think we're doing a good job. Um, and to to Megan's point, I think part of the way we do the work is how we communicate the work that we're doing. And so I know Dave David you you mentioned like we can't possibly call out every single person group issue in our goals but it's just worth an examination but like is there a way we can communicate it better to show that certain groups are seen and I think if the committee is going to consider if it's if there's something that needs to bubble up to the board whether it's something we consider for our goals or whether specific action items we need to be adding to our areas of focus. I mean, I think I think we need to hear from the committees about those about those items. I don't I don't have any particular expertise to throw at that um other than I agree. We want to make sure that um community members of all abilities are feel a sense of belonging and are succeeding. A healthy sign is that we now have seek advisors at every PTA and PTO. Something we didn't have a year ago. like something that came through the state process this year and they're having these conversations. So we are talking about you know the language and the goal is removing barriers to access. We are having that conversation. That's that's progress. Okay. Great discussion on that. Any other food for thought on these goals while we're all sitting here? Then I guess the next step is uh this is currently out in public view and people still have a short period of time to weigh in and we would bring it back for the meeting that's next week. That's correct. 95 plus percent of these goals have been out in the public view and even emailed to all the members of the public in the last six months for feedback with links to give feedback. uh the minor changes in here that were around a board goal to study how other boards do community involvement. Very minimal changes. So what you're seeing the public has seen for quite a long time and we'll formally approve next week. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. All right. We'll move on to update on ELA curriculum review process. Superintendent law. Amazingly, in November of 2023, we had a conversation that in the 2425 school year, we would be piloting a variety of materials to update our literacy resources for teachers and make recommendations to the board for full implementation. We actually visited many of those classrooms across the district to see the pilot literacy and action. And I personally got feedback from teachers throughout the process. Tonight, those teachers who made recommendations, that recommendation came through our formal review process that the board uh follows and we're going to hear an update on what those teachers recommended through their pilot process. Associate Superintendent Dr. Leoo, Superintendent Law, Mr. Chair, members of the board, thank you for the opportunity to be here tonight. Uh we're excited to provide you with an overview of the curriculum review process as well as an update on our implementation plans. As Superintendent Law shared, this has been an extensive process um that's really gone on for more than two years and has been led by our director of curriculum, uh Steve Bansky, our literacy coordinator, Alyssa Rutherford, and then as well as our department chairs, uh we have English language arts chairs that represent elementary, middle, and high school. We have ELT chairs. Our English language teachers that work with our immersion students at the elementary level have a chair as well as our reading interventionist chair. Um in addition to that, we've had expanded chairs, a role that we put in place for this review to ensure that we would have a grade level teacher um from each grade level K12 as a part of this. So our goal has really been to have broad involvement and really a deep meaningful review to make sure that we were making good choices to ensure the level of rigor and the expectations we have for our students here in Minnetonka would be upheld through these updates and these changes. So tonight we're going to walk you through a summary of that work and then uh be happy to take any questions that you have for us. Thank you, Superintendent Law, Mr. Chair, members of the board. Uh, as Dr. Ludoo mentioned, we're really pleased to present this before you this evening. It has been uh an extensive process over several years, and we'll give you a a snapshot of a little of that history. Um, but we wanted to remind you to begin with that our curriculum review and improvement process uh really begins with a needs assessment. There's four broad phases. begins with that needs assessment. We ultimately make some recommendations out of that process and of course um it doesn't stop there. The implementation uh which is what we'll really be talking about for next year uh is an important part of that process to make sure that we're providing professional learning and support for teachers all along the way. And then finally, of course, continuous improvement and refinement. uh because there will be as we're implementing there will be some things that we will continue revising as we have the real program in front of real students. Uh we also wanted to remind you that our process is online. That's the graphic uh that you see to the right and we do have this posted on our district website as well. just to give you a brief timeline and overview. Um really thinking broadly, uh we like to think about a lot of times people really aren't aware that what drives our curriculum review process in addition to schoolboard uh policy is really state guidance and initiatives. So, beginning in spring of 2023, as we began with our expanded chairs, knowing that there were some new standards in draft form, uh we actually began looking at uh not just uh the standards, but also having some student feedback with our teaching and learning advisory group. And this is another group that Dr. Leoo introduced uh a few years back uh really to help inform what we're doing as a teaching and learning department but also really to bring that student voice and the real experience of students. So this is a group of uh 20 plus high school students that uh many of them have been through our district the entire time. Some have entered the district as middle schoolers or even high schoolers. So it's a really nice cross-section of our student body. We also began with some uh teacher feedback. We uh provided an English language arts survey to get some um background information on really teacher level of comfort with instruction specifically thinking about literacy but also thinking about uh the materials uh so satisfaction with existing materials. Of course, we looked at achievement data and ultimately in school year 2023 24 um we began to have some state mandi mandates finalized. So this included read act 1.0, we'll talk about 2.0 and we expect potentially a 3.0. uh also academic standards in English language arts and sometimes people don't realize that this is a multi- uh process at the state level and uh these standards uh really the process began um in the midst of the pandemic. Uh so it wasn't until 2023 2024 that fall that those standards were finalized through a process that's called rulemaking. uh and it's a state it's a state process that the department of education works through and really gets feedback from community and um stakeholders. Finally, uh that same year once those standards were released, we began our work really uh focusing on priority standards and essential learnings. And we'll talk more about this in just a minute. As we look at 2024 2025, which is this year, um we were introduced to Redact 2.0, which you're a little familiar with and Alyssa Rutherford will be sharing more information on how that impacted our work. Uh we also began reviewing uh materials and ultimately uh embarked on a set of pilots and our teachers K12 have been uh essential to this whole process. We also began with unit development, alignment and revision. And especially at the middle and high school level when we think about uh middle school model and so forth, we really wanted to think not just in terms of our existing program, but also what are those programs um going to look like next year. So we were able to kind of have a step in both worlds. And then uh of course in 2025 2026 as we look to next year this is where we'll be looking at uh truly implementing uh the elementary instructional resources we will be uh piloting and continuing to pilot some of our secondary resources. And we'll talk more about the why. But one of the reasons is because there are uh you may be familiar with the indigenous education for all uh mandates which at the state level really are looking at training and resources provided by the 11 nations in Minnesota. All of that is tied to our new standards moving out and we're going to have some resources that are rolling out over the next several months. So, with that said, I'm gonna uh turn it over to Alyssa Rutherford to share a little more about the ReadAct goal. Again, thinking state mandates. Skip a No. Okay. Um, so obviously the ReadAct goal replaced the Read Well by third grade legislation. And the goal is to have every child starting in kindergarten um reading at grade level and supporting those multilingual learners and students receiving special education in achieving their individualized reading goals in order to meet grade level proficiency. Right? So part of this readact goal is that districts must provide evidence-based reading instruction by 2026 2027 school year. And so this has been a lens um that this review has been thinking about what are some of uh the updates to our curricular resources, professional learning for teachers that can ensure that our English language arts curriculum and programming uh provides evidence-based reading instruction for students. Um I don't know how to everybody's computers are different, right? Um so as part of the read act there was a curricular resource review required um and Carrie the center for applied research and educational improvement at the University of Minnesota um was required to work with MDE to review various resources. Publishing companies submitted those resources and a review was posted online for districts to use in um aiding their curricular resource review process. Um the message has always kind of been that you're not required to use an approved curriculum, but you're also supposed to teach with an evidence-based practice lens, right? So, we wanted to make sure that whatever resources we adopted really made it um especially at the elementary level, the uh I don't want to say easiest, but like re teaching reading isn't really easy. Um, but it just made it more uh um helpful for teachers that they would have the resources that they needed to implement those evidence-based practices without having to supplement, modify, enhance, or even maybe ignore parts of a resource that weren't evidence-based or aligned. Um, so we did use um these uh this review um as part of our process to um narrow down some of the resources we piloted initially and we'll talk more about that later. Um yeah, so back to Steve. So thinking about the other area that's really a state mandate. So we have readact um 1.0 2.0, but then we also have the English language arts standards themselves. And we wanted to just take a moment to um remind and inform our audience that uh the state standards are actually informed by a committee. Uh similar to we have a district um uh review committee. The state committee is really much broader. So really involves professionals, teachers, um, uh, students and other community members as part of that process. So again, just to give you a little background, that first bullet point is really just highlighting that Minnesota English Language Arts Review Committee. They looked at the last set of standards which were out in 2010. So that kind of gives you a sense of um, how old those last standards were, which are our existing standards. and also looking at academic research, instructional best practices, and also public feedback at that time. What they did then was ultimately release a draft of the 2020 Minnesota academic standards in English language arts. And after a few drafts and public feedback, um those standards are really divided broadly into three strands. We have reading, writing and the one that really has been expanded is listening, speaking, viewing and exchanging ideas. So when we think about discussion and exchanging ideas in terms of computers, there's a lot more that really address that and we'll chat about that just in a minute. Uh the other pieces they really focused on the college and career readiness goals and we'll give you a sense of kind of what those are in a minute as well. So that's the broad standards. The standards also had several shifts. This is a chart created by the department of education and there's there's a lot here but if you just look kind of broadly on the left hand side under the reading component specifically thinking about foundational reading skills addressing not just uh the read act but also thinking more broadly in terms of standards. It's really addressing print concepts, phenemic awareness, phonics and morphology, as well as fluency. And one of the things we'd like you to notice on this chart is with that phonics and morphology, this goes all the way through grade six. So there has been kind of a shift in the standards where there's more of an emphasis on foundational skills and those foundational skills also carry up through the grades. So ensuring that all students in kind of that tier one instructional uh frame have that background. We also had a few other shifts. This is a denser slide, but I'll just point to kind of the top. We have reading, writing, and exchanging ideas shifts. And again, this is a Department of Education slide to give a sense of really what's informing the standards. on the reading shifts in most anchor standards. It's really addressing both literary and informational text, what we used to call non-fiction, but really broader. It's also emphasizing student self- selection and choice. And we're going to come back to this uh a couple of times during our presentation. Also thinking about diverse perspectives and thinking about self- selection in many uh different opportunities as possible. And we'll again talk more about that. The writing shifts really incorporate both personal perspective, identity and voice across writing purposes and disciplines. So this is really thinking about writing for a real purpose. The other area is thinking about writing in terms of both to argue and persuade and really thinking about writing in terms of it's not just we're creating this particular essay. It's really thinking about we're doing this for a purpose, right? So again, write writing to rather than writing a uh so thinking about what is the reason for why we're doing this and that's a major uh shift in many uh of these standards. The final piece is exchanging ideas and here the LSVE again stands for listening, speaking, viewing and exchanging ideas. So you can see one of the areas is listening before speaking. You can think about up the grade levels why that would be important. Uh considering diverse perspectives and then valuing a genuine exchange of ideas. So that's really uh throughout the standards and finally um encompassing spoken language skills uh emphasizing attendance to audience. So real purposes and real audiences and how does that product change as a result? So as we think we want to highlight a little more uh because especially at the secondary level this self- selection and multiple perspectives became very important but it really is K12. So as we're talking more about our instructional materials and as Alyssa shares more about the elementary resources this is also true for our secondary an emphasis on self- selection choice and reading from diverse perspectives and uh self- selection in as many places as possible. And I'd like to share an example from our student advisory committee. Uh we met with uh the committee a little over a month ago and we were sharing th this same information with those students and one of our juniors on the uh the committee uh shared that when he was a 10th grader, which is when we started piloting, um there was a new unit that was rolled out that incorporated student choice. and he shared really un unprompted uh that this was the one unit uh that entire year that he really felt successful and got a good grade in. So when you think about kind of we're sometimes sharing a lot of information, but here's the real student impact as we're talking about pilots and having resources in front of students. This helps us really to determine next steps. We also wanted to share so when we talked about college and career readiness goals this is the states the whole this is really the whole statement but this we've bolded a few areas so that you have a sense of how this informs standards and really you can see perspective identity culture uh and really thinking about strong content knowledge synthesizing information and articulate articulating thinking. So when you think about those broad themes, that's a major shift throughout the standards, not just in English language arts, but also in uh other standards as well. So what does that mean for us as a district? Well, when we think about district curriculum, again, we think state standards. We then develop our own essential learnings. And in our policy, we talk about Minnotonka standards. Those are our essential learnings. We also develop district committees. um that really uh create those unit plans. So the work is not just about materials, the work is really that full unit, which we'll get into in just a minute. And then also common assessments. So really thinking about what are those assessments that ultimately show us um what students need to know and be able to do. And then we introduce resources. I always say sometimes when I tell people I'm a curriculum director, they think I'm a guy that buys materials. And um it's much beyond that um when we think curriculum because broadly we as a district really use this three-stage design for uh curriculum development and we've done this for years as many districts do across the country as programs like IB do across the world. Um we are thinking about stage one what are those desired results for our students. Stage two what is the evidence and then stage three what's the learning plan? So that's resources, but that's also the actual instructional side of things. We also have kind of a different graphic to show this. And our teachers during the professional learning days over the last two years have really seen this particular graphic uh several times. We think about our standards. What's loose tight? The standards are very tight. What do we want students to know and be able to do? We need to think about standards. Essential learnings. We then create studentfriendly language targets. We create formative and summitive assessments and ultimately we're sure to include instruction as well. And what you see on the left hand side are what we call our our PLC uh focus. So just showing how curriculum and PLC's and instruction really work together. That's the idea. Doesn't begin or doesn't end at the end of a review process. That's the beginning for really ensuring that all our kids um are learning. So again, just kind of one last piece just to sense when we talk about um essential learnings and prioritize standards. We use a process that initially was introduced um by Larry Ainsworth and our district has been using this for a long time and it's focusing on really looking at state standards and thinking about what are those standards that endure over time over grade levels. where is there leverage kind of between disciplines within maybe a content area but also across content area and then we also think about readiness for students. Ultimately we want students to be able to transfer these skills from one area to another. So all of this goes into the creation of our essential learnings. And just to be clear, we teach all the state standards, but what the essential learnings do for us is they really are the focus of where we go very deep and what we're assessing as part of our common assessments. So with that said, we want to share a little bit about some of the work. Um, and I'm going to start with some secondary pieces and Alyssa is going to share more on the uh elementary side. At the secondary level, but actually at all levels, we use a template um for curriculum design. really thinking in terms of if you look on the right hand side those um bolded words essential learnings. We think about those being tight, our units being tight, our assessments being tight, our texts, our core texts being tight. Sometimes some of our supplemental texts may look different in a classroom or across classrooms. And then sometimes the sequence and pacing can look a little different depending on really what students need, right? We're always really trying to make sure that we're meeting the needs of individual students. So, we'll talk more about um this particular um document, but this has been a huge lift for our middle and high school teachers especially. They have gone through all of our existing unit plans and they have started revising um units really to be true across the district. So east and west really having those common units but also looking vertically too so that high school understands what's happening at middle school, middle school understands what's happening at elementary. So, we've had teams together, especially over the past year, um working uh downstairs uh in this very building uh on this process and bringing teachers from across the district um representatives to be able to do that. So, I'm going to share a little bit I'm going to turn it over to Alyssa Rutherford who's going to share a little bit about our curricular resource review. Yeah. So, um when the Redact 1.0 0 came out, we were not sure whether or not this curricular resource review that was named in the read act included secondary or not. So we were, you know, waiting for that guidance and then we found um this is a screenshot from the Department of Education's website um that they aren't going to review any core curricula for for grades 6 through 12. our teachers have much more like teacher developed curriculum and you know they bring in a variety of texts to go with their units anyway and so um there's not a lot of like prepackaged grades 6 through 12 you know boxes that Steve buys because he's the curriculum director right and so so even even if they were to review resources for 612 that would have been kind of a lift probably um and but they are going to review some intervention materials so we're excited to hear what what is to come on that list um for in November um for reading intervention. As far as um the resource review, it has been kind of a process because some of the timelines have been pushed back or were pushed back, I should say. I think it is actually officially over now until they're required to review again in 2033 per readact 2.0. I don't know what Redact 3.0 will say. Um it might change that timeline, but maybe not. Um so January 2024 was when we first heard kind of the results of this review that they were required to partner to complete. Um and they were required to identify at least five literacy curricula and supporting resources that are evidence-based or focused on structured literacy. So they posted on um a little bit after that January 1 deadline um a list of five resources. One was a comprehensive resource so it covered all components of literacy. Two were foundational skills resources for grades K through two. One was a K through five foundational skills resource and one was like a knowledge building resource. So what a knowledge building resource does is it covers the language comprehension components like um writing, reading, comprehension, fluency um and you know syntax and grammar and all of that but not necessarily the foundational skills like phmic awareness, phonics and fluency or well fluency can kind of live in both both worlds. We'll talk more about that later. We'll have an image for you. Um so they had a rubric that was very rigorous um looking for specific structured literacy practices and then also trying to identify any areas of where there's red flags. Red flags means something that really shouldn't be used to teach certain components of literacy. Um for example maybe how you teach high frequency words um phonetically versus just teaching it through memorization. Memorization would be the red flag. Um so we uh had those results uh from the review and the team said okay um there's only five. Let's wait until the reconsideration process happens because a reconsideration process where the um publishing companies could submit additional evidence and be reconsidered um was to happen in the next 60 days. So by February, end of February. So we kind of were like well let's look and see if there's additional things that were elevated to the approved list. So, initially with Redact 1.0, it was like here's approved resources, here's not approved resources. And what approval meant was approved for being able to be reimbursed with Redact funds. Um, there then redact 2.0 came and after the reconsideration process, um, there had been a shift in the funding. And so, um, I know this is like probably too into the weeds. You maybe don't care. Um, but this has been like the journey that our team has been on, the ELA, the elementary team of, you know, look looking to for this guidance knowing that it would help us identify things that had those evidence-based practices embedded. Um, and eventually there was an extension um, for the reconsideration process to be completed this March. Um, and so no longer was there any reimbursement for approved resources. And so the Department of Education and and Carrie actually created a new way to organize their list. They created tiers where it was these resources are highly aligned. There's some that are partially aligned, minimally aligned, or not aligned to those structured literacy practices. So that did give the team more information about, you know, there's these five, but then there's also all of these other ones that were reviewed. um which ones are sort of rising to the top as far as being um embedded with evidence-based practices. Right? So, we looked at the elementary ELA team had um priorities beyond the readact that influenced our decision- making and things that we decided to pilot. Um there was high priorities in having a K5 alignment. um our previous resources kind of had, you know, a K2 and a three five plan and the team really wanted something that could extend all the way from kindergarten through fifth grade. Uh the concept of having high quality instructional materials that limit the need for supplemental resources and try to address those multiple components of literacy with more of a streamlined um package. You know, our elementary teachers are teaching all of the content areas. So if they have to use, you know, four different manuals to teach English language arts, it just makes it harder to do that planning when they're also teaching science, social studies, math, etc. Um, obviously we wanted something aligned to structured literacy so that we could um teach reading in the way that's most evidence-based. Those uh the Carrie and MDE review and the rubrics helped us find those evidence-based practices. And also our entire team was um going through the readact required professional learning with core and so they were learning about evidence-based practices while also doing the review. um our our English language arts department chair actually went through letters a couple years ago before the read act and so she was also very well-versed prior to our core training and I went through letters training as well before coming to Minnotonka and so we all had pretty good solid base and what to look for and of course those um rubrics that Carrie and MDE used um helped us uh do that more easily as well. um the ELA team, the elementary team was like, "We need it to be rigorous for students, but we also need it to be teacher friendly for implementation." So, those were kind of those priorities that the team had. Um and so when fall came along or I guess it was the end of summer, we decided we were going to start by piloting two things that were identified as highly aligned um and start from there and see how it how it goes with students. Um, our pilot of Witten Wisdom um was everybody loved the rigor of Witten Wisdom and they loved that it had uh authentic trade books for kids to read. Um it was a very long lesson and so we were not as satisfied with how much time it was taking up in our literacy block knowing that we wanted time in the schedule for responsive instruction for extension intervention that choice reading that is elevated in the standards. Um, and so when Great Minds, which is the publishing company for Witten Wisdom, um, mentioned that they had a new resource coming out called Arts and Letters, that was a shorter version. It's not they they of course say it's a brand new thing. It's different than Witten Wisdom, but when we looked at the the resources, we were like, this is very similar in its approach. it has um actually um a better approach to teaching writing than Whiten Wisdom in in the committee's opinion because we dug into that knowing that that was an area that we really wanted to make sure was still strong for kids. Um and the resources in general were updated both teacher facing and student facing to be um more friendly. And then the text as well 50% of the texts are different even though some of the module topics are similar. Um, one really big bonus was that Arts and Letters came with um a one of the core texts is Birchbark House by Louise Erdrich, which is a local um art uh author from the um she's Anishab. Yeah. And so then it fits with that anchor standard that asks us to ensure that students have access to reading um the Dakota Inishab perspectives, right? Um and then functional phonics and morphology. That one we started piloting as well and that our the team was happy with that from the get-go. Um especially our grades three through five. They really loved the morphology saying that you know both our advanced learners and our struggling readers really found that valuable as a word study spelling um component of the curriculum curricular resources. So kind of just to to show like what components of language and literacy these these work towards they're they both have the writing integrated along with the reading. So the language comprehension components and then the word recognition components work together and both of these resources are um teach these pieces of language and literacy in a structured way with explicit and systematic and cumulative or like review along the way. So the fluency, vocabulary and comprehension and especially strong oral language base lives kind of in that arts and letters program and they do embed also a little bit of morphology syntax or what that means is like looking at um sentences breaking those apart and um really in those authentic texts and then students write about what they read. And then functional phonics and morphology does those other pillars. Um phmic awareness, phonics and again fluency. They both live in both worlds. Um really making sure that kids understand the sounds that language makes and how those map onto the spellings. Um, and then in the upper grades, the idea of prefixes and suffixes and base words, which again, as Steve pointed out, the foundational skills parts of the standards in grades three, four, and five really call out that morphology as something we need to be teaching. And so, this um resource is uh intentionally aligned to those Minnesota standards. So that brings us to where we are now. Uh which is um this gives you kind of that that glimpse of phase one is kind of at the top. Phase two is our recommendation. Uh and then phase three really is looking at implementation. So at this point, as Alyssa shared, we have gone through a comprehensive pilot process, a comprehensive review, really aligning to what the states provided in terms of uh guidance and rubrics. And we've also looked at specifically at the standards and as Alyssa pointed out, readact 1.0 is one piece, but the standards go beyond readact 1.0. So that's the piece that we're at. Um we will be um looking at implementation then of the resources Alyssa shared at the elementary level for next year and we'll be coming back to you uh next month for final approval of those resources. Uh we also will be looking at continuing with our piloting at the secondary level of resources to ensure that we have the choice text at those as those units um are being implemented and then also ensuring that we're addressing everything that uh is part of the IEA uh indigenous education for all resources and we will have those um starting this summer and we anticipate into the fall. So with that said um that is the broad piece for the review. Um we will be looking at um our unit revisions, our instructional resources and vertical alignment throughout. Dr. Leoo is going to share and again like we said we're not done when we implement we want to make sure that we provide professional development too. So, as you know, over the last two years, we've been providing extensive professional development um certainly structured literacy um or the science of reading through our core training with all of our elementary teachers as well as disciplinary literacy. Um and that work will continue. So as we go into 2526, we'll continue to look at our learning through our MTSS framework, emphasizing tier one, the support of PLC's. will be providing extensive training and support with the implementation of new elementary resources with starting with that introduction on that June 10th date um that we're able to provide teachers to help them head into summer but continuing deeper dives as we go through next year not only with teachers but with principles so that they're able to support the teachers in the building with that implementation um as they move that into the classrooms. rooms. Uh with our middle school model implementation, we'll be providing professional development that will both support disciplinary literacy as well as supporting our ELA and our new communications courses. Um continued evidence-based approaches, K12, continuing to support that data use, particularly with those foundational skills through our data response planning. Um, and then as the state of Minnesota continues to uh identify that phase two training, we'll move that out as they make it available with the teachers that they identify fully for phase two. And finally, because our pair of professionals play such an important role in the learning work with our students, um there will be eight hours of specific literacy training that will happen with them and that will be a part of the professional learning days that we'll be providing them opposite of teacher days so that we have you know critical masses available to work with them. So it's really a whole district effort but we know that you know there are multiple components and this learning piece for our teachers is most critical to the successful implementation and moving forward our literacy goal. So with that happy to take questions superintendent law ju just for perspective for the board and that was a lot of content on literacy. Um, the last time that the state did this was 15 years ago. The next time a board here could be considering this type of action could be in 2040. So, we just got 30 minutes summarizing how t you know 15 years of standards are moving forward. What what you did allowing our teachers June 10th to get these materials and it felt last minute. We heard from our community. you saw that we were using the year and we we were working with a company to get that those materials on site as soon as possible the same time that the entire state is trying to get materials on site and in the hands of teachers. So kudos to our team for getting uh stuff here on time but this is this is some of the most important work a school district can do ensuring all students can read. It's not easy. You saw in that presentation, it was a lot to follow all the things that go into reading. But, uh, what you're moving forward tonight is our teachers getting materials in hand and then we'll formally approve the purchase and implementation. U board member questions, comments, discussion. Megan, um, comment first. It was very reassuring that even though I have been out of the classroom for a while, we still like education changes all the time, but it it was great that we're still using understanding by design and backwards planning and all those things that are like um best practice. But um question in one of the charts it was there was a print concepts in K through two just what is that? Um well it's I think it just lives in kindergarten on the standards. Yes. Um but the beginning yeah so it can actually extend past kindergarten but like with like text features would be like the advanced level of print concepts but in kindergarten it's like can you know kids follow the text on a page? Can they turn the page appropriately? Do they understand that a word is a word and a letter is a letter and a sentence is a sentence. So you probably could have had Dr. Leoo answer this as a former kindergarten teacher. Right. Thank you. I was trying to figure out if it was like printing handwriting or if it So that makes sense. Thank you. Yeah. So that that's under the reading components and they do also have like letter formation under the writing components. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. I'll echo um what Superintendent Law was saying and um I understand based on your presentation that there were a lot of individuals in the district who were involved in this. But since you're the three that are here, I'm thanking you three as the representatives. But it it sounds like um and I can see it as a teacher, you might see this as an opportunity, you might see it as drudgery, but I I think it it's either way it was very important work and will remain that as we're implementing. So thank you for all of this and what's yet to come. I would echo that especially with the alignment piece like knowing that students going to east and students going to west are going to come into the high school with similar I think is huge for the high school teachers and same with the middle school to have their feeder elementarymentaries kind of aligned. I think that's a huge step and that's a lot of work. So thanks to everybody. All right. Thank you very much. All right, the hits keep coming. We'll move on to the review of proposed fiscal year 26 budget. Mr. Chair, members of the board, one of the things I pointed out to our elected officials and the public many times is we are required to submit a budget by June 30th whether or not the state has completed their process of allocating budget. And um as Mr. Mr. Berswis, executive director of finance and operations, will be here tonight. This is everything we know today, getting the first run at our state required board approved budget by the end of June. We will come back again at the end of June with everything we know at that point in time and approve a budget. It is likely we'll have to come back again in the fall and amend it based on how things are going. But tonight, we're going to get a preview of what our fiscal year 26 adopted budget will look like. Mr. Bourgeoa. All right. Thank you. We actually connected. So, thanks Steve. Appreciate it. Um, so we'll get this rolling here. Uh, one of the things about the budget every year is um that um especially this time of year just to talk about is the size of this district is the size of the dollars is pretty much is very significant when we add up all the funds, you know, and in in in your packet there's a chart. not going to expect you to read through it, but it lists out the general fund which actually has a bunch of sub funds in it and all the other funds that we are are required to to to put together and utilize to manage the funds of the district. And the total uh the total uh revenues for FY26 are $278 million. So over a quarter of a billion. So it's a it's a big operation and a a significant duty. The the ironic thing about that is when you get into just the general fund and we're trying to balance and all that, we're literally scraping for $30,000. You know, every little bit helps to try to get us to to zero and to minimize whatever budget reductions we're doing. So, uh, with that, I'll just start rolling through here and try to, uh, keep keep moving. Hopefully, a slide a minute or less. But um this is a slide that you've seen before, but I just uh bold the the important button right there or the important bullet right there that under the current statutes, we don't have any further capacity to increase the operating referendum other than receiving annual inflation increases. And we all know that, but it's important to keep saying that. We got to keep pounding away on it because it would re it would really be important to us because just even a little flexibility in there means we wouldn't be going through this budget reduction exercise for a number of years even with $300 per pupil or $500 per pupil. And uh there'll be a little bit more on that as we're going through here because the gap that we have between um in state aid uh is widening. Uh you know we've always been way below in state aid. Now we're down down really low. uh and it's over a couple thousand dollars that we are below state aid. So it's, you know, people think we have a lot of dollars compared to the average district and it's like no, we have way less money than the average district in the general fund. Okay. Um this is just our chart tracking everything from the historic times of the the more difficult times in the late 90s and 2000s, the long run of of not having to uh or having balanced budgets, and then the last two years. So, we actually have about $3.78 million a year ago and about 4.3 million this year. And um Oh, and Ash Mooney, who's our coordinator of budget and financial systems, is here today. So, I asked him if he wanted to sit at the table. He said maybe next year. So, um so um but um anyway, he does an awesome job and we're going to get him up here pretty quick. Um so, he's he's tracking all us. There's a couple of trackers that um we have, you know, showing how we did versus our targets. And so, and actually uh we gave those I passed those over to to Superintendent Law so he can forward them to you um at the appropriate time. These are the revenues that we're getting per pupil in fiscal 26 uh in the general operating fund. The the the main ones um are our general ed revenue, which is up about $200 per student, and then the referendum revenue is up about $62 per student. Uh but all the other funds, Q comp revenue frozen for a long time. Local optional revenue frozen since 2014, losing out against inflation. Gifted and talented revenue frozen since I can remember, even when I was in Rochester. Safe schools revenue frozen for a long time. So, and those library aids and student support aids are relatively new and uh the the way things are looking uh a big chunk of those might be disappearing uh once the legislature gets their their uh business finished. Maybe not for this year, but for the following year, unfortunately. But each people unit brings in about in the general operating front brings in about just under $11,000. And then at 1.2 uh ADMs for uh waiting for 712, it's it's over $13,000. So the average is about $12,000. And we also get operating capital dollars about $230 is the estimate there. And that that's going up about 50 a whopping 50 cents a year. So that's near frozen. So, uh, and you know, everything is frozen. We are not going to let it go. Um, lease levy, uh, is $212. That's actually been frozen since 2014. And, uh, though, but we've been able to utilize that. Uh, we get $254 per pupil at 1.2 waiting there. But we've been able to utilize that to do a lot of the building additions, of course, while we were growing during that the the uh, uh, growth period. So we'll start getting into the numbers. Uh in the general operating fund, which is actually a subset of the what we call the the Minnesota UARS, UFARS is uniform financial accounting and recordkeeping system. So a great acronym uh general operating fund is a subset of that uh because we have actually nine other sub funds that roll up. So in our general operating fund, uh about $173 million. So it's going up about 4.1% gross. uh some of that is be you know hopefully as we grow in students but and expenditures right now we're budgeted at an increase of uh 1.6% 172 million and that looks a little bit odd but in this year we're actually deficit spending a little bit. So the fact that we're rolling back from deficit spending uh means the increase is actually um a combination of reductions and then a little bit of an increase to keep things down and line up better with the budget or with the revenues. So a a slight surplus of $890,000 and again that's a lot of money individually but again on our on 173 million or on $278 million that is such a small part. So we have to really monitor carefully track every expenditure carefully and Ash is the guy who's the point person on all that and helps us out with that. If we uh if we actually hit that our unassigned fund balance will actually edge up to 17.6 million for the first time in in in a number of years. and uh and and edge it up above back above 10%. So, I'm not going to go through all the assumptions at the bottom there. Uh but you can see where we're at. Um I will mention on enrollment 11,364 assumes 12 11,200 in person and uh which would be a growth from what we were this year and then 110 for uh uh Tonka online and 54 for early childhood. Those are all uh students that we get uh average daily membership and adjusted pupil units for. So uh we are down 26.8 teachers from FY25 with our budget reductions and other positions that you'd see in the list. Uh we are act you know we the things that are not in here are um the final deliberations by the legislature and then also what we actually will settle with with the MTA. So, uh, we will see where we're at. And then the average teacher salary and benefits this year is 134, a little over 134,000 and average new hire is a little over 107,000. Just putting it in chart uh area. Um, the bigger chunks of revenue, general education revenue, uh, which is the basic formula is 92.9 million. So, that's still the big the biggest chunk, the big big 18-wheeler that helps helps haul a lot of the load. Uh categorical revenue includes about 20 uh $23 million in special education and then the rest of that is is uh either state categorical or uh well all state categorical programs. Um the uh federal revenue is about 2.8 million. We get a real low number in both. Actually we get a real real low number in federal, but we also get a real low number in um the categorical state that's not special ed uh miscellaneous. And we'll go through these in a little more detail to give you an idea what's in each one of these these uh pies pie slices. And then the operating referendum at 28.4 million. So on a percentage basis 54% general ed um categorical uh including special ed is about 20%. Uh and then miscellaneous 2.9 federal 1.7 and local optional 5.2. And our operating referendum is 16.4. the um with the operating referendum, it it's been there's been years when it's been higher percentage because uh we were still we still had the the referendum cap, but then as as other revenues have been as general ed has gone up a little bit, it's taking had having to take over. But and and it's a um the operating referendum percentage drops a little bit, but the thing about it is is it's not, you know, the general education still doesn't keep up with inflation. So teacher salaries and benefits on the expenditure side are about 114 million. Paras the other other people who spend the most time with direct student contact in the classroom or about the school 12.9 million. And then all other salaries which is maintenance clerical uh all the district service center positions uh and grounds crew and those types of things all other salaries are 23.4 million. Purchase services of 7.2 two of supplies, 5.6 in transportation, just under 8 million. And then there's we transfer over to our our arts center uh program about 757,000 uh under this proposed budget. Percentage-wise, we're right where pretty much right where we've been about 67% a little over 66, you know, going up to 67% on teacher salaries and then paras and are about seven and a half. Those are a lot of headcount, but they're partial hours. So, uh and the salaries are not the same as the teacher salaries. So even though there's a significant number, they're our second largest employee group after the teachers. Um they're 7 and a half% of salaries because many of most of them are part-time. The um but we are right at about 75% of our of our total budget then being teachers and then pairs again the people who do the most uh direct contact with students. And then all other salaries and benefits 13.6 purchase services uh 4.2 supplies 3.28 transportation 4.6. six. So, looking at a synopsis of the um our our more our our it's kind of funny to say our more detailed summary spreadsheet, but um that we use uh this is where we're at kind of a revenue expenditure and and break even or not for the next five years. Uh the way things are playing out right now. So you can see that uh on the positive side for fiscal year 27 so far the challenge is a lot lower if you know and if if we end up having to do 2.2 two million of reductions there that slides through and fiscal 28 is closer to 2.5 and fiscal year 29 is closer to five, you know. And so it's this is kind of a a setup where it looks like if nothing changed and enrollment didn't change or we don't make headway on revenues or operating referendum and if we keep hitting our our uh our bargaining unit targets in terms of settlements, we'd end up cutting 2.3 to 2.5 a year every year for the next five years. So, uh, that's kind of the way that sets up. Uh, so we'll do whatever we can to make sure that that, you know, that we can change that change that future into the future that we want it to be. So, those numbers actually just translated to this much more detailed summary spreadsheet. And, um, uh, but you can see uh, well, at the bottom line, um, we are looking at budgeting 9.9% in our amended budget for our our unassigned fund balance. And if we hit that, that's going to be great. Um and then just even a little notch up is going to be a 10.3%. So this is the way this is charted out since fiscal year 07. You know that you can see the time period where we weren't doing budget reductions. We peaked at about uh 26.5 million in fiscal 20 right before that was the year that CO 19 hit in March. Uh and then we had a couple of COVID years there. We we deficit spent. We basically broke even, you know, just $30,000 or so under break even in fiscal 23. Fiscal 24, um we we dropped by about 1.8 million and fiscal 25 are looking um you know that we we're actually right now currently deficit spending about 3.2 after the re both of those are after the results of of our our negotiation with our largest unit. And then our projected 17.6 $6 million uptick if we hit next year's um next year's uh target to for revenues and expenditures. Uh one other thing is um just make a note, April 2010 was the first year that we got a AAA bond rating. So we're at 15 years in counting. Uh we'll keep our fingers crossed to hang on to it. That little uptick uh in 26 if it happens, that's all all goes to the good to make it be year 16 or year 17. So, and uh that in itself helps to keep our interest rates low, but it's also uh something that the district once we got once we actually achieved AAA in April 2010, we've we've used that as kind of a barometer to the community saying, "Hey, there's these outside people saying that we're we're fiscally sound and and they they've rated us as high as you can be rated in terms of getting your bond rating up, which the way you manage your business and your finances is the key cornerstone of that. So, uh just just noting that. So we the string is still going. Knock on wood. We'll we'll see how we do here. Um balancing the budget helps that. So just kind of running through some of the numbers in a little more detail. Um the that general ed revenue uh 58.7 million by residents and 34.1 million open enrolled. You can see the bigger chunks in in categorical revenue. Special education about 23.6 million. Uh Q comp has about 3 million. equity revenue that floats between 900,000 and 1.1 million depending on it's a really complex formula and it it compares us to where we are in terms of different revenues uh a small different market basket revenues and compares us to where everybody else is in that same market basket revenues and some years we're up to 1.1 million other years we're down to 900,000 TR pension adjustment revenue is 1.8 8 million. That actually looks like Whoa, that's a that's a nice little chunk of change. But what that is is that actually is money that we get. It's it's money that pays for the increase in the TRA rate from 7 and a half starting in five years ago. It edged up all the way to 9.5. Uh and that was to pay for uh uh some changes that they did in 2018 to lower the the retirement age from 25 down to 62. And so the reality of it is is that money is not new revenue. it's just offsetting more expenditure that we were mandated to pay. Uh the the downside of that also then is uh that TRA pension adjustment revenue which is several hundred million right now. That's also money that the state considers is E12 money. So like when they say hey we gave you the most money in E12 or whatever. Well, a chunk of it was that and of course you can't use that to pay um to pay teachers and and put more kids in or put more teachers in the classroom or you know help balance the budget. literacy incentive aid to 725,000. Um that's one of the two uh for lack of a better term pay for performance funding formulas uh that we have. The other one is Q comp. Uh in Q comp if you uh you have uh you get a chunk of dollars but you're uh you your your teachers are have to work on on improving their craft and and as they do that then it's like the dollars continue to come. Uh and literacy incentive aid is based on the performance in third and fourth grade performance gains um for for our students in reading and math. And um so one of the things that th that one in particular actually both of those have been under under the microscope for potentially sh uh discontinuing those two programs and shifting the mo the money to other school districts where there's higher concentrations of poverty which has become the the the main kind of uh uh distributor factor that's being used with everything other than the basic formula uh miscellaneous. And so we have we have about 20 other categorical program revenue items that are about 4.5 million. And then uh miscellaneous revenue uh about $2 million worth of uh investment income, transportation fees and student fees, etc. All that ends up uh participation fees and for athletics. All that ends up to be about $5 million. Federal revenue again 2.8 millions. Mainly it's title one, two, three, four programs based on grant letters. Um and then uh there's some caros included in adopted budget for that because uh we we always get th those grant letters later in the year before the before after the start of the year and so it's difficult to spend all the money and it's since it's on a federal year you get till September 30th of the next year to keep selling it or are spending it. General operating fund uh additional revenues are that's our voter approved referendum at $2266.31. we are at the state cap and um we are uh you know we need to keep pounding away on that. One of the things in 2019 when the state did a uh the second tier of local optional revenue every every district in the state got a new $300 for for local optional revenue. But our district and in a c about six or seven others u I know Eden Prairie D I believe and I think Burnsville a couple and a couple more but a a very small subset of that what they said is hey your re your uh referendum's too high so they took $300 off our referendum and moved that money over for our second tier so we didn't get any new money but then instead of leaving the the referendum cap where it was they like double whammy I mean I it was kind of a crude way to say it but I said we kind of got stuck in back and then they twisted the knife because they dropped the operating referendum cap by $300. So, we didn't even have the chance to ask. And that's still happening to this day. So, uh you know, that's another another way to look at um trying to say, hey, c can you uh kind of write the write the wrong that was done back in 2019. You know, we we got zero while everybody else got 300. Can you just take that off and let us ask for the 300 back for locally? So, we'll see. So, some interesting notes here and a lot of this is based on we just about a month ago the um uh the school district financial profiles came out for fiscal year 24. Uh it always takes a state a few months to compile it. Everybody has to report the fiscal year 24 year end which is June 30 24 data to the state by December. They get it all in December then they compile it and put it out and then they they put it out in in April or or May early May. So, that's the the latest comparative statewide stuff that we have, but I bolded a couple things there, but um so out of the 329 school districts, if you rank them in terms of general fund state aid, with the per one getting the most per pupil being number one and the one getting at least 329, we're at we're we're at 320. So, we're in the bottom 5%. Actually, about the bottom 3%. The state aid average is 12,448 and we're at 10,254. That's $2,194 per pupil. Okay, $2,194 per pupil. If we just were at the state aid average and the state aid average is actually up about 144 because there's um uh you know, if you if you rank the state aid as a school district, but if we were at the state aid average, we'd be getting approximately another $25 million in state aid. Now, we get a chunk we we make up for some of that with voter approved referendum revenue, but um even in spite of that, that just puts us at position number 167. We're not even at the median, not even at the middle of the pack, and we're still about 44 slots below the state average. So, there's a lot of and and most of those districts are are metro districts that are higher than us. So, um, you know, we're we're swimming with a a concrete block tied to us and, um, so we're doing pretty good considering we're swimming with a concrete block tied to us. So, um, but, uh, yeah, so the the bottom line is we're still 64 positions below the state average. Again, that's the latest school district profile. So, um, when we ask for some things, it's the the, uh, what do I want to say? conventional wisdom is almost always wrong and the conventional wisdom is wrong, but it's really hard to convince everybody who believes in the conventional wisdom that they're wrong because everybody believes in the conventional wisdom. So, it's kind of like catch 22. Um, operating side uh or operating expenditure side, salaries and benefits of everybody totals 87.5%. Purchase services, there's that 4.2%. You can see examples utilities $1.7 uh million. Uh that is uh you that's our water and electrical primarily primarily electrical and then water and um refuge removal and those types of things because for some reason we have fuel for heat natural gas counts as a supply. I guess it it is a thing. So uh it counts as a supply. So that's actually $557,000 down below. But um if you think consider that we we heat all of our build all our buildings our our 1.8 million square feet for about 33 cents a year in natural gas. we're doing okay in terms of being efficient. Um likewise, all of our other utilities were less than a dollar per square foot per year for our utilities. So again, we're being efficient. Um you know, various other categories. I'm not going to read each one of them for you, but it gives you an idea. Uh instructional supplies in the general fund are about $2.5 million, $2.6 million. We also have um textbooks. Those are we we basically are buying the vast majority of those out of the op of the capital projects uh tech or referendum fund which is our which is for technology and classroom instructional supplies and classroom equipment primarily and and security barriers. Uh transportation, we're at 4.5%. That's edged up because we got a pretty big increase at our last um last request for proposal because we had one request for a proposal that was legit and a second one where they were proposing but they didn't even have a bus fleet. Um and so um we we took we had to take the low quote which is for a student and they do good they they do as good a job for us as they can and uh but it was a 20% increase a couple years ago. So we've been elevated up after that. Um and then you see the art center there. So that's the kind of the the big picture on the general fund. Uh nutrition services fund. Uh here we have revenues budget at 9.7 million and expenditures at at 10 million. So we're budgeting a a deficit spending. When we budget deficit spending in there, that's based on replacing equipment because uh we have a almost a 50% fund balance, 44.3% fund balance, and we have to we have to use it and we have to use it in that fund. So, we can't take that money and use elsewhere. Um, and we've always had a healthy fund balance, but the fund balance has been growing in the last few years since the state actually did um, you know, the full reimbursement uh, between federal and state for for breakfast and lunch because uh, we're getting 4.6 $4.65 per lunch. And for people who weren't on free and reduced lunch and we were charging them, we were charging $3.40 at the high school, 320 at the middle school, and 310 for elementary. And we were breaking even and having a decent surplus at that point in time. So, our surplus has been building up. So we are are putting into equipment trying to improve things. Uh you know the the food truck that we just had outside um the magn magnificent mobile meal machine called the fresh tonka fresh express. Uh that's one of the purchases we made with some of the dollars and and gives us some opportunities to bring different kinds of food to our students. Um anyway so um we also get $2.37 for breakfast. So staffing is up to 85% of targeted positions. We still have nine positions that we have not we haven't been at full staffing since before COVID. Uh but we also have nine long-term subs on board, which is the most that we've had in a while. So, they we figured out how to make it work with less people, but it would be nice to have some additional people because sometimes we're we're still working short staffed in the kitchens when they're sick. You know, people are are sick uh have to take a sick day or whatever or personal leave day for whatever reason. Community services fund adopted budget 15.8 million revenues and 16.3 million expenditures. um utilizing some of the fund balance, a very healthy fund balance there of 5.6 million projected by the end of the year. It's actually will be closer to six million at the end of this year and actually might even be a little higher than that once we close the books, but it's about a 34.5% fund balance. Um the important thing about uh community services I always like to mention is is um actually I got the numbers back there, but it's 86% of the revenues are local. That's a typo on my I'm sorry, it's not a typo. 87%'s down below. I'm reading too fast. Uh local tax revenue 6.8%. State tax revenues about 600,000 3.8%. Uh federal tax revenue 2.4%. And then $ 13.8 million. So 87% of the revenue is generated through offerings that we have that the public makes a a make or you know makes a a buy or not decision. They choose to you know buy the the class. They choose to buy the activity. they choose to uh you know buy for the participation in the tour to talk or whatever. So um and the deficit is due to uh increased personnel costs. This year we we had some realignment in of some of our uh our salaries and benefits for for a few people. Uh capital expenditure fund which is operating capital and lease levy. Uh 6.2 million revenue 6.1 out. Uh it's a little bit more of a breakdown below. This is one where we um we utilize about two $2 million of of um of of operating capital to actually pay make payments on uh some of the building bonds that we we did when we didn't which we didn't use a building bond referendum for while we were growing. And actually this year there's because we restructured some bonds there's a pay there's a year before our payment comes back on. So we're at about 1.744 million instead of 2 million. Uh and then we're paying about $2.5 million out of our lease levy. Same thing. So there's about $4.5 million revenue stream that we use out of operating capital lease levy. Uh and those are the two primary expenditure um line items in this area. We also do about $800,000 related to health and safety program. And health health and safety in this regard is not the same type of health as like going to the nurse's office and those types of thing. This is related to you know fire exiting and fire sprinklers and and those types of things and and indoor air quality. Our debt service fund uh this is our uh the bond payments we make on our general obligation bond um bond revenues or uh bonds that we have outstanding. The revenues are based on the payments at and we have to levy at 105%. the state requires us to levy an additional 5% in case we would have a lot of tax delinquencies by our taxpayers. We don't. So the money builds up in a in a in a surplus in that in that balance and and and once it gets past a certain point if it's large enough then we it actually gets used to uh reduce a future levy by the amount of the 5% overolction. So it's kind of a self-balancing uh thing in that of that nature. So, uh, at the end of fiscal 26, uh, if we, it looks like we'll be ending with about a $2.6 million fund balance. So, we may have a levy adjustment down at about $2.6 million, uh, that actually might, uh, might be able to come off whatever we're levying a year from now, and that actually might play into some of the stuff we're talking about later. Uh, so, uh, the other thing is is the in February of 2026, we will make the last bond payment. We levied for it last year. We're collecting it now uh in in in 2025. And in February of 2026, we're actually going to make the very last bond payment on the bonds that were issued from the April 23rd, 1996 building bond referendum. So those those bonds will be retired because it's been 30 years. Um fiduciary funds. This is actually um uh a fancy way of saying donation funds that people donate for us and they are um uh giving us dollars for specific purposes. So we have several hundred accounts that we keep track of small dollar amounts to be expended on specific purposes that people have donated to us. Once we donate the funds, if they donate the funds for supplies at this school or for a scholarship fund or whatever, we have to spend it that way if we accept it. And so that's this is where we track it. Um but this would be a fund where actually uh any type of donations could be tracked in this fund uh regardless of the whether they're large or small. Um so we have a mechanism to actually create uh significant dollar amounts if we ever would just decide to go down that path. And uh so the fund balance stays relatively constant. We got a really generous community. Um that's a lot of a lot of money for a community our size to be gen basically every year uh donating you know between 1.4 4 and $1.7 million for for you know various things. Athletic equipment funds uh this is comes from a $55 participant fee and uh that just helps to go to fund the various athletic equipment needs of our everexpanding um pare of varsity sports. uh you know this so this is where you end up with uh getting when we start a new varsity sport like bad mitten or boys volleyball then we we have money to buy uniforms uh self- insurance fund uh we're looking at at breaking even next year we had a 5.25% premium increase for this year um and knock on wood we uh we hope that um we might come in a little better this next year and and but we're definitely still working on coming in and looks like we're coming in at break even and maybe even a little better. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. Um, we have a fund balance percent of about 29.2%. And that might seem large, but the thing about health insurance is it's it's a it's a it's a cash game. I mean, you need a lot of cash to pay the bills. And in in with a small entity like ours, um, even a big entity needs a lot of cash to pay bills because health insurance is one6 of the total economy, right? So, uh, you need cash and you also need to make sure you have enough cash to pay bills if if you end up having a spike like like we did a few years ago. we had a spike in cancers and uh but we made we had enough cash that it wasn't wasn't an issue for us that we were going to run short and not be able to pay all the other bills. So uh this this fund has been going since July 1st of 2002 and um which is was in fiscal year 2002 um or July 1st 2001 sorry in fiscal year 2002 the average premium increase even though we've had um a few years where we had uh double digits uh the average has been 4.1% and during that time the national trend is 7 8 9% or more almost every year. So, we've been beating the trend. Uh, doesn't mean it's it's inexpensive, but um my one profoundity that I ever thought of was that health insurance is really expensive because it's the only way you can buy time. Um, and then art center on seven uh there's this is operating revenues and transfers in the $723,000 is transfers in. Um $246,000 is uh the uh revenue from ticket sales and um the uh if the if the plays actually cover their incremental operating costs, we the art center keeps the dollars in a equipment replacement trust fund. Right now they have about $263,000 in there, but when they need a new soundboard, uh they don't have to compete against classroom needs that way. uh or if they have a large, you know, large play with a cast of hundreds, um you know, they and they need more microphones, they can go and get it. So, or they can also use this if they need to to do things with the uh scenery and things like that. So, it's a a a pretty good program. actually, you know, there's um pretty much most most most uh uh programs in the state would love to be able to be able to break even like we do or better on the actual gate receipts versus the actual incremental cost. So, uh it's a well-run program. Um Trent Boy does a great job, Kent Kudson before him and um they, you know, they have that on the right right path. Our dome operations, we pick up about 392,000 per year. our expenditures before our bond payment is 238,000 and then so that generates a surplus before the bond payment and the bond payment keeps it at zero. So if we hit those revenue numbers uh you know we put a little money aside if we um for for just doing things with the dome in if we need something and uh if we don't it it can you know we we have money to pull it out. There's a small trust fund balance of about $10,500. And actually the bond payments are uh um are actually going to be finished off in February 1st of 2029. But we've been able to replace the dome shell um this this coming year because uh it's a roof, right? So we were able to use long-term maintenance funds to replace it after um quite a number of years. But ironically, I mean, the dome itself, it comes up and it comes down and u every year, but because by by law, we could only have it up for less than six months. Otherwise, we'd have to put in sprinklers and different types of HVAC and all kinds of stuff. So, it's it's under the under the rubric of a temporary building. And so, um, by the time we actually pay off the bond, um, it'll now be two domes or the son of dome, uh, up there. But, um, it'll have been used for a total of 124 months or 10 years and four months. We we lost a couple of months, uh, for a few seasons when we hosted the state tournament um, for football in the year when the Metrodome had the roof collapse. So, but the the the one thing about that was our facility was deemed uh a great great a good enough venue, a nice enough venue to basically host a state tourn, you know, round of the state tournament. So, that was a feather feather in our cap in that regard. Aquatics program uh $1.15 million in revenue, expenditures of 950,000. This is actually part of the uh uh part of the um community education fund. Uh but we operate as a separate sub fund. Uh and so it'll be operating on a net surplus. There's a chargeback for the bond payment. And when you say what's the bond payment? Uh back in 2007, the district had been trying to build a new swimming pool for a long time because the swimming pools were too shallow. They could not even dive off of starting blocks anymore. They had to remove the starting blocks. and but a new pool was going to be 30 to $40 million. And um so actually when I came here I was looking at some things differently and and um we we came up with the idea of expanding the pool at East because that's the only place we could expand out without getting too close to the houses next door. And um what we did is we added um we added enough space to add two lanes to the pool. So when you go into the pool at east, you see this big beam in the ceiling. That's where the that's where the the uh wall used to be. Um but we added on from that wall out and that allowed us to and we used long-term facility maintenance to replace all the old um 50-y old components. And um so in doing so, we end up with an eight lane pool and and in with two lanes in the new section and the diving wells in the new section. And um so that two and a half the payment on that $2.5 million bond for that addition is the is $135,000 a year. And so they're raised revenues and so because in the community education fund what we do is we actually have a chargeback calculated and then then we just apply that against the bond payment out of the general fund. So, it's been a very successful program and they they broke even every year um before CO. So, CO kind of set them back a little bit, but but they're chipping their way back and there's 12 payments remaining of about 1.3 million. And then the Pagel Center operations. Uh we bought the Pagel Center in 2013. It was originally built by the uh Minnotonka Youth Hockey Association. uh and uh when it started needing roof repairs and major repairs, they had they were able to operate it, but it was really expensive from a capital standpoint uh for them. And so we have long-term facility maintenance on facilities we own. So it was actually more cost effective. Plus, we could refinance at a much lower rate since we were tax exempt. And um uh so we cut their payment, we cut our payment by about 70%. Our share of the bond payment and they cut their their bond payment was down by about 30%. And um and so we operate they operated on our behalf and any any expenditures over revenues um in a given year are able to be levied in in a subsequent fiscal year to make it up. It's called a makeup levy. So this looks kind of odd, but that negative fund balance of 1.2 2 million. That's really actually two years of operations that have yet to be levied for because the way the levy works is you incur expenditures and it takes two fiscal years for the the revenues to actually come in because of the way the levy cycle is set up. And so that's what that that means. And so because it just looks odd and uh but what I make sure I tell everybody is if for some reason it's never going to happen but if for some reason hockey was outlawed in Minnesota and we weren't going to be doing hockey anymore and the center shut down two years after it shut down this fund balance would be zero and everything would be tied up. So um only 13 school districts in the state own their own ICE arena. Everybody else rents from cities or counties. So, um, you know, we we don't have a a city or a county that's nearby us that has something available to us. So, our our people and our school district, our prior school boards took it into their own hands to, you know, come up with a really good solution. So, we're able to keep it going. Long-term facility maintenance, uh, bond proceeds are projected for next year to be 14.285 million and then we'll expend that on the projects. So, no net surplus. There's currently a fund balance as of 6:3026 that will be projects in process out of this 14.2 million. We spend a chunk of the money on designing the program and also then in June which is still in this fiscal year. So about a third of the money gets spent before the fiscal year um and then uh the rest of it carries over into the next fiscal year. So that 10.259 million will end up end up being expended after June 30th 26. So that's what that shows. Um, but it's part of our 10-year plan. And, um, so we will, um, it's going to be interesting though because we've been putting a lot of money into long-term facility maintenance because of the age of our buildings, but we we caught up and pretty much been catching up and replacing the really old stuff. So, um, over the next couple of years, the the level of long-term maintenance is going to going to have to are going to be able to drop because, um, just kind of sticking with roofing and paving and maybe a few things, but a lot of the big stuff that you do every every 35, 45, 50 years pretty much has been done over the last, you know, 15 or 16 years. So, uh, there's going to be a period where, uh, future school boards aren't aren't going to have to do as much to stay stay in a state of good repair as we did to catch everything up. But uh in in defense of PRA school boards, we were not in a long-term facility maintenance program until 2004. And when they got in it in 2004, took them a while to get going, but then we really kind of amped it up in 2007 to start catching everything up and stopping roofs from leaking and all that kind of stuff. So, um it it's it's working well for the district in that regard. Um, our building construction fund, we've got uh bond proceeds of 5.95 million, expenditures of about 6,450,000. So, there's a a net net deficit of 500,000, but that's that is actually half of that's the part of the money that's going to come in over the next three years on the uh Veterans Field restroom concession stand building. So, the the the bonding uh proceeds and the costs are basically 2.2 2 million for that network infrastructure rebuild. Uh 91 1 million 950 for Delton Road in the parking lot. The Veterans Field retaining wall, 1.3 million in the the concession stand at 1 million. So we will, you know, we're basically cash flowing 500,000 out of the out of the existing fund balance that we had from project savings from past projects. Uh and then our capital projects technology fund about 10.2 million uh slight slight surplus. Um, this is 6.569% of net tax capacity. As the value of the district goes up, the revenue goes up. So, we work really hard to just stay in that stay in in that zone, stay in that box. And, um, and it it's been working pretty well so far. Just a couple more slides here. OPE Trust Fund, uh, we budget to hit a million dollars of investment earnings every year. Some years we get above that, some years below. Um, the the expenditures for benefit payments next year are going to be 1.3 million. This is funds held in trusts for uh postretirement benefit commitments prior to 2002. And actually um uh when I when I printed this out, it was 180 active, but we just got an update and there's 175 active participants out of the original 615 who were able eligible to participate in this. Um we've actually dispersed $22.7 million since the trust fund was established in 2008. 9,850,000 went for the Vantage Momentum building, but the other 12 thou uh 12,865 thou 12,865 went to the general operating fund and just of of that $17 million unassigned fund balance that we're we're looking at, you know, that's that's equal to 73% of that. So again, it's just all the things you do to just kind of scrape up a little bit of additional money makes a difference in the end, you know, accumulates at the end of the fund balance. And then we have um the last fund is our debt service fund. So we pay about 1 point uh we levy about 1.479 million and um that's the revenue for the the next payment. Um the expenditure has actually been levied this past year. So that's going to be paid out of this year and um but there's a $476,000 fund balance there that also is used in in as it accumulates to lower future payment uh as happens with our other bonds. And so we've got about $15 million left to pay on the bonds that were originally issued to fund the uh OPED uh trust fund and those will be paid off on January 1st, 2038. So uh that is a kind of speedy zippy way through here even though it took a while because we got a lot and so be glad to answer any questions. Thank you, Mr. Bourgeoa. Uh board members, questions or comments? Sally, so going back to the general operating budget and the unassigned fund balance uh projected at 10.3% I believe our board um minimum is 6% correct? Yes. Can you talk a little bit about that? Um and what potential options there are for the use of that and what cautions there are for that? Um the the 6% fund balance uh policy was put in back way back I believe in 1987 if my memor is correct on that. Um and at that time they're looking to have like you know about you know it's really 6% is about maybe three weeks you know if you take your 12 months every 12 months is about 8% you know one month per month. So it's about about three weeks worth of operating uh funds. So, you know, and it's good to have a minimum. Prior to that, they didn't have a fund balance policy and they ran things really low. The risk if you get too low and and you know, I always just say if for whatever reason we miss our pro we miss our projections by we we were 99 and a half% correct on our revenues, but it's a half percent low and then and we're a half percent high on the fund balance. That's $2 million right there, you know. So you could be like even more accurate than the weather guys, right? And um um the well maybe try to get better than that. But um but the point being is is you can be really tight and still on this on these dollars be just a little hair off and and it can go fast. So it's important to have something. The other thing is is your fund balance also represents uh a big chunk of of your your cash and as your fund balance declines, you have less cash. So, you might end up running into periods where you have to borrow borrow money to uh for cash flow borrowing to make payments for to make sure you make payroll. And I've had to do that a couple times in my career at other districts. And uh um so at that point, you're actually paying additional interest expense just to have cash to make payroll. So, it's kind of like a another expense on top of the expenses that are causing you to have such a short, you know, a shortfall of cash. So, you know, having we don't we don't have um it's a lot of money to us individually, but that's, you know, that on $173 million, uh 17 million is 10%. You know, so it's basically a little over one month of operations. And um uh but the other thing about it is is we're also just related to our triple. It's not the thing that it's not the tail wagging the dog, but we are actually on the low end, the very low end of districts in terms of fund balance who are rated AAA. So, there's there's that as a sub thing, but the most important thing is is you have to have a reasonable dollar amount. And and granted, there can be rainy days. You know, odd things can happen. Um, and they may not happen often, but then when they happen, you really need it. And actually when I first started in school business here in Minnesota, I had a uh there was a a gentleman named John Moss who worked for a company called Springstead Bond Adviserss. And he was he was I got to know him pretty well. And he was the assistant commissioner in the um 1980s when the um uh there was when they had a really the the uh the October 1987 was a huge bond drop in the stock market. the state budget went went just tanked and he was one of the people who had to actually calculate how much money was going to get pulled back from school districts. So now that was almost 40 years ago, right? But it did happen, you know. So again, it's a rainy day fund. Our rainy day fund is not exorbitant compared to other districts. Um, and uh, you know, it's a reasonable dollar amount, but um, yeah, I mean, hey, if any of us had $17 million in a bank account, we would, you know, be on the beach in Aruba or something, but um, it's really a relatively small, modest size, about one month of operation for us. Thank you, Dan. Yeah, I think I think just looking at that unassigned fund balance, that's my that's my primary concern looking at our long-term forecast because even even if we're operating at a break even pace every year, you know, expenditures are going to be rising due to inflation and contracts and things like that. So that unassigned fund balance as a percentage is going to just passively creep down even if we don't have to touch it. So, I mean, I I don't know what the answer is, but it but it it seems like an imperative in the next few years that we've got to figure out a way to start topping that off and making sure that we keep that in a healthy place. Yes, Megan. Yeah, I was going to kind of echo the same thing. I mean, even in this spreadsheet, we're dropping below 6% in two years. So, that's not a long long way out. that's like an immediate need. Um, what I was wondering is I know there's been some talk at the legislature about Q comp and that right now we're factoring it in and it looked like it was about $2 million or so. So like let's just say that they say we're not going to fund that anymore. Then that would be added to the it would become deficit or like how does that Yeah. Oh, you you want to go? I can do it. Yeah. Go. So, there are two buckets of money out of QC comp. One of them is money that goes directly to teachers in terms of goals and staff development reimbursement at about $2,000 per teacher. The other is the employees that we use to do peer evaluation. So, if we didn't get that, the likeliest thing would be we would those employees would lose those positions and they'd be put back in the classroom and other people would be cut and then teacher compensation would go down on average about $2,000. And the the one thing I would just add to that is we've already levied for the local component of Q comp. We're collecting it right now for fiscal 26. And so all the proposals that I saw, if I read them correctly, were that they would look at eliminating it for fiscal 27. So at least we would have warning to be able to figure out what to do. Um because we basically have, you know, we're collect there's money in the bank right now that is going to be fiscal 26 revenue for QC comp. And so they were not going to cut it off and you know pull the rug out from what we've already done but it was going to be okay a year from now you know was going to be a levista at least under some of the proposals hopefully not because our it's certainly important to us. I have a question uh in a similar vein. Um and I'm not looking for a recap of all the assumptions that you've got in here, but I am sort of curious. Are there things uh that are still in at play in the legislative process that might like did local optional revenue make it into either the governor's proposal or either of the omnibus proposals? They're negotiating those now, so nobody really knows what they're going to end up at, but there's a wee bit there's a of l and that's we we are looking the the suggestions have been about $40 per pupil, which would be about $500,000 for us coming through. that would come and and it's a got a different title and it the it would come in as an aid so it would be immediately levied rather than having the board do it something like that Paul does that yeah and and it's like when we read that and we had an exchange or a weekend I said hey after 12 years of talking about this it's a win it's a small win but it would be a win you know so when you when you email every single week with hundreds of people and say please consider putting some money in local optional revenue. It's nice to see that there's something. Well, I'm I'm uh resisting the urge to complain about the the revenue side because there's not much we can do to improve that. Um if you are for some reason watching this and haven't heard me rant about that before, uh give me a call. Be happy to bend your ear. We would like a legislature that would allow us if we're not going to be getting equalization revenue and we're not going to be getting uh put up into a tier uh of comparable districts at least let us ask our community members for more funds because right now we cannot ask for any more operating dollars and you've said that many times. I've said that many times but it is frustrates frustrates me to this day. So, I appreciate your hard work in all the work that we've done throughout the district to balance the budget uh and do our best. Um, and if anyone in case is still awake and listening, please continue the pressure because let's keep at least that $500,000 worth of of L and whatever the final deal is. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Chris, sorry. No, no worries. Um, uh, great comments by everybody. Um, yeah, I just wanted to thank Paul and and your team. when I look at this and we talked about the unassigned fund balance and and seeing that trend and going through I would you know and maybe I'm misremembering and that that could for sure be but I think this is the first strip spreadsheet that we've seen in a while that that we're almost out to the end where where we where we still are have some fund balance. Uh we've seen quite a few where that was immediate within a year or two. And I would say um you know we're doing the things this board, the the administration, the district are doing the things that that we need to do to try to mitigate that and push that out more and more and more. And that's a lot of hard work, a lot of tough decisions. And you know, uh I think we just need to recognize it that that we're doing the work that we need to do and and and you can see it. Um it's unfortunate for all the reasons uh and we'd much rather be talking about other things, but uh you know, we have to deal with the hand that we're dealt. So just I just appreciate it that it it's I looked at it at first. I'm like I mean uh we have a fund balance projected. I'm sure they'll get eaten up uh uh with all the things that are coming, but we're at least projecting a little bit for next year. So it's there's some positivity there. Say here's a chance. Hey, we'll take for we'll we'll we'll take $40 a student as a win for sure. So, thank you. All right. Anyone else? Thank you, Mr. Bour. All right. Next item up for discussion is facilities improvement update. Superintendent Law. Mr. Chair, members of the board, this is another board goal and that we worked on with a group of community members for about nine months to come up with a proposal that we have winnowed down to what we thought would be palatable. And at that point in time, the concern was can we ask for anything knowing that we would love to be able to ask for an operating uh referendum at some point in time. Um, as you've all learned, Mr. Bourgeois does not sleep. If there's an opportunity to make progress tonight, we're going to see the chance to do no net tax increase and meet the community recommendations. This decision doesn't need to be made until August. Um, but we'll talk tonight about the ability to do a significant improvement in facilities and not ask our community for any tax increase, leaving all of that potential tax increase for future operating referendum. It it's some financial wizardry uh having reviewed this once. Um, but it it also is what our community asked for to improve our facilities and what the board asked for to leave room to raise for operating. Mr. Bourgeois Okay, thank you, Superintendent Law. Um, yeah, just trying to look look at things differently and try try to improve our chances or things of that nature. So, just a follow-up status, of course, we are looking at $85 million, windowed that down, uh, but $85 million in facilities improvements under consideration. Uh, we submitted that to the Department of Ed in March and they turned it around actually in 27 days, which was actually really, really fast. And in my whole career, nothing ever got turned around that fast for that. Um, and it would require a building bond referendum. If we run a referendum in 2025, it'd be the first one since April 23rd of 96. So, it'd be 29 years and 7 months since we actually asked the community for uh additional dollars for facilities. And again, uh, over the last 18 years, we built additional facilities about 370,000 square feet. But um we've done that and paid for that with about $4.5 million revenue stream amount of existing revenue. So it's taxes people are already paying but we weren't asking for more. So our initial bond and construction plan was for the 85 million is was to look at and it's kind of traditional for districts that sell sell bond issues is for the most part I mean unless they're really big but for the most part they sell the 85 the all the bonds at once. And so we we kind of had it set up to do and try to maximize that, but sell 85 million in one bond issue if we would run a traditional bonding option and run a referendum that was passed in November 25. And so the first payment would go on the 25 pay 26 levy even though the referendum election is after the preliminary levy. If you pass a successful referendum, you can add things to your final levy if a referendum is passed. So that was the assumption would be that okay let's put it on and we'll have the first payment go on the 25 pay 26 levy and and that bond design structure um you know we try to make it as modest as possible. It would have had it would have a 2.64% increase on the 25 pay 26 overall levy. Um and of course that would be in addition to any other increases of existing levies for operating referendum operating capital um if we have some long-term maintenance bonding etc. Um the um the and the under that plan though the idea was okay and we'll just start in with everything as and just get going on all and uh it was uh design and engineering would start November 25 after an election and we'd work it to complete all the projects by September 2028 about 2.5 years from start to finish and that would we worked it down and we worked on the bond design and try to minimize payments and that came in at four $4.99 per month on a $500,000 medium home. So, um, pretty, you know, hopefully knock on wood. I mean, yeah, it's reasonable. Um, I just bought a a latte over at Starbucks over there in Shorewood and it was it was, you know, $5.76, you know, so um about the price of a latte, but um, but still was it would be a t tax increase. And so, again, this is the chart that shows kind of the breakdown of of who who basically who pays the freight. uh in our district, we don't have a lot of big corporations that don't vote in big, you know, we don't have a big paper mill or, you know, a bunch of, you know, big corporate headquarters or warehouses or things like that or power plants. So, uh about 89% of our levies are supported by residential properties, either homestead or non-homestead. Um so, the residential properties are in blue and then the non-homestead are in orange. Those are basically, you know, people who are snowbirds. So, um, and but just because they're snowbirds, they might have two places doesn't mean that they're they have, you know, that they're, you know, they also have, you know, a yacht docked in Bermuda or something like that. So, um, it's all p people's residences and, uh, that this was the, uh, bond structure that, uh, we were showing at that time and it would decline over time. Um, the other thing is that dotted line in in both of these things that I'm showing you, that dotted line is is you notice there's a graph on or the the axis on the left has the dollar payments for the levy. The axis on the right has net tax capacity. In other words, what's the value that's going to be generating tax money and we assume no increase in in in other words that and that's that number on the right is generated net tax capacity based on housing stock value. And we assume over this whole thing no housing stock value in time. If if that line was bending up as you look to the right, uh that would mean that there would be more people uh more houses um to be able to spread the taxes over. So that would help to over time lower how much every individual house is paying because it's being spread among more. But we just assumed just flat home values uh in in this whole thing because it's the most conservative. And that came up with the u uh you know working with Baird uh they they calculated this out for us and it came up with the uh the annual uh net tax impact uh uh and then the monthly net tax impact and again it's $4.99 and uh um and then for the average home price is $841 per month about $60 per year and about $101 per year for those two. But it's like there's continued economic uncertainties. State of Minnesota budget troubles you know for at least the next four years are pretty pretty rough. And um uh you know again the deficits about as big as the deficit was after the great recession for the next the two bianiums that followed the great recession back in 2009 right so they're going to we're going to have some struggles there. Um, and then we had $3.7 million in budget reductions and roughly five million of reductions for 26 uh after an 18-year run where the community was used to us not having budget reductions. It wasn't even on the radar. Um, and of course, we'll work to balance 27, you know, so there might be some budget adjustments there that we're going to have to do. And then the fir, you know, just macro wise, the first quarter 2025 was reported that for GDP at the federal government level was a minus.3 contraction. Um, and then there's still the tariff uncertainty working its way through the economy. So, all that stuff is just kind of turmoil. It's like what's going to happen? You know, small businesses are, you know, how much am I going to pay for things I'm selling and but they're coming from, you know, Thailand or wherever. Um, so it's like just looking at that, it's like, well, is there a different can we could we do try something different? Can we, you know, think our way out of this, so to speak. So just to try to think outside the box thinking and it's not it's something actually that have done in the past but in terms of this situation um and we've employed outside the box thinking regarding bonding for construction projects over the last two decades. You know we stayed within our $2 million annual revenue stream from operating capital and our existing $2.5 million lease levy. and and to stay in that stay at those levels, you have to work to restructure bonds or you wait to pay off a bond and then when that payment drops off, you know, you you you can slide another payment in behind it, but stay within that level. And kind of like on a on a smaller scale, I kind of use the use a metaphor of a family that has two cars and they can only afford one car payment at a time. And let's say you have a 400,000 400,000 $400 car payment and you know they're paying it off at $400 a month and they got two cars. Well, they get that car paid off. It's like, okay, now the old car can be replaced. So, the the one payment drops off, so I can replace the the old car with a new car and have another $400 car payment. And so, you're still paying the same amount, but it's not impacting the rest of your home budget, right? And so, you still can buy the same amount of groceries and stuff because you're paying the same amount to pay your two cars off over time. So, it's just kind of it's similar just kind of similar to that. Um, so you know, we look at and and with bonds, we can actually structure payments of different sizes. We can time construction. Uh, so you know, let's if we look at spreading things out a little bit, it makes a difference on when you need the money. And there's nothing that says you have to bond for it all at one time. But we we did $108 million with $4.5 million, you know, staying staying within that thing. 370,000 square feet of building space. Um, so we can apply all those same strategies to mitigate $85 million on our taxpayers. Timing of projects, timing of bond issuance, and spreading design and construction out. So, we were able to to we were able to come up with and to design and it is legitimate a no net tax impact option. And the reason I say no net tax impact is because people are you can't tell people, well, we're buying doing $85 million worth of bonds and you're not paying taxes. you. Yeah, of course you're paying them off, but the point is is we're asking people to pay the same for long for what we have outstanding on our geo bonds, but not more than what they're currently paying. And um so bottom line is is what we would need to do is look at still starting project design and engineering starts in November 25, but then stretch the construction out to three and a half years. Do it do it in sequence instead of not so much all at once. And um so what that would take is we would you know assuming a a positive uh a positive election result we'd do a $5 million bond issue in February of 2026 uh to fund a design of MME and MMW. So we that first payment would not fall actually until the following year. And then we would all then we would also so we would break ground about June 26. We'd do a $50 million bond issue in June to fund the construction of those two projects. Those are the two most significant projects and they'll take the most time but they're probably also probably have the most urgency of of all the projects. Um and uh so we would start construction in June of 26 and then uh we would be able to complete them about you know 14 to 15 months should be should be sufficient doing them simultaneously and finish them in September 2027. So and meanwhile those those two bonds would have their payments start coming on onto the levy. Uh, and meanwhile, there's other payments that are dropping off that you'll see on a chart that I'll show you after I go through this slide here. But um then in October 27th, so after we finish those, we'll start designing the all the other projects, the elementary school small group rooms, the uh gymnasium at Deep Haven, the media center at um at Minwashed, music room at at Groland, and um and then uh so we'll get those designed and then what we'll do is it's the same thing. We'll start construction in June after school's out. And so we'll issue another 27 million bond for the construction part of it in June of 28. Um and um then what we would do is construct those from June of 28 and they'd be completed no later than August 29, but those projects are smaller and probably would be completed in 6 to 8 months. So they might be completed more in uh February, March. So be completed well before August 29th in September 2029. But basically what we're doing is we're stretching it out. So by doing that we're spreading construction out and allows us to break the bonding apart into four tanches and we time the sales uh for the new payments to come onto the general obligation bond payment levy as other of for LTM are coming off and there so the result of that is there's no tax increase from a successful 2025 $80 million bond referendum on the 25 pay 26 levy because the first payments on that bond are starting in the 26 pay 27 levy. because of the way we timed and designed the bonds. So, what happens is and it is $2.62 for a $500,000 home for all this stuff, but it's it's being offset by declining bond payments on our long-term facility maintenance bonds. So, the net impact is that we've been asking people to pay a certain amount and they'll still pay the certain amount going forward, you know. So, again, like my car car analogy that we're staying staying within that level. So the net impact to them is is zero. They're still we're still asking them for the same amount. So um I kind of went through the slide actually before I got to it. Um but other bond payments are declining. So here is the slide that the next two slides are the ones that probably make it the easiest to understand. Um the uh the TAN bonds are all long-term general obligation long-term bonds. And that's where we're going to be at when we get finished with the 25 pay 26 levy for um fiscal year 27. Well, um we would be slotting in the four different bonds uh tranches. We got salmon, light blue, uh gray, and orange. Uh orange is gold orange um that we would slot in at these times. So those are the actual bond payment designs and and we can we can structure them. Again, it's not like a home mortgage where you pretty much get a home mortgage and you have that same payment for 30 years. With with municipal bonds, we can say, "Hey, we want to pay this much in this year, this much in the next year, and this much in the next year." Again, this is also then not assuming any future increase in additional building construction to further lower the amount per person that that is being paid. So, we get the most conservative assumption. But the next result, because we're just staying flat, is we're asking people not to pay more than they were paying in 2027 for long-term general for for general obligation bonds. And so we slot this in and then eventually it drops down. The other thing is is um right now interest rates are high and one can never say never, but eventually interest rates will drop. We have different bonds that we actually can restructure and lower the interest payment and work to even lower these payments uh continue, you know, further. The other aspect of this is um so if we're not ever we're not asking for more money than people are payingly are currently paying um it gives us a little bit more of a of of some keeps some powder dry for operating referendum but be calculates it out that's this is the way this shows it. So, so your tax impact doing that and we have the ability to do that because we have the ability to determine when we're going to sell the bonds and how we're going to structure the bonds. And so then, so we have the ability just like we've done all the years with the bonds that we did with the internal dollars to keep those payments at a certain level. And if we keep a payment at a certain level, the net increase across the board for for general obligation bonds is zero. It just is. That's the math. So, um, there's no net increase at at at the median home price. There's no increase at the average home price. There's no increase at at the farther end up the scale. So, um, and and again, Barrett helped me calculate this stuff. Their name's on these. I mean, they're they're, you know, their name, their reputation, they're, you know, they this would not be on here if it wasn't possible, you know, and I wouldn't be presenting it to you if it wasn't possible. The the other thing is is um I actually worked as a private citizen in Wakonia 10 years ago and we did something basically identical to this. I actually took it to the school board and then they took it to Aaylor's and fine-tuned it. But uh and I was a co-chair of their committee for their 75 or $73 million building bond back then um on busman's holiday kind of thing for me and um uh this is what we were went to the public with and presented you know. So this is not something new. It's different than what's normal, but it's not something new that hasn't ever been done. Um, so the thing about it is is it's an option. It's respectful to taxpayers in uncertain economic times. I think it's it's really important also to keep the keep our powder dry for a future operating referendum election if that opportunity ever materializes, whether that's for $300 or $500 or $100. you know, in in while we were doing our 18-year run, we went to the op we went to the public for operating dollars twice in 200 and seven in 2015 and you know that's where we asked for more dollars both times but it was for operations but the other thing is is ironically in 2007 I uh um that was in the fall 2007 when I walked in the door I mean one of the first things that Dr. Peterson showed me was a a survey from uh Bill Morris at the time. Bill Morris was doing with Peter Leman on the operating referendum for 2006. We needed to run an operating referendum because otherwise there's going to be more big budget cuts. You know that you could you know that graph would not be look like that. And he I started on April Fool's Day of 2007, but he showed that to me and uh it was 6040 against for for a $436 about a $4 million tax increase. And as I started getting, you know, acclimated to the district and seeing what was doing what they were doing at that time, we were spending $4 million a year on pay as you go long-term maintenance. And so this is similar but different. But we already we were levying for $4 million a year on pay pay as you go long-term facility maintenance. I wrote up a a proposal of Dr. Peterson. I still have the slides, so I I can dig them dig them out and prove them to you. Um but um I came up with this the idea of why are we bonding for I'm sorry why are we doing pay as you go uh for stuff that's going to last 30 years or 40 years. You know when we're doing these big replacement projects, you know, the the the public world or the rest of the world bonds for long-term capital improvements. So, I I put together this proposal that if we bond for long-term capital improvements, the pay as you go levy for long-term maintenance is going to drop by four million and then we can ask them to raise our operating referendum $436 a kitten for$4 million. And so, I had two SL basically two bar charts saying, okay, well, this is where these are and this one's going down and this one will go up and you're at the same level. So we did a tax neutral campaign for operating referendum at that time because we could and we passed that one with something like 6535. It flipped from 6040 against to 6535 in favor. Um so the thing is is this is where we're saying bonding to bonding. We're not asking you for more for bonding but we're ask it's very similar in that we're saying you're paying this much. We're not asking you to pay more. We're actually just to pay the same amount longer for these bonds. So, that's the that's the concept. Um, you know, and again, any future referendum election that we would run, uh, you know, if if you run a referendum for $300 per kid, we need that every year. Well, that, you know, that's $4 million by itself, you know, so that's much bigger even than these bond payments. But, but this community really supports, you know, our programs. And um so this is a situation where first time in 30 years we were saying you're spending this much for your facilities every year uh to pay off the bonds that we've done to maintain them and we want to stay at that level but put these additional improvements in. So it gives you another option to think about. So, one quick comment. We asked our uh survey partner about this process and the thought of getting gathering information over the summer and he said, "I I'm going to save you money. If there's no tax increase, the likelihood of this passing is very, very high and it's not even worth going back and asking the community for it." He would help us in the fall should the board decide to put this on the ballot, gathering information about what the community needed to hear during the communication process. But going from where the support we had at $5 a month to this, he just said it's not a good use of taxpayer funds to pay for a survey. Okay. Yes, Camry. I feel like we have some good news finally. It just feels like positive to me, right? on these referendums we've had before, sometimes the wording on the ballot is confusing, even if it says zero. And I saw in that last slide there was something that said 9% something at the top. Um that 9 point pay 2026. I would just hope there was be something not like that that would show up on the ballot. Oh, that that doesn't that just that numbers on there to demonstrate that the uh the tax rate um the tax rate stays the same. That's another way to say there's zero increase. Okay. On the bonds on the bonds that we're talking about, but the ballot would say by voting yes, you are voting for a tax increase. So, we would have to make sure that that was very clear to But thank you for all of the number. I mean, that is just it's if like doc Dr. Law said it's it's nice to hear that we wouldn't have to use taxpayer money to go back out for a survey if this is more likely to be voted on. Yes. So, thank you for the numbers. And and then if if if we would go out and people would do it, we darn well have to go through and execute the plan and make it be that way. But the thing is, if you execute the plan, it's going to be that way. Okay. Senator Swisitzki had introduced some legislation to change that ballot language. Have we tracked that? I have not. That might be where it took him back. I I don't know where that's at. I In fact, I didn't even know that was all there. He was He was trying to change the language so when it is tax neutral, it wouldn't show up as you're paying an increase. So, look into it. We might want to ask that. Okay, Dan, your hand was up. Yeah, I see I see a lot of benefits to this. Um the the first place I'm starting is the the last time we did a finance committee meeting, there was a lot of consternation about timing of the board approval of a bond measure. If we were proposing a net tax increase on people, was uh an approval as late as August going to give us enough time to message that and win people over? And I assume that we're much more confident in August timing given this approach, right? Yeah. I mean, but but it is something where you really got to sit down and talk with people about. I mean, so we we really would have to put some elbow elbow grease into it because it it takes a while. And of course, the first thing is like the the average person go really, you know, so, you know, we have to we have to put time into it in that regard. Well, and I think we have a really good case study in that um based on the tech levy that we ran two years ago in 2023 in conjunction with the schoolboard election. And that, you know, gives credence to the fact that it makes a lot of sense to do this during a local election where the focus is on uh local elected positions and local issues. If we were to kick this down the road to a primary election or a general election next year, it would get lost in the noise of all the bigger picture things that are going on this year. We're going to have three school board positions on the ballot and hopefully those folks running for school board might be out there, you know, trumpeting this and speaking in favor of it. like I think all the candidates did in 2023. So, there's there's a lot of good reasons to to do this this fall. And I think the the 2023 tech levy case study is is a an encouraging sign. Um I have a comment and a question. My comment is I disagree with you. I don't often disagree with you, but I wouldn't call it wizardry because it sounds to me like it is experience and wisdom and smart financial design. I'm not disputing that you are a wizard, but I think this is this is something we can do. We can actually do and it's done well. And thank you to you and be for the elbow grease to put get us this far because I think it's uh it is exactly what we need in the current climate. Um my question is does this do anything negative to our long-term financial bonding or what else? I mean do we do we lose capacity that we need for long-term financial maintenance or long-term capital maintenance? I'm saying those terms. we in in in the 10-year plan that um we've approved, I'm already showing a pretty big drop off and uh soc and and and the the I'm showing a drop off, but I've been showing that for a while because even before we were doing this because you know, our district is 1.8 million square feet, but we've replaced so much stuff that I'm to be honest with you, I'm having a hard time finding more stuff to put on it. I'm not going to put stuff on it just to put on it. We're always going to have roofing. We're always going to have paving, but um the, you know, the the issue of needing more bonding in the future. We will need more long-term maintenance in the future, bonding, but it's going to be smaller numbers. Um it's going to be numbers that you can layer in as other other debt gets paid off. And um and so I don't I don't think it would limit us. The other question is is well, what can we do? Will we do another billing referendum? who we don't know. I mean, who knows? But, um, it's been 30 years. Will it be another 30 years? I don't know. But the thing is is the other other important point I'm just going to put up here is that assumes that we're not going to have any more building construction. And we've got infill going in all over the place. We go up one to one and a half% in in pro in additional properties added to the district. So from a from a this is a this is just a payment standpoint, but the individual homeowner um actually in if if we actually do this exact payment structure where our payments are flat and we stick with it as as the um as the property value increases, as more homes are built, large lots broken up into three, etc. um the individual homeowner technically that $262 or is going to drop to 250 240 230 because it's being spread among more people. So we're not going to be limiting ourselves to the long term in terms of our bonding capacity. And then we just had the rating call uh last week with uh Moody's on our smaller bonds that we're looking at issuing. Um and I told him that this might be something that's happening. And um you know, knock on wood, he he said we look like we're pretty stable. He was said said uh Kevin or Colin Paskki was his name. Um he said that we um uh look like we're stable and he thought that we're probably going to at least be able to keep our AAA this this long, you know, but every bond issue you make is makes a difference. um also look the condition of the of the of the um of the state, you know, so who knows? But the but the point being is he wasn't concerned about us like right now when I mentioned $85 million, but you know, we have this tax neutral proposal and it it didn't raise he didn't raise like oh my god, you can't do that, you know, or you're you do that, you're you say you're going to do that, you're going to you're going to lose everything. So, and the thing is we wouldn't lose everything anyway. worst case we drop down to double A1, you know. Um, but the point being is is doing this doesn't really prohibit or tie any futures board's hands to what they need to do. But, um, you know, if you look at where we're at from a long-term facility maintenance standpoint, uh, really starting to to to ramp down on that to just kind of some real core things because we're in a state of good repair and the the fact that we haven't done any other long-term bonds in a long time. I mean, it's this is as good a time as any to slot in a chunk of of bonding. Thanks, Dan. Yeah, I mean, my my assumption as far as the negatives go is, you know, we're we're to reduce the impact on our community. It's going to be an impact over a slightly greater period of time. We're going to play slightly more amount of interest to spread it out like that, but it's something we'll actually be able to get done and improve our buildings. Um, forgive my ignorance on this question, but the the the payments for all of these bonds that we're seeing up on the screen, does that come out of operating? No, that's a separate levy. It's a separate It's a separate levy. So, general obligation levy that we have to do with the extra additional 5% on. Okay. It's for bond. So, this is all bond payments. This is But those bond payments don't come out they're they're not part of the the fund where we're challenged right now. Correct. Operating. They're not part of that fund. They come out of the debt service fund. Okay. Y correct. So this is all out of the debt all self-contained in the debt service fund. It's a whole separate levy. Yeah. So I'd be I'd be more concerned if we were reducing our capacity to contribute to our unassigned fund balance or something like that. But Right. Yes. This this this happens all outside of the big operating fund. Yeah. That's correct. But we will need to be very clear about that with the community also because otherwise we're going to get into the conversation of well how come you're not using that money for salaries or whatever that we have right there's still going to be communication and you know we haven't even been talking tonight but you know the reason this is possible one of the reasons this is possible in addition to your tactical brilliance is that we have reduced where we started. I mean, this was a package that has already been right-sized three times from where the facility started. And so, we're down to something where we are get we are doing the most with the least trying to trying to do a really good costefficient uh capital project. Mhm. Okay. The next step for this based on board support and certainly there's an opportunity to not put this on the agenda but would be a meeting in August to make the final decision on this to vote on it and then the pre-work considering a campaign we would do either way because we wouldn't wait till August. But the next board decision would be in August to say with everything we know right now, it has zero tax impact. Do we want to give the voters a chance to weigh in on this? And and we have to do that before August 12th by state statute. So So if we would call an election, it has to be um before August 12th because it has to be a minimum of 84 days before the election. Yeah. Okay. Does that fit with our August calendar right now? We'll do a special meeting for it, but we'll really advertise it so people know it's coming. And the good news is it'll be the only thing that we're talking about at that board meeting and we'll probably do it like August 12th. Yeah. As long as we're at at the buzzer, that's good. Yeah. Okay. Awesome. Great. All right. One more item on our agenda tonight is cell phone use survey results. Mr. Chair, members of the board, uh, one of the board goals is that we need to survey our parents and gather their opinions on things that are important to them. Uh, one of the things we kicked off the year with was a letter that I wrote to the community saying that our current cell phone practice is that at elementary school, we encourage families not to send cell phones or smartwatches and not have them be part of school. Our middle school practice is bring it but don't bring it out from bell to bell. And in high school you can have cell phones but don't have them in uh interrupt the instructional space. And that's what our policy says. We sent those surveys out to the community and to our staff particularly at the high school but to all of our staff to weigh in on that and our high school students. And we have the results of those surveys tonight. Our goal is to preview these survey results tonight um based on the results of this survey, make any changes and bring those back again in June and then formally approve them in August. You will see that uh the recommended changes are fairly minimal. Executive Director Getty. Thank you, Superintendent Law, Mr. Chair, members of the board. So, we put together a survey. Um we deployed it in May. We had three surveys. It was the same survey but given to three different audiences. So we surveyed all parents. We offered the opportunity for that. MHS students and all staff. For the parent survey. You can see we had 2259 respondents. For the student survey, 1515 respondents. That was uh the MHS leadership was wonderful. They um they did that all in one hour of one day and said, "You have this opportunity." And and we had a great turnout. And then for staff, 495 staff respondents. And that's a really big chunk for staff, too. Um, so the first question on the survey, and I hope all of you took it, was uh just a general question. We introduced how we manage student cell phone use. And then we said, you know, based on this is what we do at elementary, this is what we do at middle school, this is what we do at high school. Do you agree or disagree that the overall current practices regarding this um are working well throughout the school district and should continue as they are? and 43% agreed, 30% disagreed and 100% and this was parents said I don't know. For students it was 60% agree and for staff it was 25% agree. So that was a basic question but then we broke it down by learning level and said okay parents what do you think? This is what we do at the elementary level. We don't we don't prevent but we do discourage elementary students from bringing these cell phones or other electronic devices to school provided they're not accessed at school and they're kept outside of class in a backpack or locker. Um, and 62% of parents agreed, oops, uh, 60% of students agreed and 51% of staff agreed that what we're currently doing works for them. And then we said and really listed all the reasons that we've heard over the years about the reasons that elementary students on this one should not be allowed cell phones at school and let people whether they said they wanted they thought it was a good idea or not. for these different individual reasons, how do you feel about this? And these were the percentages of people, parents, students, and staff that agreed with these statements. So even if they thought, yeah, I think they should be able to take it to school when they went through these individual items, they might have actually disagreed with some of that. And I think we wanted people to feel that conflict because we feel that conflict. We hear both sides of it. And we agree with some of it, don't agree with some of it, but then we have to come up with policy and practices. So they're disruptive to the class environment and students learning process. You can see the breakdown there. It's not it's not that disperate, although um staff hire for saying that. Um they encourage social isolation. Again, um sort of consistent. They increase cyber bullying and other social media pressures. Both parents and staff felt that was a stronger thing. One in three students felt that happens at the elementary level. And that's not a lot of students are on social media in the elementary level is what we heard from high school students in the survey. The use of students social media at school has a negative impact on students mental health and well-being. Again, a lower number that we see there from the students and again feeling that at the elementary level that's not necessarily um what we experienced. And then there a distraction for students. Um staff in particular felt that this was high but both all three groups saw that this was an issue. and then they can be easily misplaced, lost or stolen. And that was, you know, about average. And then reasons that cell phones should be allowed at the elementary level. Um students in particular, if you look down that middle column had strong reasons. Uh they allow parents to keep track of their students. They said, you know, three out of four felt that or two out of three felt that was important. But for parents and staff, it was much slower. They allow students to stay in touch with their parents in an emergency. again students and these were high school students remembering back to their elementary years. It was a higher percentage. They may be needed for a medical situation. That was something all we're aware of. We do allow um special situations and so you work with a principal on those. They provide a social outlet when students are feeling insecure or lonely. Um you can see 1% of parents think that that's important at the elementary level. almost no staff and students while it's only 15% is significantly higher than both parents and staff on that one. So felt like that was interesting. I think all the ones that were outliers were really interesting to look at. They're a part of daily life for many people and students should learn to use them responsibly. Again, students felt like well even at the elementary level start them early. There was one comment in there that said these are addictive you know you can teach people how to use them. Then we uh asked about the middle school level. And at the middle school level, we allow students to access their cell phones and devices before and after school, but not during passing time, not during lunch. And that's consistent at both middle schools. 60% of parents agreed with this uh practice. Uh 63% of high school students agreed with this practice for middle school and 58% of staff agreed. If you remember those initial slides, it was a lot lower. So interesting as you get to the learning levels. So then again to these questions, reasons to not allow cell phones at middle school. Um a little more consistent across the disruptive although higher for the staff and you'll see that as we get to high school too. Just higher distraction because there's more of them. They encouraged social isolation for students. Again staff felt that was a a stronger thing. They increased cyber bullying. Staff were a little stronger. Parents and students were they validated that. You know it's one in three or almost one and two. The use of students social media has a negative impact on students mental health and well-being. Two out of three staff um not quite half of parents and students felt that way. They're a distraction for students. They all acknowledge that was an issue and staff in particular. Um they can be easily misplaced, lost or stolen. Staff were more concerned um why cell phones should be allowed at the middle school level. They allow parents to keep track of their students. Again, look at that student column. 76%. They allow students and parents to stay in touch with each other. Students 82%, parents 26%. And staff 19%. They may be needed for a medical situation. Parents 3%, staff 31%, students 72%. They provide a social outlet. Um, parents 2%, that surprised me. Staff 3% um and students 33%. So again, just that difference in it. um they're a part of daily life for many and students should learn to use them responsibly. Again, it was interesting the high school students were trying to remember back, right? And so a lot of their comments when they did their open-ended comments, they talked a lot about, well, middle school's when you first get your phone typically, and it'd be good to learn how to balance use it. There were a lot of people talking about that high school. So, uh parents, do you disagree or agree with the way that we allow students to have cell phones at school? They can have them before or after school during passing time and during lunch but not during class time. At least that's been the practice generally. 49% of parents agreed, 74% of students agreed. 38% of staff agreed, but there were a lot that said I don't know. So, it really wasn't a ton more that disagreed. It was close. Um, so here's the questions. Um, why not cell phones at high school? They're disruptive to the class environment and students learning process. Staff felt strongly about that. They encouraged social isolation for students. Um not students didn't didn't say that. Uh staff definitely parents one and three. They increased cyber bullying and other social media pressures. Uh one out of five students and what two out of three staff felt that way. The use of students social media at school has a negative impact on students mental health and well-being. Staff felt that more strongly than students. What one in five? They're a distraction for students. I think all acknowledged it, but staff in particular, and they really are the ones that have to manage it in the classrooms or that hear about it from their colleagues that they're managing it. Um, they're easily misplaced, lost, or stolen. And then why should they be allowed? Check out the second column. So, I just that was off the chart. Like, they allow parents to keep track of their students. 81% of students. And you think about it like if you if you go to a coffee shop, any of us, and we're waiting for somebody that we're going to meet there and we don't have a book with us or something. Um, not many people just sit and look straight ahead, you know, pick up your phone and that's your friend, you know, that's your your thing keeping you occupied. And I think a lot of students expressed something similar to that, like that's that's what I do when I need to have something. They allow students and parents to stay in touch with each other in an emergency. 90% of students, nine out of 10 high school students who took this. They may be needed for a medical situation. They provide a social outlet when students are feeling insecure or lonely. That's a big different number. Parents and staff, 4% students, 47%. And again, that's that's your friend, right? That's your safety net. They're part of daily life. 73% say students. So, this was interesting. So before I guess I get to these, I'm going to say that then we had about 200 open-ended comments for each section where we said other and somebody could add something. But then at the end where we gave that big bucket of what else do you want to tell us? There were 877 comments from parents. There were a couple hundred comments from staff. There were a couple hundred comments from students. So took all of those and worked first with our AI tool and then did some stuff as well with chat GPT after peeling out some of the sensitive pieces of the data. um because it just let me do a little bit more and um asked it to give us to give us from this data first by parent for all these different learning levels then by student then by staff separately um what are the sentiments themes and solutions that were offered in these and so then I got buckets of information with that and then put it all back in and said what are the commonly agreed upon solutions from these three sets of data across parents, students and staff together. Um, and that was pretty interesting. It was It's a fun process to work through some of the AI tools and to see what it can do and where it gets challenged or where it tells you you didn't line this up right. So, so I'm going to struggle with it, but I'll do it for you and I'll try again. So, here's where we came up with for elementary level commonly agreed upon solutions from open-ended comments from parents, students, and staff. Um, and I'll read some of the reasons that it came up with for why or why it it chose this. uh maintain and strengthen the existing policy was a common theme and it said all groups generally support current restrictions with calls for stricter enforcement. Store devices and backpacks or lockers. All stakeholders support keeping devices out of reach during school hours. This is again elementary level. Allow smart watches and similar devices only. Uh preferred for GPS tracking and limited communication suggested by both parents and staff. This wasn't commented on as much by students. Casebyase exceptions for medical, IEP, or family specific needs. This was endorsed by students, parents, and staff alike. Um, and then, um, middle school level, enforce consistent schoolwide policy was the number one most commonly agreed upon by all those three constituency groups because of strong engagement that inconsistency and enforcement weakens effectiveness. uh restrict use to before and after school. There was broad consensus among parents, students, and staff for non-class time usage. Students expressed preference to use at lunch and passing time. Also, these are high school students remembering back to middle school, but that was not agreed upon by either staff or parents, so I didn't include it on the screen. Oops, let's go back. Um, store your phones. Store phones during class time in lockers or backpacks. uh recommended by all groups to reduce distraction, digital citizenship education. I thought that was interesting and it was in particular mentioned by staff and students, teach responsible phone use consequences and self-regulation. Uh and then case by case exceptions for medical needs, IEP or family specific needs. And that was endorsed by all three groups. Here's the high school. Consistent enforcement of current practices across classrooms, a universal desire to ensure fairness and clarity. Now for staff and parents, this was to say um they shouldn't be used in class. For most of students, it was some of my teachers let me do this after I finish my work. I wish it was consistent across. But again, they all had a desire for consistency. That was a theme. Uh restrict use to non-classroom time lunch passing time before and after school. Um that was shared by students, parents, and staff as a balanced solution. Like if you're like don't ban them, I think was the student concern. And for parents and staff, they felt like what we're doing is working. And it gives students enough access to their phones that if they are coordinating ride shares or after school activities or, you know, need to get in touch with a a parent about picking up a younger sibling or something that they have those opportunities to do that. Allow expect allow with expectation of maturity and self-regulation with consequences for misuse. So students in this emphasized autonomy and staff and parents emphasized accountability. So it was the allow it but even students said just take them away if somebody's misusing this. And students in particular mentioned kids taking photos or videos of kids that didn't want those photos or videos taken and they wanted consequences for that. But they also wanted to be rewarded or appreciated in their classroom if they were not one of the ones not abusing it. whereas staff and parents wanted students if they're going to have these devices to use them responsibly. So, I think that that was a that was a theme. Uh an option for case by case um exceptions as in some of the other ones. And then there was some agreement of use as an academic tool with teacher permission. Students and some staff supported phones as learning tools as appropriate. It was not the majority of staff, but it was the majority of students. And parents didn't weigh in on this. That wasn't a theme that came up. So, those were the pieces that we got out of the survey and it was really fun to play with AI and uh learn a little bit more about how it thinks and how you can think with it and how it's a good teaching tool. But it also was really um amazing that we got such great responses. This is something that people are really passionate about. So, I hope it helps to fuel your discussion. Thank you. Uh discussion. Oh, should I leave this in in case you guys want to refer back? Okay. Our our next step will be to bring back this presentation briefly and our current policy to the June meeting for another discussion. So, this is just a chance uh we we will create a one-page or a simple summary to share with all parents in the district and students that said you took the survey, here's what we heard. Um, and I mean there's a lot of alignment with our current practice with an opportunity possibly for our advantage policy students who have done good work to say how do we how do we address the high school piece of this? So that's next steps and then I'd open up for discussion. Yeah, I mean I was struck by some big differences on the groups like the staff having much stronger negative associations and I suppose that I can I can imagine reasons why that might be if they're the ones who are stuck having to manage the policy on a daily basis with differing differing numbers of compliant uh students. But um and not surprised that students had different views than staff and parents. But um uh those align with the informal survey of my household. I was I was I was a little surprised at how closely aligned parents and teachers were. I thought there was going to be more separation there. I I'm glad we did the listening sessions because that was really helpful with hearing directly from students versus the survey from parents and staff. That was good timing. So, thanks Jackie. Sally, so this will give you a little insight into my parenting style. So, when I think about my kid sitting in the classroom surreptitiously looking at his phone, I'm thinking that is really disrespectful to the adult, right? So, that's where my brain goes first. When we talked to the middle schoolers in the lesson listening sessions, I didn't get the sense that they were concerned about a student themselves being distracted by the phone as much. They weren't thinking about the impact on the individual. I think that they were thinking about that when does the phone become a distraction to the classroom. And they did comment that it puts the teacher in a position of having to deal with it and that becomes a distraction, right? Um, so again, we're back to my view, which is that's disrespectful to the adults in the room, but I I appreciate also that how that's impacting a student's learning. So, so yes, double down on policy, probably figure out how we how we make it more effective and less intrusive in the classroom to have to deal with it. Yeah. Um, I just thought it was interesting. I wondered how many people taking the survey when they were responding about social media were thinking about social media globally versus social media during school hours and because that came up in our listening session and I feel like that has come up. Um Groveland did a whole parent reading together of the anxious generation and had a conversation about it with a bunch of different parents and that surfaced there also like do we think social media is a problem? Yes. Is it at school? Really, not that much. And so, it makes me wonder if some of those respondents weren't teasing the two things out into separate categories. I also thought that the elementary response is really interesting of allow smart watches but only in backpacks because that just means that elementary school kids are going to lose watches. So, I don't know how that really works. Um, one thing I wondered, were there any comments because this came up with the Groveland parent conversation about school time mode and like educating families about cuz like Apple watches big themes of it. I mean, I did look at every single comment. Some of them are pretty interesting. There was one that said, "My kid is texting me all day long from his smartwatch. Make him stop." Huh. Well, that's what I was wondering because that kind of came up in the Groveland conversation also is like do parents not know that Apple devices have a school time mode where they can't communicate? Well, I do think the comment about digital citizenship and maybe that works into that is about smart solutions not only for students but then also for parents. Do you know about these blocks that you can put on because there's great education that we can provide out there. Yeah. I because I think that would be an important piece for the community and and I think that would alleviate some um some concerns kind of from both is like if people just know how to use the technology then it's like less daunting. Um but I also thought it was interesting I recently had a because a kid said well I don't need to use my phone because I just email from my school iPad anyway if I have to tell my parents something. And I was like, okay. I hadn't thought about that piece either, but they do have their school iPads. And it makes me wonder like what the teachers were thinking when they were thinking using phones would help academically. Like why would that be superior to the districts iPad? So, I would just be curious about some of those things and kind of why people responded the way they did. But I'm glad our policies are kind of stable and working. Right. So, we'll hear about more more to come. All right. That's the that's the agenda. Thanks everybody. Thank you.