[Music] aoy minetonka I'm David law superintendent of minetonka schools thank you for joining us for this episode of our district podcast aoi motanka the new school Year is off to a strong start and we have an important year ahead of us today we're talking with two of our school board members about where we are and where we're going I think it's helpful for our listeners to get a glimpse from behind the scenes of how the school board is involved in the governance of the district and supportive of our operational efforts we'll discuss the Schoolboard goals for the district and the strides we're making in support of those goals the long-term planning process and efforts for our minona schools and our financial Outlook joining me here our school board chair Megan singer and Schoolboard Treasurer Dan Olen thank you both for being here let's start by please tell us a little bit about who you are and your connection to the monotona school district I'm Megan singer um I am the current Schoolboard chair I'm in my third year on the school board and I also have two kids in the district I have a third grader and a seventh grader this year two boys what's been your involvement with the district prior to the school board lots of sports so both my kids are in multiple Sports both through Community Ed and through some of the associated organizations and in the district and I've done some volunteer work with that and I did homebound instruction for the district for a few years and was a reserve teacher for a while thank you for both those things too Dan how about you what's your connection to the district uh also live in The District parent of two boys um Dan I'm the school board Treasurer so two boys at mmw we've lived in minetonka for seven years now probably moved here for the schools so it's been uh really awesome like growing into this community something you know over the Last 5 Years these are the least likely times a member of the public might consider running for this school board if you look at some of the challenges through the pandemic and just some of the issues we've had Society what prompted each of you to run for the school board well I think for me you know I'd been as a parent like unlike Megan having my kids in sports and and having that sort of connection in the district I'd kind of been on autopilot for a long time and uh then I started you know I started just getting a little a little frustrated with some things within the district and I met a lot of other parents who who shared my frustrations and who were looking to maybe make a little bit of change and get more involved and I think it's just through building those relationships with other parents and other folks in the community that you know realized I was you know willing to do this and it it'd be nice to you know pitch in and help out if people thought that that was something I could aw Megan um you know when I ran I had little ones mine were um you know in elementary school still and it was kind of just thinking about their future and how great the minona school system had had been and making sure that I wanted to have it continue being amazing for for the duration of their time in the district and their friends and our neighbors and I thought I could bring a little bit of a unique voice to the school board as I I was a full-time High School teacher for 12 years and so I thought that I could just bring kind of a different lens to some of the school board conversations because I I think that Excellence part of Excellence is being self-reflective and as a district looking at all the things we're doing well but also what are the things we can do better and how can we make these schools e even better for our kids well and thank you both for giving up your time one of the things that our listeners probably don't have a great understanding of us like what does a school board member do I get it all the time as a superintendent but what what do board members do between meetings or throughout the year um I can speak starting as the board chair uh that we really just have you as our employee so we do not do any of the day-to-day management of any of the schools uh when something arises in a school it's the school administration The District administration that handle it so we do the governance piece of it and we H help set the goals for the district that kind of guide your work and the work in the buildings and um as the chair I help determine what's going to be on the Schoolboard meeting agendas and respond to community members that might email or reach out um spend a lot of time reading through the board pack ET and the emails that we get from you every week so that we know what's going on in the district but I would say that's kind of the bulk of the time Dan anything to add as a first year board member well I think it to me the job is kind of just to listen a lot you know I mean yes we do the meetings we meet we usually meet twice a month we have committees that that we attend outside of those meetings so we can stay on top of of Finance or sped or The Association of Metro school districts or or or what have you but really like we're we're in this we're in this sort of position where we occupy this space between the community and the institution of minetonka public schools and I I really just you know we do have to vote we do have to make decisions but the the job in my opinion isn't to go in there with an opinion or an agenda it's to be a set of ears like listening to the needs of the community and then listening to the needs of you and your Administration and the teachers and kids in your building so that we can pull all of that information together and respond in the best way possible I would also just add to that we are a governing body so as each individual board member we don't have any power um we only have power as a unit and so if we are going to make a decision it can't be Megan wants to have sushi every every Friday in the school cafeteria and then she's going to do it because I don't have that power so I would have to convince everybody that that was a good budgetary idea and I am a sushi fan I'm not I'm I'm also a sushi fan but I don't I don't know if it's good for the budget but we would have to have a um a majority vote to make something like that happen so I I think one thing we try to do is like we you you alluded to how it's maybe more difficult to run for office and participate in in roles like this these days than than maybe it used to be and I think like I know I probably speak for Megan and speak for all the folks on the board like we pride ourselves in in being a a bunch of grown-ups and adults who are there to do the job and compromise and listen and just help make sure that you and minetonka schools have what you need well one of the things you've referenced and I think it's been since I've been here in my this my third year a priority to listen to and engage with the community what are some of the ways that this board gathers feedback from the community that come to mind well we the obvious is we do the surveys so everybody out there has received surveys in their email inbox and believe it or not we read every single comment that comes through in those surveys um sometimes 80 Pages worth correct yep um we do get you know phone calls and emails from the community um we are really trying to be more transparent about a lot of what we're doing so like we started live streaming these study sessions in the interest of just having people able to be involved and have it be accessible for folks who can't come to the meetings to um have a way to be informed in another way and you know we you know with you we've gone to the middle schools gone to the high schools done listening sessions with some of the kids in each of the buildings this year we're trying to double down on that and spend even more time with the kids in the high schools um set up some more Community listening events throughout the fall as we build through what the budget's going to look like for the next fiscal year so I think it's just you know if if someone reaches out to me I'll take a meeting or go have a coffee whenever somebody needs to if they need to to bend an ear or or have something they need to discuss it's just about being present and then you know if someone lets us know like hey there's you know here here's an idea of how you could reach people that maybe you're not doing yet just being open to suggestions because I'm sure I'm sure we're not doing it perfectly and there's more we want to do and we just we want to create as many of those opportunities as possible I think I think the cool thing about our board too is that so many of us have um feelers out in different parts of the community for those very informal conversations um you know whether it's sports or theater the place of employment I think once you're on the board for a little bit people know that and they will approach you and kind of just bring something up really informally and it's a really great way to connect I think with community members um in a uh less structured or less formal feeling way um I want to transition a little bit you hinted at this earlier but one of the things that that we do to build Community Trust and to measure progress is set goals how what what is the goal setting process how does it involve Community input how do community members know about it uh you know I've only I've only been in this role for half of school year right now so this is this this school year this fall is the first time I'm going to be able to engage in the full process so I've been on on the the back end of this where the board has sort of drafted a preliminary set of goals and then throughout the spring semester we spend a bunch of time just meeting and talking them over with uh around the board table in a study session uh in a formal session and hearing from the community about how we could change them too but Megan you can probably speak to like the Genesis of the goals bigger than better than I can um the the interesting thing about goals is they're never finished right so they are always kind of ever evolving and so I would I would say one thing is that we don't organically create new goals every single year we start with what we have and we use feedback that we get from folks in the community and staff members and all that to look at um maybe there are things we need to add or maybe there are measurables we need to change like an example I can think of is we were hearing a lot about nutrition services for a few years and as a result we put that into the goals very explicitly and now we have a nutrition advisory Council of parents working with the Nutrition department so um I would say that it's kind of cool in that way and that it's like a living working document that we take the feedback last fall we got a lot of feedback that the uh previous goals were a little confusing and so we spent some time just making them um easier to digest and and I think the timing has shifted also that that when you came in we really moved to um try to have the goals adopted earlier so that over the summer that teachers and administrators could be working on implementing the goals for the next year um rather than getting them mid year and already being in the school year and having to kind of adjust on the flag yeah the the one thing I'm like my takeaway from from everything you just said is again the board like as as a listening body for the community because it sounds like a lot of what you were talking about and what got funneled into this year's goals came from the community and Community needs and everything like that so really it's the folks watching the students the parents setting those goals for us letting us know what our direction should be as a district and then we we just get to crystallize it down we our goals have reflected what we've consistently heard from the community in terms of student mental health student wellness literacy academic Excellence meeting the needs of every learner long-term Financial stability one of the other goals that I'm going to lead into is facilities you know they came up my first year the second year we committed to start studying them and here we are there's something called a facility task force I know board members aren't part of that because we want it to be Community Driven what is a facility task force and what role will it play with the board well I think it kind of started at looking at the long-term facilities but then when we started looking more at the Middle School programming that was also something that kind of came up during that process that maybe some of our facilities weren't quite meeting the needs that we need them to going forward and so um we talked about how to look at that kind of holistically and with the budget and with all of the constraints that we have um so the facilities task force has uh District leadership it has community members and they've been going out to each of the different facilities buildings in our school district and looking very closely at um what is in each building currently and what it may need going forward to try to kind of think about that anticipatory piece making sure that the buildings are ready for the next 20 years and that they meet the needs of our students so that will come back to the board probably in November is a recommendation and the board will have six or eight months to consider what to do with that so there'll be a chance for the board to hear the recommendation and then again grab Community feedback through that process shifting gears to the other long-term plan financial stability public education around the state has struggled to keep up with the rising cost of Labor rising cost of utilities we have a board goal for long-term Financial stability one of the things that we've been hearing two questions I've heard from the public why didn't you see this coming and what can we do about it either one of you want to talk about did we see this coming we saw this coming I think if uh you talk with any of us you talk with Executive Director of Finance Paul Bourgeois we we'll let you know that we saw this coming we've got you I think the association of metropolitan school districts sent out like their election guide yeah over the weekend or or or this morning and it it goes into the budgetary issues that we've been seeing coming for nearly a decade like you alluded to it funding from the state on a per pupil level just doesn't keep up with inflation or costs the sped cross subsidy isn't there and you know one of the things that we've been fortunate enough to do as a community in minona is is ask our community to kick in some of those resources via property taxes to help us fund the programs and maintain this level of excellence and we've just hit the ceiling on our capacity to be able to ask the community for more and so now we're in a we're in a place in where not alone I think nearly every District in the Metro is facing the same sort of uh financial crunch that we are is is we really really need our legislators and our state government to to double down on fully funding public education and I would add that um as Dan alluded to we can't really increase Revenue like we don't have another source for bringing in money and so it forces us into a position of deficit spending and looking at our budget and where we can make you know shifts and changes and try to prioritize keeping it out of the classroom as much as possible but I think one of the other things that not everybody understands about school Finance is that we can't just take money from one place and put it another because there's um discrete categories that we have to stick to and you know the vast majority of our budget is people which is a good thing I mean that's the people that are working with the kids um so it it just makes it difficult to think think about um if we're looking at having to actually make some budget cuts uh doing that in a really strategic and responsible way to keep it as much as we can away from the classroom and from our kids and I know David you and and Paul and everyone in the Administration has been approaching these Cuts in a a sensitive and a as a humane way as possible and I think you know there there there's no way to get around like how how big some these Cuts might feel to some people um but we've got a really dedicated you know Community finance committee looking at these problems and meeting on a regular basis and I would just say that I know we've heard from a lot of parents about class sizes and things like that we want to continue hearing from parents to see not not only if there's anything they're noticing that's um that's become tougher because of it but also if they have any ideas because we're uh we're here to do whatever we can to to balance that budget in a responsible way but also just make it as least painful for the kids and the teachers as possible right and hope that going forward we can bring in more revenue and I think that that's something that people in the community need to know is that uh the best way to try to do that is to reach out to legislator Regis legislators um we have the case committee that will begin meeting here pretty soon that goes and works on trying to work with the um Representatives because they're the ones that would have to push something through yeah we make we we maintain and and David maintains a good relationship with all of our our representatives and legislators but the thing we consistently hear is that what's really really meaningful is when they hear from parents absolutely in their community so we we will be ramping up our case committee which is an advisory committee that works with the legislation to let them know they they want to make sure there's an investment and their children well as we're getting close to the end what's your favorite part of being a board member what gives you energy to come back and keep doing this either one of you for me I think it's just I kind of like found my community and people and Home in minetonka through doing this through knocking on people's doors and meeting a bunch of people that I would have never otherwise met and um I don't know it's a really F fulfilling fantastic way to to do some work and spend some time and and give back to the to the institution that's providing my kids with such a great education and that we want to just keep building it and like Megan said make sure that those opportunities are there for for kids for the next two three generations I think my favorite part is still when I get into the buildings um you know I was a full-time teacher and while I don't miss the grading and all that that was associated with it I really do miss being in schools on a regular basis because there's such energy and it's really cool seeing all the just amazing things that our kids do I mean they have crazy opportunities yes but they also produce just this like amazing body of work at every Lev level and it's just so fun to get in there and see how the teachers interact with the kids and how the administrators do and um it just has a great Vibe all around like when you get into a building it's just a very positive feeling I really enjoy it the kids the teachers that never failed to impress me like I I I don't know I don't know about you folks but when I was 16 18 I do not feel like I had myself together the way these kids do they're awesome it is and it is so fun to see kids when their spark is lit just having a great time well I want to thank both of you for giving your time to the school board giving your time to the community and our school system but also giving time for this podcast of AO Menat tanka and I want to thank you for joining us for this Schoolboard episode of a Hoy manat tanka we'll have more episodes to come and we'll see you around [Music]