The Minnetonka Public Schools Foundation is honored to present for your approval our recommendation to award $136,150.41 in grants to 49 different grant applications across the district.

Something new this year is the recognition process. In the past we have had a ceremony where we have all of the recipients come and it's been a little bit of a burden with the schedule. Some schools get out at 2:40, some don't get out till 4:00. And so we're going to try to go into the schools this year and celebrate them with their students and their peers and we would love to have you join us.

This first package is about a $2.5 million estimated budget. We did have um a good a good uh turnout. Uh there were six bidders and the low bidder was Rachel Contracting LLC at $2,360,000. Uh that's about 100 Well, it is $140,000 below the estimate, so uh that of course will continue to be going into the project, but we're doing what we can to save money.

It's about uh 5.6% below the estimate and we were a little bit nervous with the price of diesel fuel in particular. Uh but we we've got a bit under budget, so it's the first one, so we're we're kind of like a steam train just starting to get going here.

As a committee, we took into consideration the required parameters, some that Superintendent Law just spoke to, such as contractual agreements, 184 teacher duty days, 170 student contact days, which allows us to provide three full professional learning days to our teachers, conference days, and the statutory requirement, an exception that actually allows us to begin before Labor Day in 2027 and 2028.

Although we did not have a unanimous vote to add Chinese Lunar New Year, we did have a majority, so the recommendation was brought forward to the board.

I just want to express that I am grateful for the time that people are spending acknowledging this need, and I appreciate too um Wong Law Sure you talking about the importance of this to to staff because that is something that hasn't been very prominent in the discussion up till now, and I I want to make sure that that's acknowledged as well. So, I think it's a good idea to take this back for more discussion because of the opportunity for that to advance the education.

What I've heard is what you kind of alluded to that it's really hard for working parents to have a Wednesday off and we have so many 40 weeks in January, and February, and March that it it I think feels like a challenge. And so I'm wondering if one of the things that we can do before we bring this back is if we can think of creative ways to offer support to families for those kind of extra, you know, I know we have some that have like full day camps um since this is not a federal holiday or something that's in the the contract, I don't know if there's a way to be creative around offering explorers or community ed something for parents who are working that would take it a kind of off their plate of figuring out child care for elementary.

I think one of the things we need to consider is whether or not we are going to consider this a sort of a permanent addition to the calendar or one of relative convenience for lack of better way of putting it.

I I I find it hard to distinguish between um you know, the relative meaning of a religious holiday and a cultural holiday. You know, I don't feel like it's appropriate for for me as a board member to sit in judgment of what somebody else's holiday means to them. So I just want to make sure that we're all being mindful of that and trusting these communities that when they tell us a holiday is important to them and it holds meaning and that they want to be able to celebrate it that we really take that to heart and and listen.