when this policy was implemented there was no specific language in the state statute that said you could have such priority placements in a policy this such language remains absent in the statute today however the statute also does not say that you cannot provide such priy placements and so it is clear that when the board passed this policy it took what you would call a loose constructionist interpretation of the law.

as a udina community member I really like to have the privilege to be kind of given uh some priority in the open enrollment process and and I I think that will further Advance the uh the relationship between the Ed City community and also the school dist District as well.

it's not whether my twins actually get into Elementary School it's going to be a struggle if we don't solve this it's going to be a struggle all the way up through High School whether or not we're going to be able to uh go to Ed so it's a decision that my wife and I have to make now is do we move.

the mde took a look at that in the statute and said that that is not a permissible preference or priority that the district can have in its policy the mde said um it's a preference that that's not required by the statute and they also said that it's not even allowable under the statute.

the mde went on though from there to say even if this is not um a prohibited preference being a school district of residence preference which is prohibited under the statute even if it's not that it again is not a required standard that a district can have and um or even is an allowable standard that the district can have.

the policy also impacts again our teachers who are not residents of the school district as far as not having preference and that's been something that was in previous policies and we've been in touch throughout the process with um representatives from Education Minnesota daa make them aware of that and keep them informed in the process.

part of what we reiterated at the policy level and um believe shared at the board level is support for field trips we recognize that this is an important part of the educational experience and our job is to wrestle with how to make this the most effective and safe process that we can.

that's the equity piece is just making sure that there is access to these trips for all students.

our Electronics policy now addresses drones so I think that's 21st century language drones are not drones are not permitted on school grounds but without I think that there's they would need to have prior approval.

we had over 2500 responders um the calendar is quite a topic um among many people and so we um devised some calendars based on the parameters we looked at the survey results we went back to the calendars that we had had um had developed and to see if there were some that really went against the survey results.

I've worked with a lot of committees and I thought that this committee was absolutely fabulous we really uh we weren't necessarily all on the same page but we all heard each other and that is really greatly appreciated.

we are doing work in every building in the district as we move forward with this referenda and so we thought it was important that we establish commonalities between the buildings look at how they compare from building to building and really approach everything that we're working on as part of the referenda initiatives as a districtwide approach to things.

I still worry that we are constraining ourselves.

the central element that remains critical is that we have as much flexibility in the design of the structure and the building as possible knowing that the personalized learning framework is going to be something that we're going to continue to grow um and expand upon.

the flexibility of those kind of spaces that we might have it labeled right now as a Creative Commons or an art room but maybe that looks a little bit different if the program changes.

part of our job in facilitating the design and the process is not to just take someone's um statement about what it's like today and the statement of well we don't know how we'd share room so don't do that and to take that at face value and say okay well we won't do it then it's to really look at where your opportunities are and to think about and compare it to other schools.

what we're currently approaching with the uh West Campus site is an additional 100 parking spaces which is about a 10% increase in parking on site we are looking at redefining how bus traffic works on the site so creating one common bus Corral to the um to the east side of the site as we come in.

our fields in this area are being uh replaced with Synthetic Turf to provide uh two additional lacrosse football fields in this area and baseball will be striped over the tops of those fields.