thank you thank you guys questions [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] thank you thank you [Music] thank you [Music] thank you [Music] thank you thank you thank you thank you foreign thank you thank you and what the impacts might be I know you might not know 100 but what we're what you're looking at for again okay well I'll consider maybe with a policy Carter I think the change and so in Minnesota um employees public employees have the right to organize into our community units under the public employees Labor Relations Act um commonly referred to as hellra and Palmera also defines what is what's considered a Charming condition of employment in terms and conditions of employment are considered mandatory subjects of bargaining one of the policy changes that came out of this most recent session is that uh Staffing ratios were added as a term and condition of employment prior to this the number of personnel that an employer and public employer um was actually considered an inherent managerial rights and that has been changed under this new um policy to whereas stacking ring shows it's no longer an inherent managerial right meaning that it's now the subject of a mandatory subject of Harmony so sanctions applying to all public employees um and of course all School District employees the policy change also went up one step further in the case of School Employees and added adult to student ratios and classrooms and student to Personnel ratios to terms and conditions of employment and in a dinette for many years the school board has approved the class size you know a double two student ratios class items minimum and maximums within our school district but those things will now also be the subject of bargaining the last thing that was added under terms and conditions of employment is actually student testing which is something that hasn't been part of a mandatory subject of bargaining in the past maybe I'll ask director Woodard to actually talk about what financially impact yeah the financial impact at this point is as director Shaw mentioned is relatively unknown we're still Gathering data and making our best projections um Sonia covered the rest of the materials very friendly and comprehensively I'll just add that I believe that e-learning days and how we operate those other districts are also a tournament condition and also those terms and conditions apply to all of our own units I think the teachers unions are getting the headlines for this one but it applies to all groups [Music] great thank you the next piece I believe will go to both of you as well has to do with unemployment initiatives on the policy side of that so prior to May 28th um 2023 when this new model went into effect School term employees in the state of Minnesota so meet the people that work nine or ten months per year have not been eligible for unemployment insurance during the summer months and that that was changed during this last legend legislative session specifically for non-instructional employees and what we're hearing in the news a lot is hourly employees that's the language that they're using but deed which is the agency that oversees unemployment has been very clear that what they're they're really they are looking at it as instructional employees and non-instructional employees within a school district and so non-instructional employees will be eligible to apply for unemployment during the summer term of course um unemployment Minnesota decides whether or not they are eligible that is not something that our school district has any uh authority to make that determination so in the school district that not instructional employees typically means our paraprofessionals whether um uh classroom paraprofessionals or or special education career professionals our bus drivers um we have nine and ten month clerical positions within the school district we also have health services Associates within the school district that work on school term schedule and then although in a Dyno we subcontract for nutritionalist services in place in many school districts that would also include nutritional food service inquiries as well and so um what that means is that after the school year ends the people that fall in this category can apply for unemployment life unemployment workspring for all other employees throughout the state and then of course assuming that they don't have another job in the summer which may prevent them um from receiving unemployment they they'll likely be eligible for that as well and that includes Community Education education absolutely Dr Stanley so our nine month Community Education yeah so the way unemployment Works in terms of the compensation to the individual seeking that assistance it's based on their average weekly wages um for the previous calendar year um for a maximum of 12 weeks most employees will receive about 50 of their weekly wage to a maximum of 857 per week again for the 12 weeks and that would also apply to winter break and spring break I believe and not just the summer terms the district's maximum exposure per the eligible employee groups would probably be around 1.2 to 1.4 million dollars the state did appropriate a 135 million dollar fund to compensate school districts for this that fund is supposedly meant to last to fiscal year 2027. whether that's true or not or whether that will be enough funds is to be determined thank you both um my last item was the paid fan Paid Family Leave Act and I'm not sure who is the best um yes I I can I can speak to the policy portion of this so this one is set to go Bismillah um is set to go into effect on January 1 2026 so we still have a little time to figure out all the details but it really the idea is that they've been talking about this in the state for a number of years now is to set up a system that's similar to unemployment insurance for people to apply for wage benefits When um it's necessary for them to miss you know uh be absent from work for having it having a baby taking care of a family member for their own serious medical condition those are the the largest largest ones follows along very closely with the FMLA Family and Medical Leave Act which is a federal act however this of course provides wages as well family and they have MLA Federal Family Medical Leave Act provides for job protection and it provides for um your employer must continue your insurance just like you were working but is actually unpaid leave it doesn't provide any wage replacement during that time and so the Paid Family Medical Leave Act the Minnesota law actual also provides wage replacement in a very similar manner to unemployment insurance and it's the maximum length of paid benefits annually for an employee would be 20 weeks with a qualifying event um and the qualifying event would have to be at least seven days um absent and then all employees would be eligible for this benefit after not after they work for the employer for 90 days in terms of the financial impact the way this works is the state's going to set up a trust and the trust will be funded by employer and employee payroll deductions and so the maximum contribution from the employer will be point seven percent of all taxable wages that the employer pays out so for this school district that's going to be about eight hundred and thirty thousand dollars per year potentially that we would have to contribute to this trust thank you but we know that there are specific education related pieces of legislation that happen but this is good examples of how other parts of what is happening over at the Capitol will also affect our school and I didn't know I don't we're not going to have a budget conversation now but um I wonder if it would be helpful to just kind of explain the time frame of when things are going to be shown to the board as we're in budget planning mode right now absolutely timeline if you refresh the board book tomorrow at about noon or before end of day you'll see a budget document that details our bird process what happened at the legislator legislative session um excuse me and also each of our funds depicted in a uh the governmentally accepted accounting principles in that format so although details should be available tomorrow and there were some information presented at last week's special meeting so check that out as well okay thank you so at this time I'll open it up for questions if anybody has a question you can raise your hand will be very informal about this go ahead all right I have a question about this radio ratio stopping regarding the class sizes so who's gonna are you understand that now is the the board inside and now we'll be depending on if they unionized or how is how how it will what what how who will decide and not the size of the classes now so ultimately the school board approves the collective bargaining agreement that's brought before them so so the way it works is with all different employee groups within the school district is directive order to deny sit down and go through negotiations with the employee group with their with their designated team um following once we reach what's called a tentative agreement between the two teams then the employee group takes a vote and if they that vote passes it's called the ramification and then at that point the that proposed agreement goes to our school board for final approval the school board is of course included however all through the entire process they're updated they provide the financial parameters for the negotiation for our negotiations team and they will be a obviously included in any type of Staffing would show a discussion as well mine was my question was kind of similar around with that with the bargaining unit deciding testing what does that mean and does that mean if they decide you don't want to spend so many days doing testing we'll no longer do maps or we'll no longer do um fast Bridge or I mean what does that mean again so with the read act we legislation says that we are required to use in our particular case we use best for entity um so when it comes to our comprehensive literacy screening that that will need to continue we know that the Minnesota comprehensive assessments are required by state law so that will still have to continue we use other assessments right so um we capture data via Panorama for students social emotional well-being we capture that information we capture or we'll begin capturing um information starting with some schools and some grade levels for the cognitive abilities test the co-get really looking at talent development in natural abilities um and so those pieces are negotiable and we as as um director Saylor said um she mostly hurt in this particular case the part will be there as well um we'll continue to work with Union leadership to negotiate those pieces but when it comes to our literacy efforts that is now a state statute with the read act and so we will continue using are there any other questions sure I have a question about um so if you're able to recoup some of the funds that you've invested in letters what um is your plan to reinvest that in the school or do you have to go back to the education fund or do you work with them to create a new plan or do you expand your training and yeah so there's it's a great question and it will allow us to just continue to fund but really those funds would go come back they'd go into the general fund we actually have a plan like I said we are so fortunate to just be in a really good position with this so we what redex says is that by next year we need to have our primary teachers as well as interventionists trained we have been in the position where we've been doing that training now and actually our early childhood uh teachers as well we've been working on that training now since 2021 so we're really in a good position we don't know how much we're going to get reimbursed um but we do know that we are actually moving to begin letters is is primary Aspire is for intermediate moving into secondary up to eighth grade and so we're actually going to be moving into that training with some of our intermediate teachers um by 2027 teachers Early Childhood through eighth grade need to be trained and again we're just in a really good and unique position that we have so many of our teachers trained already so those monies come back we could certainly use those that refund to go to work some other expenses they will come back to the gym I don't know so they can go for it [Music] well we know that we're committed to continuing our efforts so but when they come back in they do go into the general fund okay Sarah another question oh four ninth through 12th graders is anything being done for those kids that have slid through um can that funding go to to bump their system up reimbursement funding is that your return to yeah so um first of all we actually just really you can tell I'm really proud to be teaching a learning team right because uh they moved fast Bridge into ninth grade already and so we've already been using fast bridge in ninth grade we've already been able to support students with their reading and just really excited about what we're seeing with that teaching learning is also brought to the board um for just initial review our comprehensive tonight through the 12th grade literacy plan and once that is approved then we're able to to see you know what we will need to do we've actually added a for for this coming school year we've actually added a reading course at the high school level so this is a commitment that we already have when it says that those funds go into the general fund um that's just because the funds came out of the general fund without specific funding being set aside for it but we do plan to continue our operations and funding as well it sounds like we had some really good things money coming in and other things that are going to require money going out I know that we'll see a fuller budget picture tomorrow or later um overall is it an F positive or are people pleased with the outcome of the session or do you feel like there are maybe some misses of things we didn't get that we wanted that's a great I'd never even say that I'm not excited that we now at 47.8 of the special education cross subsidy coming in that's a huge point I mean that was a tremendous one and that is something that our students were down there advocating for and it made such a difference you know we have additional unfunded mandates and we won't know the true impact of those until 2026 for exposure or every District won't know the impact of um unemployment so what happens with the new unemployment it's also reimbursed right so we we have to have money set aside to pay that out first and then and then we'll submit for a reimbursement later and so it's about cash flow right you have to have those money so that you can set those aside um we won't know the impact with class sizes until we go through the negotiations um we have a class range and if we went with the lowest numbers in our class range um it requires a significant number more teachers which require significant more funding and so we are incredibly excited for the for the subsidy we're excited for four percent two percent we are really excited for the um the tied to general fund to inflation because what that guarantees us is that we know we will get nothing less than two percent there were years I've been in education for a really long time there were years ago we got zero percent they were years where we actually in education gave back to the state to help them fund other things um and and we will receive no more than three percent the great thing is we can start to plan out and budget in a way that other businesses are able to do that because we just never knew where we were going to be at that stabilization is the key to all of it which was priority when when is the next negotiating period starting with the teachers um it starts this summer oh questions yeah does anybody else have any questions I have a question do you have a mentorship program for your student um students on your board as they as they go through they can mentor the younger students to be leaders and that advocacy I think so I think that that's our hope a lot for this coming school year that's one of their effort we that is one of our big hopes for this coming school year as we're seeing the importance of student voice on this committee and the importance of making sure that we are continuing to grow this group and use our students as the as the ones to influence the school body right and to help shape what this looks like I'm sure there's such a learning curve too for for those students so learn all the aspects of what you're trying to do what are you guys I said keep passing that on and passing that on to the new I would say definitely before being able to legislative action committee I had no idea about like the status of Education policy within Minnesota and like being on the community is definitely opened my eyes to show that like education education finance and especially policy is extremely complicated and I think it's like it should be a necessity that everybody knows and having like the new members and helping Mentor them we're definitely even though we're like having a more educate more educated public and we can like talk about these issues more like explaining it in like more lead terms and it will just make more sense thank you so much yeah sorry it definitely was a learning curve regarding uh well just following bills and speaking to Representatives as well just um putting everything in terms that you can understand as well as when we had like younger students with us especially making sure that they were um they understood what was going on as well as speaking to the representatives and having that opportunity to voice their concern as well as support and it wasn't just the our representatives of this District as well they did they did a lot of Outreach efforts for other people in the education plans committee and those types of things that um so you're you know obviously we converse a lot with our Representatives directed but the overall community structure they did a lot of work with those folks as well so that's that's a great exposure for them and next year we hope to have Dr Woodard give us another class on education funding because [Music] meetings the more members of our community the more students and everybody understands it that we're out there okay well if nobody has any other questions we will adjourn this evening thank you so much for coming once again we'd love it if you'd like to keep in touch with us at the Lac we will be posting our breakfast again next year we'd love to have your names that we can reach out so so much for being here everyone thank you