to call this meeting to order at 6 o'clock p.m. for Thursday, November 13th. Um, and we anticipate that this will be a very short meeting. Um, so I would like um to call for an approval of the agenda for tonight's meeting. >> So moved. >> I have a motion. Is there a second? >> Second. >> I have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor, please say I. >> I. >> Any opposed? The chair votes I. And the agenda is approved. And that takes us to our consent calendar. Um, these items provide the board with information considered to be more routine in nature. If the board deems an item to be necessary for additional discussion, a motion will be made to move the item to new business. I would look for a motion to approve the consent calendar. >> So moved. >> I have a motion. Is there a second? >> Second. I have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor, please say I. >> I. Any opposed? The chair votes I. and the consent calendar is approved. And that takes us to the purpose for tonight's meeting, which is a res resolution canvasing returns of votes of school district general and special election. I would like to invite Natalyia Pishel and Andrew >> Witworth >> Witworth >> Witworth to the table to um present that to the board. Thank you for being here this evening and for all of your work um in regards to the election. I believe that um Dr. Mary Perry Reed would like to say a few words. >> Thank you, Chair Andre. Well, on behalf of the school board, you see the certificates of recognition in front of you. Um, we're very grateful for all of the efforts that you put forth during the entire election season to set up all of our polling places and um, you attended hours and hours and hours of training and you spent lots of time on the phone with Henipin County. You moved voting equipment, ballot equipment. You did so much for our school district and we're very grateful. Thank you very very much for facilitating a successful election. We appreciate you. >> Thank you. >> You >> and are you going to share some comments about the process? >> Yes, we're going to share a little bit about our the canvasing and then a little bit about our experience as well. >> Yeah. So, we're going to start off with the canvas canvasing results. Um so after each election a canvasing board which is our school board for our school district um is going to convene to certify the results of the election. >> So what is canvasing? Um so tonight we will present the abstract, the write in tally forms and the results tapes from each of our ballot counters at our three polling places. Um, so then we'll discuss what was on the ballot. We had three open school board seats, one bond referendum question, and one capital projects levy question. The three candidates who have been elected to fill our open school board seats are Rachel Hartland with 7,364 total votes, Johanna Heyman with 6,894 votes and Sarah Wilham Garbers with 5,624 votes. The remaining two candidates received the following number of votes. Eric Mandle received 5,567 votes and Tim Mlepski received 5,66 votes. Question one referring to the bond referendum [clears throat] uh passed with 10,225 yes votes and 3,792 votes for no. And then question two referring to the renewal of the capital projects levy passed with 10,890 votes for yes and 3,95 votes for no. >> All right. Before [clears throat] we pivot um to our next bit about our experience, does anyone have any questions about the abstract or the canvasing results? >> No. Thank you. Okay. So, we'll just jump right into a little bit of an overview from this year. For our rental equip equipment, we rented all of our election equipment from the city of Eden Prairie. This included five DS200s which are ballot counters, five express vote machines which are accessible ballot marking devices, 22 voting boat booths, nine poll pads which is essentially our digital precinct finder and then the three American flags for each of our polling places on election day. For election day, we needed to staff our three polling places with election judges. We re we recruited from contacts we got from Eden Prairie and Edina and we had 45 judges total. [clears throat] We needed to coordinate and create a schedule taking into account each and every election judge's preferences and their training. And we didn't work totally alone. We had a lot of help from some external personnel. Um, primarily Degan David Teagland, the city clerk of Eden Prairie, um, was gracious gracious enough to help us throughout this whole process. Um, and the wonderful folks over on Henipin County is the election team. They led us through every step of this process, learning how to run the election and answered so many questions along the way. >> They answered all of our calls. [laughter] >> They saw us calling and they were like, "Oh, them again." [laughter] All right. Um, moving on to our internal staff, which included people from buildings and grounds, um, the business office, and we also had to hire an additional election support during our direct balloting time. Um, and then of course it included us. [laughter] >> Yeah. So Andrew and I have worked over 300 hours for this election and I think [laughter] it's it's felt like more sometimes. Um but that was what we sort of tallied up in total. >> Yeah, these hours have been both a combination of work of hours outside of work or typical work hours and unfortunately replacing some of our regular duties along the way too. which obviously if if you've reached out to me recently, schoolboard members, you've seen I've not been responding as quickly as I normally do or haven't gotten to things yet. And it's been a lot. Um especially coordinating with 45 different judges. Um I was their main contact, so reaching out to them was a lot of work and >> coordinating just >> all the pieces, all the moving pieces throughout the process. >> Yeah. quite a bit. Um I guess >> so we can jump to the next >> Yeah, we can jump to the next piece. >> Um so if we decide to move to evenear elections, um one of the costs that we would obviously not incur anymore would be hiring election judges. The [snorts] state, I believe, no, the city. >> The city would take over the costs. Is it the city? Yep. >> Yes. The city would take over the costs and the actual process of hiring election judges and booking polling places. >> Yep. And they would be responsible for staffing for early voting, the postage, for notifying of a polling place change. Um they wouldn't need to lease equipment as cities for the most part owned the equipment. Um so that would take get off of the school needing to. >> Yes. And also with the training, one of the things that we experienced with our election judges is we had to find pre-trained judges because during odd year times the Henipin County does not run election judge training. So you have to find people who are already >> trained. Um the training lasts >> two years. >> Two years. Um but we couldn't find any new people. So we had to be very specific with the people that we hired. Um so yeah >> um if we were to move to even years, the current board members would see that their term would be extended by a year to align with the new election cycle and school districts would still have the option of holding um special elections at other times of the year whether that's odd or even as allowed by the Minnesota State Statute 205A.0. 05. >> And that's the end. >> That's the end. Anyone have any questions, >> comments? Sharon Dre. >> Yes, Director Jean. >> Hi. Well, I'd just like to say thank you so much for doing this. I know uh it's a little out of uh probably, you know, most people's comfort zones and I appreciate that you uh did that and uh you know, you're uh uh doing democracy, so I appreciate that. Um, and maybe you don't quite have the number yet. Uh, maybe you're still accounting, but I'd be curious, how much did we spend in total this cycle, right? And that includes your opportunity cost for, you know, your 300 hours. Uh, you know, maybe not the gray hairs it cost you, but you know, everything else. Um, if you could give us an estimate that or an exact number, that would be appreciated. >> Yep. We're in the process. We still have um Skyward is still processing some of the reports right now because of the pay periods that we were part of. So we do have some we are putting together numbers um and we will have that for you guys at a later date. >> Thank you >> chair Andre. >> Yes. So um another consideration you know when um a future board takes up the discussion of perhaps moving to evenear elections is the issue of early voting. Um so there were some city elections in the seven cities that the district touches or um comprises um this election cycle and in other cities there were not city elections. In fact um I live in the Adina part of the school district and there were a lot of voters in my condo association who were not aware that an election was happening. Um and so the early voting location for Edina Eden Prairie and St. Park, correct? Was here. >> Edina, Eden Prairie [clears throat] and Plymouth. >> And Plymouth. Thank you. Um Oh, yes, obviously. Okay. Um was here at Eisenhower and you had to staff that location as well >> and get the machines here. >> Um I came to early vote and at that point I asked you about how many people had come by and at that point it was about 14. So, I'm wondering what the final tally was of early voter. Even just an estimate would be helpful. >> During direct balloting period, we had 19 >> voters and I believe during the absentee, we had five. >> Five, I think it was five. Yeah, >> three or five. And absentee voting is before the direct balloting period >> and that starts September 19th. So from September 19th through November 3rd, we had a total of [snorts] being >> less than 25 come to Eisenhower to early vote. >> And the the space has to be staffed 24 well our hours, so 8 to 4 um by two people. >> So there needs to be two people there at all times. So that was an incredible amount of effort and staff time for a very low number of early voters. And there are multiple reasons for that, right? And one of the reasons being that some people who didn't have city elections and don't have kids in school and were kind of tuned out in terms of the schoolboard elections just didn't know it was happening, much less that their early voting location was here. So, I guess the point that I'm driving at is it's important to take into consideration all of these elements. Um, and we want voters to be engaged in our schoolboard elections. And there is data that shows when districts have changed to in this case even elections, right? um in other in other states um that there is more there's increased voter turnout when the elections coincide when school board elections and city elections and county elections coincide. Yeah, we were looking into trying to find numbers from um cities around us who um have switched to even year and we weren't able to find any, but we did find a few from other states and the voter turnout just for mun municipal um elections is it goes up quite a bit um once they move into the even year. Um, and [clears throat] we even discussed it ourselves. Um, because I live in the Hopkins School District in Golden Valley, um, but Andrew lives in Golden Valley and was not part of the Hopkins School District. So, we discussed, you know, if these things were on a regular, you know, or an even year election, we probably would have looked into this stuff on the ballot, you know, and more people would be interested in finding out what was on the ballot to begin with if they're already voting for, you know, a presidential election. Thank you. >> Okay, >> Chair Andre, can I ask a question? >> Yes, Director Roer. [clears throat] >> Um, so thank you to um for all of your uh work around the elections. I know that it was a lot of work and you know, especially just with our school boards. Um, I do like what um, director Russ Morland said because I was looking for early voting and I usually went to the place that I usually vote and people like we were trying to figure out where the location was. And so I don't know if there's like a lot of people who maybe wanted to early vote but just didn't know where those locations was. So, if we can maybe do a um I don't know like a social media campaign or something or um if we can get like those locations plastered um I think that would increase the turnout and then also to so just for the current board members um so because the uh the it passed in Hopkins does that mean that we're going to evenear elections for Hopkins? >> That's the city of Hopkins. And so that actually means that we as a school district now have to be in charge of another polling place. So if we had another election on an odd year and Hopkins, the city of Hopkins does not have an election, we would be in charge of another polling place. So that would be more that we would have to take care of. >> So then are we looking to vote? I'm sorry. I'm just trying to make sure I understand. So are we looking to vote again on going to evening your elections for the school district? So, we've not voted on go moving to evenear yet for the school district. Just the city of Hopkins voted. >> Okay. >> So, director Roer, that's a discussion that the board has has to have and we started having it last year. >> Yeah. >> And we have not as a board voted. It hasn't even come to the board for a vote. It's been put on the agenda. >> All right. So that's a discussion that I see there's a lot of interest in continuing to have. >> Yeah, we we actually were saying that if we if you wanted to, we would be willing to come back and give another presentation with a little bit more in depth with numbers and information too. >> People are interested in the data. Thank you for that. >> Thank you. >> And thank you for this presentation. Do you have more? >> No, we're all done. Okay, great. Thank you. I appreciate that. And I like that. Um I feel that it's nice that we had the the um discussions beforehand so that you could be intentional as you were going through this process in getting gathering that data and feedback and how it went. >> Yes. >> And that it was new to you too. So >> I think it all kind of came together well. So thank you for that. >> Welcome. Thank you. >> Um and that takes us to the resolution. >> I'm going to stay right here if that's [clears throat] okay so I can write down >> Yes. I was going to see if you wanted to read it or would you like to like like me to read it? I actually I'd have to pull it up. One second. I can read it >> cuz I'm fine. Fine either way. >> Thank you. >> Thank you, Andrew. >> Thank you, Andrew. >> Do I need to read the beginning part? the pursuant do call. No. Okay. >> No. [clears throat] >> Um, may I start? >> Yes. >> Okay. Be it resolved by the school board of independent school district number 270, state of Minnesota, as follows. It is hereby found determined and declared that the general and special election of the voters of this school district held on November 4th, 2025 was in all respects duly and legally called and held as specified in the attached abstract and return of votes cast a total of oh my apologies. I don't have the number on this thing. Sorry. >> It's okay. >> Too many different pieces of paper. A total number of Where is my total number? a total number of that doesn't sound I think I'm a little confused as to where the total number is. [clears throat] >> I'm sorry. Yeah, it's a tough figure because it wants total number of voters >> and that's >> that which is >> challenging when you can vote for up to three. >> Yeah, because they were all combined um >> with >> But would it be in the abstract? >> I'm looking at the abstract, but it >> you could count the referendum the greater of the referendum numbers. That's a good question. >> Those 13,000 [clears throat] >> 14, >> but I don't have access to the abstract. So, I couldn't look at it. >> Oh, it's in the um canvasing results t um in the consent. And then if you scroll down, there's the abstract. >> Oh, votes cast. Votes counted. I thought I saw 11,000 something. Oh, that is also blank. Apologies. I should have pulled this up beforehand. >> [clears throat] >> Yeah, I don't see anywhere where there's a total. >> No, there's no total on the abstract either. >> Here, let's try the Secretary of State. Yeah, I bet it's on the Secretary of State website. >> Okay. >> [snorts] >> I'm just seeing totals for each candidate. That doesn't signify the total number of votes. [clears throat] >> Just do the greater of the referendum though, right? If everybody voted on the referendum, >> not not necessarily. >> You can't infer that. >> No, because they may have voted for the referendum but not candidates and or vice versa. >> There there is an email from one of our HF um union reps. She did some uh Denharog did some work. I forwarded it to you, Nick, Natalia, and Shannon just so you could look at the numbers and >> um help confirm if these are accurate. But she did um some pulling together of numbers. And what she is sharing is that for question one, there were a total number of 14, 2017 votes. in question two 13,985 but um I don't see totals for the >> voters >> the school board candidates >> so I would say [clears throat and laughter] because this question is asking for total voters that we go with the highest number. >> Okay. So, I I just added up from the Secretary of State the highest number, which is the >> um I didn't get 14,000. I got 13,985 as the highest. >> I think that was question two. If you do question one is 14,17 >> 14. >> Oh, yes. >> Yeah. >> Yeah, it is. >> That's what >> that's what she's saying as well. >> Yeah. >> Okay. I I'm fine with doing that. Yeah. >> Okay. >> 14, 2017. >> Okay. >> Sorry, director or clerk Thompson. I probably should have forwarded this to you. >> Okay, now I need to find the tab again. [clears throat] >> So, we just need one number. Then >> we need I would for this first one, but then it wants the rest of the numbers. Correct. >> So [clears throat] we can just as specified in the attached abstract and return of votes cast a total of 14, 2017 voters of the school district voted at said general election on the three school board members for four year term vacancies on the school board caused by expiration of the term on the first Monday in January. Next, following the general election as follows. [cough and clears throat] Excuse me. And [snorts] this is our numbers from our abstract. So then it would be [clears throat] Rachel Hartland 7 >> 7,364 Johanna Hyman 6,894 Sarah Wilheim Garbers 5,624 Eric Mandal 55 or so 55 5567 Tim Mlepski 566 6. >> And then there was a write in. Do we want to include that? >> So Rachel Hartland, Johanna Heyman, and um Sarah Wilham Garbers having received the highest number of votes are elected to four-year terms beginning on the first Monday in January 2026. as specified in the attached abstract and return votes cast at set election a total of a total of so this is for question one was it 13,000 something for question one >> question one was 14,000 >> 14,7 voters of the school district voted on the question of authorizing the insurance of school building bonds for a school acquisition and betterment program of which 10, 225 >> 10,225 voted yes and 3,792 voted in favor of and then 3,9 3 uh 3,792 >> Mhm. [snorts] voted against the same said proposition proposition having not received the approval of at least a majority of such votes is hereby declared to have carried. Oh, having received the approval of at least a majority of such votes is hereby declared to have carried as specified in the attached abstract and return of votes cast at said election. A total of 10 10,890. It's um sorry that was the 1300 right >> 13,985 >> 13,985 voters of the school district voted on the question of renewing and capital project levy authorization for taxes payable in 2028 and thereafter of which 10,000 890 voted in favor 3,095 voted against the same said proposition having received the approval of at least a majority of such votes is hereby declared to have carried. The clerk is hereby directed to certify the results of the election to the county auditor of each county in which the school district is located in whole or in part and to the commissioner of education. The motion for the Oh, I think I think that's it. We're ready. >> Yes. I would look for a motion for an adoption of the foregoing resolution. Does anyone want to move? >> So move. >> I have a motion. Is there a second? >> Second. >> I have a motion and a second. Uh clerk, please call the role. Oh, is there any discussion? >> Seeing none, clerk, please call the role. >> Chair Andre, >> I. >> Vice Chair Ross, >> I. >> Director Roer, >> I. >> Clerk Thompson, I >> uh Director Xiao >> I. >> Director West Morland. >> I. >> Thank you. The resolution has been accepted. Um, and that concludes our business in canvasing the election. Thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> Thank you so much, Natalia. >> Um, so with that, I would look for a motion to adjurnn. >> So moved. >> I have a motion. Is there a second? >> Second. I have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor, please say I. >> I. I. >> Any opposed? The chair votes I. And this meeting is adjourned at 6:29 p.m. >> Thank you all. Appreciate it.