arrive. I know um uh Brooke, Director Roer said she's on her way in just a few minutes and I know um Director Ross and West Morland also mentioned that. So, just a couple minutes um maybe two and then we'll get started. Thank you. Hello. Welcome everybody. We're going to go ahead and get started knowing that director uh vice chair Ross is on his way. Um the first item on our agenda for the Hopkins School Board workshop is the uh on today, March 25th, is the transportation audit. Um the audit update. So I would invite um uh I'm not quite sure. I know it's director Chapanduka. Um, Miss Williams, I'm not quite sure about your title. Assistant director. Assistant director of transportation. Um, Williams to the table. Thank you for being here. Welcome. Hi, Director Ross. Do you want me to provide? Yes. Um, Dr. Mary Perry Reed. Okay. Hey, good evening board members, community members, and folks in the boardroom. Thank you everyone for being here. Um, we are going to, as Chair Andre shared, we are going to begin our workshop with the an overview of the work that's been done to conduct a transportation audit. Um, and I do want to just set some context that in the past several years, we have here in Hopkins public schools experienced significant changes to bell times and student enrollment patterns. And we in light of a $7 million budget reduction, we would like to scrutinize our current transportation system to identify potential efficiencies that will help us in um installing reductions or efficiencies in our district budget. So, we're really grateful to our partner in this work, CISO, and we have Nikki and Shannon here from CISO. I'm also grateful to our assistant director of transportation, Naisha Williams, and our director of business services, Terrell Chapanduka, and assistant superintendent, uh, Lightfoot, who will all work together to um provide an overview of the audit and what the findings are. and then we'll be talking through um the recommendations because we do have some decisions that we need to make um and make very quickly for our community so that folks know what to expect for next year. So at this point I'm going to turn it over to you. Thank you. Thank you Dr. Mary Perid. Uh good evening board chair Anderson respective board members and uh the community at large. Uh as just mentioned by the superintendent uh we do have um our partners from CESO tonight uh Nick and Shannon uh to take us through some of the findings uh which are tied to our transportation operation. uh they've been working on this uh and this was a very quick turnar around uh and we appreciate uh them you know taking on this uh challenge uh within a short notice and be able to provide some results which will use to make some determination on the next steps. Uh I know for this audit to be successful, they had to work with uh assistant director Naisha Williams and the transportation team uh to dig deeper into the numbers and information and uh come up with the information we have here. So I don't want to take too much time. My thing after this um uh presentation and conversation we'll jump on to maybe have some discussion around uh one of the transportation policies which is poly 707 uh with uh Dr. Lightoot and uh vice chair Ross. Uh that being said I will give the opportunity to Nick and Shannon to take us through the presentation. Uh I also have Natalia uh presenting uh the slide deck. Thank you. Okay. Do you guys have our slide deck presentation? Yes. It's linked in the Yeah, it's linked in the Okay. So you guys are looking at it. Perfect. Um so I'm Nikki Pangrell. I am the director of management services at uh CISO Transportation and I'm here with Shannon. I'm Shannon Connley. I'm a consultant with CISO, Center of Effective School Operations, and we have been working with your guys' transportation team to do an audit of the transportation operations within Hopkins School District. Throughout this uh throughout this uh audit, we've been doing for the scope of work, we've been working on doing a full audit of all uh transportation operations from the routes, the schedules, the policies um in the budget and the finance. During this, we've had on-site observations of bus arrivals and dismissals. We've had on-site interviews with key stakeholders. Um and then we've been collecting data, reviewing and analyzing all of the data um independently. So a summary of your guys' transportation operations within Hopkins. You guys are currently running 116 total vehicles. 55 of those are general education buses. 32 are special education buses and 29 are vans. And these are used for sped or McKinventto students. Hopkins transports 4,600 regular education education students daily, which is approximately 65% of your total enrollment. 678 open enrolled students are currently using your transportation. 678 students um for open enrolled using transportation is a significant number. Uh, Hopkins has about 1,500 open enrolled students within their district, within your guys's district, and over half of those are currently using transportation. Um, if you break down 678 students onto buses using your guys' average ridership, it's about 15 buses full of open enrolled students. Next, we go into uh KPIs. Um so the average regular education planned students per bus is 44. The average duration of a regular education trip is 33 minutes and an average mileage of a regular education trip is 9.8 miles. So when we evaluate these numbers, 44 is um lower than normal for the state of Minnesota of how many buses or how many kids are on a bus. Um when you think of a bus, max capacity is 77. We never fill them to 77, but you do want to see, especially for elementary, kind of over that 55 point to get full usage of your buses. And then when we look at 33 minutes, that's a pretty short uh ride time for general education students. Um, but with your guys' bell times, you only have 40 minutes between your bells. So 33 minutes while it's low for kind of what you see across the state, it is using the time that you guys currently have to transport students. So currently you have 44 or 40 minutes. So using 33 of that is actually doing pretty well. Now we look at kind of the special education. So 3.5 students per vehicle. 3.5 special education is always going to be lower because you have smaller buses and then using those vans. Sometimes they only have one or two kids on them. So you will see a lower number, a much lower number for that. Average duration of the trip we're looking at 30 minutes. um pretty close to what we see for those general education students. Usually in most districts, this is has a greater difference between the two, but again, we already talked about how 33 minutes is uh shorter than most. So 30 minutes is about what we see for special education students. And then average mileage is 12.7 miles. And then we get into kind of the cost of it. So, your cost per student overall is $2,218. This is significantly higher than most districts within the state of Minnesota. Um, usually you're seeing that at about $1,000 per student. So, you guys are over double that. And then cost per bus, you guys are a little over 97,000 for a bus. And this is actually falls within the normal. on normal with um bus buses across the state, it's about 100,000 in Minnesota. So you guys are kind of right at those rates that other districts are seeing. Is that per year? Yes. Bus per year. Yes. Um the next graph is uh it looks like your guys' current bell time. So this is what you guys are currently running right now this year. So you have five elementary schools kind of on that first tier and then you have the secondary schools on a second tier and then you have one elementary school kind of on this third. We've kind of been calling it a 2.5 tier. It's not a full three tier. It's kind of a two-tier with another elementary school. So this deployment graph um shows your usage of your buses. So the the dips in it is when buses are out on the road. The taller points is the most buses. So you guys have the most buses out during your secondary. And then you can see that if we were able to even out the first tier and the second tier or even a first tier, second tier and third tier so that it is more using the same amount of buses. You see more efficiency and effectiveness in that. So transportation capacity. So eligibility. So, we look at part of eligibility is who's eligible to ride your buses. Currently, anyone living within the Hopkins School District is eligible to ride. And you have walk zones, no bus zones, um that vary a little bit. So, in our research, we found that there is there's a board policy that states that elementary students have a no bus zone from 0.8 miles. and um secondary students are at a mile. When we look at the transportation website, there is information that differs from that. They have information saying that students are not um have a maximum walk distance of 0.5 for elementary and 0.8 for um secondary. And then the in actual practice for transportation, they they differ depending on the school because they're looking at hazardous roads. So they're looking at students that can actually walk, what roads are they crossing, what does that look like? So it it differs from those distances. Um, so it's kind of all over the the place with kind of walk zones, no bus zones, other transportation capacities. So, route planning. So, this this this school year that we're in right now, it does have the wrong date on there, so I apologize. Um, transportation did a survey this year to opt in for transportation. We recommend that this is a great idea to continue doing. Um this tells you who's going to ride and you can plan for those ridership. Um our recommendation for this survey is for the deadline to be moved um earlier. So like more of a May or June so you can plan well for transportation who's going to ride your buses. Um and there should be a heavy communication to families that just reiterating that hey you need to sign up for this. If you don't sign up for this, there's not going to be a place on the bus over and over and over again. So, a lot of communication. Okay. So, now we're going to get into kind of the recommendated options. So, option number one is expanding your guys's no bus zones. So, when you talk about no bus zones versus walk zones, it's very important for the language that you use. So when you look at walk zones that is saying that you guys as a school board Hopkins as a districts believes those students could walk to school and using that terminology walk you really got to pay attention to what what kids are walking where they're walking from um which a lot of districts have went away from the term walk zone because of that reason. So the terminology a lot of districts use is a no bus zone. students are not eligible for transportation within that area. So this is not saying that you believe they can walk to school, but more saying that they are not eligible for transportation. So currently, as you can see on the graph, um so we have current students. So this is the students that are currently in your guys's no bus walk zone. And then you have the board policy. These are the difference between these two numbers are um who would no longer be eligible. Um and these are just eligible riders. This is not saying they actually ride. These are just eligible. And then you can see out to one mile in two miles. I'm going to take us excuse me you talk a little. So, for for this graph, we wanted to show you guys exactly who's eligible. And um that's not saying that they're currently riding. That's saying that or they could get a parent ride or they could be sped students too in here. Um and so they that wouldn't matter. Um they would still be eligible for the bus if they qualify. And then we have the the high school middle schools next kind of broken up the same way. But if you go to the wrership on the next slide here, this is showing who is currently riding in those zones. So this is the difference that you would see if you went from what you're currently doing to what the board policy is and then out to the one mile or the two mile. So when you kind of add all of these numbers together, so if you add all of the elementary, if you just go to a no bus zone for your board policy, that's 235 kids that would no longer be eligible for transportation, which could equal out to two or four buses, which when you think of buses at 100,000 per year, two or four buses can add up. um go out to a mile, that's 348 students. So that's four to six buses. If you go all the way out to 2 miles, that's 1,034 students, which could be anywhere from 15 to 19 buses. Same with the secondary. Um if you go board policy, it's 62 students, which is about a bus. If you go out 1.5 miles, 137 students, one to two buses. If you go out further, we're looking at 287 students and um you're looking at two to four buses depending on Could I just ask a quick question? Of course you can. Um because I I know you mentioned and just trying to clarify, do these numbers include special education students? They do not. These actual ridership numbers do not. Okay. Thank you. Because we would no matter what your walk zone is, those students, right? Or no bus zone, they would still get transportation. Great. Thank you. Okay. So, no bus zone was option number one. Option number two is looking at a pay to ride system. So, pay to ride. Um, as you guys know, the the state of Minnesota requires school districts to transport everyone over 2 miles, but gives school districts the option to provide noteligible students. So, if they're not in a noteligible zone, um, it gives school districts option to provide transportation and charge a fee for the service. So, things to consider, this would have to be a schoolboard policy, so it would have to be voted on by the school board. Um there's two different ways that it's looked at. It can be district provided. So you guys being the district um having the money go through you setting it up through your routing system kind of being in charge of it. Or there are districts out there that their contractor provides it. So it's not part of the district. It's not recommended by the district. It is totally separate than the district. Um and then you got to you have to decide on the fee amount per student or family and then also how educational benefits percentage plays into it. So the statute says school boards can charge for it but if students are low income and um get free or reduced lunch they would have to have some percentage taken off of that amount. Um, so it's not on the slideshow, but uh some districts close to you guys that currently are doing this pay to ride. So Edina and Minnetonka both um are districts that are right around us and they both do pay to ride for their walk zones. Um Minnetonka, sorry you guys, it's okay. No problem. I don't have that side. It's okay. Minnetonka also does it for their open enrolled kids, but their open enrolled kids go through first student and they Minnitonka doesn't have anything to do with that pay to ride that it's totally separate. Um so Minnetonka does their no bus zone through their district and they're open enrolled through their contractor. Um, and then other districts, Burnsville does it, District 196, Lakeville, Bloomington, Mountains View, Richfield, South St. Paul, there's a lot of them out there that do this. Most of them do it for their no bus zone and not their open enrolled and most of them run through the district as well that we can find. So along So with Minnotonka, you can't actually find that on their website. It's not super publicly known that their contractor does it. So, I don't exactly know how we would find it if other districts are also doing that. And then, um, the third option, if I can keep it. No, you're good. Um, the third option would be changing your bell times. So, bell times come in all shapes and sizes. Um they can be all different options. You can do anywhere from a one tier to a three tier. School districts do all different things. Um the biggest thing with bell times and what we would recommend is giving your the time in between your tiers more time. Right now you guys have 40 minutes. Looking closer to 60 would be ideal to be able to cut cut the number of buses you're using. in kind of those KPIs that we looked at the the average wrership and the average time you want to see those higher. So if you could get to an average time of uh closer to like 4550 minutes that would be ideal. So whether that's a two-tier where they start earlier than you're currently starting or the last slide um a three tier that just gives more time in between your your tiers so buses can get out get as many students as we can kind of fill that bus come back drop them off and then go out again. Now do you guys have any questions? Anything we want to dig into a little bit more? Chair Andre. Yes. Um I had a question around the payto ride model. I know it's hard to probably answer this precisely, but ballpark, what is the costing model for that? If students are paying or families are paying um for the the full amount versus what could an adjusted cost look like um for educational benefits families? So, sorry. It really varies per per school district. Um, Minnotonka is 100, correct? Um, and then we have all the way down to is it Lakeville? That's $500 per student. Um, we see a lot of times that there'll be a student cost of 250 and then a family max at 350 or$500. like they usually if you have five kiddos that need to ride the bus, they they usually max out. Lakeville is the only one that I've actually seen that doesn't. It just is straight up $500 per student. Wow. So, and that's it really varies and it's really up to the school board. Okay. And that is per year. Okay. Thank you. Um and then for free and reduced. So, some school districts just do like, hey, if you qualify for free and reduced, you don't have to pay. other ones do. If you qualify for reduced, you only have to pay 50%. If you qualify for free, you have to pay 25% or or whatever. So, it's really up to the board to decide those. Um, and it really does vary. Sounds like Thank you. D, can I ask a question? Um, as we're talking about the I think it was the third option that was up on the about um like the later times or like the average times. Um, are we anticipating that more parents would be able to pick up their children like at later times which will save money on buses or bus rides for the bell times you're saying? Yeah. No. So that is just a graph to show for the deployment graph. The buses would be able to be redeployed more than once. Um so giving transportation that time would allow for us to reuse the same buses instead of using like a bus and a half. You know what I mean? We would be able to use the same bus just based off based off ridership. Y so maybe just to expand on that. So maybe a case in point and I know all uh director Williams can help us with uh that narration. So currently with our two um two build system for example we have uh bh buses which are going to the high school uh because of the fact that the 40minut turnaround time is not enough to be able to use those buses for another trip. So, we have uh about like eight buses which just make one trip to the uh to to to the high school. I mean, if you convert it into into dollars, that's $800,000. Yeah. So, we really want to see that deployment graph at the same level for both tiers instead of like this how Hopkins has it right now. Um, and then we have the little metal brook one that's kind of an off one, but on the secondary tier, you see that we have the max buses right now. And that's because we can't use those buses more than once. And the other thing that I forgot to mention, um, currently your guys' bus contracts and most bus contracts have a like minimum a 4hour minimum for the day. So you guys pay for 4 hours of each bus per day. So, usually that's two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon. Currently, with how your bell times are set up, you're not using a full two hours in the morning or afternoon. So, there's kind of this leftover time of buses that you're paying for but aren't actually utilizing. So, more buses because you just have less time, smaller amount of time. Chair Andre. Yeah. Uh I have a question. Um so thanks for uh doing all the research on this. Um for the bell time scenario too, right? So we're talking about three bell times. Do you have a rough estimate of how much we'd save? It all kind of depends on what what schools you wanted in what area. Um so we could we could run numbers and get you how many if we kind of knew what schools you kind of were think were gravitating towards for what area. Okay. And and is that the primary driver of the over two times the average? Is that you know it's not one thing of course but is that like the main driver of that twice? Yes. Of why your guys's uh cost per student. Okay. Yes. Okay. Thank you. The reason why we have less students on buses. So with our numbers being so low, we don't have enough time to fill the buses up. So, it looks like we are transporting just about 40 students on each bus, but that's because we don't have enough time to stop at more stops. So, I I'm wondering about the scenario one, which is where you recommended um to increase that time. Um, is that something um, Miss Williams, that you think would help that issue? Would the buses be more full if there was an increase? I think it was to 40 to 60 minutes you recommended. 20 minutes. Yeah. So, uh, that could help, but we also have to pay that with, uh, the optin. Uh so when we did uh this uh analysis uh before we moved to the two uh uh two belt system uh uh back to um the previous question from director uh so when we did this it amounted to almost like close to 10 buses only three tier system with an opt-in option. The three tiered would do what? with with opt in when we did this analysis before we moved to the two-tier uh would amount to about 10 less buses across our system. So the two tier is 10 less buses. No, the three tier three tier with an opt in would uh have amounted to about 10 less buses. So this school year if we kept the bell times from last year we would have had 10 less buses this year than we have now. And so even given this recommendation of increasing the time between the bus shift over, we would still have the same number of buses. So there would be zero cost savings to increasing the time and having fuller buses. Now that may help us if we increase the time with the turnaround time to get more students on a bus, but it may not help us with overpaying the contractor for like that four hour minimum. So two hours and two hours. So it could help in other areas, but it may not necessarily be less buses or a cost saving. It's just a option to let us know like you we could go this route and then increase that time between the two, but it doesn't necessarily mean without us going in with the numbers that we'd actually save. Yeah, it might be interesting to see if there is a cost savings um associated like could we reduce the number of buses even if we are still paying an overage in time. Um I would just like to be able to compare because I know that um like we said at the beginning we've had a lot of shifting. Um, I think the elementary schools are just getting used, the ones that had a later start are just getting used to having the earlier and now we might be asking them to go back again. Um, but so being able to reference actual numbers might make that conversation easier. Um, saying, okay, this is option one, which I'm really I really appreciate it being included. kind of keeping the status quo but having some cost savings and then um and correct me if I'm not understanding this correctly. Um and then having scenario two where we would go go back to the three tier um and would it be less time in between to fill up buses? It would be our kind of our current ride time. We can I can pull some we can pull some numbers with kind of these two options. Um I guess our main question is and we can get this kind of from leadership is what schools would we like to pull um on what tiers what makes the most sense and then for that two-tier is there um a willing a willing a willingness to look at um all of the elementary schools or Metobrook moving to one of those two tiers so they're not kind of this 2.5 tier. Um but we we can run numbers and present those. That'd be great. Yeah, I I would like to see it just for a comparison. If that's doable to provide the info. Yes. Thank you. Any other questions or input? I have a question and um just a comment. [Music] Um if we um increase no bus zones and pay to ride and open enroll pay, would we still need to change tiers? Be very well likely yes. That's the bulk of the funds is with the tiered system. Okay, the pay to ride will help. Um, but we also have to think about if families would actually pay to ride. We wouldn't know that without them signing up, but it could help supplement. Um, and then when we think about the open enroll, that's separate and not really included with the district. So, I would say that might not it would help us to not overfill our buses with over with open enroll students, but it wouldn't necessarily help us save because the money wouldn't be going to us as a district. When when you look at just um the changing to a no bus zone, if you guys wanted to move forward with that in those bus savings, you could be anywhere from if you went to the board policy um three to five, which is half a million dollars, $300,000 to a half million. Um if you went to a mile, you would be looking at five to eight buses. If you went to two miles, you could be looking at 18 to 26 buses um with savings. So that it is an option. I don't know how much you guys are looking to cut in your budget, but it is a good or a step in a direction. I think it's a good first step because of how often or how many changes the district has seen in the last couple of years. Um, and I think really keeping if you are going to go to the third option, looking at bell times, really making sure that they have that hour at least. Um, I think those are really important. And with the difference between the no bus zone and the walk zone, we'd have to be comfortable with changing our board policy to say no bus instead of walk zone so that families understand that we don't necessarily expect them to walk, but they aren't eligible for transportation. Great. Mhm. Especially in Minnesota with the mother, it would be a conversation, but a decision to go to a a no bus, you are no longer eligible for transportation and you will get some push back. Well, I guess course. Of course. Um I I do think Oh, sure. Sure. Andre, I do want to just um share with everyone that we're in a challenging space with timing. So I I actually don't think we have time to have you back to the board one and two and three more times. We do have to start making some decisions and I do apologize for the ch the challenging timing. Um, but we will have to start kind of maybe get um some parameters from our board members about what board members are comfortable with so that we can start moving toward some decisions and work with our community um because decisions may or may not impact before and after care and weight lists and you know child care and like just so many things. So just wanted to share that with everyone. Chair chair and Dre. Yeah. Um, can I just ask a quick question, make a comment? Um, first of all, thank you. This is excellent data as we're, you know, this is tough stuff that we have to decide here obviously, but and this is, you know, I feel like it's given us good grounding as far as here's what the data is showing us today. Um just um a a note on on the option two for the bell times with the three tiers. It it is at least as presented here lengthening it out to get the 60 minutes between each of the bell times which is kind of like what we want, right? So, okay. Wanted to be sure I was clear. And and then I I guess just historically, what was the the reason for the 2.5? Like why hadn't we moved to two previously? Do you know? I think it was possible. Or anybody I don't know. I think it was because of the location of Metobrook. Correct. Um so the reason that we moved elementaryaries earlier and secondaries later was based on sleep patterns for younger and older students. Now why we also didn't move Metobrook to earlier I believe was based on the location of the school and the traffic patterns within that particular community. Um, Nick, can you help with the thinking here? Because we worked with the Golden Valley City of Council and they had some really strict um feedback around the traffic patterns and when school would start and end and that was a huge influence in our decision-m around keeping Metobrook at the later start time. Yeah, it was. We were looking at potentially with some of those time factors being the same time factors that um traffic was also occurring um and the patterns were occurring with Breck in their start and release times and the traffic patterns where um police officers were literally starting to think about how they could coordinate flow of traffic. Um, so certainly those would be different kinds of conversations we could have once we know when times might look like andor to the questions earlier about which schools may be best for which tier given different sets of conditions and circumstances we have to plan for. Um, and I I did just want to frame up some context. Um, and I think you mentioned it before, but um, you know, Hopkins has really gone above and beyond with their transportation. And I know that as a board member and also as a parent, I have appreciated that and I think it is the right thing to do. Um, to provide transportation to kids so that they can get to schools. I think it is a huge bonus to our families. We've done it for open enrolled students um which I think is way above and beyond what other districts have done and I have always felt very proud of Hopkins for doing that. So this is I think a difficult conversation to have especially for Hopkins but also a really important one to have um because as we all know we're facing significant budget reductions and unfortunately um this is a huge district expense. it is the right thing to do and um we're going to need to make some changes. So, I really also appreciate all of this information so that we can inform our community about the realities um what we need to do as a board um in order to come to some I think really quick decisions about um what next year is going to look like for transportation. So, I just wanted to say that um and just express my gratitude for this information and for all the work that went into it. I know um transportation has been doing a lot this year. So, I appreciate all your work. Thank you. Cheer Andre has a question. Thank you all. I I agree with all the sentiments. Of course, I'm going to ask, are we considering applying for electric school buses at all? We do have a program that's coming up that's due on May 15th. It will save us annually about 411 thou 4 to $11,000 in like maintenance cost. Um and I do believe that you do get a free bus with this program. So just was cons like have we considered it and thought about that transition for a substitute for some of our buses. And I'll have to get the information about the free bus. I want to just make sure I don't misquote that but I'm pretty sure that's what that covers. We have been in conversations with both of our contractors about electric school buses and different avenues because they have the choice to actually choose which one that they want to go through. But I think we have a larger conversation that we can talk about too because it will need some backing from the district and a definite answer on who is responsible for the vehicles. Um that is our main concern. when we have had conversations, we we hear, "Oh, you have to work that out with the bus company." So, once we find out for sure and make sure that we have the right track, um we don't want to get down the road later and we're responsible to pay for the buses in 5 years or two years or what that would what that would look like for the district. So, I think we just want to be careful. Um, we're in the meetings, we're having the conversations, but we just want all the details. And we're also trying to have that conversation with like the electric company because it is our district- own building that we'd have to reconstruct in order to suit the vehicles. Yeah. So, and I know we've been working with our bus contractors to get a better understanding with the vendors out there who are providing the opportunities for uh for electrical buses. Uh also putting into consideration that about 95% of our transportation is contracted services. And I know there's still some ambiguity around how these programs work. uh just like director William is saying, we just want to be very careful in terms of uh the obligations to to the district over time uh as well as how we maintain those uh electrical buses, the uh charging stations uh which will be erected in our uh in our facilities. So, so we're still working on uh more details. Uh but I agree. I think uh that's that's the way forward. Uh it's if if the district owned the uh the majority of these buses, then it just would be naturally uh on us to make a determination of how how best to move forward. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Chair Andre. Yes. Um, I really appreciated the way that you you framed up the conversations and within that frame, I want to point out two pretty glaring equity issues that we just need to be um we need to be real about. Um, so as I look at how a policy change would impact families in our district right now, I think it's really helpful to have these numbers in front of us. Um, and it's not just that we're going to get complaints or push back if we make this change, it's that it really will not be doable for some families. Um, and I think about families who, um, single parent families, um, and families whose, uh, the caregivers are working multiple jobs and really rely on busing um, to get their kids to school. And so, I think we're going to need to be really cognizant of that. um if we if we decide to make a policy change, if we decide to go with the pay to ride, um we've already seen, you know, problems in terms of determining and tracking compensatory revenue now that we have universal meals, which is a great thing, right? Um, and so my curiosity would be what would the process look like to determine families that are unable to pay the full amount or that should be given um some sort of reduction there. I think we'd have to be really careful about that um and make sure that we were we were tracking that really closely. So, I just want to make sure those two things are on the table um as we make some decisions here. Thank you for that. Yeah, I worry about those things as well. The other element that the monitoring committee mentioned and I don't know um specifically if this was called out but those hazard areas that we discussed um do we have an idea I know we were talking as well and the monitoring committee had questions. Do we have specific spaces that we have identified because the policy says yes um there can be an exemption for hazard areas. Can you speak to that a little bit more too in line with any other policy change that may be necessary there? So we do have identified areas where for different grade levels students currently that we will not have cross the street. Um but the difference with this if we change the board policy that for a instead of it being a walk boundary to a no bus zone we would not recognize those streets anymore. So the determination is will we continue on this way and hey we have this two miles and it may not save much because a lot of our students cannot cross a certain street main street or you know um excels here or we changed the policy completely to where we are not saying that you um can actually walk to school but you aren't eligible which just changes it completely. So it it depends on what direction we want to go to um and with our decision and if we don't and we continue on the route with changing the boundary and we don't recognize these roads that they can cross we may not save much at all. And that part was the other element that we were considering is yes those may need to be designated but then in which spaces instead of a bus do we have designated staff at those locations to help and assist with crossing. Um those have been practices that we have had previously as well on some hazard roads. Um certainly less to staff that space than the cost of the bus itself. Um so there are some different ways that we can look at problem solution options as well um to encourage the to and from um and ways that we can support um but that are not as expensive as the full bus. So just making sure that that's out there that if there were decisions to look at that certainly that can be an implementation conversation as well and there are some different ways to address any of those needs or concerns. Thank you for that. Could you just speak to the hazardous road piece because um what I understood is that yes, we do have roads that transportation leaders and staff have deemed as hazardous, but we don't have like more of them than other districts. Um, so I'm just wondering what your thoughts are on the precautions that other districts in a similar predicament take with their no bus zones to keep students safe. Yes. Um, so I think Hopkins is very similar to other metro districts as far as the hazards that are around our schools. Um, other districts. So, so right now if you guys continue with a walk zone saying that these are these are where kids can walk, these are the hazards that we don't want students to walk over or cross, I think you're at the point as far out as you can go. Just locationwise, if you go to a no bus zone, which is what other districts surrounding also in the metro go to a no bus zone, then they are not saying, "Hey, I I want you to cross seven or I want you to cross excelsier." They're just saying you're not eligible. So that's the difference between the walk and the no bus zone. So if you if you go to a no bus zone, you do not take those hazardous roads into consideration in the policy, but we could do it in practice. Correct. That's currently what you guys are doing. So your policy says no bus for a point 8 and a mile, but in practice you have walk zones with hazardous roads. So that's currently what you guys are doing, right? But we could create like a no bus zone and then have staff facilitating at the times that students might be coming to school facilitating that because I know Baker Road is also one that community has talked about with West um because there are no sidewalks um and I personally had a student who walked on it but um yeah so we could have staff facilitating that. So you could still have a no bus zone and put staff out to help cross and do crossing guards. Yes. Good information to have. And Chair Andre, yes. Just as a comment to what you just said about Baker, uh there's there's an effort uh with uh the city and county and park services to uh create like signage and you know there's there's things that we can do besides just post staff, right? We can uh have flashing lights. we can, you know, uh have an increased police presence around that time. Um we're not just, you know, hoping, right? We can there's some prep that we can do. Yes. Yeah. And we are doing great. Any other comments or I just had one quick comment. I I I appreciate all the information. I was curious of whether or not we understood which direction the district was leaning towards. I think that's the only thing I haven't heard yet from everybody's commentary. Yeah, I mean we we have explored uh some ideas around going back to a uh to a 3TM uh structure uh putting into consideration some of the work uh which we had done way back in 2018 2019 um around having three schools on one tier uh maintaining the secondaries on one tier which is kind the current structure and uh a set of uh three schools on the on the third tier and we've been just exploring what that might look like uh in relation to the opt in uh for uh for our families. Uh that's one of the areas we've uh been exploring uh at this point in time uh while at least uh our consultants were working on the on the report and I don't know subine do you have anything else to add? Well, yes. Um, thank you, Director Chapanduka. We have theorized what would have to be true to reinstitute um to elementaryaries moving back to a later start. Um, did I hear you say that the two-tier with all elementarymentaries is would offer more of a cost savings than the three tier. Did I hear you say that or did I imagine that it's it's probably pretty similar. So your when you use the most buses right now is your secondary tier. So keeping your high school your secondary schools on the same tier. We got to figure out how to reduce that. So that is moving them further apart um the tiers so you can have more kids on pick up more kids. So in both of these scenarios, your secondary schools are staying on the same tier. So it's our belief and we we have not been doing Hopkins as long as Naisha has been doing, but it's our belief that um either of these options will be pretty similar in cost savings because your secondary schools are still going to be your secondary schools on the same tier and that's when you use the most busing. M yeah just to add to that I mean the only other option we are still exploring here is on some of our specialized programs. So for example we have specialized programs at Gatewood and Glen Lake which are center based for special education. Uh so if we have uh those um schools on the same tier that might lead to commuting of resources at the same time. So, so that's one of the areas we've just been trying to figure out like if we take all our elementary schools uh on one tier. Uh what would that look like for certain programs where we have uh students going into these programs using those specialized uh buses and equipment? Mhm. We also Go ahead. We also want to consider the school bus drivers. Not many drivers would like to come in for two hours in a day and two hours in the afternoon. And I know that we can't completely consider drivers, but that is um how there's a struggle with keeping drivers sometimes in school districts because they would like more, you know, so they'll go somewhere else that has more tiers versus coming in and they really only get a two-hour minimum. So if they come in and their route is an hour and a half, they will get two hours, but that's it. four hours a day and rates have gone up for school bus drivers, but it doesn't help when you only have two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon. And which scenario only allows for which scenario perpetuates this two-hour challenge? Two tier. So, if we put all elementary on this one tier, it may need more buses depending. We will see. Um but the drivers would only have 2 hours in the morning and then 2 hours in the afternoon to take them home. Okay. The other and the segue into policy conversation is when you think about what was mentioned about reducing the number of buses for the secondary tier if you want to think about it that way. You have some other levers within policy to look at within, as was mentioned, considering those longer walk zones. And if you're able to look at that in a secondary space, which your policy allows you to do, you can look at some of that reduction to occur in that specific area that you control through policy with those no walk zones. Presently, as mentioned, you're at a mile. You can look at that twomile impact. And I think that the data that was shown to you this evening can really give another lens into how that can actually be um an effective tool in really creating that three tier um and also adjusting for that middle tier if you will that secondary in a way that can be more costefficient also. So, and I I just wanted to clarify about something that was that was just mentioned. So, are we contracting for more than 4 hours per day with our bus drivers? So, we do have a minimum of the four hours for the contractor, but what the contractors pay the bus drivers is a 2-hour minimum also. And so for us, um, we do have that. It's it's almost the same. So yes, we c our contractors receive a four hour minimum of two hours and two hours, but then if there's longer routes, then they would get more per the quarter hour. Um, school bus drivers because this is their only job. These days, um, it's not the same as before where school bus drivers were retired and they just wanted extra money and they would come in and work for a couple hours and be okay. Now, this is the livelihood and drivers are raising families off of this. So, two hours. I'm just wondering what are we currently contracting? It is 4hour minimum. Correct. So staying at a two-tiered would not change anything for the bus drivers. Correct. They're getting 2 hours in the morning and two hours at night currently. For the most part, if the route is 2 hours, yes, if or under. Yes. Okay. Just wanted to clarify that to make sure that we weren't suggesting a change to the bus drivers. So the the point for that was to say that's part of our our issue with the driver shortage that we have. So we're working it out with driver shortage, but it is um hard sometimes not having drivers because they leave to go other places because of the hours. That was just the point. Yeah. And our contract was also when we when we actually entered into contracts with our current uh bus contractors uh those contracts uh those contracts were based on a three- tier system and I think that's where this structure comes into play uh for the 4hour 4hour minimums. So if we continue on a two-tier system that might just require some more conversations and uh maybe uh re looking at the contracts so that we find maximum efficiency on both ends. So are we not currently on a two-tier system? You so you are but kind of like two and a fifth. Yeah. 2.5. Um, so currently with like how close your tiers are, there's not a full two hours in the morning for most buses unless they're running kind of that.5. There's not a full 2 hours in the morning and the two hours in the afternoon. So our option two is still a two t or option one is still a two-tier, but it's spread out. So it would be those that two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon. If you went to a three tier that we're recommending where you do have that full 60 minutes, it would be over four hours. So, you would be looking at more of a five, maybe even six hour day. Um, using less buses, but using less buses, which is great for drivers. Um, but it would it would make your cost per bus look a little different if you're paying for six hours of bus versus right now you're paying for four. So currently are we so I just want to understand what you're what you just said director Chapanduka. Um so we currently have a contract with our um bus services for a three tier. Correct. Cuz when we when we when we embarked on the current contracts were on a three tier. So it was structured on a three tier. Interesting. Okay. Thank you, Chair Anderson. Yes. So, Vice Chair Ross um asked what direction we were leaning in and um I would like to So, where my mind is is I'm thinking about what's best long-term for how we spend our fiscal resources. So, I do think that we need to really um you know, dig deep and be brave while protecting our most vulnerable students. by moving toward um less you know you've described this model as like a Cadillac model like I think we need to really move away from that otherwise I feel like we're going to be back here next year we spent all day yesterday at the state capital and legislators are telling us do not expect increases for like ever right and so we don't want to kind of revisit every year now maybe there are some changes we could make now and there are some changes we could make next year, but I I do I know I'm not the board and I'm not a voting member, but I'm encouraging all of us to really look at what we can do differently so that we're not cutting instructional staff because, you know, we don't want to go to the to the two-mile no bus zone. In Washington DC, where I worked for two years, they do not transport, not even kindergarteners, right? everybody well they do transport students with IEPs but everybody else gets to school and you know they partner with families to figure out how to make it work. So I you know I just want us to like really think about what we can what changes we can make and sustain over time and really preserve and protect our fiscal our scarce fiscal resources. Yeah. And I think Oh sorry go ahead. When we make recommendations, sometimes it's not always an all or nothing. Sometimes it is something to do now and then something that you really work on communication and rolling out for like the next school year. I'll be honest, I get nervous making recommendations for um bell time changes this late in a school year. Um not saying it can't be done because you you guys have an amazing transportation team. Um but I do get nervous about the time of the year. So sometimes it's a we're going to do this now, we're going to look at doing this in in the next year. Or sometimes it's what if we we're giving you like big bell times options, but what if you move elementary or your first year up by five minutes and your second year back by 10 by five minutes and you give 10 minutes of that 20 minute suggestion. like there's a lot you can play with um within kind of recommendations. Thank you for that. And I think too um it looks like I think we're focusing a lot on the the two scenarios whereas I think there's significant um or at least my impression is there's significant savings in these policy changes that we could make. Um, and I think maybe that's probably the more difficult conversation, which is maybe why we're avoiding it. So, um, thank you. I appreciate that. Um, and also your qu question, Vice Chair Ross, what the recommendation would be. Any other comments or questions? Next steps, any recommendations from administration where you would like the board to go after this? Chair Andre, are you moving to a more policy focused conversation around 707 or did we just do the CESO findings and the policy? What it felt like both to me? I don't what do you feel like do we want to do more of a like around the table specifically focusing on the policy discussion? Chair Andre as a member of the monitoring committee I would appreciate that um just so that we have the temperature of the board so that when we go back to craft it and bring it back we're not bringing back something that will shock and awe. Kind of sounds exciting. is what chair Andre when we kind of were talking about busing before and there were some families some openen enrolled families who like at first or or maybe still don't have buses there was quite a bit of talk about the like well you're required to you the district are required to if we're willing to drive them to the closest stop. It's something that I heard kind of over and over again on uh social media and I'm wondering if that's true. Yes. So technically per statute it does say you guys are required if it is not done in practice which is what gets confusing is not all districts do what you guys are doing. Um, but per statute, if a family is willing to get their students, if you accept them into Hopkins and a family is willing to get their students to the nearest bus stop in their school attendance area, in their school attendance by statute, you are required to transport them. Okay. Thank you. just to add to it in their attendance boundary, but it doesn't necessarily have to be the stop they request. And that is where a lot of our push back came from is because there was an expectation of certain stops. So, we can give them a stop that has space, right? So, if there's no space at the one that they require, we can give them another one. And that's where families didn't, you know, they would prefer the other one. Sure. Chair Andre, can I ask just one more quick question? Yeah. Um, and I appreciate uh directors West Morland's uh suggestion to kind of do a temperature check around some of the policy stuff, but um a as far as the bell time scenarios as compared to pay to ride or andor adjusting the no bus zone, what what is the more impactful financially? adjusting the bell times or doing this pay to ride and andor no bus. Uh so I'll put it out there that doing pay to ride on its own is not going to help you guys. It would more be doing a policy change with pay to ride. So those two kind of have to go together. Policy meaning no bus zones. Yes. Yep. Um, so Pateride doesn't have to go with it, but Pateride on its own is not really a option. It's kind of an add-on option, if that makes sense. Um, Bell Times in the work we do when we're looking to cut cut big money for districts, Bell Times is what we go to. Okay. But you have to be open to really making those adjustments. It can't be small adjustments to have big impact. But bell times are our first look when we come into a district and do an audit and they say we need to cut big dollars. Bell times is what we go to first. Okay, that's helpful. Do do you want me to go first? Oh, um, sure. Is any Are we ready to do the policy thing? Okay. Yeah. So I I I mean I would lean towards the the three tier. And then regarding policy, I I'm reticent to do pay to ride stuff due to equity thoughts. And so I like kind of hearing that that's sort of an add-on thing. And I'm open to expanding the no bus zone to some degree. I'd be very uncomfortable at two miles, but that's just where I'm at. May I ask a clarifying question? Um, Clerk Thompson, um, would you, as a board member, are you comfortable with say near two miles for secondary, but not not near two miles for elementary, like a differentiated based on that would make me more comfortable. Yeah. Just curious. Thank you. Could you repeat that? What was Well, right now it's a it's a differentiated walk zone for elementary versus secondary. And it doesn't it does not have to be the same across the board. Like if you do two miles for secondary, you don't have to do two miles for elementary. Like it could be different. Director Roer, I'm still thinking um about it and just, you know, I do look at the the equity issue. Um, I really do appreciate what um, director West Morland said just about, you know, like the families who don't have transportation and just like the the implication that could cause for someone. Um, so I'm just I'm just thinking so can I come back? Yeah. Um, regarding equity, it's a very important conversation. The cuts have to happen. So, like we don't have the money to pay for all of the things. So busing is one way that equity shows up and one way we can fight equity, but keeping teachers, keeping programs, keeping extracurriculars, keep, you know, all of those things, it's all an equity issue. And so while I really appreciate wanting to take wanting to provide buses, and I'm not saying anyone here is is saying we shouldn't make any changes, but I think that that lens is really important for this conversation. Um, I will say like personally, my kids walk, I don't know, not quite a mile, and I actually love it. Um, and I'm super excited for my elementary schooler to get on this walking. It's kind of the opposite of a bandwagon, whatever, to for them to start walking every day. Um, I feel like pay to ride feels goofy and like $100 like that's just annoying and like doesn't really feel fill much of a bucket. I mean, that feels like we're going to get $18,000, which is not nothing, but it feels like a kind of a poulry amount. Um, I am open to changing tiers if we're going to bother to do it. It would be better to just do it. I think do a a bigger jump and have it be a little bit of a pain and get over it. Um, I am open to for sure enforcing the board policy and possibly bigger on the no bus zones. I'm more comfortable with bigger kids, older kids. being responsible for their own transportation further, more like that one and a half or two miles versus the little kids. And hearing that because a private school in the area of Melebrook started at a certain time that they had the public school make concessions does not thrill me. And so that would be a fun conversation to continue if the district needs to have that with Golden Valley. I don't know. I we need to make some big changes. So I kind of I'm sort of like a yes and except for maybe younger kids walking two miles to opt in. Um, and I really appreciate your emphasis on as soon as possible in communicating this right now because August transportation changes pain me. Thank you. Um, Treasure Hartland, um, I would say too that, um, this is painful to make these changes. Um I too am concerned about equity issues. Um and I also think though that that plays into bell time changes. Um, when we changed our tiered system, parents went through a lot of pain to change their child care, their jobs, um, in order to adjust. And I hate the idea of going back to them and saying, "Yeah, do it again." Um, so I am a big proponent of the scenario one. I think that keeps our start times very similar to what they are now. Um, would have the least disruption to staff and families who um have had a lot of disruption in their lives. Um, and if there isn't a significant cost change uh savings for scenario two, I don't understand why we do it. Um, but if there is, then I understand. As far as policy is concerned, I I think I agree. I like this hybrid idea of secondary students. you know, I have one. He sometimes takes the bus, but he's going to school early because he's got stuff before. Um, I think that, you know, high school students, they just have a lot more flexibility in their schedules. I think a lot of us know that once you get into secondary, you're in sports, you're staying at school. Um, you're not using the bus as much. It is also a lifeline. um for a lot of [Music] families. So, I would say that the two-mile no bus zone for secondary students, the um one mile feels better for younger kiddos. And I agree about being really firm on our policy, in particular with our open enrolled families. um that if we have spot at a bus stop, that's where you go. Otherwise, there isn't a spot for you. Um and then exploring the pay to ride, you know, if there are families that are like, I just can't do it. How can we make it work for them? I think would be would feel better for me. Sorry, I think I I lost. Was the recommendation from the districts or is scenario two? Uh that's because we're currently on a three tiered system right now. So it would from an implementation would it just be easier just to move to stay within the same tiered system? Yeah. So that's what we've been uh exploring. Uh if we go to a three tier system with three elementary uh at the first tier, the secondaries at the second tier and uh another three elementary at the third tier. Uh the impact will be to just school uh school buildings. So it won't impact all the buildings. It will just be two school buildings where we'll have to make some adjustments. That's not the timing I'm seeing in the scenario. All elementary schools would have different start times as well as the um the secondary schools as well. They would all have different start times in scenario two. Uh so the scenarios you have showing on there are the scenarios which are being suggested by the consultants. Uh we have been working on a different scenario uh in house. uh which was putting three schools on one tier uh three elementary schools on first tier, keeping the secondaries on the second tier and then um uh maintaining Meadow Brook and moving two elementary schools to the third tier. That's where uh the impact will only be on two elementary schools. The times are 15 to 20 minutes off different. Okay. Maybe. Yeah. So, that's what I was thinking that all the elementary like all the schools would be except for Metobrook would be changing their times, but that you're telling me that's not the case. The recommendation from CISO is to give more time in between tiers these times here, but in house we kept all elementaryaries at the same time except for the two that will move back down to the time that Metobrook is. Okay. So, our recommendations are are obviously different um based off of that your guys' secondary tier is the one with the most buses. So, splitting your elementary when we were doing it. We just don't know how you would see savings keeping the same times splitting your elementaryaries because the most buses are during your secondary right times. Do you know just offhand like I know without crunching numbers maybe you don't but if we go to like a two-mile no bus zone for secondary and and do optin is can we even that out some? I mean, I'm trying to understand what it would take to make it. So, if you guys did a full optin, um, and from talking with Nisha, it sounds like it it worked to an extent, but you guys did it later. So, there was still students that you didn't hear from, so you put on buses. You know, how somewhat few um it worked and then we changed the bell times. That was the big impact. Okay. So, it worked and we reduced the amount of buses and then we changed the bell times which increased the amount of buses. So in in our scenarios if you continue to do the opt-in and you say you did a one mile for elementary, two miles for secondary, we believe you could save seven to 11 buses for doing those two options. Thank you. And that was option two you were mentioning that. So that that was actually just policy doing optin and changing your policy. Secondary and elementary. Secondary and elementary. Yep. And trying to especially knock down at least really focusing on that secondary is um so having that secondary go out to two mile no bus zone. will dock some buses off that that secondary is right now your guys's a very important tier to look at. So I'm align with that that update um within policy for the secondary for sure. Um the two mile Yep. Great. Thank you. And I just want to make sure that we recognize we have something else on our agenda. Um, and so, um, Director Xiao, I'd like to hear from you on policy. Uh, on policy, yeah, I think it's pretty in line, um, with what everybody else has said around, um, maybe one mile or definitely enforcing the policy, uh, for elementary and then, uh, two miles for secondary. I think that's reasonable. Um and maybe you know just quickly you know with the bell time thing I think uh we we need some stability like somebody else said right there there's a lot of whip whiplash in there so um just has it depending on the how much we save. Uh we we can have that conversation. Thank you. Supportive of policy change two miles for secondary. I want to talk more about the younger grades, however, in monitoring um and um supportive of a a change to the um a more efficient tiered system um either either of the options. Thank you. Great. Thank you. And thank all of you. Really appreciate your time and all the effort that went into this report. Thank you. Thanks for having us. Absolutely. Um so now we will move on to our um next agenda item. Um pull it up the scholar trade competencies. I would invite um directors home and Schwarz to the table and turn it over to uh Dr. Mary Perry Reed. Thank you, Chair Andre, and apologies to all of our presenters who have been waiting. Thank you for your patience. Um, we, I think, are going to have a number of people approach the table here. So um in Hopkins, we have been talking about how we can best capture and even measure student learning um more holistically and in ways that align with competencies that are um truly important once um in the school setting, but especially once students enter into the world beyond Hopkins. We believe that true student success goes beyond test scores, goes beyond GPA, and we want to make sure that we are aligning our graduate traits with measurable scholar competencies that reflect the skill sets and the dispositions and the attributes that students will need when they enter into what we know as a VUA world. That will be very demanding. So um this work really is a trend setting for the state of Minnesota. Our team here is is um in a place where not many other districts are. So thanks to our innovation design and learning team and all of you adult scholars paving the way for our K12 scholars. So, we have um Anne Erdle and Abby Holm and Tony Schwarz and um Eric when I um Turner Turner, right? I was going to say Turner, but my brain wanted me to say something else. Eric Turner and Angela Wilcox. Sometimes my brain doesn't work when I see um faces at the board table that I don't usually see at the board table. Oh, and Julie Ellingsson. Ellings. Nice to see you, Julie. Good. Thanks. Thanks to all of you for being here. I'll turn it over to you. Thanks, Dr. Mary Priya Reed. Good evening, board members. Um, one of the things that, uh, we have wanted to do more of this year is get more teaching and learning content in front of you at the board table. And so, this is an example of that. Um, we have had traits of a Hopkins scholar since the visioning process in 2018. And as Dr. Mary Perry Reed stated, uh, other districts do have what is commonly considered a graduate profile. Um, but we are really intentionally activating what um what are the practices that support realizing those those traits in our students and we've um engaged a number of staff in supporting this process and some of them are here tonight to to talk about that. Go ahead, Natalia. So, as you can tell, you can click it again. The traits of the Hopkins Scholar are an integral part of our learning framework. And so, as we are working toward implementation on all of the components of the learning framework, this is a very important and key component of that work. So, this is what we're going to do tonight. Um Tony's going to start us off by talking about the history and then um Abby will talk about connecting those scholar trait competencies with the work we've been doing around student success metrics and then our brilliant teachers will be talking about what that actually looks like in practice. Thank you. Um before I start this, I wanted to make a connection. I was sharing with Ann and Abby earlier um at the schoolboard meeting a couple of weeks ago when there were two transition plus students here sharing. Um it was amazing and I thought to myself, what a wonderful um example of some of our scholar trades in terms especially of their confidence and their voice. And I was just making that connection as we were preparing for this and and encouraged me to share that because it was um it was a really cool presentation. Um the history of how we got to our scholar traits may be familiar to some of you but we thought it was worth um kind of going have historical perspective of where these came from. Um so in the summer of 2018 we had almost 30 students go out into the community and ask the question what does a worldclass education mean to you? Um later that summer a group worked with go-kart labs to analyze all of those data. Um the themes and trends from that um became fall task force groups and from the strategic task forces um 250 staff, students and community members were part of that work. They helped identify what student success would look like based on the data gathered from the royal reps. Um from that we drafted the initial scholar traits in the 2018 2019 school year. they were shared with caregivers and staff um to give feedback on them and in 20 um and that happened over 2018 2019 2019 2020 um and that brought us to the draft I'm not the draft the scholar document that you have in front of you now it's the next slide to tell you we go back you can keep going because they have that um and connected to that work then is our scholar success metric work with which is more recent work. Yeah. So, shortly after that time frame in the 2020 2021 school year, we began diving into another part of the learning framework, which is the scholar success metrics. And so, some of you have heard about this before. We interviewed uh staff, families, students, business owners in the area, college admissions representatives in the area. And we asked questions like, you can do a couple clicks. We ask questions like in addition to grades and standardized test scores, what do you believe the current measures of success are for our students? Next slide. So this yielded a lot of qualitative data uh which we analyzed and that involves coding it into different themes or categories. And so there were 11 themes that emerged and the most common theme that came out of all of the different interview types were uh something that we called the traits of a Hopkins scholar. So whether intentionally or unintentionally, uh the interviewees we talked to would reference things like critical thinking, empathy, confidence. They would say, "This is what we think is success. This is what we're looking for." And so, uh, these are a couple quotes. One is from a caregiver in our community, and the other is from a college recruiter in our community. And you'll notice that they again inadvertently or or advertently named the scholar traits. Um so next slide that work made it really apparent that we needed to consider how we would put the traits in action. So whenever possible we involve the people most affected by the work. That's why we interviewed so many people in 2122. Um and we're following the same model as we consider how to put the scholar traits in action. So one way we uh meant to put them or one way we started to put them in action is in 2324. So, we're kind of going chronologically here. 23 24 teachers could earn a micro credential by learning about and really considering how they would embed the scholar traits into their lessons. So, this was a wide-ranging group. We had some media paras, PE teachers, classroom teachers, and they were really focused on this area. Next slide. So, this group took each of the scholar traits as part of their work, for example, critical thinking, and they considered what this meant. what does this look like? What does this mean? Um, and so the groups the group really started to consider what it would look like in action starting with that definition. And the next slide, the group began to articulate how this would look across the E12 system. So, for example, they considered and talked about specifically problem solving in relation to critical thinking. What does that look like for a preK student? What does it look like for a student in grades 6 through 8? and what does that look like postsecary? And so they did this for each one of the traits, a lot of different components in each one. Um, and by the end of the 23 24 school year, we had each of these continuums drafted out for all of the scholar traits. And this was really impactful and a powerful experience because it really forced us to consider how we see that in our students and how we might um consider reflecting on that with our students. So that brings us to the current school year where Tony will walk through how the work has evolved um last year and this year and then we'll hear from our three teachers. So uh a couple years ago we realized that our early childhood uh staff were using the um traits of a Hopkins scholar to communicate with their caregivers. So this is an example document that they were using and they were filling it out and sharing it with their caregivers in the spring to show how our youngest learners were beginning to develop these traits and they chose two to speak about for every each of their learners. Um last year we worked with them to find a way to share this information with our kindergarten teachers. So how do we build a system where you know this can follow our students? So this year we met with all the kindergarten teams to make sure that they had access to the information um to help them understand how their students were developing two of our scholar traits. Go to the next one. Um and then continuing this work, we're collaborating with teachers to um further our efforts as part of our balanced assessment system. So kindergarten teachers have been asked to provide brief descriptions how each of their students are demonstrating two of the scholar traits. And this information will then be shared with first grade teachers um next year to really look at how they are being developed over time. And to give you a better understanding of how the traits are embedded in the classroom and in lessons, we have invited teachers to share how they're integrating um these traits. And we have someone representing elementary, middle school, and the high school. And I'm going to invite Julie Ellingsson to begin by discussing how the traits are embedded in elementary FIAD. Thank you, Tony. Uh my name is Julie Ellingson and I was uh previously the Alice Smith physical education teacher and um in the last month I've transitioned to the role of preK through 12 adapted FIAD teacher. So a lot of this work um involves in the last two and a half years at Ellis Smith. Um can you click forward one? this um this is my 27th year being an elementary physical education specialist. I spent 23 years in Minneapolis public schools before um moving to Hopkins. And um when I heard about these traits um I I couldn't help but jump into the passion of empathy and how it can transform physical education for students, staff, um communities, parents. And so when I had this opportunity to um be able to work with the traits, it it was pretty magical and it it matched my passion. So, as you can see, the main um if you I'll just read through this really quick. Um the importance of intentionally teaching empathy in physical education. And as you see, it fosters inclusivity. Um empathy helps PE teachers and students understand and respect each other and whether it's physical ability, skill, or personal challenges. by being an empathizer with classmates and students where kids are more likely to include others in games and activities. Um promoting emotional well-being. Um can we click one more because then they can um while I'm while I'm talking I I put together some pictures because I think pictures pictures pictures pictures tell it all. And if you can see, um, these are some of my favorite pictures, um, in the I had about 15,000 of them. And I narrowed down from 15,000. Yes. Um, just what what empathy looks like, feels like, and sounds like in a physical education classroom. And what it looks like, it looks like people being able to be partners with anyone. It looks it feels like trust. Um it feels it feels confident. Um at Hopkins, I really love the um focus on restorative relationships and restorative culture and by intentionally teaching empathy and physical education. It really helps with relationships um and the trust and building relationships both with students and with the teacher. Um it increases and encourages cooperation and teamwork. It creates a safe and respectful environment. It it can increase the motivation and engagement of students because they feel safe. If if students feel safe that they can try something new and not get laughed at, if the culture of your classroom is built on empathy, it is such a solid foundation. So intentionally um teaching uh empathy and physical education is just a huge focus as you can see from the pictures. Um and in in action what it looks like is intentionally every single hour of every single day because every day is different, every class is different. Um actually um teaching them what empathy will look like in this game. not just in general, but in this game for the next 10 minutes, we're going to be playing a tag game. And let's talk about tag. Um, tag is huge. It can be really fun for some people and it can be really it it can be unsafe or feel yucky to other students. And teaching intentionally that um and and helping students feel that so that they're not chasing after the same person. They begin to see these games different and they see they want their peers to be able to participate and be happy and have joy and that's more important than winning or being competitive or a rivalry and I think you never get there but you are always on the path there and so that is where the um empathy comes alive and the work I've been doing in physical education Um, and it's again it it's those teachable moments that you stop and you you're you're aware as an educator and you stop and you break down those moments. Um, and I I think that is the key is just not assuming that kids get it, but really being intentional. Does anyone have any questions? And as I've been, you know, this last month has been super awesome because we I've been traveling around and now I'm I go to different um gyms and and watching this in action in Hopkins in our physical education departments is it it's just you know I was working with the I was the IDL liaison for the last what year? Was it a year? Yeah. Or so. and um you know just trying to lead by example and I couldn't be happier with just um the level of excellence in in our physical education programs and and that that turn to SEAL and that that um because we're not you know some of us are older and not trained in that and and you know we're always learners as teachers and I'm so proud of our department and how we are constantly evolving and changing and meeting new needs and if it doesn't work um finding what works and what makes it amazing and joyful. Thanks Julie. So that's elementary. Uh and then we'll turn it over to Angela Wilcox. Angela is a IB coordinator at North Middle School and she is going to talk about how uh the scholar trades connect with the IB uh program and then uh some of the components of the IB program as well like the the profile. Thank you. It's nice to see you all again. Um so as you may be familiar the international balora program has identified 10 learner profile traits that are follow the whole continuum of prek through 12. Those are internationally developed um and researched um and I think I sent it to the whole board. I know I sent it to you. The the internationalmindedness and a a research study that looked at what is it that actually makes a person internationally minded so that they could work and solve problems with people from around the globe. Um which is of course what our Hopkins uh scholar traits are trying to strive for. Students who can leave and work with people from around the globe, communicate with confidence and empathy. Um, so what we we've been working on implementing the IBarner profile traits, these 10 traits that you can see, they're kind of small on your slide, so I apologize. Um, the 10 traits define many different capacities and mindsets that students can practice. We've used those traits to guide our unit planning. So, for example, in our sixth grade design class, for every day on the agenda, we identify one learner profile trait that we want to ground ourselves in to make some agreements about what are we going to practice today or how are we going to be with each other. So, we have hot glue guns to make rubber band cars. What how how do we want to use those? Do we want to burn other people on purpose with hot glue? Are we going to be principled? So we talk about what does that look like and sound like? And we've had to make very explicit agreements about how the GL hot glue guns get used. So we talk about what does it mean to be an inquirer. We're practicing our whole unit right now is around resilience. And what we've we're teaching them is becoming curious, asking a question when something fails instead of getting mad or giving up or uh blaming someone or yourself. If you can find a question that will help you stay engaged. So we practice being inquirers. So this is infused in our advisory program. It's how we recognize students at the different grade levels. We look for examples of scholars who are principled and caring and and uh inquirers and critical thinkers. So the work we've been doing now is aligning those uh learner profile traits with our six traits of the Hopkins scholar. So students who practice these learner profile traits would be able to collect evidence in a student portfolio for example of their ability to be communicators or their ability to be empathetic. and they would have examples from their middle years work of through advisory and through coursework through awards they've won of those traits that they develop in the three years of our middle years program. Thanks, Angela. All right. Thanks, Angela. And last, but by no means least, uh, a voice from our high school, Eric Turner will talk about the Hopkins Creates program. Yeah, good evening everybody. Um, I'm Eric and it is my pleasure to be the the program coordinator for Hopkins Creates, which is the new project-based learning program at the high school. Um, I can tell you all about that some other time if you want all the details of how that's come to be and everything we do. Um, every term this year, every quarter this year, we've had about a 100 students engaged in our program and about half of them have been doing independent projects. Some of those projects have been passion projects, and I'll talk about some of those examples. Some of them have been ways to recover credit, doing school in a different way and in a nontraditional way that's really helped students thrive and and make it through. And it's been um a great experience these last couple years getting this program going. Um all of the projects that we do, all of the independent projects we do, whether they're a passion project or a credit recovery type project, um are built around ideas of of liberatory uh project based learning and ideas of um being part of a community um being having a sense of identity and all those things which are also very closely tied to the traits of a Hopkins scholar. And when you think about what it takes to be a high school student, whether you're a senior or a freshman doing a nine-week long independent project, the ideas of confidence and voice um and all of the scholar traits are inherently tied into how do you actually take control of your education? And that's really what Hopkins creates is about. It's about helping our students live out all of these traits through doing it. Um some of the examples if you look at the pictures down there these are not the actual projects but they represent student projects. Last year we had one of our um young Ajiway women do a project on missing and murdered indigenous women. She did a documentary and interviewed people in the building and really you could see her transformation as she um took on wanting to change this important social issue. Um and it was an incredible transformation for her and she's doing great work this year. She's doing another project for fine arts for us where she's doing um beating for her cap for graduation. Um and it's really exciting to see that. Um history of dance. I have a student who's also currently finishing a novel right now. Um she plans to submit a novel for publication by the end of the year, which is kind of amazing. Um but if you want to talk about students developing their voices, I mean, and and having the confidence to go out there and do a real world kind of project, um that's absolutely it. I have um a senior boy who doesn't need any more credits but wanted to stay engaged in the school and he's doing a project on sleep thinking of you know being a holistic scholar and taking care of more than just the academic side of things. He's recognized that sleep has been an issue for him this year and in order to get ready for going off to college next year he wants to adjust his sleeping patterns um so that he can be healthier and happier and more successful there. Um, one of the other examples on my slide, um, I have a young woman right now working on a project that's about, um, collecting artifacts related to African-American women who served in World War II, um, both digital and physical artifacts. Um, and she's had to travel to find some of the physical artifacts and go to museums and look at things like that. Um, and then the last picture is last spring I had a young man um, who had to be gone from our building for part of the day um, because he was caring for his younger siblings. And so his project was actually basically the care and feeding of his younger siblings. And he kept intricate records of what they ate and when they slept. And it was an amazing project that is all about empathy and creative thinking and problem solving and sort of all the things that we really want our scholars to be able to do by the time they graduate from high school. Um, so it's absolutely been um just a joy to to watch our students do these things. And all of the projects do help the students get to those um scholar traits. And then the last piece of what we do that I think um sort of adds to this is that the last step of every project is a reflection. And part of the reflection process is asking them how did this project help you um develop in at least one of the six scholar traits. Um I don't make them write about all of them. Most of them do write about more than one because they can see that through doing this project um they've grown and that's of course what we want. You know, it's an authentic learning experience where they then think about what they've done and how they've grown not just in the academic area but as a person. Thank you, Eric. I kind of wish I'd had that class in high school. I know a lot of adults that can't write a novel or figure out our sleep schedule. Exactly. I rely on my phone to do it. Um, any comments or questions? Well, can I just say one quick thing? Thank you so much for like teaching empathy and PE. That makes a real big difference for kids who may feel a little bit insecure about, you know, being engaged. And I just really appreciate that that is um being emphasized. So, kudos. Keep doing it. Yes. Um, thank you all for this presentation and for doing this really critical work um for our families and our our scholars. Um, incred I I agree. Um, Director Roer, you can see the impact when you are in Hopkins schools. um there is a level of empathy and caring and just creativity that um you don't often see in I think more traditional schools. So, thank you for that work. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you. gives us a few minutes, seven minutes for a break before our um uh meeting begins at 7:00. Um we will have a recognition of students. So, make sure you're back for the royal blue carpet. Thank you. Thank you. Is this impression? [Music] Thank you. Hello everybody. Welcome. Um it's so good to see you all here at the Hopkins School Board meeting for March 25th. Before we get started with our official agenda, we um want to recognize some outstanding students in our district. So, we will come down to you uh for this part of our time together. Hello everybody. Welcome. This this evening we are thrilled to recognize our student athletes and their coaches from gymnast gymnastics who have recently competed at the state level either as a team or individuals. We're excited to celebrate the outstand outstanding accomplishments of these athletes who have reached the state championships. Their achievements are a testament to their hard work, dedication, strength, and talent. Simone Biles, a dedic decorated Olympic gymnast, once said, "I'd rather regret the risks that didn't work out than the chances I didn't take it all." This quote reminds us of the importance of taking risks and pushing our limits to achieve greatness. On behalf of the Hopkins School Board and District, we extend our heartfelt gratitude to our dedicated coaches who have guided and supported our athletes. High school sports play a vital role in the development of students, schools, and communities beyond physical health and athletic skills. Participation in sports teaches discipline, teamwork, resilience, and leadership. Qualities that benefit students both on and off the gymnastics mat. Athletics foster a sense of belonging and school spirit, strengthening connections among students, families, and staff while instilling pride in the broader community. Good evening, everyone. I'm going to continue with our comments so that we can offer our highest praise to our student athletes in the audience. Um, Chair Andre was talking about some of the research behind sports. Additionally, research consistently shows that student athletes tend to have higher academic success, improve time management skills, and increase college and career readiness. Additionally, our gymnasts have a healthy, positive outlet that supports their mental health, builds confidence, and encourages lifelong habits of physical well-being. Megan Comf, did I say Megan's name right? Okay. And Emily Hogan are our amazing gymnastics coaches. Are they here with you at all? I don't see them either one. Okay. All right. So, we'll have to pass on the praise. And um we're also grateful to your parents and caregivers. So, thank you to all of our coaches and parents, caregivers who might be listening in on this celebration. Yes. For all of their hard work, commitment, and love for our student athletes. Their efforts are instrumental in your success, athletes, and we really appreciate coaches and parents. Our gymnastics team has demonstrated incredible dedication and skill. Your rigorous practice and competition schedules were balanced with team building and confidence-building experiences that hopefully enhanced your individual and your team performance. And watching you is inspiring and motivates all of us to strive for greatness. At the state meets, our athletes delivered exceptional performances competing against the best in the state. We are very proud of your achievements and the hard work that you invested to reach this point. The gymnastics team are Lake Conference champs and for the third year in a row. Yes. Yes. For the third year in a row, the girls gymnastics team won the section 6A meet and qualified for state as a team. You finished sixth overall in the state meet. Is that correct? Sixth. That's really awesome. In addition, senior Ava Brosam, junior Nia Simone Britt, and sophomore Aaliyah Jennings all qualified for the individual competition as [Applause] well. Okay. So, at this time, athletes, um, if you could stand up, we're going to recognize you. Go back to the royal the back of the royal blue runner cuz we want you to be able to run uh walk up the whole thing. You can or if you want to do cartwheels down the like show off the skills. She's thinking about it. We're going to call your name. Hold on. So, decide if you're going to walk, flip, cartwheel, or they're Look at their faces. No, you don't have to. You can just walk. Okay. So, we're going to recognize each of you. Addie Walters [Applause] Oh, Addy, we have a certificate for you. And then please hang out up here with us because we'll take a photo at the end. Aaliyah Jennings here. Arya Bergland. Ava Bros. Did I say your last name correctly? Eva. Okay. Awesome. Merrick McClean. Did I say your name correctly? Merrick Marie. Marique. Apologies. Congratulations to you. Sorry. Congratulations. Nia Simone Britt Olivia Melena Sierra Hellstrom. I hope you are Vivian Cring. Oh my. Okay. What's your name? Mia Sanchez. Mia Sanchez. Okay, come on, Mia. [Applause] Let's Let's give Mia Sanchez another round of applause. [Applause] Oh, sometimes we miss a name, but we're so glad you're here. Congratulations to all of you. And yeah, we'll take a photo. Oh goodness. Yeah. Gymnastics. Yeah, of course. Get a couple. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. It's like a shark. I don't know why I went that way. [Laughter] Which gosh, are you all traveling for spring break? Um, no. My oldest has uh robotics like every day the whole time. Oh, what about you? No, not yet. Well, thank you again for coming this evening. It was great to see you here at the at the meeting and to celebrate your achievements. Um we will um now move on to the next um session section of our meeting tonight which is open agenda. The first thing we do during this time is um host a public comment section. Um there are several ways to do public comment or to uh reach out to the board. We value hearing from our community um because we believe it is crucial for implementing vision 2031. If you wish to contact us um via email, you can do so at school-board at hopkinschools.org. And on the schoolboard page and the district website, you can find a contact form for the entire school board or individual board members. That is one way to get in touch with us. We also host a uh public comment section at our meetings. One at the beginning of the meeting for um topics um topics that are on the agenda are prioritized and then we also whole host one at the end um if there are additional comments that um need to be heard. You can make public comment by showing up before the meeting and filling out a comment card, which we have two um this evening. So, we're looking forward to that. You can also leave a voicemail to be played at the uh board meeting. Do we have any voicemails this evening? Oh, sorry. I need to do that. Um so, I will call the meeting to order. Um the Hopkins School Board meeting on March 25th at 7:13 p.m. and um we will go through our public comment um guidelines for um the two people who are here in our audience tonight. So please keep your comments to 3 minutes or less. Public comment is for input only. Members of the school board will not respond directly to public comments that are made at this meeting. No specific action will be taken at this meeting in response to comments that are made or issues that are raised during the public comment period related to items not on the agenda. If the board determines that action is appropriate, the action will occur at a f future board meeting. If you have left your contact information on the comment card, a district representative may follow up with you. I will recognize one speaker at a time. Only those speakers who are recognized will be permitted to speak. Individuals who interfere with or interrupt speakers, the board, or the proceedings may be asked to leave. Personal attacks on any individual, including any other speaker during the public comment session are unacceptable, as are obscenities or profanity. Persistence in making such remarks will end the individual's opportunity to address the board and may result in the individual being directed to leave. I will rule out of order any statement that would violate state or federal law, school board policy, or the privacy rights of an individual. Minnesota's open meeting law prohibits the discussion of private educational data during an open meeting. Accordingly, during the public comment session, no person may discuss private educational data on an identifiable student. The open meeting law also requires the board to close a meeting for preliminary consideration of allegations against an employee. Accordingly, community members who have concerns about an employee or want to fi file a complaint or allegations against an employee are encouraged to contact the superintendent. We ask you not to name an employee by name during your comments. Repeated violations of these time, place, and manner restrictions may also lead to the meeting being briefly recessed. Community members will have an opportunity to be heard within the limits of the law and subject to the time, place, and manner restrictions above. Thank you so much for enduring that very long guidelines section with me. Um, and with that, I will invite our first two speakers to the board. Are you sharing the three minutes or do you each want three minutes? will be sharing the screen. Okay, great. Um, it's Sienna Odd and Morgan Waiter Wctor. Wctor, thank you for being here tonight. Handouts. Um, just you can like kind of follow along. Now or should we wait till the end? Um, we can have them now. That'd be great. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for bringing those. Thank you. Thank you. How my bad. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. Good evening everyone. My name is Morgan Wctor and I'm Sienna Odd and we are both sophomores at Hopkins High School and tonight we'll be proposing a career connections policy to you. Let's first start by talking about what exactly Career Connections means to us. This is a passion project we work we worked on together this winter. We both had experienced a feeling of not knowing what we wanted to do with our future, what jobs to pursue, what classes to take. It was all very new and unfamiliar to us. We felt so lost. This is when we came up with the idea of a free policy called career connections. Career connections is something that we are looking to enforce at the high school to create more guidance for students as they select their possible careers for the future and their education process. It is requires no funding from the school at all. Simply teachers to enforce it and show enthusiasm. It encompasses teachers promoting future careers that connect to what students are learning in class. We want it to be enforced similarly to how learning targets are presented at the beginning of notes, except we would want it to wrap up the end of the unit and be presented to relate what the unit was about to a job in the real world. Um, this is simply something that um, we're looking to promote to make our school a better place. Um, it's a very simple policy. It requires extremely little work on the teachers end, but it would give students immense benefits. It provides a way for students to identify topics they enjoy and see how it could be applied to a job, allowing learning to feel more purposeful. In addition, it challenges students to think about their futures and provide prerequisite knowledge for students signing up for high school and college classes. Overall, it opens students minds to previously unknown careers. Lastly, in terms of how we are looking to enforce this, we hope this is to make this a universally mandatory policy for all of Hopkins High School's classes. We made a template for teachers to use by easily modifying to put the unit of um what they're learning in class and then just simply list like five or so jobs that connect to that unit. If teachers are struggling to find these careers, we've a provided career wheel um on this template that they can simply look at if they are struggling to find these. We want this to be something that's super easy for teachers to be able to use. It should take two to three minutes out of their day to come up with some simple jobs that connect to the unit that we've been talking about. Um, we think that teachers have the best expertise when it comes to doing this and we'll be there to help as much as possible, but considering they're the ones teaching the class and providing the information, we figure it would be best if they provided the job recommendations. Exactly. um we simply ask you to consider this minimal effort free policy that would provide enumerous benefits for the students and require very little end on the teachers side of it um just to spark ideas for students futures which is really what matters. Thank you for your time and consideration. I hope you guys have a great rest of your evening. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate you being here this evening. Yes. Thank you guys. And thank you students. We can't respond but please connect with Dr. Earle in the back so she can share with you what the work that we're doing in this area right now. Okay. Awesome. Thank you. And I would like to invite Briana Dawan to the table um speaking on electric buses. Thank you for being here this evening. Thank you. Um thank you all for being here today. Uh, my name is Brianna and I am a resident of the Hopkins School District. I'm also a member of MN350's clean transportation team with Brooke. Um, and I hope to be a parent in the district in the future. I'm here today to provide some more information about electric school bus funding. Uh, at a meeting a couple months ago, we had another member of our group talk about the EPA's school bus grant program. Um, thank you all so much for considering this program. It sounds like the district was interested, but the application deadline kind of came up pretty quickly. Uh, luckily the Minnesota Department of Commerce currently has a round of funding for electric school buses that is open now through May 13th. This program also covers more of the cost of the buses than that previous EPA program did. In this round of funding, Hopkins is classified as a prioritized district. So, we could receive a grant that could cover up to 80% of the cost of an electric school bus. 85% of the cost of chargers and 85% of the cost of other expenses, uh, which could be something like hiring someone to help complete paperwork. According to the MPCA, the average electric school bus costs about $400,000, while the average diesel bus costs about $100,000. So, if Hopkins were to receive the full grant amount of 80%, the cost of an electric school bus would be dropped to just $80,000. So, while replacing old diesel buses with electric school buses, we could actually be saving about $20,000 per bus. If you are all interested in this grant application, but are looking for extra technical assistance or volunteers, please feel free to let me know. I'm going to follow up this meeting with an email with all of the grant information, and I would love to help out with anything that I can. Um, and I can also connect you with our clean transportation team, who also uh has resources related to this grant application. I want to thank you all for the hard work you do for students in this district and I really hope that you consider this funding. Um, and I hope to see our district apply for the Minnesota Department of Commerce's electric school bus program. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And that concludes our public comment section. Um, I will then move to the stu student board representatives report. And we have a student board member joining us here at the table tonight. Is there any of them online at all? Great. It's all on you. Thank you for being here. No pressure. None at all. No pressure at all. No. Is this working? I think your mic is I think I think my mic is off, too. Oh, sounds um I think it's working. I think it's working now. Yeah. Magic. All right. Hello everybody. Thank you for having me here. I know it's been a while. I've missed talking endlessly about everything that goes on at virtual ADU. Um to catch you up a little bit, we recently attended the high school college fair and we were actually able to have a teacher go around with on call with um our virtual students and ask questions for them on their behalf and go check out college stands, I guess. Um for them, I was actually one of those students. It was a fun experience actually. Cool. Um coming up we have a Socratic seminar uh that every student from grade 7 to grade nine will be participating in just before the spring break ends. And then we also have um elementary spirit week coming up and ACT prep ending soon. Nobody's really excited about that, but I figured I should mention it about the prep ending or about the test that is the ending. Once the prep ends, you're on your own, right? But uh other than the, you know, dreaded ACT after spring break, we do have an elementary school trip which I'm sure will be adorable. Yes. Fun. And that's everything. Everybody have a nice night. Thank you. Any comments or questions for our student board rep? Cheer Andre. Yes. I'm intrigued about this Socratic seminar. Is this a new thing? Do you can you tell us anything more about it? I'm intrigued about it too. Um I unfortunately am not in literature at my school. I do literature in PSO, but I do know that they are reading books. They have a list of books that they've picked from and they are going to be discussing the themes and like how those tie into the other subject. So you know for example they might tie the growth and change of a character into the growth and change of an embryo. I don't know what they're learning. I'm sorry. I don't know what seventh graders are learning. It's been a while. But you're right in that a Socratic seminar is a student-led dialogue about a text. Yeah. Designed to deepen students understanding about what they're reading and make connections to real world or high other highly relevant topics or concepts. Absolutely. I'm glad to know I'm not wildly off. Oh. Well, I think that's all the questions that we had. I really appreciate you being here and the update. I'm excited to maybe see some pictures of the elementary school field trip because yes, you're right. It's going to be cute. Um, so that um takes us to the superintendent report, Dr. Mary Perry Reed. Thank you, Chair Andre. And as we hit the slide deck for the superintendent report. Thanks, Natalia. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So, I wanted to begin by um highlighting the day that we that a few of us spent yesterday at the cap. It was legislative day at the capital. So, this is an annual experience drawing in district representatives from metropolitan school districts who then spend the day speaking with legislators about public school funding and other key priorities. So, I want to thank our our LC staffer Katherine Callahan and also our board chair Andre, Treasurer Hartland, former school board member Steve Adams, and our student board reps Mia and Sufian Osman were also there. Peer coach Chowi Tang was there, and she advocated for Q Comp on our behalf. We also had a parent representative Beth Deer who um who helped with these conversations. This is all of us with representative AOM and um for our audience this is a funding year at the state legislature. However, their message to us um quite repetitively was that there is just not enough resources to go all around for public education, for healthcare, for um you know, all of the uh industries that rely on state funding. And so um we did that did not stop us from talking about what our uh funding needs are. We also focused on mental and chemical health support for students, replacing the MCA with the ACT for 11th graders, and a very rigorous conversation with Senator Rest about whether adding a fifth tier to Minnesota's state income tax system is a good idea for revenue generation. She had a lot to say about that and it was good learning from her. So, it was a very learningfilled day and really appreciate everyone being there on Hopkins behalf. Some highlights from across our school. Starting at the elementary level, it's culture box season in fourth grade at Gatewood Elementary. As part of their where we are in place and time unit, fourth graders have done personal interviews with someone they know to learn about a culture different from their own. They are using what they learned along with research about the country to design a culture box that represents the c country and culture they are studying. Our fourth grade Gators will share their learning when they present their culture boxes, artifacts, and information to classmates and families. This type of learning helps students build perspective taking, global-mindedness, critical thinking, and the public presentations will build confidence and voice. Go Gators. Students at Metobrook had a special visit from author Juliana Brandt. Juliana Brandt is an author and elementary teacher with a passion for storytelling that guides her in both of her jobs. She lives in her childhood home here in Minnesota and her writing is heavily influenced by travels around the country and a whole decade living in the South. Metobrook students learned about the multiple stages of the writing process. Author Brandt gave great inspiration on how to use creativity and imagination to write everyone's own stories. And we know that writing is a rigorous application of learning. And this type of learning also helps students develop their voice, literacy, and critical thinking skills. Yeah. Could we Oh, did I say Metobrook? Thank you for that clarification, Glen Lake. Okay. Um, so this is Metobrook here. Meadow Brook students um engaged in a really fun experience. It was a fundraiser for the school. They raised over $45,000 engaging in the Glow For fun run. There was a DJ who pumped uh this very loud music and um and issued engaging prompts to keep everyone moving. I did um run around the track and these kids are fast. So I I actually could not keep up with with them and neither could principal Sawatsky or Assistant Principal Lawson. Not because they're slow, cuz those two are very fast. But they were wearing these giggantuous inflatable dinosaur and marshmallow costumes. So they could only walk like very very slowly. And so I just want to thank the PTO and everyone who organized and of course folks who donated to help our schools fund extra learning experiences for students. Moving on to middle school. These are photos from the seventh grade class meeting at West. Every month, West hosts a class meeting during advisory in which one grade level convenes in the gym for fun recognition and reminders. This class meeting also includes staff playing a game with the students. At the class meeting, students who demonstrate one or more of the IB learner profiles are recognized. And this is a simple way of building community and connection with and between students. At the high school level, there are many exciting things happening. It's finals week for term three. Juniors have been preparing for the April 15 ACT exam. Band, orchestra, and choir students are in Cuba. Students are getting used to a more restrictive cell phone policy. And so much more. Another very cool thing is that senior Bruce Lman Stone was recently recognized as region 6AA award winner. So, athletic director uh Mr. Ellerson and I attended the AAA banquet in downtown Minneapolis this past Saturday along with Bruce and his family. across the state. There are there are eight single A regions and eight double A regions. And every high school gets to nominate a senior with a GPA of 3.0 or higher. And uh the senior nominee also has to have participated in athletics and the arts, hence AAA, academics, athletics, arts. So Bruce Lomenstone beat out 13 other nominees from region doubleA 6A to win this prestigious award. And um Bruce is a really great guy. Um in addition to all of his accomplishments, he leads our 2,000 student pepfests along with Lucy, the other uh president of the student council at the high school. He's been admitted to Harvard University and um honestly an allaround amazing individual. Congratulations to Bruce. On our Inside Hopkins podcast, we recently featured HF and their financial support of outdoor opportunities. High school teacher Carl Schroeder, who also mcded the bash, and Glenn Lake teacher Rob Trenda, gifted their time to talk about the importance of our children spending more time outdoors. With Minnesota's students spending more time on screens and less time outdoors, our conversation got into why outdoor experiences aren't just refreshing, they're essential for student mental health, well-being, and academic success. especially when kids are engaged in activities like our high school's renowned ropes course. Now, we have Principal Habbison in the audience. And so, our fifth graders every year at Tanglin join juniors and seniors at the high school to do the ropes course together. And that's that's a really awesome activity for our fifth grade students. This podcast comes at a time that coincides with our district's new cell phone policy, which does restrict student use during instructional time. So, when you have an extra 20 minutes, please check out the latest episode titled Outdoor Adventures Await. wanted everyone to know that it is MCA season which means our 3rd through 5th, 6th through 8th, 10th and 11th graders will be taking their reading, math, andor science Minnesota comprehensive assessments starting now and into the next few weeks depending on when they're scheduled at each school. We have been working hard to increase our participation rates by decreasing our opt out rates. And while you know we just heard a presentation from our instructional leaders and teachers on aligning competency traits with competencies uh scholar traits with competencies knowing that not all of these traits and dispositions are things that are tested right on the MCA exam. So, we know that what students know and can do far exceeds their test score. And we do want to encourage students to opt in because opting out does hurt our overall district scores. And we also encourage parents to just support their student with good sleep before the assessment and really giving the MCA a best effort. I'm really grateful for parents who have attended the soup with the soup. We had one earlier today and we had a really healthy conversation around our core values in Hopkins, our uh district budget um shortfall coming up and we'll we'll be talking about our district budget in just a few minutes here, some of the um things coming out of the federal government and what parents can do to support our school system. So, those conversations have been very meaningful and I'm grateful to the parents who are showing up. And with that, I'd like to introduce Principal Hay Bison to the board table. Principal Hay Bison is the proud principal of Tanglin Elementary. And we've had such a good time spotlighting different programs and schools here as part of the superintendent report. And you are um doing wonderful things at Tanglin. And I know our board is excited to hear more about what makes Tangland so special. Thanks for being here. Absolutely. Hey, good evening everybody. It's great to see you all again and to have a few minutes to talk about my school community on on behalf of my students, my staff, my my parents. Thanks for all you do for our district and we appreciate this opportunity to talk a little bit about our school. The first slide shows the phrase Tangland Pride, which we talk a lot about at our school. And when I asked staff and students what they wanted me to highlight, invariably the answer was talk about our sense of community and what we do to make everyone feel included and welcomed and building each other up a as we work on these important preschool through fifth grade years. One of the ways that we've done that, and we can go on to the next slide there, is our our kindergarten students. One of the things that they've done this year is inviting a lot of community helpers into the school tied with some of the state standards. But there are there are four pictures of adults that are community helpers. Three of those folks happen to be parents in our Tangling community, and their children were so excited to have their parents there talking about their career choices and how they build a sense of community. And the fourth one from the Minnotonka Fire Department, Sarah, uh I knew her from high school and she loves coming to Tangland as well to help teach our children about fire safety and really once again showing how we can all help our community to be a safer place through our involvement. Another way that we build community is uh through some partnerships with our PTO. One of the shifts that we made with our PTO this year is parents were asking more ways that they can help their children to grow into their greatness. So, two ways that we've partnered to do that is in November we had what we called our numerousy night where we invited families, parents, grandparents, caregivers to join their children for an evening learning about math, playing math games. And every family left that evening with a gift bag, with a deck of cards, and other things that they could do to practice math skills, getting off of the devices, which we know is an important thing to do. And what was really cool after that night, I happened to go to a local restaurant with my family and ran into a Tangled family and they were playing one of the games that we had introduced them to at numerousy night. And earlier uh in February, we had our literacy event. We can go back one more. Thank you. Uh Kenan Jones is a former Tanglin teacher and Hopkins employee. He recently published a book. He came for our literacy night to talk about his new book and we did some readalouds. We also were talking with parents about how their children can read the room and trying to build ways to include more literacy in their lives at home. So, a great partnership building community and thanks to our PTO for helping out with those events as well. I have to give a shout out to the HF for this next slide as well. I hopefully you've seen the wonderful video put out by our marketing and communications team about uh Brood Awakenings. It is a coffee cart that our fourth grade class, Mrs. Schmidt's class, started. And it's a way to bring project-based learning to life where they're learning how to run a business and they helped out. Last week we had our goal setting meeting with district leaders. So we asked if they'd open up special for that event and serve us some coffee. And when they came in I asked them what what's your favorite part of running Brood Awakenings which by the way shout out to one of the students who came up with the name of uh the coffee cart. They said two things. one steaming the milk because they've never had an opportunity to do something like that before and it was a challenge and the other was bringing the coffee around to the staff members who ordered it. I said, "Tell me more about that. Why is that a favorite thing to do?" And invariably they would smile and say, "Because when we deliver the coffee, the teachers and the staff members have big smiles on their face and say how much they appreciate it." And I think in a small way that just shows how we're trying to build that community and appreciate the gifts that we all bring to to our school. And the final slide that I like to highlight, um, we focus a lot on character strengths. We've worked over the last few years choosing 24 strengths that tie not only division 2031, but also our district's purposeful people, the SEAL curriculum. Um, these 24 character strengths we work on on a two-year cycle so that if a student enters in kindergarten, they will hit each of these three times before they graduate Tanglin in fifth grade. And what I love about our focus on character is the students take so much joy in each other. For instance, this Friday we're doing an assembly on teamwork and the students are very excited. They've been asking when are we going to do our next assembly? So, if you're available, Friday morning at 8:05, we do them in less than a half an hour. We're going to focus on teamwork. And what I love there, that's a picture from one of our assemblies. We tell the students, not everyone will get a certificate. And what a great opportunity to find joy in knowing that some of your classmates are getting recognized for being great role models in our school. So, please consider yourselves invited if you'd like to start your day off in a joyful way. It's 8:05 to 8:35. We do one every month and it's always a highlight for our school community. And I think that's all that I had. Yeah. So, thank you for the time to talk about Tanglin and how we're trying to build that sense of community at our school. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Hay Bison. Um, real quick, you have an amazing tie. I love it. Shout out. Yes, my my sister-in-law is a graphic designer and she uh designed this Tangland Pride tie for me. And one other thing I forgot to mention this green ribbon today is a national cerebral paly day and one of our students and a friend of hers did a wonderful presentation for their class about what is cerebral paly and how she is working through the issues around that and just a great way for her to feel comfortable with who she was and build that sense of community uh at our school in a different way. So thank you for the shout out. Thank you. Any other feedback or questions? Yeah, I got a quick feedback for Dr. Hay Bison. Will Brood Awakenings be there on uh Friday? They will not. However, I I we uh they open the coffee cart. We order on Mondays and Wednesdays and they deliver on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I believe. So, yeah, we can figure out a way to get you some coffee. It's pretty good. Thanks for asking. Sorry, I got one more quick question. Um, I just wanted to say I appreciated um the opening slide where you were talking about the helpers. It made me think about the the quote from Mr. Rogers where um when something difficult is happening, you should look for the helpers. There's always helpers. So, thank you for bringing that into um our students school. Absolutely. And it's it is so important, especially in these difficult times, to to recognize, especially our parents that are community helpers and all the great things that they're doing, including being on the school board. Not to name out any names, but Okay. Uh, Director Roer, thank you, Chair Andre. Um, really quick, if I can remember, and correct me if I'm wrong, are you still doing work or doing any work with Black Men Teach at all? Yes. Um, I've been involved in Black Men Teach since the very beginning and I'm very proud of the connections that Hopkins Schools has with that organization. Uh, they're doing wonderful things to try to assure that the the representation of our staff is a representative of our student body and they're they do great things. Uh, I was proud to be on a principal panel with them a few weeks ago and just a great organization. Awesome. Yeah. So Tanglin is one of two partner schools with Black Men Teach and you have two Black Men Teach teachers fellows. Correct. They're both Well, they're both licensed teachers, correct? Yeah. Yes. And Eisenhower is the other one. Oh, okay. Yeah. Oh, awesome. If you ever want to talk further, just let me know. Okay. We'll have you over for a coffee. Ah, I would love it. Thank you. Thank you so much. All right. Thank you. Appreciate your time. Thank you, Dr. Ra. Um so then if that wraps up the superintendent report. Yes. Great. Thank you. Um we can move on to approval of tonight's agenda. I would look for a motion. So moved. 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. We now go to our consent calendar. This is a um portion of the agenda where um the items provide the board with information that's considered to be more routine in nature. Um, 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 like to draw our community's attention to number D um, which has a calendar modification in it that affects our elementary um, schools families. So, um I would just say to take a look at that um so that you're aware of an upcoming um uh modification in the calendar and I would look for uh 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. I. Any opposed? The chair votes I. And the consent calendar is approved. Next up is the treasures report. Treasurer Hartland. Wonderful. Thank you. Um, as Dr. Mary Perry Reed mentioned I spent some time at the capital yesterday with the legislative action coalition and while I was there I sat in on the ways and means committee which is a bipartisan committee that's made up of so for example there's like the education finance team and there's a commerce finance team and a transportation finance team and the chairs or co-chairs of all of those committees then sit on the ways and means bipartisan committee and they evaluate each bill with its own budgetary implications as part of the overall budget for the state of Minnesota. And they were meeting yesterday to discuss potential impacts to the state's budget due to the federal house of representatives announcing their budget plus several executive orders. It was a long meeting, but I wanted to share a few budget related takeaways. Um, one is that the state of Minnesota has about $23.3 billion from federal sources budgeted for fiscal year 25, which is our current fiscal year. And that $23 billion comes in the form of 687 distinct grants and awards to the state from the federal government. Um, yesterday they shared with us a spreadsheet listing of 24 of those grants as frozen or dis uh disrupted. And then I saw that shared on care 11 later in the afternoon as well. Um most of those grants were from FEMA. Um two were related to schools um specifically for the USDA from like farm food getting those into public schools. But I did confirm that our district is not currently impacted by any of these frozen grants. Uh it is of course on our minds as we continue to watch and monitor the situation. Um the Ways and Means Committee was primarily worried about cuts to Medicaid. Um and that would impact our schools. Our schools do do some billing to Medicaid for services and equipment that we provide, especially for special education. Um but they're also at risk are $500 million in Minnesota for grants for child care for low-income families. 430 million federal dollars that come in to our state to pay for student nutrition. 210 million federal dollars that come in for special ed, 185 million federal dollars for title one, which is the funding for lowincome students at risk of not meeting academic standards. So any of those things could impact us. Um Hopkins gets a little bit less than the state average of our budget from federal sources. The average Minnesota district gets something like 8% of their budget from federal sources. We're a bit less. We get about 3% of our budget or $4 million from federal sources. Um, and so far none of those are actually for us, especially for this year yet. So, they the Ways and Means Committee and the Minnesota Management and Budget Office are preparing for a ton of possible outcomes. Um, there's not really actionable language yet or actionable budgets yet. So that will continue to be to be monitored. And a final takeaway is that though the House targets call for over $2 trillion in the federal budget reduction, they actually add 4.5 trillion or a net increase of two trillion to the national deficit in the form of tax cuts. And it was the Minnesota management and budgets opinion that the bottom 40% of wage earners are going to actually pay more in taxes and have less access to public services. The middle like 59% might share half a trillion dollar of those tax cuts and $4 trillion in tax cuts is to go to the top 1% of our of taxpayers in the United States. And so that is something that's causing consternation at various levels in the state. Um and anyway on that note, the one where we have to just continue to monitor it into the future. Um this is a you saw attached to our agenda a slightly longer um check register treasures report because we did not have one last month. So, our the range for this report is February 16th to March 15, 2025. Um, we paid almost $12,000 to Minnotonka Christian Academy to pay for textbooks as mandated by state statute. Um, $11,250 went to providing early childhood services like screenings, counseling, and intervention services. a bit over $34,000 went to Ring Central for district-wide monthly phone services. Uh there's a new Rational, which is a name brand of industrial ovens at the high school that cost $28,000. Um paid $6,100 for our employee vision plan. $9,000 went to CISO for our transportation audit in pursuit of better understanding our transportation department and finding significant cost savings there. $41,000 went to Dakota Truck Underwriters for our mandated workers comp insurance. Uh $23,000 for three different snow and ice removal events. We paid a little over $6,800 in charter school transportation, $139,000 for February's special ed transportation, almost $316,000 for February's general education transportation just to one of our busing vendors. We paid $1,100 no $111,759 in tuition to Normanddale Community College for our PSO students for fall of 2024, which translates to direct savings for our students and families. $9,967 to Centerpoint for Natural Gas. $3,800 to McDow Agency for incoming staff background checks. $162,000 to teachers on call for substitute teaching services, $154,000 for new cyber security software, um, which is called a managed detection and response software, which is part of both best practice to protect the cache of data that we have here at Hopkins and also part of a state statute where we're required to have and share with the state our cyber security plan. Uh $348,000 went to site logic for construction, specifically ventilation improvements at multiple sites. $152,000 went to professional development, but that was across the district across our 1300 employees and 11 sites and stretching for you back months back into the fall. Um, with that I move that we approve total dispersements of 2,40,6640 cents for the period of February 16th to March 15, 2025. I have a motion. Is there a second? Second. I have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Chair Andre, I have a quick question. Yes, Director Roer. What is a WC policy? It's for like truckers. Workers comp that Dakota truck. So, we required to provide workers comp insurance in case someone gets injured. Uh, and that's just the provider. Oh, okay. So, we pay that often. Okay. And then what about quadant? It's like it's like 16,000. I think those you should probably email me if you're gonna call out specific ones because we can look into them for you. It's I did not I pull up I don't know it varies every month many invoices. That one I didn't pull up. Oh, okay. But we can for sure. Okay. I I could email you. Yep. But a second then. Yeah. Um any further discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor, please say I. I. I. Any opposed? The chair votes I. And the treasures report is accepted. Thank you, Treasure Hartland. Um, and that takes us to new business. The first part of new business is a summary of the um, superintendent re midyear review. Um, there is no action. um just some information provided about um the discussion that we had during executive session um that was held during our last meeting on March 11th. Um, and just to um inform our community, um, I've had some questions about um, how we assess um, leadership in the district and um, to let everybody know that this is part of the board's role in the community is to provide um, a midyear and an annual review of the superintendent. And um it looks different ways according to um the um superintendent's needs and the um usually board chairs um preference and how that would go. But we get information this year um at this review we decided to send out a survey which has been done in the past so that all board members could um be prepared to talk about specific things that would help um the superintendent get to um the annual review and to um meet the goals that had been established at that time for the year. Um and so I'm just giving a quick summary of that process that we discussed um at the executive session. Um so the feedback that was provided by survey um at the meeting um was that 86% of the directors believe that the superintendent is highly effective and effective in the area of vision and strategic strategic leadership. Um 14% um rated at good. Uh there was a quote that I wanted to share. Um, your strategic leadership is strong, particularly with the clear direction provided by vision 2031. The vision serves as a solid framework for long-term growth and sets and an inspiring goal for the district's future. Um the rating was 100% at effective and very effective for decision making and problem solving. 86% highly effective and effective at engagement and communication. 14% at good. Operational and financial stewardship was at 72% at highly effective and effective, 14% at good and 14% at fair. Um things that were mostly discussed were issues with the audit and then um equity and inclusive leadership, crisis management and adaptability and board governance and collaboration were all at 100% highly effective and effective. So, I think you can glean from that feedback that it was um a fairly glowing um mid-year review process. And some quotes that were shared overall is I think the superintendent is doing great work and will continue to make great achievements with real and intentional support from the administration, board, district, and community. This superintendent does a really good job listening to all people, even when those people are upset, antagonistic, or are in disagreement with her or Hopkins schools. Another quote is, "I'm grateful for Roa's ongoing strong, adaptive, and courageous leadership. Please continue to communicate ways we can help the community understand the complexities regarding budget decisions." And for goals update, um 70% of those goals are on track. Um including the literacy goal, math goal, talent development goal, school safety, schoolwide goal setting and attainment, and the transportation audit goal, which we just heard our update, and the bond referendum goal. the 30% of her goals were were in the yellow which needs attention. Um but it is a midyear review just to remind everyone. Um those were employee engagement and retention goal, the Oracle implementation goal and budget goal. Some of those are also time bound. They can't be completed right now. So that's my summary. Um grateful for everyone's input in the survey, also in the um discussion that we had and wondering if anyone had anyone they would like to add that I missed in the summary. Great. Good. Um, I again appreciate everybody being part of that discussion and for contributing to it. I think it's very meaningful. Um, and I hope it is helpful and impactful for for Dr. Mary Perry Reed as she continues through the year. Thank you. So now we would move to our next agenda item which is the fiscal year 26 budget update. I would invite um director Chapanduka to the table and turn it over to Dr. Mary Perry Reed. Thank you, Chair Andre. So, um, we've been preparing for this for quite some time and I do want to just provide a bit of framing and I know, um, director Chapanduka will also provide some framing, but it is important for our community to understand that many Minnesota school districts are facing a budget shortfall as we all prepare our district budgets for fiscal year 26. and the aggregate shortfall is about 300 million across the metropolitan area. Um the fiscal predicament is a result of many things including rising costs across all categories of spending, inflation really um declining or flat enrollment across the state. Here in Hopkins, it's it's uh pretty flat. And the most significant factor is that state funding has not fully covered past, current, or projected expenses. Here in Hopkins, we are preparing to reduce our budget. Um, our goal, our target reduction goal has been $7 million. And like I said, we knew this was coming. So, we have been preparing for this even since before the school year started. Our process has included multiple meetings in the beginning of the year with our citizens financial advisory committee, bi-weekly budget meetings with district and school leaders, and most recently weekly swift action budget meetings with a smaller group of leaders and staff who are working at uh more of an urgent pace so that we could be at this point, which we're a little bit later in the process, but it has been uh very challenging. I would I think it's important for everyone to understand that um a lot of pressure on uh director Chapanduka, a lot of pressure on other cabinet leaders, on our school principles because we don't want to cause harm to our system. We don't want to u make reductions that will impair our uh teachers and instructional staff ability to provide highquality teaching and learning and um we also rely on our school leaders to facilitate highquality school cultures. Um so um I think we are going to proceed with sharing our thinking with you, our current thinking and ask our school board to contemplate the proposed reductions and last night we uh director Chapanduka did send preliminary allocations to our school leaders. We haven't heard back from all of them. um he put together uh kind of a process that he and we wanted them to engage in in terms of reviewing thoroughly and then sending feedback if they have it. And then we do have another budget meeting coming up on Thursday. Um I do know that we do have school leaders who are worried about how to do the same with less and sometimes it feels like we're doing more, right? because our students often come to us with more or very different or very unique needs. So it can often feel like we are doing more. Right? So for example, if we if in addition to ensuring that our elementary teachers are facilitating excellent evidence-based reading pedigogy and we move toward a new math curriculum for next year that is going to feel like doing more with less. And uh Dr. Lightfoot and a few of us we've been talking about Dr. Dr. Lightoot is encouraging me and I'm encouraging myself and we're going to be encouraging each other to really think about how what what do we take off people's plates? What what are we not doing anymore because we will not have the system capacity to continue doing everything that we have been doing at a high level. We simply are not staffed to continue doing everything. Um otherwise we're going to have a burnout culture. Um, so I'm trying not to be too extreme, but I think our day yesterday at the Capitol was very pivotal with our legislators being very clear with us that they are going to have a very difficult time meeting everyone's demands and that includes public education. Even though I always tell our teachers, you are the professionals that breed other professions, right? like we are the we are the basis for everything else to exist and yet you know we're we're struggling to fully fund public schools. So we're in a difficult place. It's not all dire because um with crisis breeds an opportunity to think differently and to be creative and we have amazing people in our system. Just this afternoon, our our IDL specialist um who is um supervising coaches put together a recognition event for our new staff, staff who have who were hired after the start of the year. And so we appreciate um Shannon and um Jiming for being there. And so it's really nice to see all these talented talented individuals who join our system. and then of course hope that they will have a job going into next year. So with that I am going to turn it over to um director Chapanduka maybe help provide some additional framing and then we'll get into the conversation around the proposed reductions. Thank you Dr. Mirit. Again good evening uh respective board members. Yeah. So actually this is just a continuation of um uh the processes which we have already shared with the board and the community in we are continuously uh working on iterating our budget. Uh again this is not just a process uh which is led by me. Uh it involves uh a lot of leaders in the in the system uh where we have been meeting in this boardroom. uh every other week and then on Fridays we meet with a group of um uh few principals, a few uh cabinet leaders and some of the support staff uh to brainstorm and come up with uh some uh solutions which are not impactful to uh quality services in our buildings. So uh as alluded by the superintendent uh last night we did send out the allocations to their buildings. Uh they are reviewing those allocations. they are starting to map uh some of their staffing and some of their discret discretionary needs and then uh we'll reconvene again and uh go through to identify any gaps which have been missed or any challenges which uh buildings and departments are having in terms of uh planning for fiscal year 2526. Uh that will uh be preceded by um some uh tying out of the budget. Uh when we visit uh building leaders and departmental leaders and look at um uh what they've put together, whether it fits within the budget parameters and uh how we design that into our financial system. And uh this process is supposed to happen between now and when we uh bring the uh preliminary budget for approval with the board uh tentatively right now on the calendar uh is on April 22nd as well as the uh revised budget for fiscal year 2425. Uh after that approval uh we'll go back and uh uh finalize any uh staffing reductions as well as any new hires who may be coming in and uh bring back to the board uh in May uh May 20th uh for the first read of the uh approved uh or adopted budget. uh once the board approves that budget uh the final budget will be approved on uh June 10th of 2025 and that uh completes the budget process for fiscal year 2526 and at that point in time we'll start to think what uh are some of the uh elements we need to be thinking about as we go into uh the next fiscal year which will be fiscal year uh 2627. Uh Natalia can you go to the next uh slide? So and this is information which uh we uh had shared with the board uh as well as our citizen financial advisory council had also shared with the board in terms of uh what we have used as the assumptions and uh uh parameters of uh building our budget which is based on uh a a 2% uh state inflationary increase. uh I know uh what has been proposed by some of the uh state uh and the governor's um uh elements around uh increases is about 2.74%. So uh but when we did our budget just being cautious of um some of the elements we might not know at this point in time we've used the 2% as our starting point. Uh we also factored in a 4% annual increase uh in salaries and uh wages. uh we still keep our 42% uh fringe benefits uh knowing that some conversations we've been having with our our vendors uh uh reflecting some uh significant increases in our health cost as well as some of our costs around uh mandated services we need to uh to pay for for the district. for example, property and casual insurance, uh workers compensation insurance, uh those are all seeing significant increases uh in comparison to um what we have seen in the in the last year. Uh we also factored in the 3% um uh inflationary per consumer price index for purchase services utilities. Uh as you have seen tonight, we did present to the board at the workshop on transportation because we have seen our transportation costs escalating uh beyond uh what uh as a district we can afford going into into the future. So uh that portion of our services uh did lead to uh the increases we have uh we have seen across our uh transportation operations. So those are the parameters which brought us to uh that uh close to $7 million deficit we've been working on across uh across our system. Okay. And uh so like I mentioned earlier on uh for us to at least uh get to where our budget is structurally balanced uh knowing that we can't continue uh dipping into our unassigned fund balance. Uh we have coalesed together as a system across our buildings, departments and uh operations uh to analyze uh some of our historical expenditures. Uh we did have some comparison um uh comparison around departments uh mostly central office departments and how we compare with uh other surrounding school district. uh and for the most part from a staffing perspective uh we compare competitively uh in uh at least six or seven school district we've analyzed uh yes we have a lot of work uh to do in transportation and uh we'll be working with um with the board and the community in terms of uh identifying the uh changes we need to make so that our transportation costs don't continue escalating. Uh we also have been working with uh program leaders around uh some of the shifts or realignments we may need to uh put into consideration and we've put into consideration to get us to where uh our revenue and our expenditures are aligned. So the next slide uh kind of shows some of the work we've been doing uh in terms of uh what we anticipating to be uh some of the uh cost cuts some of the seven or uh some of the realignment we need to do. uh uh we have uh put down a number of items uh which are either uh centrally administered or uh districtwide or uh instructional or operational uh and I'll just uh go through a few of them. So uh currently based on uh the trends and what we are seeing and uh some of this will also be predicated on uh the board's uh decision around uh some of what was presented here tonight with the transportation audit. Uh but we we are we are planning to cut a million dollars out of transportation for fiscal year 2526 uh through several measures uh in terms of efficiencies and some of it is tied to what was um uh what was presented to the board but we still need to have some uh additional conversation. If we able to cut more uh we definitely plan to do that. Uh we are also leveraging some of our uh restricted uh uh funds uh which we've accumulated over time with you know some of the shifts which have happened with the uh funding. We received the one-time funding. So we do have some uh safe schools uh funds uh which we can leverage to cover up our uh holistic school safety. In the past holistic uh school safety uh has been covered through the general fund. So we'll be leveraging some of those uh resources to be able to cover uh the security uh uh upgrades uh the security uh needs across our system. Uh we are also uh utilizing some of our uh restricted funds for uh operating capital again based on some of the funding we had uh received. uh we do have some uh dollars which are restricted uh in fund balance to cover some of our operating needs in the district. So we'll be leveraging about half a million of that. Uh we also have um some uh shifts and re reductions in our capital projects levy uh which will be uh reigned so that we can free up some uh funding in our uh general education aid to cover some of the um gaps we are seeing. Uh we do have some uh conversations around how we are uh aligning our professional development and uh we are also having conversations with um uh uh the system on uh what adjustments may be made to uh professional development to at least uh have a portion of those funds uh uh cover the gap we we are seeing. Uh we also spend money in the general fund to uh support some of the operation needs in for example our proprietary funds which are community education and food services. uh and we'll be recapturing some of those dollars back into the general fund uh to be able to uh support our um uh our gap. Uh so those are some of the uh line items. I'm not going to go through each and every line item on the on the listing but uh those are some of the items we are paying attention to and uh we are working with leaders to make sure that uh we are able to uh make those adjustments and make those shifts uh with minimal impact to uh operations in our buildings in terms of uh class sizes and uh and uh and programs. Uh I know I did include the uh the other components on the on the listing here. I mean I can I can uh go across the remaining items which are instructional uh with u a different shift to our uh substitute model uh and uh any uh additional information I can uh have uh Dr. Lightfoot speak to that. Uh we are also reducing our target targeted staffing dollars. Uh targeted staffing dollars uh resources we usually put on the side. Uh when we are doing the budget to cover up any shifts in enrollment. uh since we are planning using projected numbers and then when we start to see the actual numbers coming in uh sometimes we end up with more uh students coming in and we want to be proactive in terms of uh making sure that the students do have resources. uh will just be uh pristine in how we uh manage the uh the shifts or any students coming into into the into the system. Um and um some of the cuts are uh realignment within our categorical uh revenues we receive. So we have certain positions which have either been paid through the uh general education aid dollars uh which we can either categorize into either our achievement in integration revenue or our title revenue or our adsis revenue coming into the into the system. uh and uh if there are any deeper questions around that, I would definitely invite other uh system leaders to be able to help with um with explaining some of the some of the shifts which are uh which are happening within our system. So these are some of the elements we've used uh in terms of uh reductions and realignment to at least get us to the stage where we are and uh give enough uh time for building leaders to start mapping up their budgets and then uh I will continuously uh revisit to identify any any challenges they may have. Uh with that I'll I'll take a pause and uh uh invite any questions from the board. Thank you. Thank you. Any questions or feedback at this point? Chair Andre. Yes. Director Shiao. Hi. Uh, director Manduga, uh, thanks for, uh, doing this work. I know it's, uh, it's tough always, for sure. Um, question about, uh, the substitute, um, uh, proposal. Uh, are we So, we're asking the paras to do a little bit more. Well, uh, to do more, right? And is there going to be an offsetting increase in paras to take up that workload? Um I just worry that they're already stretched and then we're asking them to sub you know where you know where's that extra capacity coming from. Uh thank you uh director I would invite uh maybe Dr. Lightfoot to maybe come and help in uh responding to uh to that question around uh substitute in the in the model we'll be we'll be uh implementing for next year. Sure. Uh we're trying to take a look at um multiple fronts. One of which you identified is how do we utilize existing staff? Part of what we've also looked at within that is where the utilization um is most concentrated and are there some ways in which we can look at um utilizing coste effective manners to help address what we're starting to see. So for example, we are seeing a larger pool of individuals than we did two or three years ago that are part of the cadre of individuals through teachers on call. Um which means that we have a larger pool of individuals who can take those positions and right now that's our most economical approach. Um and so by utilizing more of those services and that avenue as a primary avenue, we're able to look at the cost offset of additional um payment compensation for time lost for our present instructors who would be covering that and not getting their preparation periods. And as you identify pair of professionals who may be looking at andor shifting hours, what we're also looking at is are there ways that we can build into assignments in planned ways hours that individuals have as part of their pair professional service. Um but even I was having a conversation with a principal this morning. How do we look at the design of that assignment to build in for coverage for that day or for some days in a proactive manner utilizing the allocation and building that in on the front end of assignments. So that's really what we're trying to navigate and manage and as we look at that much of that as I mentioned comes from greater utilization of the most coste effective measure as part of the first level of strategy. Does that help? Yes. I I I just want to make sure that, you know, we're not in in a situation where, you know, they're being asked to do all this extra work and then uh you know, they're uh helping in with in the classrooms as well, right? And you can't be in two places at once. And so um you know, it is a difficult thing for sure. But if we're having savings there, maybe we consider, you know, increasing the pool or or or something like that where it's like, okay, you know, you have 20% more work, right? Maybe we, you know, offset a little bit of that and, you know, use some of the savings, not all of it, you know, something like that. Thank you. Cheer Andre. Yes, director West Morland. Um so I want to thank the team for all your hard work. You know you have taken our guidance um and in a really really complex situation found reductions to stay away from the classroom and quality of instruction. Um I just see a a lot of thoughtfulness and creativity in this um in this plan and so I wanted to acknowledge that. Um, I have some curiosity around the capital projects levy, the reduction of FTEES. Um, it's a it's a relatively small amount there if we're talking about FTEES. So, just kind of curious what those positions are or that position. Sure. Uh, again, I'll have to invite uh director WA to come and speak to that. Oh, sure. Yeah. or by the end of this we might end up with the oil cabinet up here. Yeah. Uh for the CPL we're we are still working on that right now. That's the number that we've come to pretty recently. So I wouldn't have any specific information to be able to provide in that right now unfortunately. No problem. Um, I was just wondering if there were kind of some ideas behind that really specific number, but we can get to that later on. Thank you. I think we can share that we do have um a um administrator who is moving on to their next chapter and that was a CPL funded position. So that will be part of that reduction and then we just have to scrutinize you know are there other spaces where we you know spent general fund instead of CPL and you know do those adjustments. Right. Thank you. [Music] Chair Andre. Yes. Clerk Thompson. Um, I I would just echo what director Wes Morland said as far as, you know, thank you for this and also just, you know, the creativity that's shown here is is really impressive as far as, you know, how to how to do this without, you know, increasing class sizes, which is what we want to avoid. Um, just one question that I had was on the reduced time card extra pay, what what does that mean exactly? and and and why wouldn't we have like done this earlier if it was possible? Sure. Yeah, we've actually uh we've been doing this uh for the last few years. Uh in terms of uh any uh any extra pay which is uh paid to for example uh a licensed staff member who is uh doing something outside of their duty day. uh uh uh buildings have a decision to make around um uh what that payment looks like and the district has kind of been an outlier around any extra payments. So we have been working with uh building leaders to make sure that uh we minimize any of this extra payment outside of the outside of the duty days. Uh I don't know Dr. light food. Do you have some examples of how this is maybe structured and how it's been structured in the past? Yeah. Um, and this again is is done in partnership with our our building leaders as well. And part of what that looks like is if there are additional meetings or additional responsibilities. Um, part of what they're looking at is the reconfiguration of the way that they do that. Um, and part of what we're looking at is with less of a discretionary option for individuals to do that, how we might look at different ways of engagement that may be either on a voluntary level or done differently. um as we're mindful of respecting people's time, focused for what they are being compensated for in the classroom and making sure that that's our primary space and then looking for ways in which we can reduce any expectation or different ways of delivery for services that are beyond that duty day. um not only in the educational um uh HA contract, but also looking at any additional overtime options or additional time carded components that may be in our other bargaining units as well. That makes sense. Thank you, Chair Andre. Yes, Treasure Hartland. Thanks. As a followup to that, I can think off the top of my head of multiple teachers that I know that I see doing like student activities before and after school, and I assume they're being compensated for that extra time. Are we So, first of all, it's kind of on this sheet, it's sort of hard to tell which dollar amount was tied to reduce time card extra pay. Is that half a million dollars? Yeah. of a million dollars. Yes. So, does that mean I mean I don't want to name programs and stuff, but does that mean these things that our kids are in that their teachers come in before school or after school to do will be cut? No, it's an excellent question. This is not um this these are things like are the other time carded for. So for example like meetings or this meeting or this extra assign assignment if you will that are on more occasional and sporadic basis. This is not like program A happening at this building um does not time card for that. Those are more delivered through our athletic and activities handbooks. if you're thinking specifically about the student programming opportunities before or after school, um especially if those are related and those are funded through the athletic and activity component of the work that we do and so they are specific to that. Um and that is not part of that 500,000. Does that help? Yes, it does. Thank you. Yeah, it's a range of things like maybe curriculum writing outside of the contract day or maybe kindergarten teachers showing up to kindergarten roundup and they would like to be compensated because it's outside of the duty day. And so now if we're having fewer dollars to, you know, issue those extra payments, then principles have that difficult um they have to develop kind of a discernment around what is the most what are the most critical activities that teachers really should be compensated for if they're doing these things outside of the duty day. and where is where are there some um adjustments that can be made to have some of these things happen during the duty day without interfering with teacher prep time. So I I think it'll be challenging and and perhaps there's also an opportunity for um us to work with principles and principles to work together to um identify um some parameters that help there be consistency across sites as well. Chair Andre will Yes, Director Roer. Um as far as Thank you all for this. Uh, I agree with everyone. I know this is a difficult time and I really appreciate you all putting in your time and effort to bring this to the board and all the work you have been doing on this. I just have a quick question for transportation. I don't know this is already happening or this been thought about, but like as we're thinking about some efficiencies there. Um, I know that earlier we were talking about, you know, like what we we were talking about like the transportation changes. Is it possible to maybe um partner with like public transportation to give like bus cards and stuff to like high schoolers? So maybe we could like eliminate a bus or I mean I don't know if we could eliminate a bus but like have that been thought about like as a way to create an efficiency for transportation to cut a cost somewhere? Yeah, I mean that's something we've um we've thought about um at least in the last few years. I know when I was at Minneapolis, they used to have that uh arrangement and um and it had its pros and cons uh in terms of uh students getting those passes and actually not even using them. So uh so uh we have we've talked about it in terms of what that might look like. just looking at the uh at the demographics of our uh our district. Uh but I don't know in terms of costsaving uh what that would uh what that would really entail if we if we have an arrangement like that. I mean I feel like at the rate of which our cost have escalated, we got to take something off the table uh and then start to identify any other gaps and maybe we can do a surgical uh a surgical plan around if there's need for us to maybe partner with uh uh some public transportation on all those kids who or all those students who who may need some extra support for for transportation. So, we've we've not really deeply explored it, but we've looked at it and tried to compare to see who else in our uh space is kind of doing the same thing. Uh but I I know from experience what what I saw with the uh with that arrangement. Uh we just have to be very careful in studying it and what that might look for for our system. Mhm. Thank you so much for that explanation. Thanks. Um and I do see here there is a recommendation um for a million dollars to be kept from transportation. Um and I think that that it comes directly from the recommendations that we heard about in the workshop. Am I correct in assuming that? Correct. Thank you. Um any other comments or questions? Yeah, chair and dre to build on that comment about the transportation. Is there a potential I know this is all estimated that this could fluctuate going north or south by any chance. So for instance that 1 million could it be 1.5 or two based on what you guys align on on what the direction administration wants to move forward with. Correct. Uh so the 1 million is what we said we have to do something around transportation. If the recommendations uh from the board uh lead us to actually additional cuts, yes, we'll go we'll go for that. Uh but this the 1 million is more like a commitment of like we are going to have to do something or else we not going to be able to get out of this hall. Okay. So that's just the floor, but we could dig a little bit deeper. Sure. Thanks. We'll probably have a better understanding of that once we run some calculations on the recommendations that we heard earlier this evening. Correct. Correct. Thank you, Chair Anderson. Yes, Treasurer Hartland. Thanks. I see several like reimbursements to general funds or moving certain costs out of the general fund into more restricted but appropriate um funds. would one thing that we heard at the capital yesterday was potentially easing some restrictions either one time or kind of an ongoing basis. Is that something that would help the district? Would we potentially have other options like that? if you know that's kind of a bone it felt like the legislators were throwing to us as they were squashing our dreams of getting any additional funding. Yeah. So a lot of the restrictions we have are by statute uh and for a good reason you know uh and some of it is uh there are certain uh services we need to provide and uh if we don't put resources on the side which are uh restricted or mandated uh then we sometimes won't able to have uh to have the resources to uh to provide those services. Uh so there is definitely potential of uh being creative around how to uh use those restricted resources if there's some flexibility uh in terms of what the statute says. Um um so we can definitely uh look at what that might you know what that might look like just like we are trying to do here with some of these restrictions and making sure that uh we can spend them in certain categories which are allowable. Uh which will also um which will also free up uh the general fund where maybe those resources have been uh uh have been allocated from in the past. Okay. So, we um so there are some funds still in some of these specialized accounts that could be utilized like they mentioned nutrition. Someone mentioned nutrition specifically like allowing some like HR costs to administer to nutrition, you know, things like that. That would be a possibility. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, currently we have a healthy fund balance in our nutrition services. We have a healthy fund balance in our community services. Uh there are uh certain expenditures which uh sometimes the general fund just pays out of it naturally. Uh for example, you know, our utilities uh paid out of the general fund but a portion of that they are used to service community education programs, they used to service our nutrition services programs. So capturing those which is uh is allowable. So capturing some of those back into into the general fund especially in uh critical times uh uh critical times like this when we have a health fund balance uh is the right way to do it. Great. Thank you. Um I just had um maybe I guess just a couple of comments. um and maybe some um questions about additional context around a few of the line items here. Um and to um also just to preface that with reiterating what all my colleagues here have said about um acknowledging how difficult this is and also um really how impressed I am with with the creativity behind it. And um I think we talk often about you know precision um cuts and I feel like this reflects that. So I I deeply appreciate that. Um and I am wondering though what um counselor realignment means um given that we know how high the needs are around um that specifically and then also um I could see according to Vice Chair Ross's statement around transportation, but I show some concern about things going north with the um classroom teachers rounddown projection. um knowing how unpredictable enrollment is um that we can maybe um optimistically think we might save around that amount 600,000 but maybe in reality it's much less and is there like some sort of contingency plan around what that might look like? Sure. uh either we can if the uh um I can make an attempt and then if I get it wrong then Dr. Campy I'm going to need you and then you can address the second one. So with the counselor um uh shift so we're retaining our counselors. However, the unfortunate impact is that we are reducing the um allocation and the predictable staffing um uh modules. What does the L stand for? Predictable staffing model model. So we're reducing module is better. Yeah, it's definitely not a module. Okay. So we're reducing the amount for our our point people on restorative practices which is really unfortunate. We are going to work hard to support our district level restorative specialist in the work that she would do partnering with a capable individual across all of our schools in continuing to infuse restorative practices throughout our school sites. But um the reduction in the sight-based restorative practitioner will help us retain our counselors who would then be um funded out of achievement and integration. And currently um currently we're still kind of wrestling with what's what this will look like at our schools. Um but there is there is the reduction that we have to contemplate. Dr. Campy. Yes. Is there is there anything you would add or correct? I don't believe so. Well, thank you for that context. I appreciate it. Yeah. So on the second question around the rounding down uh of the uh FT is based on the predictable stuffing model. So what we've done in the past um including this year uh is when we do the projections uh again the projections are uh an assumption based on historical information and what we anticipate uh would be happening in the future. So sometimes what happens is after we do the projections and when we start to see uh the student coming in sometimes we have less students coming in. What we've never done in the past is to go back and say well we are pulling a resource because we gave you so many resources based on what we um what we projected but the actual numbers are speaking differently. uh and then at the same time we also were uh rounding up uh FTE. So let's say a building based on the um uh projected numbers and uh class sizes uh let's say a building end up with 29.1 FTEES. uh what we've done to mitigate for any future uh increases uh at the same time wanting to avoid uh coming back and reacting we would round up uh 20 29.1 FT to 30 FTEEs. So a building kind of is an extra uh resource to address any concerns. So if you take uh a projected number which may be higher and round it up FTE uh the building end up with way more resources. So what we just did for uh for next year is to scale down and if you are 29.1 FTE we give you 29 FTEEs. uh and at the same time uh we also started to think about well uh what would happen uh let's say uh a specific building end up with more students than what was projected. Uh so one of the creative ways we did it is uh we we've taken about 5% out of each building's discretionary dollars and put them on the side so that if we end up seeing that um uh a building has more students coming in, we are leveraging that 5% to add more resources to that particular building. Thank you. I appreciate that. and also um want to acknowledge that the way you've done it in the past is I believe the the right way to do it. Um nobody wants to be scrambling in August to find staff. Um and also um you know letting go um staff that are are critical for the building and then you know hoping that they can come back. So, um I appreciate historically um how it's been done and also that you do have a a contingency plan and you thought that through. Thank you. Any other comments or questions doesn't look like it. This is a difficult list to look at. So, I appreciate the work that went into it. Chair Andre, I I think it's important to share because I'm sure we have staff members or community members listening in. Um, right now everything is in draft and there are still um multiple ways and multiple flexibilities that our our principles have in making some determinations with what their predictable staffing model does say. And I do want to share that um because there has been a a reduction in resources going overall to our district, but that does include a reduction to sites. Then, you know, we we there's a bit of worry right now that our school leaders have around how how they're going to make everything work. So I think um what we are charging ourselves with um in the district office is continuing to look at where there might be additional opportunities so that if there are some possibilities of increasing resources to our sites particularly we talked about you know uh aiming for a average class size of 32 as an example for our middle schools right so if there are additional resources that we and send to our schools to ensure that our restorative practice practitioners, our counselors, our teachers can continue the good work that they are doing. Then, you know, that's work that we're continuing to do on our end. Thank you. And I'm glad you said that because I think at least on my end, that's assumed. So, I appreciate you speaking it out. Thank you very much for your time and for being here this evening. Thank you. That um takes us to our next agenda item which is policies and first read. I will turn it over to Vice Chair Ross. Thank you, Chair Andre. Uh tonight we're going to review three policies 520, 526, and 528. Um, as you'll note, 520 is going to reflect student surveys. Um, 526 haze and prohibition and then 528 would be student parent or student parental family and marital status non-discrimination. So, I'll hand it over to our assistant superintendent um, Dr. Lightoot. Good evening. Pull up policy information here. Um, as was just mentioned, we are looking at three this evening. Um, particularly we'll start with 520, which is a required policy that really outlines the specific information related to student surveys. We did review this as a monitoring committee um with comments from our data scientist Dr. home. Um, so that you have those as part of the material so you can see that set of information which was done to generate the additional terms that we thought would be important to include. Um, are there questions or concerns around 520? Um, I have a couple. Um the first one is just a question part of the general statement at the end. Um it says that they must comply with 20 and then United States Code section 1232H. I'm just wondering is the 20 a typo or maybe part of the code? Uh you mean section two general statement? Mhm. Um the US code is just outlined there. The 20 is the specific statement that's there that's part of the document. So, are you wondering if the 20 is a typo? Yeah. No. Um, it what it is is the the change is that it's really um instead of viewing instead of looking at 20 space U period, S period, C period. All it's doing is it's just outlining the United States Code, but that 20 is part of the citation. Okay, that's what I was wondering. I didn't know if it was or not. Um, thank you for clarifying that. Um and then um going further down in the third section um part A um second paragraph the very last sentence it says survey administers should take these limits into consideration um when considering the length and frequency of their surveys throughout the year. Um and the limitations are around state law around assessments. So I was just wondering if those are considered the same um assessments and surveys or can be depending on um I think in general the spirit of this is to look at how much time we are taking in assessments in surveys in activities um that are not specific for classroom instruction um with that set of information being outlined in that paragraph. Okay, thank you for that clarification. And then in um part B of that section, I was just wondering if um we could have our um anti-discrimination language in there. I think our equal opportunity language is much more inclusive. So just to replace Yep. Um, and then there's in section D, um, I was hoping we could replace his or her with their Mhm. And that's all I had. wonder of those others the monitoring committee has any thoughts on those or all good. Okay. No further comments then I think we can go to 526. All right. um 526. You will note uh in 526 uh that specifically there really have been no major changes in 526. Um in particular uh what you see in 526 outlined uh is really that um there are no changes that have been suggested for 526. No real modifications from Minnesota School Board Association um since 2014. Any questions on 526? I don't see any. Thank you. All right. Um 528. There were some specific changes noted. Really, it's just a a policy title. Um, other than that, no substantive changes that really are specific to a change in practice or um, general terms. Any questions on 528? No. All right. And that concludes the policies that are here for this evening. Well, well done monitoring committee. Very few questions. Um, so given that, um, I would look for a motion that the board approve the above policies in first read and further, um, that the board directs the administration to prepare the policies with suggested revisions for approval in second reading at the next meeting as part of consent. So moved. 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 the policies are passed in first read. Thank you very much for your time and expertise. Um so that takes us to um the board member reports. Um I believe I started our around the table journey with vice chair Ross last time. So it is director Xiao's turn to go first to introduce yourself and if you have a report please do share. Hello I am Jiming Jao. I'm uh use hehim pronouns. Uh I'm on my second year on the board. Um and I've got two kids in the district. Uh they are in fourth grade and first grade. Uh I do not have a board report. Hi, I'm Jen West Morland. I'm in my eighth year on the board. Um she her. I'm a proud graduate of Hopkins schools and I have an eighth grader at West Middle School and I went to the variety show last week at West Middle School. It was so good. Um, Dr. Mary Piri Reed was there as well and it just it was like completely representative of the West community, diverse, vibrant, um, really courageous the the scholars who chose to share their talents in front of this really big audience. We were filling the bleachers. um just a lot of courage and there was a strong Wicked theme, Wicked the Musical throughline. Um and at the end of the show, one of the MC's, my favorite one, um said my kid um said um that it was a statement about West and the diversity of West and that we will defy gravity. Um, and um, there's been a lot of gravity lately, um, especially for those of us working and leading and trying to transform education. Um, and so that sentiment really spoke to my heart. Thank you. Hello, I'm Kai Thompson. I am on my second year on the board. I am the clerk. I have three kids in the district, fourth grade, 8th grade, 9th grade. Um, I had to miss my first ever ESAC meeting due to a late work meeting last Thursday. So, unfortunately, I I have no board report this evening. Thank you. Hello, my name is Brooke Roer and I'm serving on my second year on a board. I have two wonderful children in the district. Um, I have just a couple of quick things. Um, on Sunday the Oh, it was Sunday the 16th, I actually attended the Aftermath concert here that was put on by Javante Patton. Um, and it was an incredible event. The vibe was just so real and it was just so authentic and I really really enjoyed the concert. It was a full audience over at the high school. Um, and I just appreciate Javvante's work and what he do. And I would love for another concert to come like like to come back to the uh the high school. It was just so vibrant. And for all the artists, I know that we had brother Ali here a few weeks ago as well. And um that was just an incredible the way they're demonstrating their artistry through um Hopkins is just incredible. So shout out to all the artists who are doing work with us. Um, I attended the uh the Westopoulos uh they call it the Westopoulos with Golden Valley and St. Louis Park. um the Avtar dinner that was hosted by Mayor um Harmon and Mayor Nadia and it was just amazing to see our Hopkins folks there from our city council um some school board members from surrounding districts and just community and our Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanigan um was there who offered some really encouraging words to me about being on the school board and some things that Jimmy President Jimmy Carter said to her about operating on the school board and he mentioned to her that it was one of the most important jobs that you can have. So, we should be honored that we're in this space um and doing this work because we are navigating some very unprecedented times, but we're doing it together, so that's what matters. Um and then I do want to just um recap. I'm sorry I gave the wrong static earlier during my present, my question about electric school buses, about the free bus. My team came today in which they are going to all schoolboard meetings across the state. So, like this was just on their calendar today, so just FYI. Um, but yes, it's 80% 85% for electric school bus. It's not a free one. So, I apologize for that. And then I could not stop without giving our girls basketball team a freaking like congratulations on winning their ninth title. Um, so proud of them and our boys basketball team as well. Like they did an incredible job this year. Um, and really put on for Hopkins in the sports realm. So, I'm looking forward to just seeing them go all the way again next year. So, um that is my board report. Oh, I'm sorry. And the Hopkins avatar dinner is tomorrow if anyone wants to make it. It's from It's at 7:00 p.m. at the depot. So, at the depot, I don't know how to say it. Okay. Yeah. Okay. I knew what you meant though. Yeah. Um, I am Rachel Hartland, currently serving as the treasurer. I'm in my fourth year on the board and I have a fifth, seventh, and ninth grader in the district. Um, I use she her pronouns. I mentioned I was at the capital yesterday with the LAC and a lot of prep went into that over the last couple of weeks. Um, I watched Willy Wonka, which was the North Middle School musical, several times. I went to the POPS concert, uh the Pi Day celebration for the robotics team at the high school. We provided teacher meals via the PTO staff appreciation committee at Metobrook. I went to the girls basketball game at the U, which was amazing, and brought my kids and had one play in the pep band there. I think that's all. Hi there, I'm Roa Marie Perry Reed, superintendent. I have two children in our district, a seventh grader at West and a high schooler who's a junior. Hopefully, he's studying for the ACT test right now. I don't think he is, but hopefully he is. And I've already provided my board report. Thank you. Uh, thank you. Hello everyone. I'm Shannon Andre. Um, I've been on the board, this is my sixth year of service. Um, I have a junior who is normally at the high school but right now is in Cuba with the music department and they are having an amazing time. Um, I cannot express how thrilling it is to have a kid have that type of experience at that age and stage of development. So I have immense gratitude for Hopkins for providing that opportunity and they really get to see a incredible music and arts culture that is entirely different from our own and I know personally just how much that expands your mind and your life. So really really incredibly grateful. Um, and speaking of the music program, the choir um last week or the week before um competed in the um min school Minnesota high school league competition and the choir got um the highest rating that you can get. Um so we were very proud of that. Um, and I went to the spring concert for um, the choir and we have such talented musicians. I have not heard singing like that since I think I was in college. Like it these are like professional level singers singing opera and they are in high school. They're amazing. So if you ever get a chance to hear them, I highly recommend it. Um and then I also attended the SEAK um committee which is the special education advisory committee. Um thank you to director Contrarus for putting that on and hosted quite a few families um parents who came and um talked about learned a lot about what we do in Hopkins but also had a lot of really good questions. And I think um parents of that pop that group of students are are really feeling the vulnerability is inherent um right now in in the what's happening at the federal level. And so I I felt very um happy to know that Hopkins could provide some reassurance to those families um in regards to their students and the kind of care and um programming they will continue to receive. Um and I think that is the end of my report except I was also at the cap and um I think Dr. Mary Perry Reed, you should share what um Senator Annne Rest shared about Hopkins to you as we were leaving our meeting with her. Well, um it was a pleasure to talk with our legislators and we actually had a couple of legislators who really thanked us, including Senator Rest, for all of the work that we do and wanted us to know that as a system um we are recognized for always striving to do what's right for students and that um that we're a beacon for other districts. So, it was really nice to get that feedback and uh we do appreciate all of our legislators for the hard work that they do and the hard decisions that they have to make this session and all the sessions, but I think in particular this season is difficult. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Jason Ross. Um, I have three kids in the system, two at North, one at Tangland. I am on my fourth year in my first term, and I do not have a board report tonight. Thank you all for taking the time to do that. Um, that gets us through our um our agenda this evening. So, 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. Any opposed? The chair votes I. And this meeting of the Hopkins School Board is adjourned at 9:13 p.m. Thank you, Gav.