Okay. Okay. Yeah, I just don't see Paris, so I might have to wait. Let me go. Let me um and Jason Oh, she's coming. I see. We'll be a little late. It's pretty I mean it's gone to two lanes. Guess you go to one lane. But welcome everybody. It is 6:03 p.m. So, we will get started with the Hopkins Public Schools workshop agenda for April 22nd um 2025. Thank you all for being here this evening. And we have one item on our agenda, which is always exciting to hear about, which is the community education and summer programming update um for our plans for this summer. So, I will turn it over to Dr. Mary Perry Reed. Thank you, Chair Andre. And good evening to staff and community members, parents who may be listening in. Good evening, board. Um, as our chair mentioned, it is always exciting to look ahead at all of the summer opportunities that we make available to our students. And in fact, um, there's probably several months, if not the whole year, of meeting monthly to prepare for summer programming. So, I'm really excited to have two of our amazing leaders at the table, Paris Timmons and Jalisa Smith Breedlove, to share some information with you on summer programming. And looks like Miss Timonss is juggling a little one. Yay. Yay. A co-presenter. Okay, this may be a first, but guess what? We're a school district and we have kids of all ages around here. So, welcome to the table. Thank you for being little one and Miss Timmons. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Can I first? Yes. Okay. All right. You can go to the next slide. I was like, don't worry, we can spend an hour just watching that kid. All right. Um, you can Advance to the next slide, please. Thank you. Hi. Um, okay. This summer, um, we at Royal Learning Academy are serving scholars who have just completed grades kindergarten through 4th grade. Um we have 374 enrollments and um they are being served by um 19 teachers, two pair professionals and we have 10 um America corpse fellows who are going to be doing our reading tutoring program again. Um this summer Royal Learner Academy will use a variety of learning techniques to meet all scholars needs. Some of these strategies include hands-on project-based learning and cooperative learning activities. The the strategies will be used to will be used to provide environments of accelerated learning of literacy, math, social emotional learning and reinforcement um by enrichment and or reinforcement of enrichment and having off-campus offerings um once a week. We last year part or summer 2024 we participated in the American court to doing pro program as well and did pre and post um reading for scholars and or for like a group of scholars and the pre and post test suggested increase in both their letter sounds and oral reading fluency over the course of the summer um by having that daily literacy tutoring. Uh the dates are on the screen. June 16th to July 25th, we run a longer program being six weeks long. And this year, for the first time, we have an extended enrichment option for families um in response to feedback around um scholars experience really enjoying the program and wanting it to be longer essentially. Um so we have an extended enrichment opportunity for families that seek it as well. um for our high school um credit recovery program that is going to be held at West Middle School this summer. Um we'll have around about 400 scholars that will be served. Um the program will be 18 days. Scholars can earn up to four credits. We offer all core content courses based on scholar need. Um for the our impact report from 2024, we enrolled um 593 scholars. Um of that 626 scholar um credits were earned out of 988 attempted. Um and yeah, we that's our credit recovery program. Next slide, please. Freedom School this summer is expanding um to offer programming for scholars who just completed kindergarten through 8th grade. We currently have 225 scholars enrolled. Um it'll be held at North Middle School focusing on the integrated reading curriculum having enrichment activities with partnerships um that will continue with junior achievement for financial literacy. We have a new partnership with the Sen with the Sonnet Foundation and we will um for the second year in a row do a partnership with SRF consulting which are civil engineers um that will come in and do um enrichment activities around like outdoor engineering activities that kids really enjoyed last year. This summer we will have four junior servant leader interns which are scholars who previously participated in Freedom School in Hopkins before that are current high school scholars. Um very excited to to have them join us again um to work with our level one and level two scholars. Every week we have a parent engagement meeting or parent engagement parent engagement gathering where we serve dinner and have child care and um excuse me. It's a time for um us to bring resources to families. Um we build community and um just support not not only our scholars but one another too. It's a it's a very collective um time. We have two trainings this year. um local training is going to be housed here at Hopkins um or in Hopkins at Eisenhower um for all of the Children's Defense Fund Freedom School sites across the state of Minnesota on May 24th. Um if you are interested in um coming, let me know. We we have a track for guests who are um interested in learning more about the program and how we serve our scholars. Um the national training is in Knoxville, Tennessee the first week of June. Um for 2024, our program impact, we um participate in the national assessment every year and we had um 70 scholars um grades 3 through 8 last year. 85% of those scholars either maintained or improved their instructional reading levels um and did not experience learning loss. scholars read on average 12.1 books during the six-week program. 90.9% of the scholars um were excited to attend Freedom School and 100% of the parents expressed satisfaction with with the program experience for their scholars and for themselves. 97.1% of parents responded that they would recommend the Freedom School program in Hopkins to other families. Um, I wanted to read two comments that families um left in the survey. One of them said, "I really enjoyed the parent night every Tuesday that provided child care and dinner. I think having something like that for scholars families was a great idea and helped them feel a part of summer programming." And another comment was the scholars got to be freer around their peers and helpful and got to learn while having fun. We look forward to Freedom School 2025. Great. Hi. Um I'm Jalisa Smith Breedlove. So I'm the youth programs um assistant director for community education and I'll give the community ed summer programs update um from birth to adult. We have quite a bit going on um this summer in our department. Um so our first program I'll cover is early childhood summer programming. You can go to the next one. Sorry. um early childhood um summer programming. So we have summer ECF e classes um which are designed to support um caregivers navigating through their journey from birth to two year olds. So we'll have 64 families on campus this summer for daytime and evening classes. And then we have our summer preschool which is um held at Harley Alice Smith Gatewood and um Metobrook. and Metobrook just added a second um class for the summer due to um need and um family feedback. Okay. And so we'll have four, six, and nineweek schedule um and that will allow to meet varieting family needs. And then there's also collaboration for a four-week program with extended school year that um same as last year. Um I'll go to the next program which is Camp Royal and Secondary Enrichment. um which I work closely with. So this year we're offering 287 camps and that includes 52 um camps for secondary students, which is a pretty big expansion for us this summer. Um where we pretty much would average about 15, but we've um expanded to 52 offerings. Um and those will be held here at Eisenhower as well as um West Middle School. And those are um filling quite quickly, so we know it's a good need. Um, and we're estimating that we'll have about 1,900. Well, right now we have n 1,938 youth enrollments. And some of those are duplicated students returning each week. Um, and we'll do our normal operation of Monday through Thursday, June 10th through August 14th, and yes, June 10th, a Tuesday, because we're going to take June 9th for um in-house training for our staff. Um, and of course, like every year, we have staff that are coming to us from the K12 school day. So they've given them a little bit time um before they do some training and families will be able to create a half day or a full day experience um here at Eisenhower in um West Middle School. and new this year um because of parent parent feedback and needing additional um care, we know that a lot of summer programs close down um that week between what we would call um prep week um or workshop week for teachers, but then there's this week that all it seems like the city just summer programs just shut down. And so new this year, we're going to do a field trip week from August 18th through the 21st. And that's um going to a variety of places throughout the city. So we've got um we've got like a twin stadiums visit. We've got like urban air or either Sky Zone I believe um that um students will come here, get on the buses and then go for um a fun time. And then some offerings that are new this year um is we'll have swim lessons as well as open swim. Um, and then emergency room 101 is making a comeback where it's um a hands-on experience for um elementary age students to um talk about like human anatomy, the body, what to anticipate if you ever visit the emergency room um and doing getting to name some anatomy and more like a science and um practical skills opportunity. Um and then I'll talk about kids in company as well as our blink program. So this summer we're slated to serve um just under 690 um youth across uh the district. So we'll be housed at Glen Lake, Alice Smith, and Metobrook as well as North Middle School. And um our standard hours of 7:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. June 16th through August 15th. Um and then our summer opportunities will include weekly field trips, hands-on projects, um and we'll in bring back our handmade market. Typically we do that in the afterchool space, but this summer we're going to relaunch that and then hope to integrate it into the raspberry festival. So folks can come and visit us there at the table to um help support pick up some items and then the um profits from that market will help support the kids and company and youth enrichment scholarship fund. So it' be a great way to support families who need it. Um, and then, um, adult enrichment. Um, so adult enrichment, um, is doing a lot of great new opportunities this summer. Um, helping, we've seen the Star Tribune post about like adults wanting to get out more and needing to be told to go outdoor and try new things and meet new people. So, um, we'll have a new horse camp for adults. Um, and as well as a behindthescenes tour at the Twin Stadium. um before going to um a ball game. And then also for those who are looking to escape the city, um there's new day trips with Medicine Lake Tours. And so there's um a river cruise, the St. Corey River cruise from Still Water. And then there's going to be a visit to Split Rock Lighthouse in Gooseberry Falls. And then there's also a Discover Rochester um mansion tour um at the Plumber House and Gardens. And then um folks will be able to get on the comfort of a coach bus with air conditioning from Hopkins to the site they'll be visiting because it's the summer months. We'll all be wanting the air condition once we're done with our tour. Um and then adult options. Um so they'll have their GED graduation which is once again sponsored by Minnetonka Rotary Foundation. that'll be here at Eisenhower in the theater, so June 20th um at 700 p.m. And then there's also summer online ESL and GED classes that will run from June 9th to July 3rd um with a variety of classes as well as a book club. And registration for school year 2425 will open July 14th for important dates. And then one last shameless plug, maybe not so shameless because I'm really proud. um is that we're celebrating after school professionals week this week. Um so we're just asking everyone if you're engaged in after school or either a summer activity and you see the professionals that are taking care of your children during that time um that you just give them a thank you and an appreciation. Um so you're thinking about like kids and company childcare program staff and supervisors, our program managers. um you're thinking of your youth enrichment instructors and coaches and um those coordinators who are lifting up those programs. Um we know that there's over 7.8 8 million young people participating in the after school programs across the nation. And um we're also helping make a difference in their lives, but we're also helping close achievement and opportunity gaps that um students um on youth focused programs um providing much more than entertainment, but we know that for some kids the reason they go to school is because they get to go to after school um as well. So I just want to shout out after school professionals. And then the last one is um community ed is partnering with Hopkins Education Foundation. We will be a part of the Royal Family Funday a little bit before the summer like a summer preview. So that'll be on May 18th. It's a free family event at North Middle School and it'll be a fun afternoon of activities and food and music. And we also have um a ninja course that will be there and some of our high school um student teams will also teams and clubs will be there running activities. So if you're free on that Sunday, May 18th, come on out. I'll be there. I'm going to make Roa come with me. It's going to be great. Just n and smile. Yes. But yeah, that's our um summer update. So thank you so much. Can I add one thing since we're doing some shameless plugs here? Yes. U Jisa and I partnered for our first ever summer opportunity fair this past March um where we had um vendors and and partnerships that we have throughout the district um via community ed and um and and with IDL to bring our community together to share K12 opportunities. Um, we had some youth, we had youth employment, um, opportunities. We had some, of course, all of the programs that we had both just talked about. Um, and for our first one, hopefully it'll just be annual. Um it was really good and we got some good feedback on how to um make sure that we're continuing to serve not only our scholars but um our fam our families as well making sure that they know what resources we have um in the summertime for opportunities for them. That's wonderful. Thanks. Thank you. Thanks. Any questions I guess we should ask that one. Cheer Andre. Yes. Um, so I wanted to praise Paris not only for having the cutest baby on the planet. Um, nobody tell my baby that I said that. Um, but um, hi. You are just it was so fun having you at the table and you have great taste in jewelry and you have like the best mom. Um, no, I want also wanted to um, praise Paris for just for building out the Freedom School here in Hopkins. It's been such an impactful program. I hear from parents and caregivers and scholars regularly how much that program means to them. Um, and I've been at other community events where people have come up and they know that I'm on the Hopkins school board and they say, "Oh, you have a great Freedom School program in Hopkins. Paris helped us build out ours. She's been a mentor to us." Um, and so Paris's influence really extends beyond Hopkins schools and I think that's really special. So, thank you for all your work on over the years. You concur, right? Thank you. Chair Andre. Yeah. Um, Miss Smith Reed Love, and this isn't part of the agenda item, but since you're at the table, could you just provide a kids and co-registration update? Maybe put in a plug for our families to submit um for a request for contract before this Friday. Just a a quick update for our community. Yeah. Um I would like to make a big emphasis that um our contract request window. So what we mean by contract request window is that we have a priority placement for those who make a contract request um in last week as well as this week. So we'll close that on Friday at 11:59 p.m. And we just really uh would like folks to get in their contract request so we can plan properly um get staffing ahead of time. it really helps us to be able to um navigate the staffing crunch that um that is there and um so yes and then those who are not able to register during this twoe window um can still request the contract um they would just be kind of placed at the after the folks who have gotten into this kind of priority pool. So if there is were to be a wait list, they would start they would start that weight list and then scaffold first come first serve after that. So it's really important if you know you need child care to get that request in now. Thank you. And to clarify that's for the fall or sorry for next school year. Okay. Yes. Chair Andre. Yes. Do you have a question about Freedom School? Um so I I saw the 85% maintain that's great. Um but for context, do you do you know maybe roughly what how many what's the drop in proficiency of for like normal normal kids? Is it like I should have that statistic on like in the back of my pocket. Okay. And I do not Okay. Um I'm happy to provide that um and let you know. Okay. I'm happy to I'm happy to do that. You mean in terms of like average summer learning loss? Yeah. Summer learning loss. Okay. I think it's I'm 40% 40% 40%. I'm not I'm sure we could look it up and I'm positive that we have we I have that information. I just don't have it up in my head. I'm happy to provide that though. Oh yeah, it's it's not a you don't need to do the research, but I think the point is that it's very effective. Right. Just to kind of illustrate, yes, it's it's very very effective. And which segus into my maybe second question is um is there things that like uh you know our general schools can learn from Freedom School like what like how do you what do you do well that like we could learn and like apply right cuz you're because that kind of reminds me of the 80% MTSS goal like you know meeting the needs in tier one you know is there crosspollination because there should be maybe that's such a big question um the short answer is yes I mean it's it's the pedigogy right it's the um I'm going to invite all of you and you will get this link um to become a readaloud guest for freedom school so you can truly see um the magic that happens. Um the training is is very intense um for the integrated reading curriculum. it they it's 5 days of a lot for for volunteers too um for for not for volunteers but for the servant leader interns. Okay. Um so when we talk about um not having the not experiencing learning loss we're talking about um working the model because the model works. Um it's it's afroentric pedigogy. It's focusing on community. It's it's scholar input. Um we're very very intentional when we're building um the enrichment activities and the off-site experiences that we're seeking scholar input um for the things that they get to do and see um and learn and we talk about real world things. the books that they're reading um reflect um the the scholars in the classroom and that matters, right? Um and then we talk about like our overarching theme is always I can make a difference and so scholar and then every week we have a sub theme of I can make a difference in myself, I can make a difference in my family, my community, etc. And so our um community partners and our off-site experiences um reflect the books that they're reading and the the things that they're learning and the conversations and the discussions that they're having. Um and I think it it because of that it gets them excited to learn. There's quite a bit of research on the freedom school model and why it's effective. And then, you know, that of course contextualized within kind of a larger body of research around culturally affirming, culturally sustaining um pedagogies and approaches. And I think part of what we do really well here in Hopkins is is bringing in family and community and the um the community readers and all of that. And that all of that matters. Um it's it's the approaches that are used every day with the students, but also all of this like um kind of wraparound support that the scholars feel when they're they're in that program and that makes a difference. This is also our first year where we've had um we will have the the SLIS who started in Freedom School with us four years ago who will now have their teaching license. And so they first were trained um with the Freedom School model as they've been in their teacher prep programs. And so now they get to take the learning um and the experience from Freedom School and bring it into their everyday classroom also. So a training ground for future teachers. Correct. Certainly. And these are Hopkins students. Okay. I'm sorry. Can you say that again? And these are Hopkins students. We actually we one of our SLI is a Hopkins grad. Um but the the the folks that I'm talking about right now that are that are have their teaching license or will have them in June um they started in our program as SLI because part of the model is not having licensed teachers um for that pedigogy piece. Um, and over the last four years they've been in school because they want to be educators. And here they are four years later still coming back to Freedom School because they love and believe in the model and they're also taking their their new degrees and their new lensure and being able to put that back into our kids. That's amazing. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Um could I just ask just a couple of questions? Um I'm wondering about the connection between um Royal Learning Academy and um the the um community education summer programming. Um are they separate or is there any comingling or how how is that working this summer? Uh yes, so they are separate programs. Um but we do have times where we come together as a community for breakfast and lunch. Um but they are separate programs with separate demographics. Okay. And separate instructors and Yeah. separate instructor. We're learned academy as targeted services. Yeah. Right. And that programming um do um families pay to be a part of that or academy they do not pay for um so so teachers um make recommendations for summer learning um referrals based on the the MDE criteria and then um uh and then scholars are invited and families enrolled. Correct. Thank you. Sorry I was distracted for a second. And families are enrolled. I can't imagine why. So often. Yes. And then um Royal Learning Academy also has licensed teachers and Camp Royal will have licensed teachers want to come and participate but um we do not rely on licensed teachers for our programming. Thank you. And then I just wanted to um give a shout out for the great adult enrichment opportunities that have just been growing and growing. It's really exciting to see this and I am going to take horse camp. Oh, good. I'll let me Oh. Oh, the Okay. Look, I will I will let coordinator Leman know. We might have to run a special camp. I will let her know. It's exciting. She's super excited. She's doing new things and being really innovative. Board members or less. Otherwise, we'll post it. I was just saying that. Yeah, same. have to. Yeah, I'm a little scared of horses, so I'm going to be I I'll just not do that. You can root from the stands. Exactly. Exactly. You can follow behind us in a scooter. Oh, that's true. Or like a segue. That would be very cool. Clean up that. Well, I'll share the kudos to with her. And as our presenters mentioned, it is after school professionals week. So, we want to shout out all of our before and after care providers. They are amazing individuals who not only provide the proper supervision but also very enriching activities and experiences and love for our students. For sure. So for sure they are they are amazing. Yeah. We've had some folks with us uh 36 or 37 years now. So they're they're invested. They're passionate. So I just want to shout them out. Amazing. Incredible. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you both. Thank you. And the extra presenter. And do the minutes need to reflect that? That we had a bonus presenter? I think we I think they should. Yeah. Clerk Thompson, we can Well, that is all we had for this um agenda. Um, so we are free to have a break um and meet back here at 700 p.m. for the meeting. Thanks everyone. Thank you. Hello. Welcome everybody to this uh public meeting of Hopkins Public Schools um school board. I will call the meeting to order. It is 7:02 p.m. um the meeting for April 22nd and we will start off the meeting with one of my favorite events which is our honoring our amazing scholars here at the Hopkins um at Hopkins schools. And sorry I'm fangirling a little bit because tonight we will be um honoring our girls basketball team. So please come to the front. So this evening we are thrilled to recognize our student athletes and their coaches from the girls varsity basketball team who recently won the state title. [Applause] Yes. Um and I hope you all watched it. was an amazing game. Um, their achievements are a testament to their hard work, dedication, strength, and talent. Paige Buers, who has many Hopkins fans, says, "Championships aren't won in the game. They're earned in the gym." She also says, "Failure is just a part of the journey to greatness." These quotes reinforce how hard each of you worked to contribute to your team winning the state championship and that each of you most likely had to have your own personal relationship with failure. Research consistently shows that student athletes tend to achieve higher academic success, improved time management skills, and increased college and career readiness. Additionally, our basketball players have a healthy, positive outlet that supports their mental health, builds confidence, and encourages lifelong habits of physical well-being. Parents and families, thank you for your hard work, commitment, and love for our student athletes. Your efforts are important to their success, and we deeply appreciate you. Watching these athletes compete is truly inspiring and motivates us all to strive for greatness and we know that many of you are not here so we can send a video clip of this to the whole team and you can watch if you want. Well, on behalf of the Hopkins School Board and also our Hopkins Public Schools, our district, we want to publicly recognize our dedicated coaches, assistant coaches, student managers who have guided and supported our athletes. And I know you're not all here, but Coach Starks, I think she was over across the street at Alice Smith. Is she on her way or maybe not? She's on her way. Okay. So, if when she walks in, we'll give her a round of applause. She's our head coach. Then we have assistant coaches Alexis Garcia and Mike Winston. And we have behind the bench coaches Martin Smith and Devin Buckley. Student managers Aaliyah Burch and Reese Watson and athletic trainer Lexi Dutton. Let's give a round of applause to all the adults and students. As our board chair Andre stated at the state games, which many of us went to and brought our families, our athletes delivered exceptional performances competing against the best in the state. We are so proud of your achievements and the hard work you've invested to reach this point. So, the Hopkins girls basketball team pulled away to beat Maple Grove 81 to67 to win the state title. The victory secured Hopkins ninth state championship, surpassing Rochester for the most titles in Minnesota history. [Applause] Yes, quite a few of these amazing players reached double figures in their scoring. as I call each by name, please join myself and join our school board um and celebrating their achievements by giving them a round of applause. So, actually um athletes, we're going to have you go to the back of the room there and then just kind of stand behind the royal blue carpet. So, then when you hear Well, it's not a carpet, royal blue runner. So, when you hear your name, then please I wish we had a basketball you could dribble your way up, but we don't. Whoa. Do you have one? Do you have a basketball with you? [Laughter] Oh, it's all right. So, when you when you hear your name, ladies, then please walk up and we have this is this is your school board. So, we want to congratulate you. We have a certificate for you and we're so proud of each of you. CeCe Adler, are you here? CC. All right. Liv Bell. [Applause] Ava Coopido, Harper Peterson, Tatum Woodson, Aisha Mohamd Squires, Malia White. [Applause] All right. Now we have an actual Lauren Hillshime. Here we go. Lauren, Avery Weber. [Applause] Okay. And stay up here, Lauren. So, when you all get up here, then just hang out up here and we'll take a photo after. Okay. All right. Did I say Avery Weber? Okay. Ruby Z. [Applause] Amari Johnson. Here we go. London Harris. [Applause] Ava Smith. Jalia Digs. Ella [Applause] Roberts, Lana Durant. [Applause] Did I say your name right, Lana? Yeah. Okay. Congratulations. Irma Walker. [Applause] Congratulations. And Arabet. [Applause] Okay. So, do do we have an ETA for Coach Starks or what do you think? Come on, Alexis. You can come up here too for the photo, Alexis. totally. What do we have going on at Alice? Do you have Did you Is that over there? Okay. All right. Yeah. Okay. So, y'all come up and hang out with us for the photo. Come on up. Come on. Scooch in for the photo. We'll just fill in the stars. You can stand up straight. Thank you. Thank you guys. I got a food. Do are you hungry? You need a snack. I'm being pressured to give snacks. Come on. Yeah, you want to totally get a snack. Yeah, sure. It's not like I mean I'm like a pug physique right now. So like I'm I got pug energy but you know I'm just living off master. I'm like I'm like yeah you're carbo loading but you don't did not run a marathon cuz of the um like one then the other Oh yeah. You always five. Wait. So where where's the honeymoon? Oh yeah, that's right. Atlanta, right? No, [Music] thank you. Oh, I thought I was literally talking about Mr. Swiggle and then you was like then we have to be good. Okay, that takes us um to the next part of our agenda this evening, which is um public comment. Um and the um Hopkins Public Schools um believes that hearing from our community members is crucial to implementing vision 2031. So if you wish to contact the board via email instead of publicly commenting at a meeting, please use our email address which is school-boardschools.org. It is on the schoolboard page. You can find a contact form if you wish to um contact us that way. We welcome a conversation with all of our community members. And at board meetings, public comment will be received both in person and through voicemail. Instructions for how to leave a voicemail to be played at the board meeting can be found in the board packet on the district website. We have two public comment sessions per meeting. The first is at the beginning of the meeting and prioritizes items on the agenda. The second is at the end of the meeting and will be used when necessary. Do we have any voicemails this evening, Natalya? We do not, but we did receive a comment card. So, um, each comment section lasts for 30 minutes and we allow comments up to 3 minutes for each person. As outlined in the board meeting protocols on the board website, if we have more community members than 10 per comment section, priority will be given to those comments pertaining to the agenda. In this manner, the first five voicemails received will be played and the first five people who submitted public comment cards will be invited to the table. Since we do have one comment card this evening that was submitted before the meeting started, I will go through the guidelines for public comment. Please keep your comments to three 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 future board meeting. If you have left your contact information on the comment card, a district representative may follow up with you after the meeting. 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, schoolboard 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 file a complaint or allegations against an employee are encouraged to contact the superintendent. We ask you not to name any 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 for participating in public comment this evening and for sitting through that very long guideline. I would now like to invite um Charles Hendris up to the board to give public comment on um thanks for public service and cuts of federal funding. Thank you for being here this evening. Thank you, Madam Chair and board members. And uh that's really my agenda tonight. Two items I would like to talk about very briefly. one uh I think we the citizenry we do not thank public board members enough for the work that you put into this. It is a lot of details and many many hours and I appreciate it. Uh it is truly the work that uh helps make democracy be what it is. My second point is that I think we are in perilous times. Excuse me. uh both in general and I think for public education and I fear that the current administration does not like public education and uh as you are probably well aware there may be big cuts in federal funding that are coming and also the the board may be faced with questions about the principles and values of this community and how those apply to our programs and and studies here. And when that time comes, I hope that the board will u be like Harvard, be like the mayor of Maine and stand up and say no, you will certainly have my support. I appreciate again the leadership and the guidance that you provide for our students and for this community and I look forward to supporting you in that. And um my grandsons will be entering the school system in three years. So I I really ask you to do a great job. So, thank you very much for listening and have a good evening. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That now takes us to um the reports section and we get to start off with our student board representatives report and it looks like we have a full house practically. So, who would like to start? I can start. Uh, so my name is Manuel Wahu and I'm a sophomore student board representative. So last Tuesday, some sophomores and seniors took their bilingual SEAL tests and juniors took the ACT at the high school. Scholars took bilingual seal tests for six different languages including Spanish, Chinese, French, ASL, Russian, and Somali. I personally took the Chinese bilingual seal test. And I just want to shout out um Mr. Rios who organized the bilingual seals testing. It was super organized and well put together. And the fact that the district is offering these tests and also covering our testing fees is great because having the bilingual seal opens so many opportunities. Also, this week, all 10th graders have had or will have required meetings to get to know our school counselors even better and for us to get important information about our college and career platform, Maya Learning. These meetings are held in small groups and organized by last name. I had mine yesterday and I think that it was very helpful mainly because my counselor walked us through how to use Maya learning which is a platform that many students do not pay much attention to but it's actually very helpful. Next week is the election campaign week for next year's student council president. Throughout the week there will be lots of campaigning going on such as posters and social media posts. And on Tuesday during Royals Connect, the student council presidential town hall will be taking place in the auditorium where students will be able to hear directly from the candidates and ask questions about how they plan to improve our school community. There are two candidates, Ezra Wolf and Daltton Kilgore, who will be running for one president spot, and the runner up will become vice president. So, it's a little bit of a change in structure from this year where there's two co-presidents. Voting will happen on the last day of the campaign week, which is uh Friday, May 2nd. Thank you. Hi, my name is Eloise Bullan and I'm a sophomore board representative. We're going to start with the MCA testing. So, we had su successful MCA testing um on the 17th, which which was last Thursday. Um NHS, which is National Honor Society, applications are now open for rising seniors, current 11th graders. The requirements are a 3.67 67 GPA or higher, 30 plus hours of like volunteer hours, and a letter of recommendation. Applications will be due on the 23rd of April. Um, NHS is a nationally recognized club for high academic achievers, and it's dedicated um to it's dedicated for them to be sorry. Um, it's for high achievers that are dedicated to their community. yearbooks. There are fewer than 90 yearbooks left and once they are sold out, they can't reorder them. So, if you want a yearbook, I would recommend purchasing them soon. We also had Kelly Morrison come to present at HHS for Choice. She's a proponent of reproductive rights. Um, and she's a US representative for Minnesota and a former OBGYn. And then lastly, I'd like to spotlight Mr. Herring. Um, he has always had a calm demeanor in class and he's always helpful. He always um is able to answer questions and I feel very prepared for the AP test knowing that he's my teacher. Which um class does he teach for you? He teached uh he taught me both AB Cal AB and BC. Thanks. I'm Iris. I'm a freshman board rep. I wanted to start out with Hades Town is performing starting this Thursday. If you're unfamiliar with the show, it is a musical based on the Greek mythology um tragic story of Orpheus and Uritysy. Um it's basically Orpheus is a musician who is writing a song that will bring back spring because for the last few years there's only been really harsh winters and harsh summers. And Uritysy is a poor girl with no family who wanders from town to town trying to gain some footing. Orpheus sees her and immediately falls in love and she eventually starts reciprocating the feelings. Um, but pretty immediately dies. Um, so Orpheus follows her to the underworld and makes a deal with Hades to bring her back to life, but encounters some trouble along the way. The entire production is in song, not a mix between singing and monologue. And the music is a mix of folk, jazz, and blues. So again, it starts this Thursday and I highly encourage you go see it. Next, the Hopkins Mountain biking team is having anformational meeting on May 14th at 6:30. Practices will start in August, but they're having this meeting now so that you can gain biking knowledge in schools and get to know um captains and coaches and stuff like that. Um, also the ceramics club night you may have seen on Instagram was just a couple of days ago. Um, it was for ceramics club and upper levels. So it ceramics 3 advanced studio and AP ceramics. Um, those students and their families and friends to come to the studio after school and teach their friends and family kind of what they're doing in class or in ceramics club. So, anyone who could come was allowed to use the wheel, glaze something, or hand build something. Um, and then following on the ceramics thing, I wanted to spotlight Miss Murray. Um, she is one of the amazing ceramics teachers at Hopkins High School. Um, I'm currently in ceramics 2 and we just finished um making our coil sculpture and we're now doing a slab vessel or sculpture sculpture. So, it's really fun. Um, there are actually four levels of ceramics in my class and Miss Marie is doing a wonderful job of managing it all while still making the class really enjoyable and smooth. Um, we're constantly being challenged, but she's always around to help us when we need it, and it's just really fun and a really great time. Hello, my name is Sufan Osman. I'm a freshman board rep. Uh high school uh for the high school commencement time changed from 2 uh 12:00 to 12:30. So it's only been pushed back 30 minutes due to Eid falling on that day. Uh also senior party is going to be coming up. So cuz it's the end of school year, it's seniors. It's not much to talk about that one. Uh, this is kind of sour note, but like seasons are changing and there's a lot of allergies and the high school needs Kleenexes. I got a really short report. And then finally, for my teacher spotlight, it's Miss Nina. She's a geometry teacher and I had her for the first semester and she's honestly one of my best math teachers I've ever had. She actually applies like real world stuff to her teaching and to help students understand it and I honestly like probably wouldn't have done as well in geometry if it wasn't for her teaching. Thank you. So cool. You asking for donations for Kleenex at the high school? I think so. Okay. All right. Did Did somebody put you up for that? Is she in the room? Is she in this room? Is she in the room? Thank you all. Um, any comments or additional questions from board members? Chair Anderson. Yes. U Manuel, did you highlight a teacher? Um, not exactly. I guess I kind of highlighted Mr. Rios for um organizing all the bilingual seal. Okay. Um, testing and stuff like that. Gotcha. Yeah. Thank you, Chair Andre. Yes, Treasure H Heartland. Yes. Manuel, I'm sorry. When did you say the forum was for um students to ask prospective student council presidents questions? That's next Tuesday during Royals Connect. So, that would be um 9:50. Yeah. Yeah. 9:57ish is when it would start um in the auditorium. Thank you very much. Well, thank you so much for those really comprehensive reports. It's nice to know that there's still a lot going on even though the seniors are almost done. Um, and we look forward to seeing everyone at graduation. Um, so that takes us to our superintendent report, Dr. Mary Perryi Reid. Thank you, Chair Andre. So, I have a few things to highlight. Um, first I wanted to share that school leaders and their instructional leadership teams are hosting district leaders for their fourth quarter schools goals meetings, which require school leaders to review what's been accomplished within our three strategic goal areas for this school year. learning and teaching culture and operations and also to prepare for our June goals summit with all of our leaders. So for example, the learning and teaching goal for early childhood is that 100% of all preschool and early childhood special education teachers will be able to identify and define early childhood concepts and provide examples from their teaching pro practice. Sandy Larson, who's a preschool teacher at Gatewood, shared this example of how she facilitates the early childhood concept of scientific thinking with her preschoolers. She shared that the children at Gatewood are lucky to work with live animals. There are chickens, pigs, and goats living in a barn next to our playscape. Our class visits the animals once a week, if not more. The children brush and feed the animals and collect eggs from the chickens. We read books to learn about farming. After collecting eggs, we use them to solve math problems. Understanding animals helps children learn about biology, ecology, and the environment, and it fosters curiosity about the natural world. Working and being with the animals also promotes empathy, helps with regulation, and enhances mental and emotional health. It is very apparent as we enter the farm animal area that children are more regulated. So, thank you to Miss Larson for helping our three and four year olds develop their scientific thinking as well as healthy social and emotional cognitions. First and second graders at Metobrook have been on a research role. First graders went global researching countries around the world and then writing their own books to teach others what they learned. Second graders became bird experts and turned their research discoveries into colorful, creative books to share with kindergarteners. In each grade, there is a project-based unit with an embedded research component. The more students write, the better writers they become, and strong writers grow into strong readers. Metobrook researchers enjoyed sharing their finished projects with others. Young scientists in Miss Han's first grade class at Ellis Smith are waiting deep into work of water, which is the mystery science unit, where students explore how water shapes the Earth's surface. In this lesson, students created a model of the Earth's surface and used it to investigate how water and rivers work. Students color the high points on their model with blue and use spray bottles to produce rainfall. This allows students to observe patterns within water and river flow. The work of water mystery science unit is aligned with the next generation science standards which we call NGSS for short in the education world. Specific standards covered by this unit include earth systems, hydrosphere, water cycle and natural disasters. Glenn Lake has been having loads of fun lately. First, at the end of March, Glenn Lakers went to Skateville. It was a perfect way for students, staff, and parents to get some exercise, build community, cheer each other on, practice resiliency, and make new friends. And then last Thursday was Principal Rael Day. Glenn Lakers love their principal so much they planned and kept secret a day full of surprises, including students and staff dressing up like him. that's in um suits and Nikes to be twinsies with their principal or they dressed in purple and gold because principal Rael is a huge Vikings fan. students flashm mobbed in the cafeteria, presented him with a huge thank you sign that included every single student and staff signature and it was a really fun day at Glen Lake to celebrate a principal who constantly f finds ways to celebrate those that he serves. We have a student celebrity at West Middle School, Minnesota Play for All, which is an organization that emphasizes inclusive environments for play and learning. That organization was invited to be featured at a national virtual conference called Making Connections. And so Minnesota Play for All wanted to showcase a student speaker. and thus they chose West 7th grader Kaylee Brace to provide a twominute keynote. That was an exciting opportunity for Kaylee and also for West Middle. Congrats Kaylee and thank you for representing Hopkins. As Manuel mentioned, the MCAs and the administration of the ACT mark the beginning of a very busy spring exam season at Hopkins High School. Check out all of these exams during the latter part of April and mostly May. Um as U Manuel mentioned about 40 students attempted their seal of biiteracy and 749 students which is about 40% of our high school population are signed up for at least one advanced placement test with a total of 1,237 exams being offered. So happy studying to all of our scholars. We look forward to everyone earning high marks. And thank you to our exam coordinators, Markeel Rios and John Samler. Shout out and gratitude to HF that recently awarded six spark grants totaling more than $20,000 to Hopkins educators. Spark grants help teachers acquire additional resources and kickstart classroom projects. These spring grants will help expand ACT prep to support 9th and tth graders. Provide tools to eighth graders at North who are engaging in 3D recycling and learning about sustainable energy systems. Purchase colorcoded cutting boards to help culinary students avoid cross-contamination as well as stage a mock restaurant. add orchestral music by women and underrepresented composers so that high school orchestra can play a broader range of music. Fund recreational equipment for T plus students who struggle with fine motor skills or have limited mobility and support for translation of um Shingshing materials in preparation for IB authorization at Eisenhower Community School. Very grateful to HF for your generous and enthusiastic support. Please join us on April 29 here in the boardroom for an evening of hands-on AI activities, bold conversation, and communitydriven visioning as we explore what artificial intelligence means for our schools, families, and our future here in Hopkins. These sessions titled AI and Education: Building Ethical Futures for Hopkins Public Schools aims to develop and implement a comprehensive AI strategy that aligns with our Hopkins learning framework and vision 2031 with a focus on equity and future readiness. This will be more than a conversation. It's a chance to learn about AI tools and build the knowledge and ethical practices necessary for navigating AI responsibly. This will be a multi-year project. So, thanks to Dr. Dr. Tiffany Nielsen Wkelman and Alyssa Kappell. Any others, Dr. Erdle? Um, many many the whole uh IT and is team director, Dr. I um imagine there are a lot of uh our innovation design and learning and our information systems staff and leaders who are involved in this project. So thanks to all of them for their coordination and leadership and I wanted to share some upcoming dates uh for soup with the soup and these are intimate conversations that parents and community members can have with the superintendent. That would be me. There's one coming up this week. couple in May and one in June. Looking forward to see you seeing you for um a very brief one-hour conversation and um all topics are welcome and at this point I'm very excited. So during the superintendent report we've been spotlighting a school or a program or or a special student experience. So tonight we are featuring the international trips that many of our students have recently taken. So Principal Ballard, Principal of Hopkins High School, please approach and any um presenters who will be helping share information about these fantastic trips to Cuba, to Europe, Croatia, I believe, to Ireland. One of our, well, a couple of our Hopkins graduate traits are global-mindedness and being welltraveled. So, I'm very grateful to all of our adults who are working together to provide travel and international experiences for our students. These are really incredible opportunities. and we recently recorded a podcast with a couple of students who traveled to Cuba and they had so many amazing things to share. So, I'm going to turn it over to Principal Ballard. Thank you all for being here. Thank you for welcoming us to the board table. It's always a pleasure when we have an opportunity to share some of the amazing things that happens at Hopkins High School. Um, the first slide that you see before you is the vision at Hopkins High School and elements I like to always bring out is the co- agency. I love the co- agency element of our vision because it calls out uh the partnerships that are necessary in order to achieve a very large goal at Hopkins High School. However, tonight uh we will focus on the personalized learning that is connected to one element of our graduate traits which is being global minded. Will you transition that slide please? Global and wellraveled. There it is. Um and this evening we have some of our phenomenal teachers um along with some of our scholars who have experienced travel recently this school year to talk about some of their experiences. Um, as a principal, one of the things I try very hard to do is find as many ways to say yes and move the barriers um, out of the way to allow our teachers to be creative and do all of the phenomenal things that they can do in order to support our scholars. So this school year I had an opportunity to say yes um to our scholars traveling internationally but it was unique this year because some of that travel did not happen during the traditional time at which it usually happens which is spring break. Um so we had this once in a-lifetime opportunities to actually for our scholars. So it was very important for me to move as many hurdles as possible um for that to happen and it was so worth it. Um, so you don't have an opportunity to hear from the amazing teachers in our school system all the time. So I'm going to just pull back my voice to um introduce some of our staff that will be talking about um the recent travel. We have um Mike here who took a group of scholars to Europe. Um and in that hyperlink there's additional slides to walk you through that experience for the scholars that attended that trip over spring break. And then we have Ireland and Cuba. All right. Well, thank you for having us today. Uh, my name is Mike Babine Denin and I teach at the high school. I teach AP world history for 9th graders and I teach AP psychology as well. And this year we had an amazing opportunity to go to Europe and visit the Balkans and then a little bit of Italy as well on our trip. Um, so you'll see some of the places on there that we visited. We went to uh Dubravnik. That's where we started. We spent two nights in Dubravnik. Then we traveled to Split and spent one night there. And then we went to Zadar and up to Plitvita which is a UNESCO heritage site for uh a national park which was amazing. And then from there we went to Leublana which took a lot of learning for how to say that. Um which is the capital of Slovenia. And then we traveled uh to Venice with a stop at Trieste on the way. We did not do the Rome extension for that. We just did we flew home from Venice after that. So you can do the next one. Thank you. Uh the trip was 33 students almost all juniors. There was one senior I believe. Um and they were all juniors who are taking either AP World History this year or AP European history. Uh and then six chaprons. We traveled over spring break like uh Principal Ballard said. And then we visited three countries uh with a unique and very connected past despite being three different nations alone. Um so I just added some pictures so we can go through these pictures as we went. Uh we first we visited Dubravnik, Croatia, uh which is one of the southernmost cities within Croatia. And I did not take these pictures. Um but we did go inside. There are a couple that I did take with some of the students and looking at that. Um, but one of the amazing things about Dubravnik is it has this old town which is one of the oldest fortified medieval cities within Europe. Uh, and it's all in completely intact still. So you go in there and it feels like you're just in this really tiny tiny place. Um, and we had a lot of students who were very interested in uh, Hollywood as well because a lot of Game of Thrones was filmed in Dubravnik. Uh, so they were very excited to do the Game of Thrones scavenger hunt within the city. Uh, which got them into the city and looking around at all these really cool places and figuring out the historical part that they had seen in the HBO series. You can go to the next one. Uh, so this is one of the pictures of us down in the port in the pier uh, with the whole group of all 39 of us. All right. Uh, the best part of Dubravnik was this was literally the view from our hotel. Uh it was a hard way to start the trip because we knew that this was probably going to be the most amazing view that we had the whole time. Uh and it was just truly the sunset went over the Adriatic. Uh and every night we got to have dinner as we just looked out over this amazing sunset that went down each night. Uh the next place we went to was Split, Croatia. Uh and here was kind of an unexpected visit to Diolesian's palace. Uh Diolesian was a Roman emperor from ancient Rome and he was known for really horrible brutality uh within his empire but we actually went to his retirement home uh in Split which was right on again the Adriatic and it was a really unique place. It's one of the most wellpreserved Roman ruins in the world. Uh and we got to go tour and walk in and through this entire uh palace as we went through it. Um, and so even though we don't necessarily talk in our courses about ancient Roman history, there are a lot of students who are really interested in seeing these artifacts and these ruins of ancient Rome and then how they became part of the Venetian Empire as well, which we talk about in some of our courses. Um, and then eventually, uh, it became part of the city. So, it's kind of interesting that they just used the walls that were Diolesian's Palace as just walls for shops. So you'd walk into a touristy shop and buy knickknacks and it would just be like ancient Roman architecture and all sorts of things just right within the city. Um so it was really fascinating to see and experience that. Uh Vita was this is the uh national park that we went to in Croatia. It was really fun to get out of any cities. Uh unfortunately it was not like this while we were there because we were there in March. So, if you go to the next one, this is what it looked like for us. Still pretty. Still pretty. Yes. Thank you. Uh, anyway, it was still incredible. Uh, it's been an incredibly rainy spring in Croatia. And so, we actually got to see the waterfalls at their peak. Uh, which if you were to go to Plit Vita during the summer, uh, that waterfall in the background, which is one of the biggest in Europe, would be about a quarter of that size. uh with just the middle part going with water. So, it was actually really amazing to be there at that time. Uh and it was raining. That's why we all have our rain gear on, too. Um and it was just kind of flooding. The students were unsure of what was going on. They had to walk through uh these planks that went right down along the water. Uh a few of them had interesting footwear that they wore. One kid had socks over their sandals, I think. I don't know what that was about, but uh it was an amazing experience for students just to get out and experience nature. Uh and Plit Vita has become a major tourist and camping place within Europe over the past 10 years or so. All right. Uh then we went to Liubljana which again is the capital of Slovenia uh which is uh another place that kind of connected a number of places of history is that castle that's on the top uh was inhabited by the Hapsburg Empire for a little while but before that it was even back into it was created by the ancient Romans as well. Um and it had a really amazing atmosphere of a really amazing pedestrian city that you can kind of see down in there that's all it's all walking. There's no motorized vehicles. It's all just pedestrian friendly and we spent a lot of time just walking and exploring in there. All right. Uh and then went to Trieste um which was also incredible because we saw this amazing uh Roman amphitheater uh which is incredibly well preserved but also Trieste served as an important part within the Hapsburg Empire as well as we kind of learned about some of that AustroHungarian history. uh was their major port city that so it was the third most important city within the AustroHungarian Empire of looking at Trieste and then Prague and Vienna being the capital but we got to learn more about the Hapsburgs went to Trieste and kind of connect with some of that European history as well and then uh we ended in Venice. That was the last place we ended up at. Um and the next slide is I think the really cool place we got to go to a glass blowing factory. Uh we got to see a demonstration of this amazing glass blower who's been at his craft for 40 years and he made a vase and a horse in about five minutes and it was incredible to watch and the all the students were just engrossed in this presentation of this guy blowing glass and working with the glass and working with it. Um and a number of them came home with Venetian glass uh that will probably be given on Mother's Day probably is my guess. So that's what a lot of them were talking about like oh I got my mother mom a gift I can give to her my grandma or something. So uh it was really amazing uh that we went from that. So you can go to the next one please. Uh this was a normal day on our trip. We usually woke up had breakfast. We got on our bus and then did something within the city whether it was kind of a museum or a city tour walk or something from there. Visit a palace whatever from there. And then we had a usually a good chunk in the afternoon. Uh which was really great with these smaller cities because they could explore a little bit without it being like a giant huge megopouloolis. Um they were able to go and explore a lot and that gave them kind of this uh the ability to do something. We talk about that confidence and the ability to have confidence going out to visit somewhere. A lot of them had never been outside of the United States and then all a sudden they had a few hours where they could just explore a European city. Uh go have lunch and walk around a little bit and have confidence of getting back to our meetup. Uh we always pinned like where we will meet up. Everybody pull out your phone, pin here, meet us here. Um and so it was amazing that they could go out and that was really a fun time where you got to hear their stories. That's kind of where all their stories came out from what they did with their time. And then we come back together, we do another group activity, have dinner, which was usually a local uh food that they have in in central Europe. It's usually some sort of meat and potatoes. So there's a lot of meat and potatoes. Um if you like that, go to central Europe. Uh and then the last part was then we come back, kind of relax from our day, and then do bed checks, and then they would go to bed, and we'd do it all again the next day. All right. Um these are just the highlights. I kind of talked about it. We can I think move on to the next one too. You can check out that some other time. These are their favorite places that they said if we could go back to one of the places and the actually in order of what they said were their favorite places of Dubravnik uh and then Vita and so many of them were talking about we have to come back in the summer when it's beautiful and green or maybe we should come back in the fall because it's all maple trees so it's just lit up in oranges and yellows and some of them were like we should come back in the winter because you can walk across everything. So they were so excited. The number of sweatshirts that students uh purchased from there was amazing, which tells you something about how much they loved it there. Uh and then the DOA's Palace uh in Venice was incredible. They were just blown away by the wealth of Venice and this place that has that you maybe don't hear about as much in world history, but was such a major power. Um they were blown away by that. And then Liubiana was really cool, too. All right, then next one. Uh and I think these were the the things that were really interesting for some of our learning was about the Venetian Empire, seeing some of the ancient Roman thing. Uh and then the biggest part was just them kind of understanding the complexity of that region. Uh and understanding the dynamics and the ethnic groups of this. I know uh you two can talk about the importance of the Ottoman Empire and the rich diversity and ethnic heritage that lives in this area and it's still there today. uh as we talk about uh Slovenians and Croats and Slavic people and Serbians and uh Bosnians and that they are still very much working together, but you can still feel a lot of the tension that exists as you talk to the people about these other places. Um and there's still a lot of pain from the Yugoslav wars of independence that happened in the '9s and the Bosnian genocide still rings true in a lot of these people's stories. Um, and so repeatedly we would hear stories of the wars of independence, uh, especially in Croatia. And that really struck home to the students hearing about it in the textbooks and reading about of these wars and decolonization and all of those things and nationalism. They kind of got to see these people truly hold on to those things deeply within them. And it became really real for them as they kind of understood that specific region of the world, which was really enriching. I think my my favorite part and a lot of students walked away really interested in the history of that spot and I think that's it. Thank you. Thank you. Wow. I think that this is us. Uh good afternoon. My name is Gonzalo Roy. Uh I'm science teacher for the Huntos program in North. Uh I also happen to be the head coach for uh Hopkins girls uh rugby team. Eloise being one of our players. Uh we uh were very lucky this year. Uh tour or touring in rugby is something very very common. Uh touring and rugby they go hand to hand for many many years. uh when you speak of rugby there's always histories about where have you guys gone over the past 10 years and somebody will have a story we have gone here there everywhere you make friends all over the world and they become part of your family so um all of us that have gone through the process or have played rugby since we were very very young have enjoyed that as a team we are trying to revitalize this sport here in uh in the state. Um we got invited by Egan Rugby Football Club. Uh they organized the trip uh to Ireland. Sadly, they didn't have numbers to bring a whole team. So they opened the invitation to all of us and they said, "Hopkins, will you guys be willing to go and participate with us?" And we know what it means. We know what it does for the kids uh kids. We know what it did for us as players. So uh we put the invitation forward to our players and many of them decided to say yes we will go we would love to participate. Uh at that point uh we got in touch with uh uh Miss Ballard here and she was kind enough to remove all the red tape that could be for the students to say yes this is an amazing opportunity please go enjoy it have fun and without their support uh this would have been very difficult for our uh players as a students. Um so our team is Hoping Royals uh Rugby Football Club. We are a 501 uh C3 uh group. Uh you guys can see there our mission. Uh we love kids and we are here for them to empower them and to get the best out of them in all levels. That's the basic. If they be if they happen to become amazing players, that's a cherry on top. Uh we can go to the next one, please. Uh about our story. Uh Hopkins rugby was founded in 19 uh 1999 by uh JD uh Johnson. We have won as a Hopkins uh team where most of our players comes from Hopkins High School. I can I will get into that in a little bit. We have won four champ uh state championships, one Midwest championship. We have one amazing former Olympian Katie Johnson. Uh we have had four USA Eagles which is our national team players that have been there. Uh four all-Americans, one Makabian Games players and all of them all of them are from here. So um the we had 23 players, five of them were from Hopkins. Um we have many schools uh going with us. We have uh some kids from Alberly, Egan, Minnotonka, and As Hopkins. It was a day uh 10-day trip. Uh we went to Northern Ireland in Ireland. Uh we visit Belfast, Kilani, Kilkenny, and Dublin, and all the places in between. We have this amazing driver, uh Brian. Uh we can spend hours and hours talking about him. When Chuka when you talk about history, he made a massive difference on the trip because he had both sides of the story. He is Catholic. Oh, no, I'm sorry. His wife is Catholic. He was he is Protestant. So we had a firsthand history lesson of what they both families went through and how it was for them to uh unite or unify in love and come out of this. Uh we had a wonderful city tour wherever we went went with him and he told us firand stories of what happened, how it happened, how it was perceived by locals. uh what it did to them and how they have been um healing in the process. So for us the adult that was great. Uh I saw many of the kids enjoying that part of the trip especially because it was somebody local uh telling the story and I have to say the kids developed this amazing relationship with him which was lovely to see. Um during this trip, the girls got to play three games with local uh teams, which is part of the rugby culture. Wherever we go, every city that we visit, we contact every local rugby club and set a game. And that's what we do. We just go play uh for 40 minutes, 35 minutes, however long the game might be uh per side. And then we have those amazing socials at the end of the game. So whatever thing happens on the field stays on the field and then you become friends for life. Um what else? Those are the places I got to visit. Uh we went to Trinity College and visit the book of Kills. Uh the kids got to practice two days in a row on Kilkenny Castle which is the most wonderful setting that you can imagine for this. It was just gorgeous which is the uh picture on the fire uh left. Um on the bottom you can see the pictures of the team. Uh those are all the girls from uh all four districts. Uh on the top you can see some of the p uh one of the pictures of the girls from Hopkins. And I didn't want to put all the pictures because there were I don't know thousands of them. Um in Northern Ireland, the girls um we all got to go to uh Giants Castway, which is a beautiful natural place uh bustled uh deposition with this wonderful rock formations and we spend there uh I don't know like four hours, five hours walking around. So pretty though. It was just beautiful. Uh Kilani was the same. We visit every single castle that it was in front of us. Um, I sent an email to the parents and the kids on the tour asking them to tell me what was significant for them about this. I got many many different I can't quote them all but some of the things that got their attention was uh for example some of the kids said I was surprised that in order for the light to function I need to keep my key on the on the key holder. If you take your car out you don't have any lights. And so for some of them that was it's amazing how far ahead they are on their process of conserving energy and being responsible. So that was their take. Uh food was another one of those things they were some of them were in shock about blood sausage for breakfast in the morning and they came out out thinking that it was the most delicious thing. So, uh, being immersed in the culture, being able to, uh, enjoy it and being part of it, leave it for a few days changed them. And, uh, I don't know, uh, there's so many things that I can say or hours I can spend talking about this. I just want to thank the opportunity and looking forward to keep working with you guys. That's my slideshow. Um, yeah, you can click over. I just it's a very brief overview of where we went. So this was like Giants Cathway I think it's called. Gorgeous. Absolutely beautiful. And this was the game we played. Um those girls were super super nice after the So after rugby. I think one of the most important like best things about the game is the socials. So afterwards you know you're on the field you're tackling these girls like people get injured whatever whatever happens all stays on the field. Afterwards, you eat with them, you talk with them, we danced with many of them. Uh we played bingo with them. And then the day after that, uh we met up with them, we got ice cream with them. All lovely people. I even had to teach one of them what a snicker doodle was, uh recently because apparently they don't have those in Ireland. Um it was absolutely beautiful. And then this was Dublin. We did not play a game in Dublin, but it was a lot of sightseeing. So we got to be with our friends a lot. This was one of the places where we were confused as to why the electricity was not working in the room. Um, we would put the key card in and it would take it out and it would take 5 seconds and then suddenly all the lights were off. It was so weird. Um, you can go to the next one. Um, Kani was super super pretty and so that's where we were practicing. Cool castle. Um, we did play a game there too and we had a social with those girls. It was just beautiful. Absolutely lovely. And we ate a lot of ice cream um almost every day. So, sorry, Galo. Um and then this was our last the last place we were at. This was a real castle, real castle grounds. Saw a lots like even more castles. Um these girls that we played against, we also u met up with. We got dinner with them. They showed us like the the cool Irish spots. So, very exciting. Um, you can even see some Yeah, this is just an overview. Um, those blue jackets we were wearing, we basically lived in. We wore those every single day. And I think the biggest takeaway was just the people. So, in the lower picture, you can see there's a girl named Emily. She actually offered to come tonight, but they are actively playing a rugby game as we speak. Um, but she's lives 40 minutes away. So, a lot of the girls that we played with live in Albert Lee and Egan, so they're far, but it's so nice that we have connections with them. And it's making the season astronomically better because every time we get to play a game, usually it's like you play a game, you have the social, you kind of talk to them. Now, it's these girls, we know them, we love them. I've seen them every single weekend since we've been back. Um, so it's just, it was such a lovely experience. Um, and especially just everything about it. It was lovely. So, yeah. All right. I think I think this is us. Hi, I'm Allison Swiggum and I am the orchestra director at Hopkins High School. And I'm Melissa Hansen. I'm the choir director. We brought a couple of students along with us, so they'll introduce themselves. Um, Jeremiah Princeton. I'm in the choir program and I'm in I am in uh 12th grade right now. Hi, my name is Rosie Calabria. I'm a junior and I'm also in the choir program. Great. And so um uh the board we really have appreciated that the school board has approved a number of our music trips over the past number of years. Um we've taken four trips now, but this is the first one that the choir students have joined us on. Um four trips since um since the COVID pandemic. So this opportunity we presented to Principal Ballard um last year right after our Costa Rica trip and we had this opportunity and idea to go to Cuba and I think it was one of the most musical experiences that we've had. The next slide please. We have just a few of the first two slides are just kind of the overview and then we'll get into the beautiful pictures where our students will share more about them. Um we had 90 students from band orchestra and choir and we opened this up to 10th through 12th grade students. We had seven chaperones, four teachers, and we were super excited to and have principal Ballard on our trip as well. Um, we had three shared performances with the National School of Arts in Havana. Um, we also did a um there was a um choir, there was a choir performance and a workshop with the Kamarata Ramu. And um we also had many dance experiences clinics with Samba, Salsa, and Roomba. And then you were going to talk about the last Oh, or Rose, you go ahead. So, for the we had live music performances. Not only was this um did we got to did we get to partake in a lot of the live music performances, but it was just around us 100% of the time. At every single meal, we had some form of music, whether it was it was always live music, whether it was a small band, a quartet, a septet, it was beautiful. And some of these uh performances included the national Cuban uh septet loanos a bro uh laata romo uh coron national entre and um the afro kubano rhba and these um these were absolutely unbelievable and I remember each one very distinctly. They were unbelievable. Um and then again some of the highlights um again the clinic with the Kamarata Ramu was with her chamber orchestra. It's an all female chamber orchestra and she's a female director. Um the dance clinics that we had, we had multiple ones, but especially the one with Paso Aaso. Student connections and social time that we had three full days at the National School of Music. The 1950s car tours of Havana. We have some pictures of that. Um rooftop dinners. All of our dinners were open air rooftop dinners at these five-star restaurants every night with live music. We had a beach day on one of the top six beaches in the world according to Condast. Um we had combined performances with the National School and the Cuban music history lesson with the director of the National School for the Arts. Next slide. And then here's our pictures. So here's um the orchestra uh in the in the top right picture. Um we performed for them. Then they performed or then we clinked together in the lower um picture and then that's a picture of us all together with her 16 member chamber orchestra and we had 24 um orchestra students on this tour. So this was a very specific event for the orchestra students on this trip. Next slide. Um we were able to um spend three days of exchange at the National School of Music. Uh, and I think the student musicians we can all agree are some of the top musicians we've heard. I mean, grades what they were nine through 12. 9 through 12. Some of the I have never been surrounded by so much talent and effort and just joy being around these kids. They are unbelievably talented. And I have no doubts in my mind that I was in the presence of the next Cuban stars, musical stars. They are there's really no words. They are unbelievable. And being a musician in Cuba is a really elevated P position. So these students are all all of the students they were planning on being professional musicians which was kind of surprising for the American students who are doing music but maybe not planning to go into the music because they're they can't afford to necessarily as a career. And these students the government supports. So all of them all of them are planning on being professionals. So the first day with them, um, their big band played for us and they had a couple of singers who sang and then our choir sang for them, which was a little intimidating going after this amazing group, but it was exciting. Um, and because we had some ac capella pieces that needed percussion, we just grabbed one of their percussionists and said, who spoke no English and said, "You want to play?" And he played all three pieces with with us, which was all of these with no sheet music. and he just did these off of his own rhythm which actually were the exact rhythm that was written in the sheet music but he had no idea. He just played what he felt was right and it was spot on. Then we finished that day the band performed also. So that was our first day exchange and we had some time for our students and their students to just talk and it it took a minute for them to get comfortable with each other but yeah next that disappeared quickly. The next day we had I think it was the same day we had the dance clinic with Paso Aaso which was basically a a lot of these talented dancers. I have never seen anything like it. And the kids have amazing coordination. I don't think I've ever seen a 9-year-old with that much body coordination. Okay. Basically they started with uh kids and then started going up in ages and then they performed these various dances of different it's mostly Afrouban culture but it's like a mix of uh Cuban with a lot of African elements in it and it was beautiful. the the the slide on the right it was more reminis it was more reminiscent of the it was more I think it's more a western African dance more of it and then after they had danced they invited us to um they invited us to do a dance with them and then they started picking us picking uh us one by one and then we start dancing with them and then by the end of it it was just like one big dance clinic it was amazing next slide oh yeah there's there's our whole group together. So that's the the whole dance company and all 90 Hopkins students. Next slide. Oh, our meal experience. I I think I said to some of the people who had asked us about our Cuba tour, it kind of felt like we were on a food tour. So, u it was amazing. All of the meals um on our music tours, it's really important to us that all the meals are included. So, they got breakfast, lunch, and dinner included every single day. and we had these four course gourmet um gourmet rooftop dinners with live music and so our students ate very very well on the tour. Rose was going to comment a little about that. Um on the for the food, if you could go back to the previous slide. Um it was so wonderful knowing that we had the support of the district and that we um were not financially responsible for every meal and knowing that we could go into the trip and only have to pay for our travel meals at the airport. It was really just such a luxury and it was such a beautiful thing to not have to go into this worried about the finances of food and yet be presented with some of the most delicious food I've ever had. And it's it was truly amazing. And I think that when it comes to the food in Cuba, not only the fact that it was just um it was sponsored, but the fact that this type of food and this type of cultured food that a lot of people I feel like would not have access to outside of this trip, they were able to have that food on the trip. Like ceviche, you'd have different type of croettes, you'd have uh fried beans. It was really just it was truly an amazing food experience as well. Um, and I think that that is largely due to the fact that we were not worried about the cost of the food while we were there. And so for that, we'd like to thank you. Next slide. So that that's the live music at lunch and just some of the presentation of the food. I mean, it was really really Can you tell they're foodies? I know. I know. I I am kind of a foodie. So So it was good. I think the lower um the lower picture is um some of the sushi that the seniors had. There was one night where it was like 10th grade, 11th grade seniors were split up. So that was kind of fun. The next slide. Um, oh yeah, you were going to talk about this. Again, this is outdoors on the top of a roof. This is a rooftop dining, but um that night we saw uh a small jazz ensemble, Armanos Abru, right? Um a 17-year-old and a 19-year-old and then they had a bass player. So there was a pianist. Was Was he the 17-year-old the one of the most amazing jazz pianists I've seen? I thought he will have a they'll have huge careers. and the 19-year-old was the the drummer and then they had a bass player. But just some of the most talented musicians I've probably ever seen and I've seen a lot of very talented musicians. So, it was jaw-dropping I would say. Yeah. Next slide. I missed the introductory part of their um cuz I was in the bathroom at the rooftop dinner. I missed their introduction. So, when we were leaving, I was like, "Wow, that is amazing. They must have years of experience." And then I was informed that they were just 17 and 19. It was absolutely insane. It was mind-blowing. They were just so good. Um, one of the days we had a lot of the tours. So, we did a tour of the old Havana, which is a Yunco, is that how you say it? Yseco World Heritage site. Um, we had a capital tour. That's the lower picture. And then um and then uh also we there's not a picture of it, but we toured the National Museum of Cuban Music. And I think Rose translated for the um for the tour guide on the So, the museum, it was actually very, very small. It was probably the entire museum, I would say, is probably about the size of this room. And it was split up into rooms that were probably the size of this little al cove right here. Very small, very condensed. And so, we did have to split up a lot. Um, and I uh I'm from the Huntos program. He was actually my science teacher and it was amazing. So, shout out to him. Um, it um just being we had to speak Spanish. those who could speak Spanish really had to utilize that skill. And it was great to be able to take our experience from the Huntos program because a lot of us who did speak Spanish are from the Huntos program. And to be able to implement that in like real life situations in a whole new country was just amazing. And I had to translate for an entire group of people, the entire museum tour. It's a little stressful. It was a little stressful, especially cuz I knew that a lot of the people who were there as well did speak fluent Spanish. So I was like, am I translating this right? But it was it was truly amazing. And uh just having the privilege to translate and to be able to be kind of the middle ground for a lot of the language on this trip was truly an honor and I really enjoyed it. Next slide. I think this is the choir one. Oh yeah. This was probably one of my favorite experiences from the trip. Um we performed um at the cathedral uh before the National Choir of Cuba. So the Hopkins group, we'd been we'd been walking all day. We were in our street clothes and we walked into this beautiful cathedral and got to sing. And a cool thing when we were warming up, the students wanted to sing a particular song that we weren't planning on singing, a piece called Sweet Rivers. And I said, "There's no piano. We can't do this." "Yes, we can, Miss Hansen." I said, "Well, I don't have the music." "We can do it, Miss Hansen. Let's just do it." And it was the perfect song to sing in that acoustical place because they they sang and everything just rose above them. And just to see the looks on the students faces when they sang in a place like that with that kind of acoustics was incredible. Um I Yeah. After that we basically listened to the national choir. It was mind-blowing how good they were because there were some sections where they had like their hands over their mouths uh trying to mimic a trumpet and it sounded heavenly. And then some of the solos were some of the best I've ever heard. And then they would sing like I think secular songs I would hear just in the streets but it's just like choir choirified. It was really good. Coral arrangement. Yeah, it was truly to be able to sing in such a beautiful space with such great acoustics was one thing. I know that after we had finished Sweet Rivers um with Miss Hansen's direction, we kind of all stood there in awe and we were like the sound is still going yet we've stopped singing. It just keeps going. It just kept blossoming. And um being able to be in the presence of all those amazing singers and this being the national uh Cuban choir was just so amazing. And I think we all just took a little bit away from that knowing that we could go into something like this and we could truly just choir is a home and it's just such a beautiful place to be and hopefully we could find a home like that with among like our community that kind of thing. Next slide. Uh this was Sunday. We had kind of a um it was a day that we weren't at either of the schools. Uh we went to this beautiful beach. We had a salsa dance class and then we also were able to tour these two these two cities. Next slide. Um this is the last two days. So on the last two full days we had two more days at the National School of Music and um again the students because we got to go three days to the same school um the students really were be becoming comfortable each other and we had lunch together and you can see you know students exchanging contact information. And I know Rose had told me before that she's still in contact with that girl that she's in the picture of with Miss Meena. And we I'm still in contact with her and I think five other students from Cuba. Um and I know a lot of us are still in contact and we're just talking to each other all the time. Um it was truly so great not only to be in the presence of such talent in Cuba, but also to just see the effort that they put into their music. We, for example, the choir, um, the choir, we actually gave them a piece of our music, just build me a buttercup. We had an a capella arrangement of that. It's just such a sweet song and the way we sing it makes it beautiful. Um, and we we just gave it to them. And mind you, there was a language barrier I think for everybody except for two people in the choir. Three people in the choir, Christian, Cisto, uh, Elamore, and me. But it was truly it was miraculous just to see how although we couldn't communicate through the same language, we could really communicate through music and they picked it up like that and we were actually able to perform that song with them at the end. So on that last day we did a lot of collaborating with our musicians and theirs. Here's one of the highlights for a lot of the students is we had an each there was a groups of about three or four students and every single of our 90 students and um and 12 chaperons um got to have a one-hour car tour and I was like oh that'll be fun. It was really amazing. I was like oh wow that's really fun. Next slide. Uh these are the chaperrons that went and the three music directors Norah Thai cast Melissa and myself and then we had Principal Ballard and um wonderful parent chaperones and staff along. So Oh, we just wanted to like say a special shout out to Melissa because on the last day we were we She's amazing by the way. I hope you know that. It's just that on the last day we were practicing a song. We couldn't figure out a song. She just s we just suggested, hey, let's do Battle of Jericho. We didn't bring the song onto the bus. We just rehearsed it once and then it was like one of the best performances we'd ever sang of that song. And we couldn't have done it without her amazing uh um directing in the bus. She said like, "Hey, you sing that. No, you sing that. You sing that." Because we were missing way too many people. So, she had to do a lot of things on the spot. And it worked out really well. It was amazing. It was a bit of a puzzle. I also like to make a shout out to Miss Hansen. I know that this trip definitely would not have been the same without her. Um I my parents weren't able to go on the trip and so it was really like having my own parent on the trip. It was just um just through this trip and just throughout my years in choir at Hopkins, I think Miss Hansen has definitely been the number one highlight for me because she has been able to teach me so much about music and so much about uh just being a community member in the music program. Um and I just think that I definitely would not be the same person I am without Miss Hansen and Miss Wigum and Miss Tycast on this trip. So, I just want to say thank you guys so much. Thank you. And there's one more picture. So, one more slide is just that's our whole group, all 90 students and principal Ballard is in there and that's in front of our hotel and that was the day that we were going to be going to the school with our uniforms on and we left all of those t-shirts with the students at the many of them. Some of the students kept them, but yeah, a lot of the students asked for those shirts and so a lot of our students gave those shirts to the students at the national school. So, um, in summary, I just wanted to thank the school board for approving our music trips and, um, for providing the opportunity for us to be able to travel internationally, and I'd like to thank Principal Ballard for saying yes to this as well. We also would like to thank the um, the just the administration at Hopkins High School and a lot of the teachers at Hopkins High School. Like uh, Miss Ballard said, um, there this was in an unusual time for the spring trip for a lot of classes. Um, so we did actually end up missing about a week of school. The teachers were incredibly accommodating and incredibly supportive about this trip. We were never once made to feel guilty about missing the school. We were welcomed back with just open arms and such a warm embrace. And they were so willing to work with us and come in on grading day and just help us guide us through the educational little educational blip that we had because we miss school, but they were truly amazing about it. So, thank you to them. a big educational blip that you had away from school. [Music] Well, um, as you can see, there are many things happening at Hopkins High School, but the purpose of this was to highlight the connection to the travel and our scholars benefit in so many ways as well. Um, as our teachers for having the opportunities to travel with our scholars. So, thank you for your support and listening to a snapshot of the travels that have happened in the recent month. Thank you all. Thank you. Amazing. Thank thanks to all of you. Yes. Thank you. And thank you students for sharing your perspective on the experience. It's very meaningful. Comments or questions for Dr. Mered Perry Reed? I um had just a quick question. the um I know that the AI um presentation is on April 29th. Do we have a time? Yes, I believe it starts at 3:00. Thank you, Dr. Erdle. Mr. or what? I think it's a 3:00 start time for staff. And so staff is 3:45 to 6:45. Then the community is invited to come at 6:00 to 6:45 and then the community will be engaged till about 7:30. Thank you. Couple of different standard times. So 3:45 start time for staff, six o'clock start time for community. Thank you. Um so that takes us to um approval of the agenda. I would look for a motion to approve. 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. That takes us to the consent calendar which purposes for are those um information things that are considered to be more routine in nature. If a member of the board deems an item to be necessary for additional discussion, a motion will be made to move the item to new business. I would look for a motion to approve the consent calendar. So moved. I have a motion. Is there a second? Second. I have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Chair Andre? Yes. Just to note that you and I had discovered that typo in the meeting minutes from last time. Natalya, it looked like there was a copy paste between the treasures report and then that site logic IQ referendum. So if for the site logic we could just put a discussion was held and it passed. Sure. The one you had wanted me the paper copy. Yeah. So, the um minutes will be amended um to reflect the change um noted by clerk Thompson. It is under the site logic referendum placement contract. Um the first item of new business. Um so it would be changed to do we want to hold these minutes until the changes can be made for the next meeting? [Music] or just have the There was no voting on that. It was just a discussion. We had to we had to approve it. Yes. Because it was pulled off of consent. Oh, sorry. Um, so it was approved. It's up to you. I think we would be fine with having it amended. I just don't know who moved or seconded. So, um, knowing that it will reflect what happened in the video, are we all comfortable with that? Okay. Yes. So, with those changes noted to the minutes, [Music] um, I'll call the vote. Um I um yes. All those in favor of passing the consent calendar with the changes noted to the approval of the minutes, please say I. I. Any opposed? The consent calendar. Oh, the chair votes I and the consent calendar is approved. That takes us to the treasures report. Treasurer Hartland. Wonderful. Well, good evening everyone. Um, I wanted to give you a little bit of background information on how our district uses PECards or purchase cards which allow certain employees or departments to make kind of oneoff or um, occasionally urgent purchases. Um, Director Chapanduka and other admin in the district have worked hard over the last five years to reduce the number of cards that we have active. So now we are down to about 40 active cards from an original number of 140 cards of people who had some discretionary spending power. And switching our switch to Oracle has helped trim that number of cards so more people have easier access to placing purchase orders. And that's really been advantageous to our budget to the tune in the millions of dollars over five years. Um because if a person within the district places a PO or a or purchase order inside their cost center, our system deducts that from the the applicable department's overall budget immediately. And so there is a lot more planning and there's more oversight and there's more transparency into the budget when our district employees who are spending on behalf of their departments can use um the requisition or the PO system. Um but pecards are credit cards essentially and they get paid after the fact without that visibility as to how their purchase affects their department's budget. Um and so Oracle has made that process a lot easier. Um the PE cards break down to roughly one per building and one per department and then a few key people with that discretionary purchasing power. And the owner of any card within our district has to go through mandatory training before they can get an activated card. Um all PECARD receipts require receipts and documentation. Um and they're overseen by both the head of the department and the business office and pecard transactions get audited by our external auditors. Um the building and grounds department has a slightly higher amount of purchases on their pecards due to the nature of their department. They have to respond to emergencies across the district and buy things on a more ondemand basis. So overall they also have moved towards this better practice of entering POS and requisitions as much as possible. Um but so if you exclude the building and grounds PECard purchases our total PECARD purchases within the district are quite a bit less than 1% of our total budget. And as a piece of larger context, these treasures reports and the check registers that get posted in our meeting minutes every couple of weeks cover the approximately 19% of our budget that is neither staff salaries and benefits nor the pecard expenses. So when we go through and we approve treasures reports and the dispersements, that's total throughout the year that'll come out to like roughly 19% of our our total budget. So then moving on to this period's check register. Um you might notice this one's a little bit shorter than others. It's mostly due to spring break having fallen during that first week of April. We paid the city of Hopkins $46,528 for multiple months of rent for spaces that several of our programs live in. Um the school district hosts official programming in multiple sites um throughout our district um including the Hopkins Center for the Arts and also the depot coffee shop and youth community center. It's on Excelsier. Uh we paid $216,250 to Safe Engineering for parking lot improvement projects across the district. Um we share adult basic education programming with several neighboring districts. So, we paid 65,000 to $298 to Wisetta Public Schools and $49,811 to Minnetonka public schools for our share of AB expenses. $25,479 went to Teachers on Call for substitute teachers. $10,778 to Mcdow agency for background checks for prospective employees, including many for the these upcoming summer programs that we talked about. We paid $59,95 to National Life Insurance for premiums for our employees. Uh $42,600 was paid to the union, um Suburban Schools Local 284, which is our support professionals union. And with that, I move that we approve total dispersements in the amount of 1,115,96.97 cents for the period of April 1st through April 15, 2025. I have a motion. Is there a second? Second. I have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor, please say I. I. Any opposed? The chair votes I and the treasures report is accepted. Thank you, Treasure Hartland. Certainly, that takes us to uh our first order of our first and only order of unfinished business, uh policy 707.1. I would invite um Assistant Superintendent Lightfoot up to the table and turn it over to Vice Chair Ross to um give us an introduction to this policy which is looks like it is an addition to our policy 707. Yep. Uh thank you, Chair Andre. It's actually a separate addendum uh for 707.1. So, we are bringing this back to um the board for discussion. I know we're going to be um have a lot of conversation about transportation, but yet this is just a transportation policy, pay to ride option for no bus zone areas, and this is going to be a separate addendum that we're bringing forth. So, I'll hand it over to uh assistant superintendent Dr. Lightoot. Good evening. Good to be with you. Uh what is in front of you is the result of the previous conversation that you had at the last board meeting. Um specifically the direction was to bring additional information on as we think about the transportation information change and impact. what it would look like if we had specific information that was captured within policies either within 707 itself or as a pull out um here identified as 707.1 or a separate addendum depending on how we want to look at it or as you advise. Uh the specific component of this was really to identify elements within the payto to ride concept such that we could contain that information per your discussion and have it come back to you as the board there. Again after this discussion it will go to the monitoring committee to put into final form for your review. Once again really the purpose this evening is in essence hopefully a dialogue to say is this what you were hoping to see? Did we get some things on track? Are there things that are missing? Um, and certainly from this discussion, we can bring it then back to the monitoring committee's meeting on Thursday. So, with that, thoughts, questions, observations, omissions, errors, all of the sort. Thank you. I appreciate the work already put into this and um for the opportunity to continue our discussion. Any comments or questions? Chair Andre. Yes, Director J. Hi. Uh, Dr. Lightfoot. Uh, I do have a question um on 1B, right? So, we're saying, okay, priority is given to families who are experiencing financial hardship. Um, are they going to be charged or are they because as I read it now, it seems like we're giving them priority, but it's still paid to ride. Unless I'm reading it incorrectly, I think that is really part of the question that can be discussed when we consider the construction of the payto- ride option. You do have a policy that does have a sliding fee scale um that identifies everywhere from zero to whatever concept might exist. So part of that construct could be built. The policy is not that specific. Um, if it would be identified that a sliding scale would be created, we certainly could add such language or contain that here as well. Yeah, it might be good because as I read it, I'm like, okay, so they can pay us money they don't have. Just is weird to me. U, just some clarification on what you said. um is is containing within 707 a sliding scale. Is that does that already exist within the policy? Is that what you were referencing? Yeah. When you have your fees policy, do identify that for any fees that we would charge, there must be a sliding scale. Okay. Um and that sliding scale, like we said, can range in the way that it's constructed. And so that would apply to this then. Okay. Thank you. That's what I assumed, but I wanted to make sure I was following. And thank you for bringing that up, director Xiao. I had that same question in my mind. It felt a little bit like a disconnect to be talking about pay to ride and financial hardship. So good to know that that applies. So we can just add the language for anybody who's not familiar with the Absolutely. umbrella policy. Yep. I have notes there that when we look at the construction on Thursday as the monitoring committee um clarification on any sliding scale um and what that might look like if the group has any additional guidance, we can bring that back for further discussion. Uhu. Perfect. Chair Andre. Yes. Treasure Hartland. Thank you. Um I was not at the last meeting so I apologize if this question um was answered but is the department the transportation department um going to set the fees and that will be communicated to the family later that's separate from this policy. Yeah. Um that work is in process when we think about for those individuals in the no bus zone um what could this look like as we were thinking about that payto- ride concept. um and how could that be initiated with some of the specific parameters that were part of that discussion. One of those was what would it look like? Could we have some structure where we didn't add additional um buses which would not equate to the budget reductions that we would need to achieve? And how could we utilize space that was on the existing bus in such a way that we could identify those in financial need and act accordingly so that we could have this contained within a policy so that the public would know such a way that how it works. It's interesting to hear your own little bit of an moment. Um well thank you for that and also I can see some parallels between this language and and our you know process for signing up for other in demand services such as kids and co and so I know that those processes are like very much vetted and looked at through equity lenses and have had a lot of community feedback on and so I appreciate that same lens here. um chair and cast a quick question. Yes. Thank youer. Thank you Dr. Lightoot for um you know presenting this uh policy and read question. So will for the pay to ride fee will every family be charged the same fee or will it be based on like if there's a family like that's one mile versus two mile like will it kind of be that type like will there be any fees that are like different than the other? That may be a conversation for the upcoming budget item on the transportation element. That's part of your agenda tonight for some of those specifics. But I think it's a great example of how the policy gives the governance, the guidance, and then the particulars hopefully coming from this policy can then be determined by the department that will actually bringing be bringing forward um the specific components that you're describing. Thank you. Oh, you're welcome. Thank you. Thanks for um for doing this and writing up. I think you captured really well the conversation that we were having at the board table at the time and our concerns and then also walking that fine line of um of providing perhaps some alleviation to families but also not getting into the situation where we're adding more buses. So, um I appreciate that and I'm wondering a couple of things. Um mainly and this might this delves a little bit into operations but in the implementation section I'm wondering um the the families experiencing financial hardship must provide documentation. I'm wondering is that our educational benefits form which would be known and a process that families would know how to navigate at least a little bit. Yep. And it's a consistent process that we have throughout the district for multiple access points um that can be used um and there may be other sets of documentation that people may have as well. um keeping it open so that if there is some other demonstration um trying to be open to sets of possibilities not being too restrictive with one specific instrument. Great thank you. Um appreciate that and I am also um wondering with the sliding scale would that be based on kind of that educational forms process as well like yeah the free and reduced and exactly if you think about other spaces within the district you'll see different levels of fees associated for example with athletic participation um different variations in different rates at different components. All of that can be created um and um looking for first the initial authorization so that we can now bring it forward and then do the construction as the next step. Great. Thank you. I appreciate it. Any other discussion? Great. Great. Right. Thank you. Anything else needed on this one? Not at this time. More to follow. Thank you. That takes us to um our fiscal year 23 audit update. I would invite um Director Chapen Dooka up to the table and turn it over to Dr. Mary Perry Reed. Thank you, Chair Andre. So, as our presenters approach the table, I'll just provide a quick framing. Um, I think it it um many members of our community um have been waiting to hear about the fiscal year 23 findings. So, we all know that um we did experience delays to getting our financial audit completed for fiscal year 23 due to a myriad of factors. And now it has been completed and submitted in good order. And um the report does highlight our efforts as a district to create and maintain stability despite enrollment challenges and economic conditions that have been challenging for us here in Hopkins and across the state of Minnesota. We did recently meet with our school board audit committee to review the report. And um here at our uh board table, we have our director of business services, Turo Chapanda, and Chris and Ezra from Clifton Larson Allen, the audit firm, who will uh provide an overview of our district's financial position for FY23, key findings, recommendations, and then hopefully um answer questions that board members may have. Thank you both for being here so much. I know both of your last names start with K, but I didn't want to mispronounce either. So, please properly introduce our guests. Teruro, thank you for being here. Thank you, Dr. Mary Bered. Uh, good evening our board chair Andre and respective board members. Uh I will let our uh partners from CLA introduce themselves and uh without uh kind of wasting any time uh go into uh the presentation and we'll give the board an opportunity to ask any questions after. Thank you. Thank you very much. My name is Chris Kopix. I'm a principal with CLA. Uh I've been with CLA now for um about 21 years working with local governments my entire career here in Minnesota. Um cities, counties, schools, charter schools, state agencies, uh kind of anything and everything in between that's governmental in Minnesota. And then I have Ezra Kettz with me as well, the manager that has been working on the district's audit. We do have our presentation here uh tonight that we plan to go through. I typically like to say ask questions as we go, but obviously you can hold those to the end as well. So, um I'm not sure who is. Okay, perfect. So, um you can continue on to the next one. Uh okay, so just real brief agenda what we're going to go through. We got some required communications. We'll go through our internal control comments for the district and then Ezra is going to go through some the the federal single audit communications that we have as well as Minnesota legal compliance and then some financial results for the district as well. Um, keeping in mind that this is the results from June 30 of 2023. And obviously we're we're well into this the next fiscal year at this point. So just uh wanted to be able to provide some at least historical context for that. So, if we continue on to the next slide now, we'll go into our required communications. And what we want to hit on this one is that really the the district at the end of the day, you received an unmodified or a clean audit opinion on your financial statements for June 30, 2023. That is the highest level of assurance that any entity can receive. That doesn't matter if you're governmental, nonprofit, for-profit, publicly traded, unmodified as that opinion you want on your financial statements. um within your financial statements themselves, the very first note really just details out what are the significant accounting policies of the district when it comes to financial reporting. We did ad adopt one new governmental accounting standard. This year you'll see the acronym in here occasionally GASBY that stands for governmental accounting standards board. That's the standard setting board in the United States that provides um guidance for local governments to report financially to external parties. Statement number 96 was adopted during this year's audit. And what that is is that's the accounting for subscriptionbased information technology arrangements. We like to call it Sabidas. Uh just to to shorten that up, but really what that is is um local governments have a lot of different agreements out there. This one's specifically focused on IT arrangements where if you have multi-year contracts where you're um committing to a certain fee for a certain number of years, they want you to record that as an asset and a corresponding liability to give readers of your financial statements a better understanding of what's out there from multi-year agreements out that. Um we are also required according to auditing standards let you know if we had any uh difficulties in performing the audit, disagreements or anything like that. um as you can see and we've been um having a lot of conversations about this. We do have to specifically call it out that obviously due to the delays in the audit process, we did include that just as a a difficulty encountered during the audit. And really what it comes down to is just the turnover within within finance that that happened during the year when we were starting to get ready for the fiscal year 23 and that really caused a lot of delays in just getting everything reconciled and prepared for the audit. So we we are just required by auditing standards to really call that out. So um looking at internal controls now um so what we really have in our internal controls. So us as the external auditors for the district our responsibility when it comes to internal controls is not to provide an opinion on your controls but really to identify if there are any control deficiencies in our testing. So we look at those um various things anything from cash reconciliations to the approval of dispersements and purchasing and and kind of anything and everything in between. So our responsibility is to let you know if we identify deficiencies. So we typically classify those into two types of comments. A material weakness or a significant deficiency. A material weakness is kind of that highest level that we need to communicate to those charged with governance such as yourselves. And what that means is that the the absence of that control could lead to a material number or a material mistake within your financial statements. So the potential of there being a material mistake. It doesn't always mean mean mean that we found a material issue but there's a potential for it. Significant efficiencies are similar in nature but just slightly less severe. So we don't think that there'd be a potential for material but it's still something that warrants the attention of governance. So on this one you'll see we have three of them laid out on this screen. The first one related to material audit adjustments. What that's basically calling out is part of the audit process this year. We had to adjust some of the numbers that we got from finance. um just surrounded to um primarily with beginning fund balances within within a few of your funds, making sure that they reconcile to the fiscal year 22 audit at the end of fiscal year 22 to make sure they roll forward into fiscal year 23. Outside of that, we also had some adjustments related to uh making sure capital assets were properly recorded, um booking receivables and payables and a few other things like that. Um th those were um material in nature. That's why we consider it a material weakness. Uh we also want to make sure that we um kind of highlight on this next one that documentation over control processes. So a lot of times what we see as or what we want to see as auditors when there's a control process in place in operating effectively it should be formally documented. So formula document um form form sorry formal formally there we go we'll get that word out there. formally documented to us really means physically signing off, initially dating something or it could be an email exchange saying yes, we reviewed it or something like that. We want to see more of that. So having more of the formal documentation in place for um various transaction cycles, whether that is reviewing and making sure time and effort is certified properly for employees, making sure dispersements are properly approved, all of those types of things, just making sure that those are really in there. a lot of those controls are taking place, but they're not necessarily always being formally documented. So, really just continuing to improve that. And then that last one on there is um just related to the financial statement preparation. Uh the district engages CLA to help prepare the financial statements. However, we cannot be part of your control process. So, by definition, we have to say that there is a material weakness there. Nothing overly concerning with that though is is um we do that for a lot of our clients. So nothing out of the ordinary necessarily for the district, but we are required according to auditing standards to really call that out. So um if we want to go to the next slide and I'll turn it over to Ezra now to go through um some of the single audit communications. Thank you Chris. So uh federal single audit is required when a school district or any public entity has $750,000 in federal expenditures. most school districts are are well above that at least in the metro here. Um so in that case there's a process where we go through to look at okay what what federal programs do we need to look at and then look at what the federal guidance the uniform guidance in this case is telling us for suggested audit procedures over those federal programs. So what we start out with is looking at any programs designated as higher risk by the federal government. In fiscal year 23 there was the um SFRF which is stands for um state local fiscal recovery funds and then education stabilization fund and those two were COVID related programs COVID funding um SFRF $258,000 education stabilization fund 1.2 million. Um we also look at testing any programs that had previous material weaknesses. There were none in fiscal year 21 or 22. And then we also just have to make sure that we're doing enough of single odds over the federal expenditures of the district. So we have to look at over 40% of all federal expenditures. So for coverage, we also looked at the child nutrition program which had $2.3 million worth of federal expenditures. Next slide. So as far as results of of those three single audits that we had in fiscal year 23 for the child nutrition cluster, we did have one material weakness in reporting. uh it's a pretty small amount in comparison to the the two million that that we're seeing uh and looking at for the federal expenditures, but with reporting testing, it's kind of the report's either correct or if if there's even a little difference, we have to report it. So, that's where we're we're calling that out and and do have to report that. Um as far as the CO 19 education stabilization fund for 1.2 million, we we didn't have any deficiencies in in that program. And then for the third program on the next slide there uh the coronavirus state and local fiscal recovery fund uh we did have two material weaknesses one over procurement um and that's related to just um some documentation that was missing over the selection of vendors and and that's not something that was completely unusual in fiscal year 23 um just you know tail end of COVID sometimes having to decide what vendors you're you have to go with for allowable expenditures. Um, so not something that was unusual uh around the metro and I think around the country. Um, but something that we do have to call out when when that was missing. And then a material weakness. Oh, sorry. Um, material weakness over reporting. So, uh, that's just related to a couple reports that MDE uh, required the district to provide and and kind of what Chris was talking about just some of the documentation we're looking for over the review of those reports that are getting provided to MDE. Um and I can call out just in fiscal year 22 there was a significant deficiency uh in the education stabilization fund over time and effort documentation and that was resolved in FY23 and that's why and I just wanted to point out as well when when we talk about that procurement comment we didn't identify any misspending by the district it's really just making sure that those controls that are in place to formally document how we selected a vendor or why we selected them those are requirements of of the federal single audit that um we're so used to spending in Minnesota based on state statutes. It's um over 25,000 and then you have this really large gap all the way up to 175,000 according to state statute where you have to get formal bids for it. The uniform guidance actually instead of having those three kind of three thresholds, they have five. So when you're not used to necessarily working with employees that are used to the federal procurement requirements, that's where we see some of these deficiencies. The other thing that made this very unique for these COVID programs is that you could actually go backwards and identify eligible expenditures. So, an employee followed all of the proper requirements that the state requires, the district the district requires, but then after the fact, the district was allowed to go back and say, "No, we really think this purchase for sanitizer should have been covered by our by our COVID dollars that we received. So, we're going to move that over in and say it's expenditures under the COVID programs." Well, the employee didn't know that that was going to be kind of backdated as federal expenditures. So they didn't have all of the required procurement documentation in place. So it was kind of a catch 22. It's an allowable expenditure according to the program, but then it's not necessarily dotting the eyes, crossing the tees to make sure that we have all of the the checks done to make sure it's truly, you know, a federal compliant purchase. So very very common, as Ezra mentioned, we saw this in a lot of our clients that we worked with, not just schools, but cities, counties, across the board. We saw that was a very common comment that we had. All right. And then uh next section here, Minnesota legal compliance. So this is checklists that are provided by the office of the state auditor. Uh we go through the checklists uh required. All all external auditors have to go through this for public entities. Um and just basically looking to see for specific Minnesota statutes if if the district's in compliance. And the only piece of non-compliance we identified in fiscal year 23 was just the non-timely submission of UFARS data. And that's where those numbers were just not final at that point. And so they weren't submitted um at that time. Uh and and I can say in in FY22 there was an additional non-compliance item related to contracting and bidding um that that was resolved um when we were looking at that. So improvement there. And then as Chris mentioned with financial results. So really just going to talk pretty high level and and just kind of calling out general fund here. Um if you have additional questions about specific numbers, we definitely can talk about them or or get back to you if they're very specific. But um just as far as as general fund goes with again age data from FY23 uh revenues increased 4 million or 3.5% uh mostly related to the property tax increase that was then kind of being offset by start of a decrease in federal sources as as some of the COVID money in FY23 started to um be spent and and get used up. And then as far as federal expenditures on the next I'm sorry not federal general fund expenditures on the next slide there uh you'll see there was a 8.6 million increase in in expenditures in the general fund. So 7.5%. Um that's mostly related to an increase in salaries and employee benefits. And then with the purchase services again tail end of of COVID I think a lot of that was related to CO spending and that sort of thing. So for the general fund um the general fund revenues were were actually uh slightly less than general fund expenditures. So it did cut into fund balance in FY23 slightly um for the general fund by like 1.8 million I believe. So just kind of high level with the general fund and um you know if you have any other questions about any other funds we definitely can get into it. But uh and then I think that that's the end of the presentation. So thank you for letting us present and yeah we can take any questions. Thank you. I appreciate the presentation and your time in in presenting it. Any comments or questions? Chair Andre, director West Morland. Um I have a question for Director Chapanduca. Um so what I'm hearing in the presentation, thank you. It was very clear and I think helpful for our community to have all of the context you provided too. Um, but what I'm hearing is there were some material weaknesses or or process elements that were related specifically to this COVID funding to use a a general term for that category. Um, and that that was um a very specific point in time and we probably aren't going to see kind of a lot of those difficulties moving forward, right? Um but then further up in the slide deck, slide seven, um there were material weaknesses that seem to um be things that we should be attending to as we're moving forward um because these are things that could be repeated in future budget cycles. So my question for Director Chapanduka is how are we addressing some of these things internally or what are some plans that um that are being discussed? Sure. Uh so one of the things we've done is to uh enhance our systems. So uh as you may know we did move from more of a centralized budgeting process to decentralizing. So now resources are going into the buildings and they are spending those resources and we reconcile everything um uh at the central office. So one of the things we've uh started to do is to make sure that uh first of all when people are spending any of the allocated resources uh we have created automated systems to be able to check and uh make sure that resources are available uh make sure that there's actually a documented approval process across the system uh when it comes to uh any expenditures. So uh there are pre-authorization of expenses uh in the system through creating a requisition turning it into a PO getting through approval from the budget managers and um um uh then reconcile everything uh going on on a monthly monthly basis. Uh and those elements have not been there because of the fact that our systems were so siloed. Um and obviously uh they were more kind of more human- centered and when people started living with the knowledge and skills uh we kind of had to reset the base. Uh so uh so those are some of the things we uh we have started to implement uh in the system especially with making sure that any purchases which are happening in our system have to go through an approval before we buy the goods and services. uh the system checks to make sure that there's money for those elements to be uh to be bought and then uh reports are available for system leaders to be able to check their budget uh to actual and then if there are any variances. uh those uh reconciled uh on time instead of waiting until the end of the fiscal year and then start to identify some of these um nuances around maybe uh certain entries being posted to the uh to the wrong account. We identify those up front and make the necessary changes throughout the entire year. Thank you. That's really helpful. So part of what we're seeing reflected here is the shift from the centralized budgeting model that we had before to the predictable staffing model and some systems and processes getting worked out during this time frame that now sound like they are they are more in place and that we have the socialization around it too so that people are practicing those things regularly. Correct. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions? Chair Andre, measure H Heartland. Thank you. I just have a quick comment. I wanted to um thank both of you, Ezra and Chris. They've taken some extra time to meet with the audit committee as we discussed, you know, a couple of those material weaknesses and the changes that they've recommended and and the things that the business office had already identified to work in. And so, you've been very um giving with your time and your expertise and I appreciate that. Um, additionally, we talked about as a part of a control is potentially meeting um as the audit committee more often instead of just kind of when an audit is done. Um, it was their recommendation or you said other districts do have their audit committee meet more often and that's something that um we will look at doing as well. And um overall, I think that you also um director Chapanduka, do you have one more moment to talk about catching up on fiscal year 24 since we already uh should be working on that one as well? Yeah. Uh thank you, Director Atlant. Uh yeah, we are actually working on those uh modalities and I know I did talk to Chris briefly here. So I think uh we'll kind of come up with a with a plan on when that audit will be will be completed. All right. Thank you. Uh Chair Andre, clerk Thompson. Um yeah, I just had a couple questions and thank you for the presentation. Um appreciated uh director West Morland's questions on slide seven and some of the clarifications around that. Um ju just a question for the auditors. Three material weaknesses around internal controls. Is that unexpected for a school district audit like this or is that about par for what you'd see? I I think in at least in my thoughts given the turnover that happened getting ready for the audit and kind of through that audit process, it didn't surprise us. Um we've seen better, we've seen significantly worse. Um you know, it really comes down to is is especially start going through some of the the changes in systems and processes, it it just leads to that potential being out there. I um you know kind of the the hard part especially when you start talking material audit adjustments. You could have a perfectly clean audit if we identify one thing that might have been booked in air. Say uh in a a contracts payable might have been missed on a large construction project. Every everything else could be perfectly done. If we have one adjustment that's over that calculated materiality threshold we have. It's automatically a material weakness no matter what. you could do 99.9% of everything accurate. If we find that one that 0.1% where there was an error that that happens. So I don't think it's all the ordinary given the the the turnover that happened and in some of those a aspects out there. It doesn't surprise us that we have it. As I said, there's sometimes it's worse, sometimes it's better. It didn't it didn't surprise us though for the district just given everything that had gone on. Thanks. I appreciate that context. And then um on slide 13 talking about the Minnesota legal compliance um the non-compliance found about the non-timely submission of UFARS data by November 30th. Um first of all can you tell me what UARS is and is that just saying we didn't turn in the audit on time or is that a different submission? It it is a different submission but it's it's basically the underlying data. So the the audit is actually due as of December 31st, in this case 2023, but the underlying data was due November 30th. Okay. And that that's the case every year. Okay, that's helpful. Thank you. So do we know what UARS is? So that's uh uniform financial accounting. Yeah. So uniform financial accounting reporting standards. So every transaction we do in the system, we have to report it to Minnesota Department of Education because that's how they track all our expenditures. Uh so whether it's salaries, whether it's benefits, whether it's purchase, services, supplies, every transaction has to be reported at the end of uh each fiscal year by November 30th. Uh but obviously because of the fact that there were some delays that also delayed that information. uh being being reported, but we did work with uh uh the Department of Education uh to get that file submitted. Thank you. Um well, thank you for again for all the context and for um most of my um colleagues asked the questions I had. So, thanks for that. I did um just have one final clarification, more of like a followup with um Treasurer Hartland's question about plans for fiscal year 24. Um I'm wondering if um one of the the um measures that you had put in place um with a different system is that the Oracle system requiring signing off of different things and moving that more to a site um a user it's a userfriendly system so that sites can use it as Oh, correct. So that's how the system is uh is set up. So the users at sites uh uh using the system to do the different purchases they have to do and then it goes through an approval with each site uh cost center manager. uh and then the system checks the budgets make sure that uh the accounting codes are correct uh before anything is uh submitted for the purchases. Uh unfortunately our legacy system didn't have those checks and balances. So we had to uh use other third parties when it comes to some of the approvals. So we had to bring in some other third party systems which we had to implement and then uh with the help of people uh just trying to make sure that those processes at least are adeared to but with such a system sometimes things get missed uh or uh things get identified through an audit or later on. Those are the things we are trying to uh to mitigate and be proactive on. Thank you. So, we're not sure that that's been solved for yet with Oracle or uh Well, I mean, every time there's like anytime the auditors come to the district, my assumption is everything is okay. So, um they will come in use their standards. So I can't promise you that well everything is perfect because like what you heard Chris saying is you know a minute one thing can change turn that into uh a finding. Uh but from our perspective uh we believe that we have set up a system which is mitigating on uh on all the issues we we know and have identified in uh in audits. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, I think um there are no further questions and if I'm not mistaken there is no action required or do we need to accept the audit? Uh you can accept it uh just as a formalization. Okay. Um then I would look for a motion um to accept the fiscal year 23 audit as presented. So moved. I have a motion. Is there a second? Second. I have a motion and two seconds. Any discussion? Seeing none. All those in favor please say I. I. I. Any opposed? The chair votes I. and fiscal year 23 audit is complete. Thank you everyone. We feel really good about that. Um that takes us and thank you for being here this evening. Um I'm not sure if you're staying for more of our discussions. No, no, no. Good. I'll sign up. I just want to make a comment. Um you know, having sat through a lot of the presentations earlier, I think I identified where I want to go on vacation next, right? I'm kind of jealous. That was not something when I was going through high school. Oh, yes. Amazing. So, I No, I I do appreciate being able to to see that part of the district and, you know, appreciate that that transparency as well. So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So, that takes us to our fiscal year 26 preliminary budget. Um, I will turn it over to Dr. Mary Perry Reed. Thank you, Chair Andre. So, we have our director of business services who will remain at the table. And I think um I just want to call attention to cabinet leaders just to um be helpful with answering any questions that board members may have following this presentation. Um it's really important for our community to know that many Minnesota school districts are facing a budget shortfall as we all prepare our district budgets for fiscal year 26, which is next school year. And across the metropolitan area, I've said before, the aggregate shortfall is more than $300 million with some of the contributing factors being rising costs in all categories of spending, inflation, uh flat enrollment here in Hopkins with uh more declining patterns of declining enrollment in other areas across the state. And I think the most significant factor being that state funding has not fully covered past, current, or projected expenses. Our budget reduction here in Hopkins moving into fiscal year 26 is $7 million. And then um I think another important to note other than transportation being an obvious place to reduce it has really been challenging to identify potential reductions or efficiencies that won't cause noticeable or significant harm to our schools. So, as much as we are trying to protect classroom teachers, protect student learning, protect instructional support, um it is it is painful to hear the the about the worry and the concerns that some of our school staff have as they think about next year. So, I do want to acknowledge our community members, our staff. We do have um a few staff who have written in and um you know it's it's hard to to read some of the worries and concerns that folks have and at the same time we do appreciate that folks are paying careful attention and are really advocating for what they need and what our students need. So that balance between advocacy but also uh really paying attention to how we use our scarce resources is is a delicate one. And um I want to extend my gratitude to everyone's efforts to working together for our system. You can go to the next slide, Natalia. Thank you. So um just some additional framing. We are mindful of paying attention to our instructional and operational priorities before and during every budget process so that we can be certain of the most important considerations in front of us which include quality tier one instruction at all grade levels where we can observe evidence-based reading and math practices that to promote strong achievement. We want to sustain a focus on student and adult mental health seal or social emotional learning support for students and as much as possible continue to sustain if not build restorative school cultures. We want to pay attention to the specialized needs of students who have IEPs or individual education plans and students who have 504s. That work is vitally important. We also have a commitment to pay attention to and adhere to any um modified or new class size memorandums of understanding that uh we develop in partnership with our elementary and secondary teachers. We know. So, one of our community education leaders talked about students um being very attracted to in outside of school enrichment opportunities, right? Like we know a lot of our kids come to school for sports and all those um fantastic extracurriculars. So, having strong activities and athletic opportunities for our students is really really important. And during the pandemic, we put a um a lot of thoughtful and creative design and investment into virtual edu, which is our online school. And we want to continue to ensure that at least at the secondary level, we have we have eliminated kindergarten through grade 2 virtual edu, but we want to continue growing enrollment at those upper grade levels because our families are asking for choice and flexibility and creativity in their educational experiences and programming. And then there's quite a few operational priorities that also guide our thinking. A lot of these um have um significant investment of time and resource, replacing our ERP, replacing Skyward with Oracle Cloud, preparing for a potential bond referendum. And that's a really interesting juxtaposition of having fewer resources for operational and instructional but having this amazing opportunity to um to partner with our community to ensure that our facilities are our future forward. So preparing for that November 25 bond referendum, focusing on adult wellness and employee engagement, installing high school safety upgrades and um those those that has been an effort within the last three more four months here. Improving onboarding and professional learning for employee groups across all nine of our bargaining units. conducting a transportation audit which took a lot of time and exploring colllocation of our language immersion programming. So, lots of priorities in the system with this slide. Um, just intended to highlight a few of the more critical um or uh critical ones or um the priorities that have been a specific focus for this school year moving into next school year. So I think uh director Chapanduka do you want to provide some backdrop for some of the assumptions that have guided our our budget planning? Sure. Uh thank you Dr. Mary Per Reed. So I know at the uh March 11th board meeting uh we did go through uh some of the information we'll be presenting here at the board. Uh starting with the assumptions which were actually uh recommendations from the citizen financial advisory uh committ uh which has been meeting to come up with strategies to help the board and administration in um mapping as well as creating parameters for the fiscal year 2526 budget. uh putting into consideration uh some of the challenges around uh the gaps between our revenue and our expenditures. Uh first of all knowing that the district uh is a um district which is more human- centered uh by that I mean the majority of our expenditures uh the amazing staff and uh uh community who are part of the uh integral structure of the district uh between our salaries and benefits as as well as uh our additional services we provide. Uh we started with the inflationary increases uh for uh our state revenue uh we receive uh looking at it from a 2% increase in FY26. Uh we also uh factored in the components around uh projections uh knowing that our projections uh uh since the pandemic uh slightly increased but uh when we look into the future they are actually flat. So we factored in a flat uh enrollment projection. Uh we also factored in uh a 4% increase to the cost of living adjustments for the salaries and wages. Uh we kept flat our fringe uh fringe benefits at 42% for FY26. Uh knowing that uh we've also seen some slight um changes uh on the market with our healthcare plans. Uh we also factored in a 3% consumer price index uh inflationary increases for uh purchase services uh our supplies as well as um uh the largest increase we've seen which is uh transportation. So uh when we look at uh our transportation uh costs uh starting before the pandemic into the pandemic we have seen a huge increase uh over the last few years. So uh we are also factoring that in and we'll talk about some of that stuff when we uh talk about the next topic. Uh so when we factor all those components uh that's where we realized that um our expenditures were overrunning our revenue. Uh putting into consideration that for the current fiscal year we had also moved some resources uh from our unassigned fund balance to be able to uh maintain the programs and uh quality of service for the for the district. Uh can you go to the next slide Natalia? So the next slide actually just uh shows some of the processes uh as a system uh we've been embarking on in terms of uh making sure that uh we are holistic uh when it comes to determining uh what it is that we are trying to solve for when it comes to our budget uh conversations. Uh we started way back in uh August, September uh by holding bi-weekly meetings with uh district leaders and our principles uh brainstorming on some of the uh challenges as well as uh enhancements or realignments we uh needed to do uh for our budget to be able to balance. Uh we also met with a smaller group of um uh district leaders which we called the swift action team uh to uh operationalize some of the recommendations we uh were getting from the budget transformation group uh and make sure that uh whatever cuts we're going to make uh had minimal impact. But definitely they do have an impact considering uh the significance of uh the uh gap here. Uh but we're trying to make sure that there's uh minimum impact to uh what the board uh has always desired for our community which is class size and uh maintaining the quality of some of the programs. Um we also did uh take some steps in terms of uh analyzing and doing some comparative analysis with uh other large size uh school districts in terms of their staffing at the uh central office. Uh making sure that we are not an outlier. Uh we also embarked uh on a transportation audit uh with uh center for school uh uh school operations uh which uh actually helped us in identifying some of the uh challenges we have seen in transportation. Uh we did also uh do some work on uh identifying if it was ample time for us to uh colllocate uh some of our programs. um on the you know costing programs we looked at realignments and I'll talk about some of these things as we go through uh realign uh realignments between some of our uh federal and state specific dollars we receive uh so that they are standardized across um across our system. um uh looked at uh some of the differences we've seen within uh when we allocate resources into buildings with the predictable uh staffing model and try to realign and uh find a common theme uh across uh how those resources are being operationalized in our in our system. So those are some of the uh ideas which uh were brought to the table and uh worked on by all district leaders uh with feedback being shared uh you know with different leaders who were not at the table. Uh can you go to the next slide? So the next slide uh actually is related to enrollment since as we know enrollment uh drives uh funding coming into the into the district. So uh the graph you see right now actually shows uh more of a flat enrollment which is what we've factored into uh into our projections uh for uh next year and beyond. Uh we constantly go back to look at our enrollment uh and make sure that uh we are on top of uh identifying families who have a potential of coming into the district or uh try to uh convince families who may be planning to to leave the district. Uh the good thing about this is we are not seeing a decrease in our enrollment. is uh kind of keeping pace with uh what we have seen here uh in the last few years since the the end of the pandemic. Uh the next slide uh just uh shows a breakdown of our fiscal year 26 uh general fund revenue. Uh uh about 43.1% is our basic revenue which is actually determined by the formula allowance. uh as uh defined by the state. Uh we have 13% or $70 million which our which is our stated and some of the levies. Uh 14.7 million or 11.3% which is our uh special education revenue. Uh and that doesn't uh count the cross subs the district has to inject into special education. This is the direct special education uh which is coming from this uh from the state. Uh about 8.5 or 6 uh 8.5 million or 6.5% which is our general education aid. Uh 13.5% or 17.6 million which is our operating uh referendum uh which is uh voter driven. Uh 5.6 million or 4.3% is our local options revenue. uh which is uh uh an authority uh bestowed on the board uh for that revenue but that revenue has been stagnant for for for many years. Uh 3% or $3.9 million which is our federal aid uh and this doesn't include uh what we've seen in the uh last few years with us getting the stimulus package. Uh and we also are uh keeping watch on federal aid uh based on uh some of the actions which are happening uh uh in Washington DC. Uh 3.2% or 4.2 million is uh restricted revenue which could be revenue coming from uh different uh uh fee generated uh resources within the within the district. uh 2.1% is other revenue. Uh this is uh factored in uh some of the funds we are moving from uh some of our restricted uh fund balances as well as some of the chargebacks we'll be doing to uh proprietary funds uh such as community um community education as well as uh food services. So uh when you look at that breakdown, our total revenue uh stands at 130,575,0001 $1130,575,130. Can you go to the next slide, please? Uh the next slide just breaks down the expenditures. Uh salaries and wages uh about 72.3 million or 55.4%. Uh benefits about 30.3 million or 23.3%. Uh purchase services about 20.3 million or 15.5%. Supplies 3.8 million or 2.9%. Uh capital expenditures about 1.9 million or 1.5%. other expenditures about 1.7 million or 1.3% for a total of 130,575,130. And this uh breakdown here factors in the cuts we've made and uh the realignments uh between when we initially did the budget uh and all the changes we've made uh to cut the $7 million. Can you go to the next slide please? uh and this slide uh I think the board and the community have have seen it uh because uh most of the time the question is uh where is this uh gap coming from again uh when you look at a 2% increase to uh revenue coming in and then you're looking at a 4 to 6% increase in cost of living adjustment. uh this gap will always be within us unless if the state does something different. uh I just wanted to highlight it uh so that uh when we go to next year and beyond uh these are conversations which will still come back to the to the table because we'll never be able to uh close that gap as long as our expenditures uh which are driven by uh salaries and benefits uh are always uh running short uh behind uh running over the the revenues. Uh the next slide actually just kind of shows the breakdown of how we came to the uh to the $7 million which I have already explained in a uh in my prior uh slide. Uh the next slide actually uh thank you shows some of the reductions and uh uh budget realignments we've been working on for the last couple months across the across the system. Uh looking at efficiencies in transportation. Uh right now we have factored in a million dollars. If we end up getting more uh that would be great for the district. uh moving some of our restricted fund balance to cover the budget for the holist uh holistic school safety uh which will actually uh net in 572,000 uh leveraging our uh some of our capital outlay dollars to uh support our operations and maintenance. uh some reductions in FTEES uh used uh which are covered by uh capital projects slvy uh thereby freeing some resources which are currently uh expensed in the general fund to be covered by capital projects slvy. uh some uh recapturing of resources in uh community education uh in nutrition and uh some of the departmental operational um uh costs. Uh can you go to the next slide? So next slide. In addition to that, we also have uh some adjustments we've done to our um substitute model uh which uh will net in about $400,000. Uh we also have uh made some reductions to our targeted staffing which is uh dollars we usually put on the side to address any increases in um uh in enrollment uh after the budget has been uh passed. Um we also made some reductions in some of our uh specialists uh with certain programs at the elementary level. uh reduction of uh time card extra payments for uh certain services outside of uh staff duty day. Uh we also did some realignment with our counselors so that they are paid out of our uh categorical revenue. uh some reductions at the uh schedule for uh for the secondary mostly the high school and uh also uh rounding down our predictable staffing model um uh allocations. Uh so all those elements uh helped us come to uh a a reduction of the $7 million uh which we uh definitely uh will have to make sure that uh we operationalize and uh uh we communicate with our community and with our staff on uh any impacts this uh this may have uh and then we'll continue monitoring the processes uh as the beginning of the uh fiscal year uh pro uh pro progresses. Uh so in terms of uh when we break down uh can you go to the next slide please? When we break down uh how we allocate resources uh and I just wanted to make sure that the community understands where the resources are going. Uh so we've broken down uh our $130 million across the uh resources which are directly going into schools uh resources which are districtwide. So about 58.9% or 76.8 8 million of the budget uh is direct allocations to uh to our our school uh school buildings uh to support the uh different programs uh about 34.5 or $45 million is districtwide allocation. So for example when you look at transportation uh transportation although majority of it is uh operationally done in the buildings but it's managed uh centrally uh our custodian model uh some of our uh elements within for example special services. So all those fall within uh districtwide allocations majority of it are actually uh activities and operations which are happening at the building level and about 6.6% or 8.6 million it's a uh those are department allocations. So for example, when you look at our uh business office, you know, we have staff who process payroll, who handles accounts payable, accounts receivable, uh grant activities, uh those fall within department allocation, human resources, um office of governance, all those are part of the uh department allocations. So once you break that down, uh it uh actually uh brings us to our $130.5 million uh preliminary budget. Uh we'll continue working with building leaders to make any adjustments between now and uh the uh passing of the budget uh and the adoption of the budget in June uh June 10th if I'm not mistaken. Uh that being said, I'll uh give the opportunity to the board for any questions or clarifications. Thank you. Thank you. Any comments or questions? Chair Andre. Yes, Director West Morland. Thank you, Director Chapanduca. Um I first have a a comment just to our community um that a really important slide in this deck is slide eight. Um we had a community member visit us earlier this evening to express concern about how action at the federal level will impact our funding here in Hopkins. Um but I really want to keep us focused as well on what's happening at the state level. And this is the slide that should be in the sun sailor. This is the slide that we should be taking to our legislators at the state level and saying we have not been adequately funded. And this compounds over time. And when we say that we have fully funded the Reed Act, for example, it's not true. It's inaccurate. So when our state level leaders are making claims about things being fully funded and historic investments in public education, ask a school board member for verification on that first of all and continue to advocate for fully funded public schools at the state level because we have much more leverage there at this point in time than we do at the federal level. Um so that's the comment portion. Um the question that I have is around um on slide 11 the classroom teachers rounddown. Um so we've received some emails um advocating around that issue particularly and I'm curious about how this corresponds to the predictable staffing model and how it might diverge from what we've done in the past. Were we rounding up in the past kind of what what is different about this? Sure. Um thank you director West Mullen for that question and obviously for advocating for uh for more resources at the state at the state level. So when when it comes to the predictable stuffy model and we've done this in different ways uh in recent years uh we kind of created some uh flexibility in terms of uh just wanting to make sure that if enrollment start to increase in a building uh we create a cushion uh for buildings to be able to have enough resources. So uh how we do the allocations is we start with projections. Uh and as you know projections um uh kind of more of uh assumptions based on what has happened in the past, what we anticipate to happen in the future and then kind of come to a sweet spot of okay uh for us to be able to uh start the year. We feel like based on all this information uh these are the number of students who will be coming into building A. And then when we start to see uh those students coming in later on in the uh uh later on uh in the year when the budget has already uh been approved. Sometimes uh the projections are less than what the actual students coming in. uh that's where uh the rounding up would really come to play. Sometimes the pro uh projections are more than the students coming in. What we've never done is to go back and make adjustments when we see that well projections are less than what we uh uh what we anticipated. we have always kept those resources uh in the building and then putting into consideration uh that on top of not even uh pulling those resources back we also rounding an FTE. So for example if the total number of uh FTEES teacher FTEES in a building uh based on sections based on class size uh let's say building A I'll give an example maybe Ali Smith um we calculate everything and we come up with like 16.1 or 16.2 in two FTEEs. What we'll do is we'll give Ali Smith 17 FTEEs. So we give them a cushion. Uh and then on on top of that if Alice Smith doesn't have uh the number of projected students coming in or let's say they end up with less students coming in, they are getting another additional resource. M uh so what we just did here in terms of just trying to rescale everything down uh we said well instead of uh doing a round up up front we just round them down. So a 16.1 FTE would be 16 FTEEs. Uh and then we'll see as the year progresses in terms of uh what we projected as students coming in and what we'll actually start to see uh later on in September or October. Uh what we have done is we have put some resources on the side to be able to um uh address any uh changes we may see. For example, when a building start to see that they they have more students coming in more than what was uh what was projected and I I hope that answers the question. Thank you. It it definitely does. And so the the part I want to kind of emphasize is that we do have some resources set aside so that if enrollment changes um it goes above the projected enrollment then we will be able to allocate more resources to those buildings. Yeah. So what we've done is we uh working with leaders we captured 5% of their discretionary dollars and then put them aside uh so that uh when we start to see those nuances uh we we can proactively be able to address them. Uh what we've not done is we've not been um this more flexible like we've been in the past obviously because of the significant challenges we are facing. uh but we have some few resources which would be able to uh help to address some of the ch uh challenges. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you chair and um so to and again thanks so much for that question director West Morland because you know it's it sounds like you know the roundown is is a big thing that's concerning. Um I I I if you'll indulge the question, I'm hoping we can Can you also pull up the budget memo that was attached here so I could ask kind of an example question that's in here just so that I understand what we're talking about? Okay. So you know if if you go to Tanglin for example and that's on page you type in 21 in there and it'll get you there. It's numbered 20 on on the slide. So it it says and then at the bottom of that page it says the total number of students that we're projecting is 479. So that that would equate to based on predictable staffing model 16.43 FTEES for for teachers. So are we saying that because that 43 we're now rounding down they would get 16 correct there. Correct. Okay. So then like if you look at the grade four two lines above that 103 students we're projecting 3.43 FTE is what that equates to. So are we saying we would hire three FTEEs for grade four there? Uh not necessarily because what uh what buildings do is we give them a base allocation but they also get discretionary dollars. So they use their discretional dollars to address any uh any either class size uh challenges they may have uh or if they need to uh provide other uh other interventions uh that allocation we give them which is between uh what we call the basic P students as well as their compensatory will be used to prop up uh the FTEES which are allocated through the predictable staffing model. Okay. So hopefully the use of the discretionary dollars will help alleviate a concern such as that. So it you know I see a line right above professional development there the the total allocation for Tangland says 6.65 million. Is that inclusive of the discretionary dollars? Correct. It is, but I it it seems to me that every dollar of that 6.652 has been spoken for here. It so I don't understand where the wiggle room for of discretionary comes from. Uh can you clarify uh director Thompson? Well, it looks like you know the column for FY26 revenue allocation. I would assume that if you go down there that adds up to 6.65, correct? So, so where's the discretionary? Yeah. So, the discretionary uh just about that 6.5 uh $6.6 million uh where it says uh compensatory. So, Tanglin receives $413,000 $514,000 in compensatory. they receive $167,000 in uh basic per student. So those dollars they're building determines how they want to use them. So they can use them to prop up any uh class sizes. Uh they can use them for other for other interventions. Uh they are not tied to uh what we've allocated them as uh the basic resources they need to be open to be able to to open their building. So the principal will be able to leverage those resources. If you continue going up uh they also get an allocation for the um uh title uh uh based on their title plan. Uh they can use those dollars to add more staff or uh add more necessary services to the to the building. That's really helpful. Thank you. And then, you know, as I went through a number of these elementary schools and divided the total seat count by the FTE, it it looked like it generally was hitting 29. So, is the what's theou for elementary schools? Like what's the goal class size? Uh I think for that maybe superintendent or Dr. Lightoot can answer for that. from an allocation standpoint. So we do so when we do the basic allocation we are using a set uh class size uh we've determined but that doesn't necessarily mean that when buildings start to plan for um uh for their uh allocations they're going to necessarily use those those same. So that's why they leverage some of their discretionary to be able to reduce the class size. In relation to an elementary class sizeouou that is uh under negotiation right now. There was anou to work toward that and we have a committee that's been working on that throughout the course of the past couple months. So more information will follow and would be part of the next contract. Thank you for the time. Yeah. Thank you, Chair Andre. Yes, Treasure Heartland. Sorry, Director. Sorry, Vice Chair Ross. Oh, go ahead. Um, thank you. I have a quick followup to both of the previous um comments and questions. Uh, Director Wes Morland, you talked about our shortfall compounding over the years. Um this year alone if we had an additional $1,300 per student that's over $9 million. Last year it would have been about eight and a half million. So you can see that over 20 years that's like an absolutely devastating amount of money to be down and it results in this painful process every single year. Um, and then in regard to Clerk Thompson, thank you for bringing attention to the additional document that is linked in our agenda um, for community members or staff members that are wondering. That's extremely helpful. It provides a lot of really detailed um information and some of it is related to fiscal um compares fiscal year 23 24 and then 2425 and one specific a couple line items I wanted to draw an attention to that is on page 8 where it talks about um the board did already hear and then administration also already heard the call to reduce um kind of administration in general and did do that by I think four positions from the 23 24 school year to this school year the 2425 and um did increase their teacher count over that same pay period and their pair professional count over that same period. So that was for this current school year. Um, and then additionally, my apologies, I was going to ask, so these docu this these detailed documents that kind of tie um that break down a budget on a school or a building by building basis. um are do you give these documents to them or do you give instead to school leaders a budget target and then work with them and their staff to come up with these documents? Yeah. So we um we we have a formula uh which we have created which uh helps us in uh determining these uh allocations. Uh and that formula is either based on um uh ranges uh which are driven by uh uh by enrollment. So we work with building leaders, we give them the allocations and then uh we schedule meetings with them kind of to go through uh all the line items go through uh their staffing which is what we are doing right now and then uh then they do the tie outs on their own. Uh that's what we call them. uh they make sure that they look at their staffing, they make sure that uh they look at their discretionary dollars, they look at uh the gaps which they have and then we uh help them navigate uh any gaps they may see uh and then we kind of continue uh continue the conversation. But uh outside of us giving them the allocations, the majority of the work lead us to them themselves. So that's why if you got every building uh they know what their budget is because they they they uh engage in making sure that uh the priorities in the buildings are driven by uh feedback coming from that building instead of uh uh central office. Thank you. And that was kind of a trick question for our viewing audience where we had this exact conversation a year ago and in fact if the community or even this board is interested I think it was May 21st of 2024 you had principles Sawatsky and Romaelli I believe at this table and they walked us through kind of the process that both the longer budgeting process that they do inside their buildings and then the meetings that they have with you to kind of specifically tie out their budgets as you mentioned. And so that would be another a piece that anyone could revisit and it's outside the governance of the board exactly how they do that but it it was highlighted last year um in service so that the board understands the steps that happen within the district and then for us as a district to treat this like very moral and weighty document that is our budget with more transparency. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you Treasurer Hartland. Um Vice Chair Ross. Yes. Thank you, Chair Andre. Uh, thank you for the presentation and all the detailed information. I was curious about whether or not are there any additional detailed budget reductions because when I look at this, it looks like a total of 6 million and I know we're targeting 7 million. So, I don't know if that means for that 936k, is that going to be something we need to transfer from the check our savings to our checking account or are we looking to still do more cuts to hit that 936 to equal out to that 7 million? No, I think uh what we're just doing is uh some just uh some adjustments. We we just need to finalize. Uh yes. So when I actually uh brought this up, it was you know the major uh elements of the cuts which might have some impact in our uh in our programs and our system. Uh we do have some few items which we just need to iron out which will not impact the uh the the uh the budget uh at the end of the day in terms of whether we need to uh move funds from uh from fund balance uh we have already kind of factored that in. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Um I just uh I had one just clarifying question along the same lines as Vice Chair Ross. Um, I saw in the in the presentation that the transportation savings is still um at a million and I believe we've had lots of conversations about how that's projected or estimated to be almost 2 million. So, are are we factoring in the changes that we've made or are we just waiting to see how that falls out? Yeah. So the million dollars I know it looks like conservative but without understanding how this will be operationalized and uh how uh at the end of the day um will uh realize those cost savings. It's a bit more riskier. Uh I think we'll have time uh between when the budget passes and when we do the revised budget to really get a good picture of uh where where everything is. So uh we don't want to end up in a situation mid year where we can start cutting uh cutting staff or cutting services to the district. And that's that conservative element of putting the million dollars in there. If we end up uh realizing more more resources, well, good for us because uh we can take those resources into fund balance and use them to actually uh uh build a better budget for uh for for the following year. Cuz right now it's too risky uh considering that we are still in the process of actually operationalizing uh what this would look like. uh for me to just say well uh we're going to realize $2 million. I know the uh the preliminary work uh did show some elements of uh a uh a cost saving which is more than a million dollars. Uh but based on uh the work we have done just uh on what we know at this point in time uh we feel like a million dollars will probably be more realistic uh to be able to easily capture uh than the whole entire $2 million until we have realized and uh determined how this whole um how this whole process would uh would work at least for fiscal year 26. Uh once we capture that information going into the future and we know that uh if we implement um the no bus zones, if we implement a different model around the tier system, if we capture along the way uh the um uh solid operations of transportation and then going into the future, we'll be able to uh at least budget differently. That's that's the biggest component. I I I kind of insist on leaving a million dollars instead of saying we'll make $2 million and then realize that we are not able to do that. That would be a gap which we have to take out of out of fund balance. Thank you. I appreciate that context. Um and then I just had my own little plug. Treasurer Hartland, you said that it more than $9 million if um we had kept uh funding education at a rate in which it was appropriate. I did the actual math and it is $9,188 $256. And I just think we wouldn't be having this conversation and we would have 2 million plus dollars to fund really important things for our families. Um, and so those numbers are significant and important and I thank my board colleagues for bringing that forward and for you to keep putting that slide in and updating the numbers because I think it's so critical that we understand where we're at in education and um I think this is my least favorite meeting of the year. So, thank you for your time. Chair and Dre. Yes. I'm sorry. Just a can I ask just a couple more quick questions that kind of popped into my head? And um Treasure Harland, I appreciate you mentioning the preliminary budget memo that's already um that's in here as well. Um on page 14, I mean, that's a fantastic breakdown of, you know, what each school is getting from the general fund, what each of these different areas is getting. Um, I noticed holistic school safety is still in there with 470,000. Um, but that's also listed as one of our reductions that we're able to move that to be funded instead of from the general fund restricted safe schools funds. So, is that like part of the work that is done cannot be funded by restricted safe schools? So that 472 that's still there has to remain funded by the general fund. Sure. So so the the 472 you're seeing there that's the cost. So what what I've done is I also increased the revenue. So on the revenue side I've also increased the 472 because it's dollars we are moving from a restricted fund balance because that cost is still going to be there. So, so it's a wash if that makes sense. So, right now in total our our total budget which we are presenting to the board is about $130 million but the actual revenue coming from the states is a little over $128 million. So we are leveraging some of these resources within the system to be able to get us to uh cuz I can't I I can't take the 472 from the expenditures because we we we have to we have to work have that work done. What I'm doing is I'm taking resources from other uh from other ports of money uh and include them as our revenues uh to be able to get us to a balanced budget. Yeah, that makes sense. Thank you. Um and then uh Treasurer Hartland, you you had mentioned the um in that other section showing you know four administration positions that had gone down in a previous year. Um I don't know Dr. Mary Piri, can you comment on any administration positions that have been eliminated for this budget? Sure. There are um we have provided our Hopkins staff with a list of district positions in all of our departments and either reductions, restructures or vacated positions that were not filled um in uh starting last year. So two years ago we didn't have this detailed document but we did provide it last year and then it's this year that we have reduced um by four positions uh when you look at a category of school and district administrators that that pool of positions has been reduced by four positions. Thank you. Chair Andre. Yes, Director Xiao. Yes. Hi. Um, no, it's late, but I do have a question about um the uh on page 10 of the preliminary budget. Um, I I see there's community education, nutrition services. Um, and it says reimbursement. Is that going to be a one-time thing or can we, you know, do we have to solve for that next year or is that can we repeat that? Is that sustainable, I guess? Yeah. So, that's going to be ongoing. So uh and we're still uh working on modalities around that. So there are certain services which uh general fund pays for which are related to either community education. For example, uh the general fund pays for utilities. Uh and those utilities are also uh impacting uh community education programs or food services programs. I mean since community ed uh and food service generate their own funds uh what we'll do is we'll capture some of those dollars back into the general fund. Uh and that's something we've really not been doing but their fund balances are healthy. So that's something we can uh we can do going forward and uh and it's also allowable per state statute. Okay. Thank you. And similar to the PT adjustment and operational cost reduction, those are all sustainable year after year. It's not a onetime thing. Uh which one is that? Sorry. Uh the two near it. So the PD the PD adjustment, right? And the operational cost reduction. Uh those were also I thought maybe potentially one time, but they're also ongoing items we can keep saving. Sure. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. and I appreciate your time. Um, there is an action on this. True Andre. Oh, yes. Can I just say one thing? Yes. Two things. Thank you, Chair Andre. Um, thank you, Trurero, for your work on preparing these documents. I did want to point out, it looks like on page 21, the PSM for North is um is fiscal year 25, not 26. So, we can maybe just make that correction later and include FY26 for North. You see that there? Which one? Um, on page 21, it looks like we just submitted the wrong PSM for North. Well, you mean on the template. Uhhuh. Sure. Yes. And then I did want to share with our board and community and um really um much thanks to our legislative action coalition that did put together a letter today that is being sent to our legislature for tomorrow because um the Senate Education Finance bill is being heard in the Senate Taxes Committee. And so this letter that our LACE has written on behalf of public of Hopkins public schools um does ask for the legislature to not pause or repeal the indexing of the education funding formula which you spoke to earlier, Director West Morland, and also asks for um the adoption of the House Education Finance target to reflect that 40 million. ion dollar investment in education so that we can continue read act support and there are some other important um asks in this letter. So I just wanted to call out the important work of our legislative action coalition and um thank them for their for their advocacy. Katherine Callahan is always on top of it. So thank you LAC. Um, and I'm sure we could make that available to board members if they wanted to review it. I'm happy to forward it. Great. For advocacy talking points. Thank you very much for your time, for the discussion. I appreciate all the board members your questions. Um, and I would then look for a motion to approve and accept the fisc year 23 preliminary budget. So moved. Second. I have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor, please say I. I. I. Any opposed? The chair votes I. and the fiscical year 23 preliminary budget is approved. Thank you for your time. Thank you. And our next item is a transportation update. Um so director Chapanduka will stay with us here at the table and um Naisha Williams we invite you up here and I will turn it over to Dr. Mary Perry Reed. Thank you, Chair Andre. Um so as we continue our significant budget related agenda items, we would like to revisit the um the transportation um item which is a very big topic and has been the focus of previous board conversation and a lot of time on the part of assistant director uh Miss Williams and uh director Chapanduka and um many others including our partners at CISO. So in the past years our system has experienced changes to bell times programming enrollment patterns and these are three of a few factors that have had a significant impact on our transportation system. And in light of huge cost increases in the last five years, we have recently conducted a transportation audit to investigate what our current state is. also investigate what a more ideal state could look like with our routing structures and um keep our eye on the goal of a more efficient and cost effective structure while minimizing if at all possible impact to the entire system. Um and so truly the goal is to dramatically reduce transportation costs so that we can confidently say that transportation does not eat into our instructional staffing which I'm not sure that we are confident about that right now. So this this discussion has been very important and um I appreciate everything that you're doing, Miss Williams, to navigate the transportation world on behalf of all of us. So, do you want to um provide some information for our community to maybe revisit some of the previous conversations and teruro budgetary impact and then we'll we'll bring our community up to speed with some of the changes that we are asking um them to support us on. Sure. Uh thank you Dr. Mary Piried. Uh I just wanted actually to start from a context standpoint and I know sometimes it's uh it's easier to see or to uh start this story in numbers. So uh I went back and gathered some information going back to uh 2019 2020 uh before the pandemic uh so that there's an understanding from the community where we have come from in terms of our transportation operations and part of the challenges which have kind of brought us uh to to where we are now. Uh as you can see in 2019 2020 FY20 uh our budget was 6.6 million. Uh we spent $6.3 million. So we did uh have a surplus which went back into our fund balance. uh in 2020 2021 uh obviously uh with the pandemic um impacting uh our operations uh there was less transportation which was needed to be provided. Uh as some of you may remember back then uh the mandate from the state was that we supposed to pay our contractors even though they were not transporting our students. Uh and I mean we did work with our contractor so that we minimize that impact. So we ended up uh uh budgeting about $4.3 million and uh our actual expenditures were uh a little over $4 million. So we did have a a a surplus uh in FY 20 FY 21 22 uh in FY22 uh obviously with the uh pandemic uh lessening and uh students starting to go back to school. Uh we budget uh 7.6 6 million our expenditures were $7.4 million. So again uh another surplus for that year and then in 2223 uh we increased our budget because more activities was happening. So our budget was $8.2 million. We spend about $8.1 million. Uh so you can see the pattern of uh how uh transportation at those particular point in times uh was uh maintaining the uh operations within the the budget and then uh in 23 24 also you know changes have been happening across our system and I think some of the uh changes we have seen uh is the demand after uh uh after the pandemic when uh students were going back to school and sometimes we would have a situation where we had to uh to be flexible uh in terms of transporting our our students. So in FY2324 that's when we started to see an uptick in our transportation costs uh um budgeted $8.2 $2 million and our actuals about $9.9 million. And then uh we started working on modalities of trying to uh mitigate some of these uh challenges through uh the transportation optin which we're anticipating would uh help alleviate. At the same time knowing that uh we also had uh consulted with the community and their desires around maybe making some changes to uh the uh uh bell times for for for our secondary uh students. So when we went into 25 uh 2425 uh uh some changes were were done to accommodate our community and then based on uh how we've seen transportation operating uh that cost is escalated uh to where we started to project going into 2526 uh close to a $3 million uh budget. deficit if we had not done something different. And uh that $3 million could be something eating into uh programs uh in our in our building since transportation uh actually supports all the different programs which are which are happening. uh as mentioned by the superintendent uh we did engage with the consultant to come and kind of help us identify some of the challenges and uh make some determination of how best to navigate our system so that we don't end up in a situation where uh costs are escalating uh on a yearly basis when we have uh finite resources. Uh so I'll give uh director Williams here an opportunity to kind of take us uh through some of the work she has done uh in partnership with our consultants to get to uh where we are with some of the decisions which we are which we are making which definitely do have some impacts to our community. So we spoke previously about our transportation audit. Um it's labeled here as transportation feasibility study. Within that feasibility study, we have um looked into a couple different things that would project how transportation is running. So our current situation assessment was what we looked at first. um what our existing transportation system looks like, what's in place, how many students are being transported, what is the current fleet size and condition, our uses usage analysis, which is how many students are requiring transportation, what percentage of the student population uses the school provided transportation. And then we went into our logistics and our routing where we checked our efficiencies and our routes that we had built. Um, are the routes optimal? What are the distances for each route? And if they could be optimized to save time or money. Um, pick up and drop off points for students. And if there if the locations are convenient, safe. Um, time spent in trans if the time spent on the buses is reasonable for all of our students. And our bus capacity, which is is our fleet side appropriate for the capacity of how many students are riding our buses and if they're being over or underutilized, sorry, I'm not moving to the next slide. Sorry. So the next slide. So what we ended up coming up with was a few different scenarios that we talked about previously and we landed on option three that within that that option we should save the most or at least we projected we'd save the most out of all options that we presented to everyone um based off of the scenarios that we looked into with our study. With option three, that changes our current structure from more of a two-tier uh system to a three- tier system, which will have three elementary schools on that first tier. Our secondary schools all on second tier. Uh the rest of the three elementary schools on the third tier with our non-public schools actually on that third tier also. Um, with that, our total number projected of general ed buses would be about 52. Um, if we were to put the Notre Dame and Good Shepard, which is our nonpublix, um, on that third tier. Um, or I'm sorry, if we kept them on the second tier, if we moved them on to the third tier, that's where we would see more of a reduction, which would be the around the 46 buses. And that's again for having more of our nonpubs, which were originally on our second tier area, moved down to our third tier. Um, and then we went over our projection of how many open enrolled students that are on our buses and how much we could save by changing the processes in which we use to accept open enrollment on our our school buses currently. Um, we also looked into changing our no bus zones. So that would be one mile for for our elementary students. And with the onem, this next slide will provide you with how many roughly how many students would be affected by the onem no bus zone for elementary students and how many buses is projected that we would save and how much that would cost being that each bus is about $100,000 um per bus per year. with this list here that we have for the elementary students. We already have identified our elementary students that are affected at each school um that are in our within our no bus zone and that includes students who were already in a walking area and the new additional ones since we increased that no bus zone. The next slide is the no bus zone for our secondary students which is two miles um walk bound or no bus zone for the secondary students. This shows you that with the two miles um each school would have roughly 120 to 200 students that are affected and that are within that 2m radius. and how many buses we would likely um project that we would save based off of changing our no bus zone to two lounge for all secondary students. The information for all the secondary students is still being configured. It's a little different and a little more difficult because students had to be grade advanced up from say sixth grade or fifth grade over to sixth grade um at the middle schools. So there's a little more cleanup that we'd have to do with getting this information. So, this one is taking a little bit longer, but again, the elementary students are all ready and we have identified each one of those students and pretty much um that is all that we have for transportation. I'm open for questions. It's pretty much us going over what we've already spoke about and um going through the process of trying to make sure that we maximize the best way possible of how much we can save going into the next year. Thank you. I appreciate that. Welcome. Um information. Are you open for questions? Yes. Feedback. Mhm. Um I just wanted to quickly um give some context around this um was that prior at a prior workshop we had discussed these different scenarios. I think we went around the table and got feedback from board members and a pulse. And so I wanted to give board members an opportunity to ask more questions since there's been a shift in our understanding of what we're going to do going forward. Um and also to know that um that the board's work which was the policy work on the no bus zone has been completed and passed and that this is a continuation of a conversation that was um at the board table but is not part of the board's work. So I just wanted to give that context. Um, so there is no action on this. It is an opportunity for board members to ask questions, to gain further clarification, um, and for our community to kind of follow along and, um, being transparent about this process that is going to, um, have an impact on a number of our families since we are changing bell times for two schools. So, are there any comments or questions from my board colleagues? Real quick, uh, Chair and Dre, I just have a quick question. Was the outside of the year 2020, uh, was there a reason why we were more in a surplus in those years? Did it did it have to do with the route efficiency? M uh there were a number of uh factors uh which actually uh played a part here. Uh one the the market at that point in time uh was also not very uh competitive as if we've seen it uh since uh the start of the pandemic. Uh and we uh uh we also did have some like some efficiencies and the way we were operating transport was a bit different than what we have seen since the start of the pandemic up until now with a lot of shifts and changes in uh in the needs within our our system. So that kind of speaks to some of those uh surpluses you can see uh during those previous years. That's why when we started to look at um cuz we wanted to use data to make a determination of which direction to take. So we went and looked at how we were routing uh before the pandemic. uh looking at some of those three tier uh models and which schools were actually um placed on tier one uh on tier 2 and tier three and at that point in time uh we're not factoring in some of the studies which ended up uh leading us to uh making some modifications with the with the secondaries. Uh so so that actually uh played a part when we started to figure out what what is the best way uh to take us forward uh at the same time um meeting the desires of the community around what they wanted to see with the secondary students uh bill times. Thank you. Chair Andre. Yes. Clerk Thompson. Um, first of all, thank you for this presentation. Um, adding that context of the dollar figures from previous years just really shows the need to take action before it continues to go. And and I think that the work done has been really good, you know, and um thoughtful and and well laid out here. So, thanks a lot. I I just have one kind of odd question. Do we do we currently offer busing for people who open and roll in and don't live in the district and would we continue that or change that under this? Yes. So, currently we offer the closest existing stop within the school's boundary for open road students. So if they live outside of the district, they are able to apply for a bus and if there is space is what we have on um in our policy that we will offer the closest exist ex existing stop. we just have a surplus in how many students are actually requesting and then we've had a lot of community outreach that um we ended up reacting and just adding more um when we have so many what 800 we had about 800 requests this year for open road families and we ended up with about 600 of them actually on a bus. So we don't actually have those buses for students and we're creating them as we go if we continue on that route. So now our what we want to do is change the way that we do that and once we are full we are full but we can offer that other option that we talked about with the open enroll families being able to have some outside pay to ride options that may help them because they may not have the space that they would normally have that we have been doing previous years basically. That makes sense. Thank you. You're welcome. Yes, Treasure H Heartland, thank you for the context. This like side by side of the millions of dollars like Clerk Thompson said is really illuminating. Um, are we do we have like a I know communication has started. I know we've heard some feedback like the exact families like the people who are really going to have a change like all these open enrolled students are they part of a communication plan that they know like as soon as possible that for sure we're talking about them it's not hypothetical they need to make a plan so they have time so the they're separate so the students that are in a no bus zone there's a separate communications plan. Um we have identified again all elementary we've identified secondary is just a little clean up that has to be done with the miles just to make sure. Um but there is a communications plan in place to make sure that we send notification out to those families because they may have been in the area to receive transportation this year. That may not be the case next year for open enroll families. We're not actually changing our policy. We're not changing anything that we have already set in stone, but we do still have a process in place to communicate to open families just to let them know that you may have received a bus for the last few years, you may not this coming year because we will not be adding buses. So, there are two different separate communications that should be going out to families. Okay. I appreciate that. I I think that that's really crucial that we do that early and often and and so thank you for that. You're welcome. Chair Andre, Director West Morland, I apologize if this was asked and answered when I was in the restroom. Um wondering about immersion families and will transportation still within the district still be provided for immersion scholars? of course keeping in mind um the no bus zones around each site kind of what does that look like and then similar to director Hartland how is that going to be communicated to immersion families? So currently for immersion families the change that we have for this year would be the no bus zone um families will they are on the list to receive if they are emerging and they're within that no bus zone. Um we don't have anything else besides open enrolled emerging families which they will receive the open enrolled um notification. So in district emerging families should be the same for now. Perfect. Thank you Andre. Yes. So, Miss Williams, will we treat um immersion families similar to non-emersion intradist transfer families or they two different scenarios? So, two different scenarios. Currently for immersion families, we are still we have not changed anything to not bus immersion families across the district. So if they are in immersion and they're not within that school's boundary, it is a district-wide boundary for immersion families. That is something we want to take a look at, but that isn't something that we have changed this year because we already have that immersion conversation on the table and it all may need to go together. Okay. Chair Andre um in addition to the context that you provided at the end of the presentation and thank you Miss Williams and um Director Chependuka for the presentation. I do want to um speak to um directly to our Gatewood community and just acknowledge for our entire community that uh Mr. Chapanduka and Miss Williams. And I did visit with Gatewood staff um last week after school um probably for about 90 minutes to just um pay acute attention to some of the concerns that were expressed um mostly on behalf of some Gatewood families who may feel that they're being detrimentally impacted. Now, we haven't heard um similar feedback from our Ellis Smith community. Um perhaps because there are more students in the Alice Smith community who are being impacted by the no bus zone expansions, then maybe those families feel like, "Oh, great. This gives us extra time to get to school, right?" Um, but I I do want to acknowledge that our Gatewood um staff are um they're leaning into the challenge and they're grappling with how they will personally be impacted, but more importantly how um some of the children and families in the Gatewood community might be impacted maybe negatively. So um we will I wanted to say that out loud and it's really important that we identify our transportation transition partners at each of our schools so that we can start collecting okay what are all the unique scenarios that we need to um thought partner and problem solve around so that no one is left without an advocate or without you know some brainstormed ideas. Taran Dre, can I ask a question? Yes, director. So, for the transportation challenges at Gatewood, is there going to be any thought process around like if a family needs to transfer out of Gatewood for that purposes, like will there be any like special enrollment for those families into a different elementary school that better accommodates their schedule? because I know that like if I I'm not sure like what the waiting lists look like for like multiple school districts, excuse me, not school districts, but multiple elementaryaries right now like in the district, but like if would there be like any special considerations for a family they need to like transfer over to Tanglin or transfer over to I don't know um Metobrook because their hours fit better. M that's a really good question director Roer. Um so that would be an in in district transfer and we we do accept in district transfer applications all the time on behalf of families within the district. I mean, it's not a huge percentage of our families, but there are requests based on all kinds of, you know, different challenges or scenarios or preferences. And so, I think that's something that we could definitely take a look at with our enrollment team when we make decisions around the um the acceptances of those requests. then they're informed by um how close to those class size or you know caps um what those class sizes in the in the um in in the incoming school um presently look like. So we would want to just just pay attention to those things. But I think um I'm looking at our director of communications and marketing who she's listening. She's nodding. Yes. So yeah, she works closely with our enrollment team and that is Thank you for naming that and that's that's something that we'll put on our radar. Okay. Thank you. Um I want to um acknowledge that you mentioned Gatewood specifically and also to be transparent to the community. Um I work as a pair professional at Gatewood. So um I feel like this decision um is very personal for me. So, I've been trying to um remain objective but not finding it easy or even possible. Um and also am not quite sure if that is my job right now. Um I think that um part of the strength of our board is that we all bring um personal um perspectives to the table and I think that is a strength. Um, so I I was at the meeting on Friday and I want to be transparent with the community that um the feedback about impacts um to Gatewood specifically are very real and they were heard um I think by the important people who needed to hear them um assistant director Williams and director Chapanduka and also uh Dr. Mary Perry Reed. So, I thank you for taking that time and also for the additional followup work you did in response to a lot of the um staff feedback and questions. The biggest one being why Gatewood? Um, and I think um that work um was really important and I'm wondering if you would be able to share um what you found out what that process was like and why we're still at where we're at with the three tier scenario from your expertise opinion. So, in a short time, we were able to take a look at a difference in what um we could possibly do with swapping or changing um anything. And we didn't see any real savings to swap schools on that level um on that tier, I guess I would say, not level. But we also took a look in a few other areas, especially our special services, and it it just didn't look like from what we were able to pull up just in that short amount of time that we would save, but potentially could cost more depending on the scenario because we're talking about a few different scenarios in addition to what we were looking at. Um, ultimately the the decision was for us to keep the tiers where Alice Smith and Gatewood would be on that third tier solely based off of our routing and our logistics and where we were a few years ago with those tiers. So, we we really just took a look at these were the two schools that were already on our third tier. um and we placed them there and went through our process of routing to make sure that um we would save by just putting schools down to that third tier. Um after changing and looking into some things um since Friday, there wasn't much of a a big change or savings if we were to swap anything else. Um I hope that's answering your question. I'm just trying to make sure because there was a few of them floating around. So, I want to make sure that I'm answering your question. Yeah, thank you. I just wanted to acknowledge that that was heard and looked into and um it's the opinion that going forward with the current change in bell times to the identified schools is the recommended action. Yes. So, thank you. I appreciate the time you took to look into that for everyone. Anyone else? Well, thank you for your time this evening as well. It is turning out to be an incredibly late meeting, so I appreciate you staying. Thank you. Um, and being part of this discussion. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Williams. So that takes us to um our staffing resolution. Uh I would like to invite assistant superintendent lightfoot back to the table um for a discussion and I will turn it over to Dr. Mayor Siri Reed. Okay. Thank you chair Andre and welcome to the table Dr. Lightoot. So, as a result of our budgeting and staffing processes, there are uh positions that next year's budget cannot support, tenured professionals who are returning from leave and probationary employees being released due to performance factors. So, that um so we are requesting that our school board adopt two staffing resolutions and um Dr. Light foot light foot. Oh my. Who provides oversight and leadership for human resources but also helps us with our um policies. This is a staffing resolution with policy and um HR implications. He'll give some more information about the the different resolutions. And while these decisions and actions are necessary, I do want to acknowledge our staff who give so much to their respective jobs and um contribute in very valuable and often unseen ways to our students and their learning to their school communities. And I just want to um acknowledge that this is a very difficult part of the budgeting and staffing process. So with that, I will turn it over to Dr. Lightfoot to uh provide some uh background information um for the two resolutions and to also help facilitate Q&A. Certainly. Thank you, Dr. Mary Priy Reed. Members of the board, um this is the personal impact. These are the budget reductions that um when we have 80% of our operations that are people, those types of reductions produce um the impacts that you see here that we are held by statute um to make sure that we do our diligence as a board to uh make the reductions necessary and then to notify individuals who are impacted. What you see here is the um three areas that we need to pay specific attention to. The first one are temporary teaching contracts. Those contracts are annual in nature. Um predominantly uh as we have inbuilding substitutes, subs for positions and individuals who are on tier one contracts. Um, tier one licenses are for individuals um, often referred to in the past as community exports or individuals who on a temporary nature are helping us until either they enter into a program looking at a different tier license um, for their own purposes. Um, or we are able to find suitable candidates to uh, be in the tier 2 to tier four areas in those areas of need. Um so that is the first resolution. The second is for the uh termination and non-renewal of any probationary teaching contracts that we have. Um those are for individuals who have been hired on a pathway toward a continuing contract. Um you will see that list there for you. And our third um that we have need of this time is an unrequested leave of absence. The unrequested leave of absence is for individuals who are on continuing contracts and for whom we don't have enough of their present level of FTE and have to place them for a period of time contractually that's 5 years on unrequested leave of absence such that if there is any open FTE that would become available they have first right of recall. Um so there are specific um distinctions in each of those and so you do have three resolutions in front of you this evening. Each of those is uh by statute a roll call vote um and so as such we'll present them separately. Um and we will begin with the start with a temporary teaching contracts. If there are any general questions or concerns uh in particular, we can. Otherwise, I would ask for the board then to uh at that time, it's ready to facilitate the roll call vote um related to the temporary teaching contracts. I have a just a quick clarifying question because in our um in the agenda, we have two resolutions. Um so, are you saying we need to do three? Yep. You have two and then the next agenda item should be the unrequested leave. We have two within staffing resolution, the temporary and the probationary. Yep. The two will be within the staffing resolution and then the third is the unrequested leave. Thank you. I was just So we're trying to combine we had to do those separately even though they're listed as one. Um, cheer and treason has a question about the resolution quick. So for the ter So for the for the termination and not renewal of temporary teaching contracts. So just two quick questions. One like so are these positions that are like going to be placed elsewhere in the district or are they just completely um done in the district? Not necessarily at this time. um they may be um part of it is also lenture related. So in answer to your question, we may be looking at the termination of a contract because it's a tier one contract under the guidance of the licensing board of Minnesota. Tier one individuals can have that contract for a year and then can seek renewal. But that renewal under a tier one generally requires reposting the position to see if there are any licensed candidates in tiers 2 through four. Um who would be given first consideration because they are already licensed and for whom we would have an obligation to interview as such licensed individuals before we were able to get another tier one renewal. Um that's generally there are a couple exceptions but um to your question that may be the case but what we are required to do is to end the contract until we are unable to find another individual or sometimes for example if individuals under a tier one have entered a lensure program then we don't necessarily need to repost if they have done such of that then they may not be on this list so there's a little bit of nuance to that if that helps. Yeah, that helps. Um, and then so are these individuals able to apply for unemployment benefits upon this termination? And if so, yes, would that be a a significant cost to the district considering our budget? We always have the unemployment um that comes with any any release of individuals. Um, yes. We do cover that unemployment contribution to the state. So it is part of our normal set of operation. Okay. Okay. I think that's just my my questions for right now. I may have more questions and just for the sake of time just you know about some of the individuals maybe that we are considering. Um we just like to understand like the replacement process and how that is being thought out for positions. I'm not sure if that's a conversation we can have at the board table. Yeah. No, that's why I said I'll have it. Yeah, that's why I was saying like I will have it. um sep like I could act separately um like outside of our board meeting but I don't want to like talk about it now but was just saying like there's just some questions I just have about the positions. Okay. Um any other comments or questions? Um I would just like to say blanket statement going back to the budget discussion we had earlier. um 9.2 million. We're we're looking at the results right here. Um this is a hard thing to do. I know it's normal um school board work um to have this happen, but there's a lot more names this time and it's really difficult to look at. So, um, if there are no other comments or questions, uh, I would look for a motion. Um, do I need to read the resolution because I'm not able to open it for some reason? No. Um, the resolution is here. Um, specifically, we do need a roll call vote. Um, so we would look at the roll call vote related to the resolution for the termination and non-renewal of temporary teaching contracts. I move that the board approve the above staffing resolution. I have a motion. Is there a second? Second. I have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Seeing none. Clerk Thompson. Chair Andre. I. Treasure Hartland. I director Roer I vice chair Ross I clerk Thompson is an I uh director West Morland I and Director Xiao I thank you and then that takes us to a um I would look for a motion for a roll call vote on the um second staffing resolution on the probationary contracts. I move that the board approve the above unrequested leave resolution. Just for clarification, it would be the temporary the um Oh, probationary contract non-renewal. Is that the correct? Yep. My apologies. So, I have a motion for the um approval of the um probationary contract non-renewal. Um do I have a second? Second. I have a motion and a second. Uh clerk Thompson. Oh, any discussion? Seeing none, clerk Thompson, please call the role. Chair and Drezen, I. Treasure Hartland. I. Director Broer I. Vice Chair Ross. I. Clerk Thompson is an I. Director West Morland. I. Director Xiao. I. You have all eyes. Chair. Thank you. Clerk Thompson. the um I would now look for a motion to um uh for the resolution of unrequested leave um to call to for a roll call vote. Sorry, that was not well said. I move that the board approve the unrequested leave resolution. I have a motion. Is there a second? Second. I have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Seeing none, clerk, please call the role. Chair Andreen, I. Treasure Hartland, I. Director Roer, I. Vice Chair Ross, I. Clerk Thompson is will vote I. Director West Morland I. Director Xiao I. That is all eyes. Chair. Thank you. Um thank you for Yeah. Um we will now move to policies in first read. Um, Assistant Superintendent Lightfoot remains with us here at the table and I will turn turn it over to Vice Chair Ross. Thank you, Chair Andre. We have one policy for um the community and the board tonight. You're welcome. Uh it's going to be policy 507. Uh the name has been renamed from corporal punishment to deescalation and the use of physical interventions and restrictive procedures. Um, so this policy has been overhauled and has gone through um some monumental changes from a wording perspective, but not to be labored any longer, I'm going to hand it over to um superintendent or assistant superintendent uh Dr. Lightoot. Thank you. Appreciate the opportunity to be with you on this. Um, first I just want to um acknowledge and be grateful for the work that went into this um on behalf of Director Contrarus and uh individuals we have in the district who work with our um our deescalation training um Heidi Wilhelm and Mary Sloig um both of whom were uh assisting us in the review of this along with Director Contraras so that we were able to incorporate language from our CPI training. to really use this as a vehicle to move away from the corporal punishment uh concept to really using it as an instructional tool as well as a guidance for our practice within district as it relates to the need to deescalate and the specific terms of any physical intervention or restrictive procedure. As such, the language is here um intentionally designed with specific information for definitions. You'll see that um the CPI training is called out specifically um and additional language included. As such, if there are additional questions, I'm happy to entertain those uh as it pertains to policy 507. Thank you. Any questions or comments? Um, I would really I would like to say that I really appreciate the work that was done on this. Um, it feels respectful, intentional, and um, very much in line with our values as a district and I think as people working with children. Um, I saw one typo. H um in uh section three number two um line two it reads um without the child's consent when the following circumstance exists of the actor. I think it should read or the actor reasonably believes it to exist. Thank you. Um, otherwise I I so much appreciate especially the the word the addition of crisis prevention intervention, the work with those um people um who who do that excellent training here in the district. We're really lucky um and I would highly recommend any staff member to do that training. It's it's it shifts mindsets in in a really good way. So, thank you for this work. Much appreciated. Jar Andre. Yes, Director Xiao. Yeah. Hi. Uh so, similar comment um on uh on the definition of number two. It says employee of agent of the district. I think perhaps as employee or agent of the district, but I it might just be because it's 11 and I can't read anymore. But yes, that's there's that. We'll do that, too. Okay. Thanks. Looks like we're ready for a vote. Um, I would look for a [Music] motion that the board approves the um above policies in first read and further 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. Any opposed? The chair votes I. And the policy is passed. Thank you. Thank you for your time. And thank you, Nick. Consciousness at this late hour. I feel like I need to apologize to everyone who's here. Um, so that will take us to our board member reports which I imagine will be brief. Um, I believe we will um we can start with director Roer if you want to introduce yourself and give your report and we'll go around the table. Uh, yes. Uh, my name is Brook Roer and I serve in my second year. I have two incredible children in a district. Um, for the sake of time, I'll just not give a board report. Thank you. Treasure H Heartland. Hi. Yes, I'm Rachel Hartland, currently serving as the treasurer of the board. This is the fourth year of my first term. I use she her pronouns and have three children. Um, an elementary schooler, a middle schooler, and a high schooler in our district. And I will also forgo a board report. Good evening. Roto Mary Puri Reid, superintendent. I have provided my board report and I have a child at West and another kiddo at the high school. Thank you. Hello everyone. I'm Shannon Andre um currently serving as chair of the board. I have a junior at the high school and just quickly want to mention that on April 30th we are planning to have a um another community engagement conversation around the budget. Um so look for details on that. And that also um director Roer and I are um planning a community conversation around um the start time changes for Gatewood and Alice Smith and we will have more details around that. Um it will be a problem solving session as well as a an opportunity to link families to resources that will be needed given those changes. Um, and it would it we're looking for miday. So, just wanted to put that out there. Good evening. My name is Jason Ross. Um, I have three kids in the system and I will full girl um my board report as well. Hi, this is uh Jim Jao. Uh I'm on uh this is my second year in the school district. I've got two kids uh in the Shingshin Academy over in Eisenhower and uh I will also skip Jen West Morland. It's my eighth year on the board. I have uh one student in the district at West Middle School and I had like a half hour board report prepared, but I'm just I'm I guess I'm not going to do it you guys. I'll just do it next time. Um I'm Oh, they Oh, sorry. Oh, no. I didn't realize we had to jump. Um, Kai Thompson. I'm the clerk on the board. Uh, entering my second year here. Three kids in the district. 9th grade, 8th grade, fourth grade. Um, I will also forego a board report except to just say that, uh, my youngest uh, caught vice chair Ross's youngest scoreless second inning in the Hopkins 9A home opener win on last night. It was pretty pretty awesome. He pitched really good, man. So, it was fun. Fun night. Nice. trying sounds like fun. Um so thank you all for um staying through the end of this meeting. Um I would look for a motion to adjurnn. 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 this meeting is adjourned at 11:08 p.m. Okay.