Thank you Mr. Chair, members of the board, thanks for giving me an opportunity to uh present here today. We've been out uh beginning our preliminary rounds with PTA groups and staff meetings and showing a PowerPoint presentation that provides an overview of the uh upcoming referendum.

We submitted and uh you'll recall taking action as a school board uh to authorize the administration to submit to the Minnesota Department of Education what's called a review and comment document and that went to uh uh the uh MDE I believe in uh late mid to late November and we uh heard back from them a couple weeks ago and they gave us a positive review and comment without any questions. So, it's pretty unusual to get a feedback or get feedback from MDE on a review and comment document without a request for any follow-up questions or uh additional information.

We're one of three school districts within the state of Minnesota that has the AAA bond rating and I've been told one of about a hundred across the nation that have a AAA bond rating for public schools.

Question two is that total of about $465 million um that would fund the new elementary, the new middle school, the addition to the high school, and then make a number of improvements, which I'll speak to a little more in detail in a moment. Across the district, the increase uh monthly increase in in uh taxes would be $29.

...this is this is for resident students. Um, probably one of the biggest things I heard from the community when they start when they first heard about this was, you know, why are we building schools for, you know, open enrollment and we are not. And so I think that's just worth emphasizing that families are moving into our district. We have to educate the students that live in our district and pretty soon we're going to run out of room.

So, there's there there are multiple right answers on this. Those are always the most difficult decisions to make, I think, where you can choose A, B, or C. And either one of them could be uh good decisions. I think the decision for the Weisetto public schools to have two high schools was a decision not made in the early 90s and um the commitment to a single large high school uh was made at that time.

...we've really looked at this area recently this year as what is what are opportunities for improvement in our staffing process. And so if you look at our strategic directions, uh direction seven, uh says we're going to align internal district processes and procedures to improve communication, decision-m, accountability, and collaboration resulting in operational excellence.

So we will be implementing uh class-size target reductions to be included in the budget assumptions for 2627. ... So a change of of one so reducing the student per teacher staffing ratio in K5 classrooms. uh change of one overall with an additional four FTE and hotspots uh added to our our K5 staffing. ... and then a change of 0.5 a reduction in the ratio for 612 classrooms.

Even if requests aren't approved, um the we the process is still something we want to support. Engaging in that dialogue with our building leaders and department leaders around what are they thinking about their organization and and what do they think um might best move the needle for students in their buildings, etc. That's all a really healthy activity that we want to encourage.

...the class size targets will be made more official. So, while this year like we still have the same targets, our class sizes were actually lower than the targets. Yep. That that will become more official when we vote for the budget.

...one thing that we're working really hard on is we know a basic math, right? We know from an HR standpoint that we have staffing ratios and we apply that. But then one thing that we're really working on is that's an equalizing staffing and then to look at equitable staffing as well. So once we have that staffing ratio in place um when Dave speaks of these four hotspots or additional spaces we're going to look at student need for that point because a kid is not a kid is not a kid and maybe our building data is showing certain things in certain grades and we want to be responsive to that.

with uh Minnesota uh using FML uh yes uh implementing paid leave. What do you anticipate? To be honest, we started experience it at charter school, the heavy lifting schools have to do it because some staff um decided to take advantage but then school has to find another staff and which means you're spending twice more. What is your anticipation how it will affect?