Why is that a schoolboard work session for May 27th, 2025? Good afternoon. The time is now 4:00. The Visetta Public Schools Board of Education work session for Tuesday, May 27th, 2025 will please come to order. We'll start with the introductions beginning from from my right. Heidi Kedar, Sheila Prior, Dan Janestra, Baris Bendy, Valentina Ears, Sarah Johansson, Chase Anderson, and I'm Milan Sony. Thank you everyone and welcome. As a reminder, the board does not vote on any item at the work session. This uh work session this afternoon, we have two items on the agenda. First, we have finance and operations reports. Dr. Anderson will introduce Hazel Reinhardt, the state demographer, who will present the enrollment projections report. Thank you, Mr. Chair, members of the board, and those in attendance here this afternoon. It is my pleasure to introduce somebody who's not new to our school district, Hazel Reinhardt, who's done a number of uh enrollment projections for us over the years, and we welcome her back today to provide us with an overview of her uh latest study of our community. And uh we look forward to hearing uh what the current trends are and what the projections are for uh future years and putting that into context maybe what the larger metro uh area and the state uh demographic changes and and uh we'll hear about a number of u interesting related topics to our own enrollment growth here within the school district. So Hazel, welcome back. It's wonderful to see you and uh thanks so much for the work you've done for us and for uh the presentation you're going to give to us here this afternoon. Thank you very much and thank you board chair and board members. It's my pleasure to be here. Uh I will get started here. Uh I want to preface this by talking a little bit about the environment in which we are now making school enrollment projections. That's even uh somewhat different than it was even five years ago. And the biggest difference is we are now really confronted with low fertility that is the number of children a woman has to the end of childbearing and uh replacement is 2.11. Uh Minnesota was at 1.73 in 2023 which is a little higher than the US at 1.62. Minnesota hasn't been much above 1.8 for uh a number of years now. which means that we are not replacing ourselves that we are very dependent on immigration uh in either domestic or international for any growth and uh the the significance for school enrollment is that it has resulted in a decreasing number of births and those are uh those births translate into kindergarten students five and six years into the future. uh fertility rates uh vary by race, ethnicity and by urban rural and they are lower in urban areas than they are in rural areas. Uh the aging of the population is something we've talked about for several decades now, but some of its most profound effects are now being felt. Uh, and I think from the district's point of view, the significance lies and and I will argue and show you numbers that I think is beginning to be evident in a changing mix of housing and that you're getting housing types that have very low yields of school age children per unit. Uh, and so that's one way it affects uh, enrollment in schools. And then of course a smaller percentage of households have children. So while you may have an increasing number of housing units and households, uh it it is not uh related so directly to the number of children. We're also moving less in the United States. Uh for most of the time since the Second World War, about 20% of all Americans change their address every year. Now we're below 10%. And the significance of that is not so much uh people who could potentially move into the district, but the fact that people will stay in their housing uh much longer than they uh uh would have uh even 10 years ago. So we just have less turnover uh less immigration from abroad and that's certainly is very much up in the air right now. But I I don't anticipate that we will see that kind of inflow uh that we saw in the past few years at least in the next four or five years. I don't know. Um slower growth and that is a big big factor uh because as we have slower growth we get perilously close in Minnesota to the number of deaths being equal to the number of births. And so uh and that really produces slower growth. So slower growth is is another factor. Competition for students in Minnesota is increasing. Uh it has from the day that we uh created open enrollment uh and a higher percentage of students every year uh open enroll out of their district of residents charter school uh a phenomena of which there in my opinion there seems to be no end in Minnesota closes and too open um and you have been blessed without that much competition But I don't think uh you should count on it never occurring. And then the lingering effects of COVID. And there are a couple of places in your enrollment that I would have to say um it's just not clear whether you have totally recovered from the effect of COVID or you still have some lingering effects. We know uh statewide and nationwide that enrollment and other education options increased as a result of COVID, especially students going to private school and being homeschooled and higher rates of absenteeism. And I don't know if you've experienced that or not, but that's been a national phenomena called out in many districts. So that's the kind of environment in which we're now thinking about the future, if you will. But first, let's let's look at the past 10 years. And I could look at 15 to 20 years, the past of of Weisetta enrollment. But let's think about the past 10 years in you had an enormous enrollment increase of almost 20% over 2,000 students. And with open enrollment closed, only 1.8% of your students are non-residents. So basically what we're looking at is the growth of resident uh enrollment and that's unique also because most districts now see a lot of growth driven uh by open enrollment. Uh the school age population in the district increased about 25%. a little uh higher rate than your resident enrollment and you lost a little bit of share but not nothing compared to what is pretty typical in the metro area. Most districts lose in this 10-year period oh probably four four percentage points of share. So, you've done very very well. That all said and done, you still had a loss of 935 students to other public options. Uh, however, it's the non-public schools that enroll more students than other public options. So, that non-public is really your competition. uh what is significant in my mind I in and a harbinger of of the future is the shift that has occurred in what is driving your enrollment growth historically your enrollment growth has been driven by K5 okay and in this past 10 years if you look at the first years of 20145 to 201920 20 and I want to avoid that 2020 uh because of the pandemic but 61% of the increase in your enrollment was in K5 since uh 201920 only 23% of your growth is in K5 and that uh has in my opinion implications for the future uh that it is a it's a harbinger of slower enrollment ment growth because every growing district that I've ever worked with, their enrollment growth is always driven by elementary. And then I'm just showing you K12 enrollment and you can see the uh dip here in in uh the pandemic 2019 uh or 202021. But what's interesting to me is you did not really recover the second the following year. Most schools had a bump up and you you did not. And so if you look at that trajectory uh you certainly um you know I don't know whether whether 2023 24 or 24 25 are still affected by it or not. Um but we can see its effect there. And then on the competition, um I'm looking here at um you can see the non-public schools and they have increase and they dipped went down a little bit this year. Um and then you see the open enrollment and the u um um homeschool. homeschool is such a minor factor in this district that it's not uh it's not worth the conversation. Uh but the non-public public is there are some other key findings that I would highlight. Uh one is what's happened to births. We talked about fertility but now we see its its effect. uh births in Minnesota from 2008 to 2024 and 2008 is important because it's still kids who were in school in 2014. Uh decline 14.3% in Minnesota, 14.4% in Henipin County, but only 10% in suburban Henipin County. And I'm defining suburban Hen Henipin County as Henipin County minus Minneapolis. uh the Weisetta public school saw some natural decrease and by that we'll talk a little bit more about it but it's the difference between the size of the incoming kindergarten class and the previous year's grade 12 and you saw some of that just uh um small numbers occurring since uh 201920 and the projections say that that will become um a major factor in the next 10 years and you experienced net in migration eight of the past 10 years. The exceptions of course being the pandemic year and the following year. And when we talk about net in migration, we're talking about the number. It's not necessarily the same student. It's it's the number of students in in grade. And here I'm just showing you the uh births in in Henipin County and suburban Henipin County. uh suburban Heniban County share of the county increased a little bit in the last uh few years but you can see how the sort of uh in 2008 then it went down. 2008 of course is known as the great recession uh then down and then a little curve up and now down uh and then 2024 up slightly. These are provisional numbers, but I think in the case of Henipin County and suburban Henipin County, not likely to change very much. And then I'm showing you the actual numbers as well. Uh so you can see uh uh how that has changed over time and how it has really uh sort of fallen since uh 2019 uh and then 2020 down up a little bit in in 21 but uh just really again down in 23. And I promised you that we talk about natural increase decrease. Well, this is something that people like myself, demographers like. Um it may not mean as much to others, but uh on the uh left column we have the year-over-year change and the percentage. And then the natural increase decrease is the difference between as I said the K uh and the grade 12 the previous year. And I've highlighted in yellow the years that have been minus and you can see they they are not huge numbers but they really have occurred since the pandemic year 19 that is when it starts to occur. And then if you look at net migration that is that excess number of students there that we uh didn't anticipate if simply every grade had moved forward at the same size and I'd call your attention to of course we have the two minus numbers in uh in the pandemic in the subsequent year but the last three years is 286 303 344 and we'll look at that 344 more carefully because it it's almost all driven in a single grade transition and I don't know that that will continue to be as high as it has been in the past. So it seems to me that that 300 or around there I is a pretty good number if we want to think about the last three years and you can see um that you had 380 and 1516 but otherwise you were always below uh the 300 number. So it seems to me if you think about this in terms of development and new units that when you think of 300 or 330 40 uh net in migration every year it's a it's a pretty robust number. So enough about the past. Let's turn our minds to the future. I'm going to be making these projections ver uh via cohort survival method which is the classic way of making population projections. It's it's both simple but it has the complexity and the assumptions you have to make. Its greatest strength of course is that just as our age we move a grade forward. Roll it forward and they roll on through. So we can see if we start to have smaller elementary grades that that's going to eventually affect high school, middle school, high school and so on so forth. It requires making projections for kindergarten of which resident burst will be the proxy that I'll use and then my net migration or survival rates which is the percentage of of students you retain you lose or you gain uh and a gradeto grade uh progression as well. So those are the two assumption and we'll talk about that a bit. Now um births are reported on a calendar year and I adjust them to a kindergarten pool and by that I mean uh that the estimate of the number of children who are age five by September 1st to enter kindergarten which is law in Minnesota. So that's what I mean by the kindergarten pool. And here is Weisetta's percentage of that pool. And this again is uh as you see it here in a graphic form sort of interesting. You had the decline in the uh uh pandemic year. And that decline occurred because some kids uh uh were homeschooled or went to a private school. But many potential kindergarten students were simply red shirted. They simply didn't attend school at all. And by state law, you're not required to be in school at the age of five. So, uh they didn't. But if you look at those percentages, it was at the high in your history uh in 201920 and now it had forgetting the pandemic year and even you can see it it seems to have trended or seems to be trending down a little bit. um in making projections I'm I make one assumption that it continues to go up and one that it sort of stays at this more current percentage but you can see that and then here are the numbers and you can see the percentages I highlight in red of course the pandemic year and the pool and the size of the pool and what to me is significant I want to have you bear in mind that we now have born the children who will be kindergarteners in 202930. So we h do have a window five years into the future without speculation as to the number that will be born and you will notice that that pool decreases in size. So either your uh percentage has to increase significantly or your enrollment at kindergarten will will decrease. Uh the kindergarten b uh kindergarten to birth ratios or you can call it a capture rate of that pool. Uh I made an assumption now for the projections of a low of 8.83% 83% which is the average of the past two years and then a high of 9.1. Okay, because you did make nine once and it's very possible to go on. I'll later talk as I move this out 20 years that I moved it to 10%. But um uh you know and we could quibble about that. Maybe it should be 9.2. I mean, but then we just start to play the game with numbers, you know, but but we get to see that. So, what I'm saying is that I have one that low one which is more like it has been the past two years and the high one that shows a little growth. And then longer term, I took the projections made in 2004 by the Minnesota State Demography Center for Henipin County Zeroyolds and Henipin County increased a little bit at 65% of county births. Uh, and the pool decreases. We will see that. And we know that Henipin County uh, suburban Henipin County births decreased 7.3% from 2019 to 24. know that and those projections uh made by the state show that Henipin County's population will decrease by 2.5% as we get into the 2030s. So, uh just kind of the context around all of this. So, here's the kindergarten pool for suburban Henipin County and 202930 should be bolded as well. uh but those represent children who have already been born and then you can see that it drifts down uh you know about 40 some over the time period. So it's not a a huge decline but uh uh some would call it basically flat. And the significance of that of course is that that if that pool is flat then your percentage has to go up for kindergarten to increase in size. So here are the kindergarten projections is very simple arithmetic. I look at the pool and multiply it by these percentages the 8.83 and the 9.10. And what's significant to me, I added up here at the end of 10 years and then compare it with the number of kindergarten students in the last 10 years. And so you can see we simply have fewer kindergarten students going into the student body uh over this next this projected 10 years. And then I'm looking at projected Henipin resident birth kindergartens 2030 31 and beyond. And this these are the projections based on the state demography center uh projections for Henipin County. So you see the projected number of births and you see then Henipin County at 65% suburban Henipin County at 65% and you can see that pool declining into 20035 which are kind of the kids of 2004. Uh I sometimes say to people let's leave some problems for some other folks. we don't have to try and solve them all. Um now, uh first of all, we have to say, uh are those projections realistic? Well, they fit with all their other numbers projections that they've made for Henipin County. The variable in here is would the number of suburban Henipin County bursts increase from 65% to uh 66 or 67 uh and u although I looked at the projections for the city of Minneapolis and that's shown to be growing growing although not necessarily the number of births but just to you know kind of full disclosure what what could happen Now we really ask ourselves how can this be? Um well fertility could rise a little which would lift the numbers somewhat but as I said Minnesota has not had a a track record of being much beyond 1.8 date for some time. But we need to remember that the population is aging and according to these projections, women of child prime childbearing age of 25 to 34 will decrease in actual number in 2033 and thereafter in Henipin County. And we also are dealing with slower growth. As I mentioned, immigration from abroad has kept Minnesota growing for more than 25 years. We've been very dependent on that. And then the projected decline of 2.5% in 20 years from 202425 to 2044 in Henipin County population. In other words, there's and you know not much indication that the county is going to be booming. So that's that's the thoughts on kindergarten and the burst. Now let's look to the net migration, the survival rates of people moving in. As I've mentioned before, except for the pandemic year and the following year, it's been positive the past 10 years and before that 10 years positive. Uh what's significant uh is that you your pattern is a little different than most other metro area districts. You have a consistent net inflow of students between kindergarten and grade one and we'll look at that and it's consistent over time. Uh and I don't know whether that means they've they've tried something else and then come to the public schools. uh I don't think that all of it is simply because people are moving into the district. I don't know but that's a one factor and the other is of course the consistent net inflow grade five to six the beginning of middle school. Now that is more typical but uh that's that's very pronounced here. What it makes you another thing that makes you somewhat unique is that you have no consistent inflow between grade eight and grade nine, the beginning of high school. And most schools, public school systems have a net inflow at the beginning of high school. It says to me that that the decision of where you're going to go to school in this district is made at the middle school and then that's it. Um, and here I show you there's a lot of numbers here, but I want to show you what captured my attention in this past year of net migration. And I've highlighted it in yellow, is that we had a net inflow of 82 students between grade 8 and nine. And if you look historically, that is at least 40 above of any other year. And most years uh you just didn't have many students at all. Which leads me to believe that that total net in migration of 344 is not likely to be sustained because I don't think you'll see 82 every year. But look at the top number of of the number of kids that come from kinder. they they weren't enrolled in kindergarten, but they're enrolled in grade one. And that's really a a really substantial number in flow. And then we see the five to six, the numbers vary, but certainly 30 40 every year, some years more. And then this is just looking at them aggregated. And again my point is that that uh the increase at the 9 to 12 this past year is really uh driven by uh the grade 8 to nine inflow. You see 111 this year when historic pattern is a loss really at those grades. Uh I'd also call your attention that uh the inflow at K5 was strong this past year stronger the previous year. You can see how it fluctuates throughout. Uh 6 to8 a little more stable it. And then those were the raw numbers. And here are the survival rates. Um I see I got a decimal point in the wrong place. It's I look at it a hundred times and never see it and I see it on the screen immediately. But um basically except for 11 to 12, you always have a net inflow of students. So for the low, I took the average of the past three years and I removed the very obvious outliers when I looked at a five-year history. Said, "Oh, there's one year here that is really out of um the trend line." Got rid of it. and the other is simply the average of the past five years. And so the higher one does produce more elementary students, but significantly it produces more middle school and high school students. And we'll see that very clearly. I take use the um uh uh low K assumption here and look at uh what the effect of the survival rates are and you can see uh that and actually we don't have to try and do this u the difference is 532 students in total enrollment 122 of those are K5 or about 20 students per grade 139 are in 68 about 46 per grade and 271 are at the high school about 68. So the higher um migration assumption is really driving a much larger high school that uh at the elementary level it it isn't isn't that significant. So when you want to think about which of these you you want to have greater confidence in that's that's how I would think about it. Now in the next 10 years uh I'm projecting slower enrollment growth from 12,760 to only 13052 or 13874 an increase of 2.3 to 8.7% at the highest. and and you you know have to ask yourself how after nearly 20% in 10 years we're now down to less than 10% in 10 years. Um well uh these projections have within them they're averaging on the net migration from the low of about 260 per year to the high of 333 per year. And as we've looked at the past 33 33 per year is a is pretty uh robust growth. But the big factor is that now natural decrease averages 206 to 247 students per year because the kindergarten are graduating out much larger grades. So puts real downward pressure on the enrollment and the difference between the highest and lowest projection about 241 students. So it's it's it's not all that significant. And then what you see here as it's arrayed is that uh the difference starts to occur in the second five years of of the projection. Uh and both of them show enrollment sort of plateauing a little bit and then showing uh evidence of a slight downward uh tick in this 10 years. Then if we want to look at it K5 68 912 um the change in the first five years um from a loss of 67 students at K5 to a loss of 336 67 I think we might say is essentially flat. Uh the loss then accelerates as you get into the second uh five years of the 10-year projection. you see really substantial growth at 68 uh the middle school in the first five years. Now these are kids um you know who are they're not they're not being affected by any uh birth projections. They're in the system. They're rolling uh forward and then a very substantial increase at uh the high school as well. And then you see in the second five years I pointed out that the K5 continues to have decline. Uh you get most of the growth in the middle school in the first five years. The second five years you're getting those lower kindergarten numbers rolling into middle school in in uh after 200 uh uh 30. And then you see that the high school estimate could be a thousand students larger than it is today in 10 years. So I made projections for individual schools and uh I always say that those projections need to be taken with a grain of salt. Uh because the larger the number the the more stable your projections are likely to be. uh but these boundary changes uh really interrupt any trend line and so it becomes very difficult to uh u get a sense of of what that trend might be and we're going to have boundary changes at the elementary level again this fall. The middle school have changed several times now and will change again and of course that's made that really difficult. Uh let's talk about the individual schools. the elementarymentaries uh the the sum and we'll look at the numbers in a second. The sum of the independently made elementary school projections are a good fit with the district-wide projection. That doesn't mean the individual school projections are accurate, but it says that they're they're in the uh ballpark if they have to be moved around. The largest projected decreases are in Gleason Lake and Greenwood. And that really cut stems from the fact that those two schools have very large classes in like the third, fourth uh grades now. And if they are replaced by smaller number of kindergarten students, as those older uh classes age out, that enrollment contracts. Uh and then the largest projected increase is that Meadow Ridge and you'll see here the numbers you see that the Greenwood is is u very substantial and and as I look at it either either the survival rates are are don't hold in my assumption was that the survival rates that were present prior to the boundary changes will pretty much be in place that most of the area is likely, you know, it wasn't really half and half that that it will retain those characteristics. Um, and then you see the the growth at Meadow Ridge. Um, a little decline at Northwoods. Uh, the others, uh, you know, basically pretty flat. So the loss at Gleon Lake and Greenwood, the big increase at Meadow Bridge. Um so that is a uh well I go back here. Um and you can see that the sum was uh of them was only um one student higher in 10 years. the sum of the independently made versus the districtwide. So, it's very very close. The middle school is a less happy story from my perspective. And I told Superintendent Anderson that I'm willing to take another shot at uh the middle school numbers. The sum of the independently made middle school projections is not as good a fit. uh with the district red it's a difference of some 30 students or more that's a little too much in my opinion uh and central initially shows enrollment decline but then bounces up again and I can identify it exactly to the size of the fifth grade at Northwoods. So I I and uh as you can see here I can in the uh survival rates used I cannot get east much growth than east and I get a lot of growth in west. So I don't I don't know that I have to try something a little different there. But you can see there the difference in in the sum versus the uh uh I think it's 50 60 there. It's it's it's not it's not a good fit. And then the high school uh increase in u of five years 578 students almost 15% and the district-wide pro projection is of course the high school projection. Um, what could make these too high or too low? Well, too high is whether the cool a pool is too large, the suburban pool, or why is that his capture rate decreases? Uh, I don't think the pool is too large. I don't think of these as being too high in that sense. Too low is the uh pool is too small or the capture rate increases. And then whether more students choose other options or more choose to remain choose the Wisetta public schools whether it is because they move in here and choose it or they make a another decision. So always what about housing? Well, the relationship between uh housing and K12 enrollment is very complex. Um I've studied it in four states in some depth. Um and these principles hold really that unit type is the most important variable and single family detached units have the highest yield of students per unit. uh newer single family homes uh yield more students than older single family homes. And when they sell, if they're newer units, they tend to have an increase. If they're older units, they're likely to have a decrease in the number uh yield students. And then people say, "Well, what's the newer home?" And I say anything built 2000 or later, which is 25 years, it's not so new, but it really marks a period when when the style of housing, the floor plans, the amenities really changed. You saw more open floor plans, you saw more owner suites, you saw all of those things that are uh highly desired today. And then market value. Um, most of us hold the view or think we do that uh less expensive units will yield more children. That is not true in any district I've studied that more expensive units yield more children. And once unit at least here in Minnesota once units get to about 1.5 million you can almost guarantee that it will be private schools. Okay. Uh and then of course we're building more units for seniors 55 plus which really means 80 plus. Um and there are no no children. And the other thought we have is that oh they will move from their single family home into this senior thing and we're going to open up homes. No. um that we find all kinds of people come to be closer to their children that they weren't living in the district or even sometimes in the metro area and they move into this senior housing. So it's it's it's that's why I call it's very complex. Uh if we look at uh housing units built 2020 through 2024, meaning that we think they should have been able to have been occupied by the fall of that year because the home building season and selling is really the spring. We can see here that in these five years, we had 1,449 single family detached units. uh 376 town homes, 106 apartment units, 38 condos, which by type are very usually very much like apartments, but it's an ownership and it does make a difference. And so for almost 2,000 units now, the future is not easy to to far this out. Um but what city officials at least are thinking is fairly certain there are only 756 single family detached units 249 and notice in Madina that some of those are villas I put them with town homes although I don't know they depending on they may behave like single family I I don't know. Um many more apartment units, many more uh condos and then overall uh slightly uh smaller number of units than we had in the past five years. Now, that was the thinking here. Minnetonka doesn't expect anything to happen. And I'm going to talk about Plymouth a little uh later because these are approved units. Uh they've been through the process. Now, what about yields for per unit? Uh single family detached vary by district and within the attendance area. I in your case I use 0 0.60. Uh I'm kind of keen to to get a a better measure on that. Uh in the metro area, I've seen some new units at uh down at 0.37, which is not very high from for new single family units. Town homes are very consistent across all districts across states. 0.22, 22 which says to me that the that the type of people who opt for a town home are in a similar uh family stage. Apartments again consistent across all school districts across all states 0.11 to 0.15. So you need 100 units to get um you know 11 kids 15 kids and condominiums yield almost no school age children. There's a form of ownership that just doesn't have any kids. Now, what I need to caution you is students from new housing units do not automatically translate into additional students. And that's the thing. So, here's my estimate of the number of students that will be in those new units. Okay? And I'm assuming um uh 0.60 60 for the single family, 0.22 town homes, and 0.11 to 0.15 for the apartments. So somewhere, you know, 580 to 600 students will be in those new units. Now, that doesn't mean that they won't necessarily be additional students. Um, and then I'm trying to think about are the are the cohort uh projections and their survival rates adequate to cover this. And so the first thing is that there are fewer units. The unit type mix changes in 20 to 24. 76% were single family. Right now only 43% projected to be single family and I think the cohort projection should cover this because those 578 to 606 students were projecting in that period 1300 to665 in net migration in the cohort in that same period of time. So it would mean that your existing units would have to turn over very fast to get kids. So I I I think that pretty much will cover it. Now historically we've always viewed Madina as the wild card. Okay. Well, uh, in talking with the Plymouth, uh, planning manager, I think Plymouth is also a wild card because in a detailed analysis, uh, she has provided the data that in the timeline 25 to 29, these units are not approved, but there's the potential of 708 single family detached and60 62 town homes and 872 apartment units. But it's those single family units that I think we want to keep an eye on. And then the city will be uh working on their plan for up to 2050 on city center and the station 73 49455 redevelopment. And there she's estimating, you know, almost 3,800 apartment units. She didn't anticipate that there'll be any single family in that. Uh and that's that's for somebody else to worry about. But it's but it's that 708 that I think uh it would be good to get a little better purchase on whether those will uh be approved and and what the timeline might be. Uh I have been um interested in what the longer term future is for enrollment in this district. And I've been interested in that because we have seen everywhere we can point to any number of suburbs here in the Twin Cities that enrollment growth slows dramatically even before the district is built out. And the way it looks is that enrollment peaks and then starts to decline and it begins with the elementary [Music] enrollment. So I ran the model from 203435 to 203536 or 3435 to 20 um 4445 And I used the uh base of the high kindergarten high migration projection of 13,874. But I want to point out that if that projection is low, that does affect moving forward because those students will roll forward. I used the same rate of net migration about 330 per year and then I increased uh suburban Henipin County share to 66% of the county and Weisetta's share to 9 to 10% of the suburban and then I get enrollment in445 of 13,761 which is actually a slight decline from the um projection of 203435 then if I make the assumption that suburban henipin becomes 67% of the county's worth and why a share moves from 9 to 10% of the pool I get to 13,984 uh now there are a lot of ifs in all of this but it suggests to me that after 203435 enrollment is going to kind of plateau out and the significance of that is that I can I can list many districts in the untold pain uh when they have now surplus buildings in various locations. Uh youetta has been very fortunate in that it's um population has been willing to shift from one elementary school or one school to another with out major catastrophe. But in some districts it's a pretty dramatic unhappiness. So with that I'll say thank you and I'd be happy to entertain any questions. Thank you Hazel. Uh that was a lot of information there. A lot of numbers there to digest. 46 slides right? 44 45 46 slides. That's the number I will remember. So um board colleagues any questions comments? Oh, go ahead, Sheila. Um, and maybe this isn't a question for you, maybe it's for Chase. There was a a a table where you showed I think a 82 an increase of 80 of something at the high school that was kind of an outlier. Is that because of our we had open enrollment for that year? We had a one-year window where we uh brought in for this current school year 9th and 10th grade students. I think we brought in about 70. I'm looking at Jen. is at 65 to 70 I think total most of which were 9th grade but there were some 10th grade as well so that is kind of an artificial inflation at that level but we've closed that again and we won't have that bump uh for the coming year thank you this is always super fascinating um I I have a comment about that. I think it shows what opening open enrollment up does even when it's a small little bit like what that what that does. And so I think that teaches us something as well even though the spike is artificial um for the long-term projections. My question for you goes to the study of the four states and the yields that come out of apartments and town homes and whatever. So I remember sitting at the board table back in the other and and you said to us that these were the averages for apartment yields and and home yields, but that at least back in maybe our 2015 16 growth that we were exceeding those projections that we would that we were single family. Okay. And not I thought at one point you had said apartments as well. Do you feel like we don't we don't do that? And but do you still feel like we exceed in the single family yields? I thought the 0.6 um it's not the highest one could go. I I think one could go 0.7. Uh that's why I'm eager to uh pursue this a little further because I uh I think it's important as you look at housing and what you might expect. Um but I have seen and elsewhere in the northern part of Henipin County about 0.57. Um in an noa county I've seen an area that was only 0.37 for new units. Uh I know that in district 196 uh uh Rosemont Apple Valley Egan that the new units that have come on single family have not had the yield that the previous new units had. So um I think it's it's one thing we can study it further here and I think we want to do that. Um, but with lower fertility, Laura, you know, you start to just have smaller families moving in. Can I ask a a a question too about in the southern half of our district, as you know, we have many existing homes and so what we're seeing is the the redevelopment of those existing homes typically with a larger amount of square footage. Does that at all impact our if we start to see maybe starter homes being um constructed to be um larger family homes or middle family homes that that would incre that would impact yields at all? Uh yes, based on Edina, I would tell you yes, it will. Um and then you what you need to be mindful of is what the value of the home is because if it gets to be um you know very high value thank you then you'll see private school. Well thank you so much. Um this is just a incredible set of information research that's gone into it and it's very appreciated. Um my question is kind of in terms of um how growth can be get more growth. So one conversation we've had in committee is if we start seeing roads build um you know connecting north and south let's say within Madina that'll encourage more growth. So in your estimates did you have kind of a if we start seeing growth we start seeing more roads connecting people connecting neighborhoods was that kind of factored into your projections? No. And I'll tell you why I like to see plans, okay? Because let's start and think about this realistically. If nothing is on paper and already discussed, it's not going to happen in the next five years. Okay? I mean that we start to think about the just the time it takes uh and we you know I've been working with this district a long long time and we've talked about Madina every time and it's it's not clear to me whether that will ever develop at the I mean it That's why I say it is the wild card. Um I think more immediately the wild card is Plymouth and those potential uh single family units there because they are they're already on paper. They're being discussed. They haven't been approved through the planning process, but they're they're already been. But if nothing has been put on paper, we're looking minimum of five years and maybe 10. Okay. So, yeah. Excellent. Thank you so much. I have a follow-up question on that because I was curious when you went through the slides. I'm sure that the 748 in increased homes in Plymouth that's just within the footprint of the Weisetta schools. Yes, it is. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Thank you. So uh I mean I think that you know from the immediate and foreseeable time in which you are seeking to manage something those are the ones that are uh to keep a a close eye on. I will try to formulate my question um as I go so to speak but how um is there some sort of a formula uh based on other district uh some districts already reached their limit capacity when uh you don't have enough land I mean the land was already developed used uh whatever was so there is not that much of a growth there probably it's easier to pro prognose this to to make prognosis versus here we have land but it is hard to uh know uh when uh when people and what when do you think that we will reach that time when our district will be more into like we used all the land uh at about what time I yeah I I'm I can't project that because it has it has everything to do with how fast or how slowly Henipin County grows and that's why that projection showing that no growth in the county after a certain period then that really would slow down uh uh building. Uh I'll tell you there are districts where this has happened and they still have a lot of land to develop in 196 Apple Valley Egan South Washington um Shakapei and those are all at the moment that happened uh in Bloomington many years ago but there w west Bloomington still was to be developed when the enrollment plateaued and and then started to decline. So my point my point is that we have a lot of evidence that plateauing of enrollment occurs before the district is fully built out and and that's uh um you know I think you've you've been very very prudent but it's one of the things you know you just want to be mindful of Um let's see who else you know Shaki is a very dramatic example enrollment declining now after in in uh the 2000 to 20110 it was the fastest growing county in the US. Interesting. You know I just all of a sudden it's over. I have a followup on that question. I'm curious. Do you have what are the variables that cause that premature plateauing before it completely fills out? What what causes because the existing population see what happens? It becomes a ratio. The number of housing units you have is so enormous to the potential that can be built and and the population in those existing units is aging. aging at least aging out of the school school age. So it's kind of that concept we use sometimes of aging in place so to speak aging in place and I'm wondering too as land becomes more scarce as it becomes more expensive. I was wondering as it becomes more expensive uh if we look at the at the growth tra trajectory out of the twin the core of the twin cities it's really along the uh I94 corridor and so if land is is cheaper as you move north of here into the uh Buffalo district and then into the uh Elk River and then into St. Michael Albertville. At at this this point, um I'm I am working in uh Elk River and what they are now seeing is more expensive units than they previously had. uh that they're uh no longer seeing the growth in what they would call starter homes but but uh more expensive units. And it's reflected that they are now the uh net in migration is is later elementary middle school not the lower elementary. So it's kind of move up housing. So, it's that uh this this district has had um really more expensive housing in the growth. So, I you know that's but I I would en envision that and that's the other thing that happens is after something is maybe 2/3 3/4 built that land price really goes up. So I'm I I just think it's something you you know you uh that you don't assume that growth is inevitable after the period of very rapid growth. First of all, thank you for compiling all of this. I know it's uh quite the task and we really appreciate this is the second time that I've I've been able to hear your read on things and so I appreciate that very much. Um, my question is there was a slide where you had capture rates. Mhm. And I'm curious to know, so it looks like there's a decline as we're looking. We're going to capture less, right? But I'm curious to know, is there a cycle involved? Because as I was looking at it, it almost looked like a six or sevenyear cycle where it kind of goes up, peaks, and then starts to come back down. And I wonder if there's another peak that's coming and then it will go down again because you know as you think about as families are building there's kind of a phase where we all have our kids and then it cycles through the the capture rate on the kindergarten which I think is what you're referring to is affected by two things. One is development elsewhere in Henipin count suburban Henipin County. Okay. which is affecting it and the second would be competition within the district for students. Uh and I have I've been doing this for a long time. I have not seen competition decrease. That's the question Sheila. Yeah. Go ahead. I do have another question. Um, so I understand that we don't want to take for granted that we will grow forever and there's a really a worldwide trend for, you know, lower birth rates and fewer children for families. Um, it seems like the projections are that we are still going to get more students and we are running out of room currently. So I guess you know if we're looking out five and 10 years does where does that leave us? I mean we still have to build for the increase and then at some point yes we might have to either hope that we can fill the space with open enrollment or I mean there will be buildings closing I guess how do we balance having enough space for you know in the next 5 to 10 years with not overbuilding. Uh I will be very bold and say you can manage your enrollment. I see you as so desirable that you open up open enrollment and you can fill however many seats you want. That's it's the question of whether you're you know of whether your community wants to build buildings that non-residents primarily use. That's the issue. But but you're highly desirable. You can fill the seats. So speaking of competition, the chart you showed where the non-public versus public um it was intriguing because I didn't realize it was double. So almost every year except probably the recent years it has been doubled. So when the growth stops and again I'm looking at kind of I'm their their enrollment is likely to go down as well. Okay. So purely going based on supply and demand right uh have you seen students moving from non-public to public and hence public growth might still happen whereas overall stays the same. uh students moved from non-public to public oh until the pandemic certainly for almost 20 years in Minnesota. Okay. And come the pandemic ended that and non-public increased now not huge numbers I don't want to use you know but it increased and many people felt among them that uh because most non-publix held in-person classes okay that students would go back to the public school but that did not happen. Uh so, um I now think that we're probably going to see um these numbers at least hold in the non-public until they're too affected by the the kindergarten. Uh the challenge of course for non-public schools is exactly the same as public schools. when do you run out of physical space and how do you finance a building? Um I I witnessed uh something very dramatic. Uh a Catholic school in Edina put on a huge addition in his field and um I I would describe they bet big and they got we got the students. So, but again, it's a parish with the means to to do it. And I think that's a that's one of the factors. Um I don't know what the capacity of of brick or blake is because they are one of your competitors you know to to increase whether they desire to increase that's number one uh number two you know what the financial capacity is because you have to borrow money I mean That's so you have to have some way of of doing that. Um but the decline in kindergarten um that's you know going to Right. Yeah. Obviously I'm generalizing the data so it's not the case in every scenario but most of the times when we hear about somebody going to kindergarten other than CO or the procedures around COVID is mainly because of class sizes right um so when we get to that optimum number and now class sizes are better maybe there is an opportunity to bring those students back in so that's where I was asking should we be considering now that we have doubled the number of students in non-public. Could that be a factor that eventually we would see some transition from non-public to public? The uh surveys I've seen suggest the movement is more tied to values than it is per se to class size. Um you know and the whole the whole value system. So, but I mean I think what you're you're raising is an interesting issue and that is what what do you uh advertise? What do you promote about you? You know, is it smaller class size? Is it is it the performance achievement of students? uh uh you know that's uh how you position yourself, how you market yourself, how do people come uh to know you and even within the district you know what's people what's your image all of those things brand. Thank you. So, a um a growing trend that we're kind of seeing at least or hearing in the media is this, you know, overall maybe push for deregulation in housing, you know, to build more, to produce more and whatnot. Um so, if we do see deregulation in housing, is that something that would register in our district? Would there be ways that we could, you know, uh notice that, see that? Well, what what we have observed thus far is that the suburban communities have been pretty effective in pushing back on that. Uh the if you look at the uh uh two bills that were in the legislature this last session and were defeated, uh it was both both suburbs and uh greater Minnesota communities who said, you know, this is too much of oneizefits-all that that we want more um more latitude to uh deal with our local situation. Um I think the the um larger issue probably for you is not the number of units but uh the price point of units and the extent to which um the community would become more socioeconomically diverse than it is now. Okay. And speaking to that um price point, is there kind of a a range of home values where we see a a spike in okay, you know, this this cost of home is going to bring in more children than let's say another? It varies by district. In in in this district kind of the sweet point was it had been about a half a million to 3/4 of a million. dollar unit. And when it got over that, now prices keep on moving. So that keeps on moving up. Um but um relatively expensive units by metro area standards have have in this district produced school age children. Thank you so much. uh when you mention about uh CO and some families moving to private schools uh because obviously they wanted to have um um in um interactions with directly with teachers versus what public schools used. But you uh you're saying that it's yes originally that what happened what uh that's um drove some parents away from public schools but you then you mentioned about values. Can you clarify more about that? Oh my uh I think I think the um easiest shorthand to say is that uh private schools that are have religious affiliation tend to be less woke than the public schools have been. Um they tend although I know from people inside say it isn't what it was 20 years ago uh tend to be a little more a discipline people there are families that like the uniform aspect of it. I mean there just a whole range of of things. So would you say uh in conclusion if we would like to have some children coming towards public schools we probably need to consider values too. Uh I mean to think uh what kind of values are we holding? Uh every public school I have been in in Minnesota has a statement of values. Mhm. Um I see when I say these values, it it probably um some of them are are simply religious faith-based um some of them are around these very flashoint issues of transgender um uh critical race theory, those sorts of things. Because as I say, every public school, I mean, has posted about respect, about, you know, uh, equal, fairness, whatever. So it's not that public schools don't promote values but but the uh there are some real flash points in our society today and uh those are are emphasis for some families to to take children into private schools. Yeah. Strong disagreement and strong disagreement. Yes. They have money to be able to move. Yeah. because I I just I don't want you because I know you don't believe it because public schools do promote values. I mean they talk about responsibility, fairness, citizenship that a whole range of things. Um so but looks like there are some disagreements about some uh what? Yes. And if you look about I mean uh you read the news on the uh conflict within the school board in an noa henipin which is Minnesota's largest enrollment district uh you can see how these issues become uh very contentious. Mhm. Thank you very much. I was impressed to be honest how we are holding all the numbers. Obviously you uh spent quite a bit of time on this but thank you for um giving some analysis. Okay. Thank you. I think um so I have one comment. You talked about district 196. I remember two years ago they actually had passed a referendum close to half a billion dollars for three schools. Yeah. So they are growing. Absolutely. I have I have three questions. So Plymouth, first of all, I was surprised that Plymouth has so much growth potential. You know what, 700 plus houses. So do you think many of them or most of them or at least a big chunk of them are the $1.5 million plus houses? That I don't know. And if they are, then we are not going to benefit. Well, I don't I didn't quiz the the planning manager. Okay. uh you know because uh I asked you know for for these data and and she was very kind to say okay this has been approved the these are on paper you can see them but they have not been through the approval pl uh process um so I don't know I mean that's that's a question we could oppose um you know what they anticipated but if that information is known then that can be factored in into finding out whether we will get those students in public schools or they will go to private schools. Correct. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Um, I would just add on that too if I could is I was kind of taken by that number too when I first saw it, but considering that often times three homes are built on an acre, that's only 250 acres if my quick math is good. Um, of available building space within the footprint of Plymouth in the footprint of the school district, which isn't a lot really when you think about it. So that number became less uh of an outlier for me. I guess after I thought a little bit more about it. So, it'll be interesting to see how that materializes and during what time frame. Yeah, the these uh these uh uh areas that haven't been through the approval process, they're shown on the materials that the city will give you, you know, listing the land, the acres, what they think the number of units will be and so on and so forth. So, I mean, it's not like it's a dream out there. It's it's had some work done on it. Yeah. Yeah. Corkin on the other hand has so much open space that it's not hard to imagine that they will have many many houses built over the years. Right. So um in your estimation for the growth of the high school from the current 4,000 something to 4,500 or something like that about 500 increase. Did you factor in the open enrollment as well for the next few years or no? I assume not not. Okay. These these are are your kids rolling through. Okay. And I knew I had one more question. Actually, if I can read my own handwriting here. Uh oh. So, non-public schools that you refer to does include charter schools or no? No. Okay. Um, charter schools are public school. A public school, right? Right. Okay. Yeah. Okay. All right. And and the um from a data point of view, uh the Minnesota Department of Education will provide reports uh charter school enrollment of district residents. So you can see your number of district residents. uh non-public schools is a that's a bitter um non-public schools are are asked to report their enrollment to the Minnesota Department of Education. Uh some have done so um very faithfully for years and years and years. Uh others can be spotty. And then the other thing one has to be careful of is that the way the state then releases those data is they they release the enrollment by school of the district in which they are located. Now in maybe 85 90% of the time most of those students are from that district but there are some outliers of of national uh schools, online schools and the like that may be located in a district where the enrollment is not from that district or so tiny it isn't. So that's that's the thing. Thank you Hazel. I think if there are no more questions we appreciate you're coming here. We had one question from Dana. Oh yeah, go ahead. Hi Hazel. It's kind of hard here when we're in a work session and we're off to the side. A couple questions. Can you and maybe you answered this for Melon, but um the apartment units that are projected on that city center station by in Plymouth, do we know what kind of housing apartments those are going to be? No. No. No. Um um the planning manager uh said, "I don't think they will yield any schoolage children." Okay. Um, and until the city of Plymouth does their plan to 2050 is what the plan will be. Um, we don't know anything. We don't know anything. That's why I separated it the timeline that could be could affect you and out there who who knows. Who knows? Yeah. Yeah. that just has an impact sometimes depending on the type of housing they're they're putting in. And then when you talked about Gleon Lake and Greenwood being our elementaryaries that could be losing buildings, did I losing students? Did I hear you right? Was that based on our new boundaries or that's based on Okay, let me let me explain how I did this. I looked at the enrollment as of October 1st, 2024 and I looked at the enrollment with the new boundaries as in January of 2025. Okay? And then I calculated the survival rates between those two points in time. and I applied those survival rates going forward. Now that means that the enrollment for 202526 is probably underproed a little bit. Okay. Uh beyond that, if my assumption that the characteristics of of the Greenwood area would basically be the same even after the enrollment shifts, if that's a faulty assumption, then those numbers are wrong. But what is so clear is um when you look at the data for these schools as it stands and then as it's projected there are some very large classes and as those classes age out and if you're you know if you're aging out a class of 160 and you're replacing it with a class of 100 you get decline pretty rapidly. Awesome. Thank you so much. Uh so I mean that that's why I say though um we'll have a much better sense after we actually see fall of 202526. Okay. Y thank you. So u Okay. Well, thank you Hel. Thank you for coming and presenting this this humongous data. So we'll see you again maybe another two years. Yes. Thank you. All right. Uh the second and final item on the agenda is schoolboard reports. Uh this afternoon the board will discuss moving to even one-year elections. First Amy Guys, the district's election clerk will review some information that she had presented to the board on March 3rd with some additions to it. This will be followed by a discussion at the board table. Amy, good evening. School board superintendent Anderson. Um, as Chair Sahony mentioned, there were a few questions after the March presentation. So, I have some data points to fill you in on and then, um, turn it over to you to discuss amongst yourselves. Um, first, there's been some changes in the current oddyear election districts. Um, on the next slide, I'll review the five that have switched since March. Uh just as a reminder, district 4 districts are in the lighter blue color and the three that I highlighted in yellow um they actually are schoolboard elections that are run still by their cities because their city coincides with an odd year election. So Bloomington, Minnotonka, and St. Louis Park um the districts are not running those oddear elections. So we are currently down to 21 of 331 districts in Minnesota that have oddyear elections. Um and then it is expected that East Central will be switching. They just had a meeting in May. They tabled the vote until their June meeting, but um they are leaning in that direction. So again, highlighted in yellow are the five districts that have switched to even your elections since our March meeting and the rest that have switched since the 2003 election. Uh, of note, the only one that has elected to switch by running their next two odd-year elections as a three-year term is Richfield. All the rest have followed with the adding of one-year term to the current boards. Just to review, we saw this before. Um, we spent just shy of 82,000 on the 2023 election. Um, and projections still have us at over a 100,000 should you choose to run an election for 2025. Again, this was presented before in March, but just as a reminder, um, you know, the the exponential cost of running the election in odd years, voter confusion, um, that's more so just a voting location. Uh, during, um, evenear elections, the city and the county run precincts. They each have their own location. We do combined locations. Um we have five and they tend to not be where voters go to vote on their evenear election. It's a little bit of a mess on election day. Um knowing where to send them. The time it costs the district um and the election clerk. Certainly surrounding schools are changing to even years. It just is starting to limit our resources amongst each other of how to run them. Um it's pretty much a one-man show at each of the districts that have to run oddyear elections. Um and you can read the rest of them. Uh certainly of note is the legal repercussions. Um there's several school districts if you Google schoolboard elections in the last two years that have run into issues. Um it's just a concern. It's a little polarizing. uh one mistake of opening an envelope, sending it to the wrong place, saying the wrong thing to voters um tends to end up in the news and I kind of consider one of my top jobs keeping us out of the public eye. Appreciate it. Um the cost savings, you can read through it, but on average, our neighboring districts pay about $5,700 for even your elections. It just depends on how many um folks you have running. It's just how much space you take up on a ballot is what we end up paying. But the rest of it is taken off our plate. This is an answer to I believe Cher Sahony asked the question about in previous years what was the voter turnout. Um this has for the last decade the elections that we've run as a district. Um you can see votes cast I want to just be very clear. votes cast is the number of people that walk into a voting place or mail in their ballot and their ballot is run through a machine. That's all it covers. I cannot tell you how many of them correctly voted for the number of people they were supposed to vote for. That data is not recorded on voting machines. So if a ballot went through a machine, this is the votes cast. Um you'll see all of our odd year elections in 2022. We did have an even year election because we had a vacant seat. Uh there was one seat open. So I can tell you roughly how many votes were cast for school board, but it doesn't take into account um overunder votes or spoiled ballots. So it's not really the greatest of projections. Um I will say uh director Janestra did ask about this and it puts you um in the high 50 percentile for those that voted on the school board. Um, also just some of the numbers that are slightly different here. Sorry, I'll find my slide. Um, in 2017, you see the turnout was about 15%. In that year, we did run a referendum, um, a tech levy, uh, building out of Northwood's Elementary School and an operating levy. So, that kind of accounts for the higher turnout there. the 2021 election, I don't think we'll ever be able to forget that was coming off of COVID and lots of very strong constituent feelings around that. Um, and then in 2023, this most recent election, we also had a referendum on there. So, um, not to say for sure that's what accounts for the higher numbers, but that does have a tendency to bring out more voters. Um, and then this is the last slide. Chair Sony put this together. This is kind of a a layout um kind of a guide map of what it would mean should you choose to hold a vote or not for changing to even your elections. So, I'll leave this on the screen um while I open it up for turn it back over to you for discussion. All right. Thank you, Amy. Um I have a quick question first. So do we know for sure that the legislature has not moved on the on the proposal to require school? Yes. So state legislature has closed and they have not um they did not follow through. They did not choose to not do it. They just it did not end up on the docket for this session. All right. Thank you so much. Yes. Um so we will just start with any questions you might have with for Amy and then I will I will read the protocol for the next part. So anyone Yeah, I have one question. So Amy, the the cost previous versus you know the estimated 60,000 actual was 80,000. Did you say for future elections um odd year it would be 100,000? Is that Yes. Yeah. We have every reason to believe that. And I I I have to sit down and make the budget each year for elections and just based off of the need to hire judges and facility costs and things of that nature, it will go over this year. But there is nothing outlier in there, right? Again, no, that that would be the norm elections. Okay. Thank you. But that cost as well that you're projecting um that you haven't run the numbers yet with the that was a cost that was projected with the thought of us also potentially holding the elections here. So have you run the numbers to think about if the elections the early voting was held at the district service center? That has changed. Yeah, the district service center is going to be the location. The physical location of her where we hold a early sorry early voting is not that's it's in our buildings. Um it has to be held in a school building. So that is a zero cost. Um it's more so the cost of I mean a good 90% of it is the cost of personnel to run it and not not the district salary the outside personnel that we have to hire. Okay. So the 100,000 is the estimated cost if we were to keep it odd years. If we were to move it to even years, then it potentially can come down to rounding it off 6,000 in that range. Okay, that's correct. Okay, thanks Ash. Go ahead. Um I have two questions. So based on the flowchart, I think I'm understanding it correctly. If if we did want to go to evenear elections, I'm not saying we do. Um, if we did and we went to five-year terms, it would affect current board members. If we chose to go to three-year terms, it wouldn't affect current board members unless they were reelected. It would it would affect anybody elected in the 2025 or 2027 elections. Is that correct? Yes, that's correct. And then um looking at the years that we would have to have elections in the the two scenarios, the five-y year and the three-year term, we would have we would be asking voters to come out to vote an extra time before 2030. So they would be coming out three times. And if we did the five-year term, they would just be coming out two times before 2030. So, it's like throwing another election in there and having two elections to pay for. That is correct. However, I would just caveat that with that anything that falls on an even year from this point forward would be cityrun and and there would be an election. This is not an exclusive schoolboard election. There would be national um and state elections that coincide with it. So, I would hope that voters are going out for those as well. But yes, just specifically for school board. Yes, just for school board. Three. Yeah. Three elections before 2030. Two of which would be run by the school district. Correct. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Are we at any risk of legislators coming back and changing their position one year, two years from now? Of of course. I mean, they could it's still live at the district level or at the sorry, the legislator level. So they could I if I can just add I asked a question about do we have any thought that it would come back into the special session and the report from AMSD is that no there's not an indication that that it's coming back to the special session I mean nobody knows what anyone's going to say but AMSD's report is that it's it's not yet yeah it was not even taken to the omnibus bill so it just died yes way before that so also coming back are you talking about coming back this session or in the future anytime. So anytime. So next next year will be a will not be a policy session. It will be a you know financial budget session. So the year after that it could come back but but that's two years from now. Two years from now. Okay. Thanks. And just to add it's been it's come up on multiple sessions before now and it hasn't ever gotten any traction. Yeah. So a couple questions. I I heard kind of the list of concerns with the school district running um the the elections. Is the main driver would you say is the main driver cost in making a change or would the main driver be something else? I think there's multiple. I'm I'm certainly biased. I don't know that I'm not even sure it's appropriate for me to answer to be quite honest. I mean I have to serve the role as election clerk. I think if I was sitting here in my in a different role, I could fair enough answer that more bluntly, but I mean the brunt of it lies on my personal shoulder. So I'm you I think you need to assess that for yourself. Who would answer Amy? Thank you. This the second question I have and and maybe it's a rhetorical question. Um, and maybe Sarah, you could help speak to it too because you've been here the longest and Chase, maybe you could chime in, but is there a reason that we have kept it in odd years and what what were those driving reasons because this is something that has come up over the years? I remember over the decades this has come up at the legislature and I'm curious why Weisetta has stuck to odd years and what those what that rationale is. Yeah. Um, I I think that holding I I I think in my experience on the 12 years on the school board that this has that this was a that this was a pillar um of the oddyear elections were a pillar of of what we do and and certainly we all know everything changed in 2021 um in terms of the role of partisanship in our schoolboard elections. But a lot of what um our our community had committed to up until that point and and the reasons why the district had moved it forward is because of the commitment to nonpartisanship and and even the best of candidates um if you're running an election concurrent and and another thing is is is the opportunity to bring district issues forward to our community where there are not distractions other in other ways. And so, um, you know, running against, uh, a general election that that could have a guminatorial election, um, the entire house up for reelection or a presidential election. Um, we that that there's data that relates to, uh, the attention paid to down ballot and the commitment. And so, um, so that is there. I will also because I'm talking take the opportunity to I I listened to uh one of the AMSD panels of which there were some legislators that were on the panel and this question came up to them. This was earlier in the session and one of the concerns that the panel raised or that one of the the legislators and I I cannot recall which legislators she was, I'm sorry, was um the cost and the cost of the cost of elections for schoolboard members specifically. You know, one of the things that we've wanted is is to make campaigning and service on the board to be accessible for everyone. Um, and running an election where you're seeking to get attention um among um spending in elections, which has we know where spending has gone in elections. Um that it could also make it not accessible for candidates to even choose to run because of their capacity to to fundra. So Sarah and Chase based on your experience. So the schools who have been on even year um again I think they are staying with even year right I mean odds odd years are getting changed to even years and Sarah to your point because it coincides with the broader election cycles. Have you heard of any inherent negative impact again as you said because everybody's voting for general elections? Maybe people are not paying attention to schoolboard candidates and just selecting maybe you know incumbents as an example. So that gives you know new candidates maybe they're at disadvantage right those type have you heard any issues or concerns like what's what's your Yeah I'll start with two. I mean, I think first of all, yes. Right. I mean, I think that there's that there's, you know, less of of attention paid to who's being elected or why. And so, so there's that piece. I also think and and I you'll hear me talk about nonpartisanship a lot in this conversation, right? I mean, prior to 2021, uh, Wisetta was held up as a as a model district that was that was not partisan in their school elections. And when we would talk to other districts or other school board members and we would say, "Well, our board our elections are nonpartisan, they would laugh at us like we were telling fairy tales." And but but it was true. And and that wouldn't mean that the people serving on the board didn't have partisan affiliations. It's just that we were able to rise above and stand outside those lines. And so and we did see, you know, other and these were from districts that had their schoolboard elections running concurrent to evenear elections. And so, and it's just right, it's just impossible. Um, if you're if you're running for election alongside partisan candidates, um, you're it's you can't avoid it regardless of your intent. I would maybe just add too that um, I think cost is increasingly a variable that we should consider. I don't know that it needs to be the thing or the one variable that would drive it. Um the other thing that is nice with uh the uh oddyear elections is that you have an opportunity of a more captive audience about school issues and topics which I think has been Sarah mentioned that and I know others have along the way as well. So um those are two things that would stand out for me just you know stepping aside from the nonpartisanship and the politics of school elections etc. Um I think that those are the two variables that would stand out for me. So there's multiple right answers um in re for most things. That's always what makes them difficult decisions. Um there is a trend toward the uh evenear elections in the state as I think we've heard before as well and I stepped out for a moment but I think maybe Amy mentioned that. I don't know but um that is a a trend in the state. And I just wanted to throw another point out there that has nothing to do with the schoolboard election. However, you have to remember that any referendums that we're running off cycle. We are still having to foot the bill, nothing changes. So if we were thinking about a referendum that does not coincide with a general election, that would incur the same cost as running a schoolboard election. I might just add on that too. There are uh strategic reasons for running uh capital campaigns off the normal cycle because of timelines for bidding and when you have access to workers etc. So there are some timelines that uh can be conducive to perhaps getting bids that are uh closer to what the projected costs are and you know when the labor's available and supply all the supply chain things and that's we hire a lot of consultants to help us with all those things. But those are a lot of the factors that are taken into consideration. And if you want a building to open by, let's say, the fall of uh 28, um you need to hit certain timelines. And the sooner you uh know whether you have authority to move forward or not, the better um in those meeting those timelines. So, you know, it is kind of multiaceted and it's it's more than just uh cost and um uh you know, the the the ability to make sure that talking about the school district to the community on those uh idea elections. Um you know, there's there's a lot of variables that need to be considered and the timing. Can I build on that a minute? Um 2017 is a great example for that though because if we do am I correct Dr. Anderson that if we did a a general operating levy that it has to be held in a November election right we can't we can't ask voters to renew a general operating levy in November and so um like 2017 was a fantastic example of a time when we were able to do a general operating levy during a schoolboard election. It was also when we did the tech levy and our schoolboard candidates ran unopposed. So, it was a fantastic opportunity to really use that time in November when voters were paying attention and expecting a schoolboard election to talk about school issues and to really raise the level of awareness for the general operating levy and other things. And so, um whereas bonding and other elections we can hold off the November election cycle um and we would have to foot a general operating levy that we have to roughly every 8 to 10 years probably, right? um on a cycle of these of these oddyear school board elections. And so that would be an election that we would have to incur the cost of anyway. Um so it doesn't mean even if we move to even years that we would necessarily avoid um incurring costs in a November on a November voting date. Well, I wanted to start by saying thank you so much to Amy and your team for putting together these materials. they've been very foundational to our understanding and they really mean a lot. Um I was very I think drawn to you know the the aspect with regard to partisansship and I appreciate what Sarah brought up um because I think it goes honestly a lot further than oh you know we're going to be competing with perhaps presidential a presidential election a gubanatorial election. It goes so much further than that. And all you have to do is talk to the people who, you know, have to run for school board in an even numbered year. Um, to get any visibility, any attention whatsoever, um, you have to go to the partisan events. So, you've got to go to the DFL and the Republican party picnics, the DFL and Republican party uh, conventions, the campaign kickoffs for candidates for legislature. Um, and you have to be prepared if you, let's say, choose to door knock to answer for who are you voting for for president? Who are you going to vote for for governor? And I will just say in, you know, full confidence, full honesty. School board is not a partisan race. Partisan election is not a proper alibi. Voters are not going to buy that. So, I think really it preserves the fact that we are a nonpartisan and um you know those people who are thinking about running for the school board um for this November election. I think it would be a really inappropriate thing as well for us to you know either scrap this upcoming election by extending our terms by a year or to even change it to three years. Um I'll say you know that uh at this point two years ago I had made the decision to um run for the school board a month ago. um and just to kind of reward and instill confidence in the district. It wouldn't make sense to change any part of that because I think it come could come off as very um exclusionary. I think it also has um you know really the effect of [Music] um I did lose my train of thought there and I apologize. Um but yeah, it's it's it's the combination of partisanship. It's the combination of, you know, the timing. I think if we had made this decision after a new school board had been elected, um it would have been more appropriate. But to think about that that partisanship issue, the fact that schoolboard candidates are going to be on that partisan slate of candidates that's handed out doortodoor, um it just it it politicizes something that ultimately is too partisan. I think I do not believe there's a partisan way to educate a child and certainly our um election should fold in that way. So, thank you. Yeah. Okay. Um I just want to make a comment about the partisan nonpartisan issue. If I know if I'm know correctly, uh city council and and county commissioner elections are they are also nonpartisan, right? So they are they are a part of the evenear elections. They are also lumped in with the other partisan elections, right? state elections, federal elections, but they're also on that ballot, but they're also nonpartisan. So, that's one point. The other point is when only 21 school districts out of 331 school districts uh you know are are election, the rest of them do evenear elections. They must be doing something right. The rest of them um I agree with many of the points that have been raised about keeping this for the audio elections. uh cost again individual you know school district cost of $100,000 and if we do a three-year reduction if we do the audio even one year elections and we select the three-year term for board members then we'll have actually two more elections that will be held in the district that's another 200,000 that's almost two FTEEs um and uh you know I I feel bad for Amy if if we continue to do a year election because then she has to work so much harder. Uh um so that's basically all I have to say. I I I I'm I'm kind of caught in the middle. I don't know I don't know honestly where I where I stand at this point and both sides have convinced me with what they have said and I don't know where I'm leaning right now. So go ahead. Yeah. So um So I mean I agree. I mean 200,000 is a lot of money for public school. Um and you said two FTEEs and that's where my next question was. Is there a way and again I know it's hard. We are already in the planning process for next financial year right. Is there a way for us to show benefit or outcome? So let's say if we decide to move it to even years. Saying this right? Yeah. Even years. Let's say we extend the term by one year. So it all aligns. We saved $200,000 for the district. We extended everybody's term by one year. What can we show to public that hey I did this with that $200,000. Is there a way for us to show some tangible outcome? Maybe we bring back some music programs. I'm making it up, right? Is there a way for us to show the real value that came out of that 200,000 or again? Yeah, we saved it, but really where would we show it? Any comments or like thoughts? You on the finance community, Paris, you can show. Well, but we don't go like itemize, right? That's what I'm saying. It the 200,000 will go in general, but you know the 01 bucket. Yeah. But and again, that's where I mean I know it's complicated, but again, any thoughts or ideas? Is there a way for us to articulate that $200,000 value? I don't think so. I think it would be difficult to mount a credible set of bullet points on here's exactly what we were able to do. I mean, it's sometimes you have to take a look at things that are cost of doing business and I think we have to take a look at variables in this case aside from money. I think we need to be conscious of it. Um, but in the same token um I don't think it should be the sole driver. um to make the decision because I think it would be really hard to say here's what we're able to do as a result of moving to uh even your elections. Mhm. Okay, that's fair. Just one little thing as we're whispering back and forth here, just a point of clarification is that that 100,000 on election is not we don't run elections every year or 200,000. So, we can't say that's FTE. So I know if Scott or David Drachovich or whoever is whispering in my head to remind us that that's not an ongoing yearly expense. So it wouldn't purchase a teacher on a regular basis. So just wanting to make sure that that's clear. Agreed. Yeah. But it is a hard I'm not running for financial you know be clear with that too. Correct. But it is it is a hard saving. I mean it clearly shows we can save 200,000 just on two elections and then obviously ongoing but obviously we can't relate it back to okay what did we do with that 100,000 or 200,000 now that's fair thanks so I have a couple comments um I was originally pretty conflicted about this because of the cost savings and then I took some time to really think it through and Chase I appreciate your comment about the cost of doing business because I do think there is a cost to doing the business of the district. Um, you know, we as schoolboard members haven't taken a raise in several years and that's that's something that we've chosen to do. Um, the nonpartisan piece of it is incredibly incredibly important, not just to me, but I know that it is incredibly important to our district constituents and to our school families. um teaching our children in a nonpartisan way and expecting that from the top down is really important. If we don't do it ourselves, how can we expect that of our teachers and our principles and everybody who's in our classrooms? So that's something that I think there might be a cost to to having that and there might be a cost to, you know, even if it gets a little messy sometimes during elections, at least there is a fighting chance of us demonstrating a commitment to that. And so, um, you know, as a school board member, I know that my job is to look forward and to plan forward and to think big picture and to think about the impacts and the repercussions of decisions that we might make today on the future. And um, I've been in this district a really long time. I've learned in this district. I have become a parent in this district. And I think it's a really important value that we keep like really really important that we maintain this nonpartisanship within our schools. And if we can do that just one step like the initial step of keeping our elections in odd years I I I think it might be worth it for the cost benefit because there is a strategic way of doing things and the cost out like the outcomes of the costs may be a wash at the end of the day especially when you're trying to recruit like we talk about recruitment of great teachers all the time and we put time and effort and resources into recruiting good staff. This also may be one of those things where you want to recruit the best and the brightest out of your community. And in a community like Weisetta Public Schools, um professionals don't want to have all of that noise around them. People who are going to be really good at this job of schoolboarding don't need all of that mess. And so I from from Heidi Kar's perspective, I think we should stay in odd years. So that's my take. I haven't spoken yet. If I could have a turn. Let me let me say give a quick comment to Dana's uh comment earlier. Dana, I think if we stay with the right side of that chart, if we just keep doing odd year elections, we will have $100,000 every two years. So, yeah. So, I originally came to this Yeah. thinking it's the money savings, you know, and and I'm I'm in a position where I'm still like kind of torn. Um, but I've kind of been convinced that of both options. Um, you know, if when I we think about the cost savings, it's essentially one half full-time employee every year, which, you know, it doesn't sound like that much when you say it like that. It would be a recurring cost every year of 100,000 or every other year of $100,000 that we would save. But is that really in the is it that might just be a drop in the bucket. Um I've been you know I've previously mentioned our ask of voters. Um just I know that for some people it can it can be difficult to go to the polls. Not everybody you know is is able to go very easily and asking them to go in odd years in addition to even years is is an ask and we have to acknowledge that. Um I am I am convinced by the nonpartisanship um argument. I do think if board members from the top are showing you know like our commitment to nonpartis nonpartisanship that means something. There are forces outside of our control including with the community that you know bring partisanship in whether we want it or not. Um whether it's an even year or an odd year election and we don't have control over that. But if we are making the commitment to say like we really are trying our best to make this nonpartisan, I think that does that does have an effect. Um so again, I am still very torn about this. Um but I you know I I don't know. I think I'm probably leaning more towards keeping even elections more so than I was before. Odd. Sorry, I misspoke. I'm leaning more towards odd year keeping the odd year elections. Yeah. So, I' I've talked about history and stuff, but I my thoughts. Um I I think we there's a couple different things that we're trying to address. Um and and I took very seriously some of the concerns that Amy raised around the legal liabilities. Um I took very seriously the the concerns around um the staff load um and and the allencompassing nature of that election. And certainly we've seen that. Um, and I took very seriously the the comments about the institutional knowledge and and the inability to have colleagues that are doing the same thing. I I running an election I can only imagine is is really really hard. Um, and we and we certainly want you to feel supported and connected or anyone sitting in your seat. We want you we want the person sitting and running our election to to feel confident in what they're doing. Um, that they can uphold the election with the greatest amount of integrity and professionalism. Um and um at the and and so but all of those feel like things that we can solve without changing our structure. I mean some of that we can't make people change their elections and so we might not have that but I'm confident that we can find you that we can find the person sitting in your seat, you or whoever else um the support that they need. And so regardless of where this board decides to go, um I think that that should be a a priority of how we partner with the administration to make sure that that happens. Um I I really uh sit in the getting the issues out in front of the voters. I think that there really is something to be said to our community and to our children that says in this moment, we're talking about you and we're talking about the ways that we are going to make this better and the way that we're going to make our school district better. And you might not be able to calculate the dollar amount from what we're saving from running in the election and the amount that we're spending on on communications and marketing and and all the other things. But I've got to imagine that that getting those issues out um is, you know, is is a thing and and then again um asking candidates to do the same thing and what we're asking them to spend in their time and energy. So um those are my thoughts. Yeah, I'll quickly summarize what my thoughts are um because I was asking questions earlier so I didn't put my points together. Um so again in my opinion I'm putting cost and efficiencies on top. Um again the partisanship nonpartisanship is absolutely critical and quite frankly I trust our community why zetta community when I was running for election or even after I got elected every time I've talked to community members parents etc they have always focused on the educational outcome and what can be done and how can we solve challenge for students so that's where my mind is so if I look at cost, efficiencies, and partisanship. I don't know how much that partisanship is going to change just because we are changing the school year election. And like I said, I might change my mind if suddenly I get flurries of email tomorrow from everyone who's listening to that yelling at me saying, "What are you talking about?" Then I might change it. But again, right now, I'm trusting our community to play that nonpartisan role in schoolboard elections because everybody is focusing on the the educational outcome which is good for everybody even if you don't have schools or students in school. So outside of that, again my point is again when I look at the cost and efficiency, I can't imagine spending $100,000 every four years or two years. Yeah. So again that's where my head is. Um again I'm not disagreeing with the partisanship. I think we have done really good well and visetta I think Sarah you said is an example but just by changing the election year is that really going to change. Maybe I'm wrong but again that that's where my head is. Okay. Thank you Paris. Let me just say a couple of things that I forgot. Um I never mentioned the numbers. 5% in 2015 2017 and I don't know how much it was in 1921 23 25%. 5% voters out of 40,000 plus voted for two ele during two elections. That does not seem to be representative of of you know voters that that elect board members. That's that's that again is a is a big point with me. the number of voters that vote whether it is you know whether it's a partisan election or nonpartisan election beyond that the numbers that vote is very very important also at this board table I have not seen any partisanship at all in any of the votes any of the resolutions that we have made then there is no partisanship in a city council meeting nobody says I'm a democrat so I'm going to vote this way we see that in the state legislature They caucus with Democrats. They Republicans caucus with Republicans. They sit separately as Democrats and Republicans. I don't see where our partisanship shows. Even if we are partisan outside, I may belong to a DFL party. I may belong to a Republican party, but I do not ever bring partisanship in my thoughts in my, you know, in the process that we go through. Definitely not when I'm voting. So, I think this partisan nonpartisan is is overblown. uh we heard that during during the election also I remember one time when I was campaigning based on my values somebody labeled me as belonging to this one party and I said no I'm running on a nonpartisan these are my values if you want to label me as a Republican or a Democrat that's your choice I'm not saying I'm a registered Democrat or I'm a registered Republican so I'm running as one of those right we all have values you cannot hide those so based on the values if you call a Democrat or a Republican, then that's your choice. But I am not partisan when I have values that I that I promote during my campaign. Um I'm going to touch several things uh in train of thoughts. I am struggling with to be honest uh five year uh from the perspective of uh when I run I run for four years and I feel like oh I'm going to take another year it's just like um how to say you um behaving myself like almost like a totalitarian I chose to be to run one more year what I mean to so I so be it that that one I'm struggling with for example if it would if it wouldn't be been election saying it is this one is for 5 years because we want to do on even years I can see then everybody knows it as if right now I am in that kind of situation when I run it was for four years and to be honest I didn't know how much it takes uh now I know uh second is uh for I kind of agree with Mint in this um partisan not partisan um I feel like We hang up on this so much because even uh looking at the data 5% 5% of population were making uh choices uh for all of us. So it doesn't feel like uh many people were involved in making choice. Uh then when we're talking about nonpartisan I guess that I am from different background and I might be straightforward a little bit. I I felt differently. Uh for example, 2021 I believe if I when I pulled out accidentally data quite a bit of money was spent uh on election. So it became quite and uh I myself never ever thought that I will be doing and even knocking at the doors but because I had values which I felt were tra trampled over that what moved me to do to knock at the doors and uh speaking about nonpartisan again this is a school board I would like to remind where a teacher union uh sent uh the um brochure to housing. So no, please don't bring that that it's nonpartisan. It is uh that money um when to be honest I personally as a private citizen did we run on a smidg budget to the point where we were sitting and calculating where where we can put a sign because we didn't have that many signs. We didn't have budget for that. So please don't bring uh that one. And another one is um unfortunately sometimes I personally when I was helping another candidate I personally was an um a witness how partisan it can become when it uh pleophone parade uh the lady whom I was supporting was served with um very d I mean I don't know should I it's it's not for public in front of their own kids. That is how how people started acting out. And it's not for you to say that at the uh for a while I carried uh spray with me. This is how I I was concerned for my own safety. Um no, if you didn't experience it, um uh lucky you. Um to be honest, please please don't do that. We all have some values and I appreciate when Milin pointed out just because I mean we we have values we might disagree on some values that's the whole point of democracy that you can be sitting at the table and discuss uh this is what we are doing this is the uh the uh why what the education for I am very much so into in support of education in fact I think that I told also and I know that some some of our board members probably annoyed by me. I came from being at the bottom of a barrel an example. So I know what does it mean to feel and I know how much education can change students life. That's the whole thing. I would like for example my own kids to have the same opportunity. Speaking about partisan, I don't want any partisan um feelings and values to be pushed on our kids so that kids will get education. Any kid will get education, will be strong academically and then they will be able to uh compete to succeed. They can uh it is not uh a job of adult to put their values into students. students can learn and then students once they adult they can all make their own decisions. So um that one I have a hard time as for moneywise. I think it money should not be um it's a lot of money sounding but at the same time uh the district which is dealing with over 260 uh K budget uh my feeling is more it's how many people are getting involved when it when it is about 5% are voting is it actually uh um the parents who are actually involved um are making decision. I feel like it's a very small population is making decision for this big uh this big district. Thank you. Yeah. D. Well, I did want to take a moment to, you know, sum up my um remarks and kind of give my um viewpoint on this. So, I'm sure you all know kind of where I stand. um to kind of you know perhaps you know uh reassure colleagues of some items and you know just give my um viewpoint on some others uh with what pars you asking about um partisanship and the role of that um yes um it's inarguable that it will um those are the only events that voters are going to you're going to have to throw in with those individuals um and to uh you know your point Valentina I actually really enjoyed um having a very lengthy phone conversation with you the other day where you told me about your you know journey as an immigrant and it was really a um a special story to hear. Um but I am drawn actually to the you know argument and conversation around that percentage level of turnout. Um I think it's something we really can overcome and I don't think that the 5% turnout which is really a lowest low um is going to be anything we go back to at least not in the near future. Um, you know, when we look at what the turnout was in, um, the midterm election for 2022, it was about 56%. I think we can go from 25% to 56%. We run really good candidates. They get their message out there. There's a lot of attention. That's only going to be made possible in a um oddnumbered year election. So, um, I think it's it's on the candidates, it's on the community to really engage um really ask questions of their elected officials. So um you know talking about the um the financial side as well um I will definitely say that it um bothers me as an individual when we talk about you know students children as dollars and cents. Um that's something that you know I don't I don't take too kindly to. Um and so I think that this is an investment in why is excellence. I think outstanding school districts make investments in excellence. Um and to me this is one of them. So um I will be voting to maintain the oddnumbered year elections. Thank you. I think we are done with a very healthy discussion. Thank you all. We appreciate it. Again, thank you Emmy. Uh I I have one other question that just came up when we were discussing. Um if we do come up do decide to bring bring this to a vote on June 9th. Um, I think I heard you mention that July 1st is the deadline for us to let them know, let the secretary of state know. Now, from what I remember, the end of July, the last week of July and the first week of August are the filing periods. So, would July board meeting not be appropriate? Would that be too late? That would be too late for the November election. So at any point in time the board any board could make the decision but the July 1st cut off is for the current fall elections. So yeah so it would be too late if if that was the will of the board even if the filing period is July end and that's correct it's too late. Yeah we've already actually started planning for the election. Thank you for that. All right. If there are no other questions or comments, uh I'm just one just from the next step standpoint. Yes. If this were to come back for voting. Mhm. Are we going to have three choices or just yes and no? Because technically we have three choices, right? Yes. And no. And then within yes, we have two. So, so what will happen is if we this comes for a vote. So, as you see in your screen, the first vote will okay. If if the majority votes no, it's not done, right? Majority votes yes then there are two choices again five year term or three-year term. So that again will be that will be another take a vote on five year or three year it depends but that can be done there is a process for that. Okay there are there are written resolutions on how to do that. Okay sounds good. Thank you. All right. Okay. So this completes our work session for this evening. The next regular school board meeting will be on Monday June 9th. The time is now 6:17. The Wisetta Public Schools Board of Education work session for Tuesday, May 27th, 2025 is adjourned.