Calling the meeting to order at 6:01 p.m. This is the board of directors regular school board meeting for Monday, December 15th, 2025 and our last one of the year. Welcome to all of our visitors, guests, and media. Uh, as usual, we're going to start uh with the board and administrative roll calls. Mr. Felt here. Mr. Burns >> here. >> Miss Danielson >> here. >> Miss Schultz >> here. >> Miss Gatsco >> here. >> Miss Nathan >> here. >> Mr. Oell >> here. >> Mr. Scheler >> here. >> Mr. Hannon >> here. >> Mr. Girtton >> here. >> Miss Okonnell >> here. >> Miss Payeyton >> here. >> Mr. Dalton >> here. >> Mr. View >> here. >> Mr. Samansky >> here. >> Please stand for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Moving on, there have been no public comments prior to the start of the meeting. So, the first action item is a motion to approve the agenda and addendums. >> So moved. Second >> motion made by Miss Danielson, seconded by Miss Nathan. Any further discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor say I. >> I. >> I. All oppose. Nay. >> Motion carries. Item three, the consent agenda, which includes the school board minutes for the regular school board meeting on November 24th, 2025, the personnel consent agenda, and the business consent agenda. >> Approval. >> I'll second. Motion made by Mr. Burns, seconded by Miss Gatskco. Any further discussion on the consent agenda? Hearing none. All those in favor say I. I. >> I. All oppose? Nay. Motion carries. Item four, the recognitions, presentations, and showcase. We're going to have the MSHSL Excel Award and the MSHsla AAA award. Mr. Samansky. Floor is yours. >> Thank you. >> Good evening. Each year, the Minnesota State High School League recognizes students who exemplify the very best with intercolastic activities that are meant to develop leadership, service, academic excellence, and involvement beyond the classroom. We are extremely proud of our nominees and grateful for the opportunity to celebrate students who represent values, missions of Watertown Mayor so well. Tonight, we have the opportunity to recognize two such awards and the outstanding students who represent Watertown Mayor. First, the Excel Award. Excellence in community education and leadership. This award honors school juniors who are active in school activities, serve as leaders within their school, and demonstrate strong commitment to community service. Each member school may nominate one male and one female student who truly reflects these values. Both students exemplify leadership, service, and involvement, and we are proud to have them represent our school. It is my pleasure to introduce Watertown Mayor's Excel Award nominees, Alena Holmstrom and Evan Jules. >> All right, you two right there. >> Well done. >> I was going to have Mr. Schuler take pictures if you want. know what's going on. >> The second is the AAA award, academics, arts, and athletics. This award recognizes high school seniors who achieve excellence in the classroom while also participating in both league sponsored athletics and fine arts or activities. The AAA award highlights students who successfully balance rigorous academics with broad extracurricular involvement and strong character. Selection for this award occurs through a multi-level process at the school, region, and state levels, making it one of the most prestigious honors presented by the Minnesota State High School League. Two award finalists from each region, one boy and one girl, will be invited to a recognition banquet in March, and league officials will announce the four statewide AAA award winners. All 32 finalists will also participate in an encourt ceremony during the class doubleA championship game of the boys basketball state tournament. This statewide award winners, a girl and a boy class A and class doubleA schools will also receive a 4-year $1,000 scholarship. It is my pleasure to introduce Watertown Mayors AAA award nominees Eliza Rowan and William Mant. And when you when do we find out >> few times? >> Um move on >> for the ex for the XL we will find out like the very last week of January beginning of February. >> Okay. >> Um and that will just be announced by the high school league. Okay. Um, so how the process occurs, as I mentioned before, we nominate for the Excel, we just submit it to the state high school league >> and then they've got a group of folks that look at all of them from across the state and they'll narrow it down to either 32 or 36. >> Okay? >> And then they'll announce those winners and you'll see those during all the state tournaments. you'll see their their picture in a real quick bio all throughout um you know March Madness and at the various hockey tournaments and basketball tournaments and that sort of stuff. The AAA is a little bit different. Um our two representatives will go up against our sub region schools and that'll happen the second week. I think it's January 14th at Maple Lake. Um, and basically what they'll do is is they'll introduce themselves and the a committee will take a look at their their applications and that sort of stuff. They'll take a look at how they presented themselves when they were at the banquet and then our sub region will pick a male and a female and they'll go on to St. Cloud the following week to compete against the other three um in our sub region and then those two winners will go on to the state. Okay. So, it's a little bit different of a process. So, >> awesome. Thank you. >> Y >> and thank you to all of our award winners and good luck moving forward here. So, hope to hear good things in January and February >> and good luck. >> Good luck at the choir concert. >> And if you guys have to go, feel free. >> Thank you. >> Thank you for coming. >> Thanks for coming. We'll give them a minute or so to head on out. All right. Item five, our action items of the evening. Uh item A is the acknowledgement of donation, contributions, and fundraising. Mr. Scheler. >> Uh Mr. Chair, we have two donations uh this month I'd like to recognize. Um, we had anonymous donor to the Watertown drama department for $81.25 to help with the trip to London. Um, also a donation from the Hower family to Unified Sports for $50 uh to offset some club fees. So, thank you again to those donors. >> Yes, thank you. >> Make a motion to approve the donations and contributions. >> I'll second. >> Yeah. >> Have a motion made by Miss Gatskco, seconded by Mr. Felt. Any further discussion? All those in favor say I. >> I. All oppose? Nay. Motion carries. Item B, the first read of district policies requiring review. Mr. Schuler. >> Uh, Mr. Chair, uh, this, uh, policy comes before you tonight, uh, policy 513, uh, student promotion, retention, and program design. Um, in the conversations uh in the last spring, um, Miss Okonnell and I had some conversation regarding this policy and just kind of getting it up to date. Um, even though we obviously review it every 3 years, um, it came to light a little bit more uh, this past spring when we had um, a few requests to go through um, the acceleration process. Um, and this really hits on three things. uh promoting students uh from one grade to the next grade in school. It also talks about retention, so holding a student back, but also really talks about acceleration. So again, that's moving a student um up a grade potentially. Um and so um Miss Okonnell did a really nice job uh this summer of doing some research from other area districts both out in this area and also in the metro in terms of what that looks like. So, um, the green, as you can see, has been all updated, which, you know, is a pretty significant upgrade from most of our policies that we bring forth. Um, this one took a lot of time and effort. Um, and again, um, just walking through the process of how the process works if you're looking to accelerate your child uh, up a grade, for example. So, um, our policy committee did have a chance to review this last week um, and did weigh in as well. Um, so at this point we're asking for a first read only and uh we'll bring this back in January for a second and final read. >> And I'd like to note it's not just promotion from one grade to another. It could be within just a a subject or a program of some kind >> from math to advanced math. >> Correct. Correct. Y >> is there a motion? >> So moved. Second. Motion made by Miss Schultz, seconded by Mr. O'Neal. Any further discussion on the student promotion, retention, and program design policy? Hearing none. All those in favor say I. >> I. >> All oppose, nay. Motion carries. >> Item C, the comprehensive achievement and civic readiness annual report. Mr. View, feels like we've already seen this. >> Uh, yes, we have. >> Now we have the real presenter. Well, there's been a couple of uh updates since our last uh clarifications, shall we say? >> Clarifications. Here we go. >> Mr. Scher did the best. >> So, um I believe this is the next slide, Mr. Schuler. >> There. >> And so, we just cleaned up some language on this slide here just so that it's um anybody from the public who is looking at this slide could hopefully read this now and make sense that um our young Royals uh students perform 9.2% 2% better than our non young Royals students uh on the fast bridge score during the fall of this past year and the math students did 23.3 points percent better um excuse me not points but percent better than the non young royals students on the fast. So that was um a little bit wonky the the first time around. Um, and if a couple more five slides. Um, yep. Keep. Yep. And we keep going. Next one. Next one. Next one. There. Yep. So, keep going because the only thing that changed here is this goal was met. Um and probably because uh you were at the meeting um one of our fine uh parent community members uh pointed out that um Mr. Fle got it wrong. So had said it was not met. So uh but it is met. So that goal has been uh and changed up here on on this one. And then down to because this goal was met, we decided to up the um uh goals for next year uh based on these scores here. So, we upped the goals to be um in like Yep. So, we're looking at slide 28. Uh back one, back >> back there. >> There we go. >> There. So, uh because we're at 70%, we upped it by 2% uh in both of those categories from 70% to 72% for this next year and then I think 65% up to 67% for this next year at all. Um, I went through I tried to look at the revision history and make sure that these were the only three slides that were changed since our last discussion. So, um, well, other than that, we should be uh, good to go. And that's um, these were the clarifications I believe you were looking for last time. >> Thank you. Thank you. >> And based on those clarifications, we do need to make a new motion approval. I make a motion to approve the updated comprehensive achievement and civic readiness annual report. >> I'll second. >> Motion made by Miss Danielson and seconded by Miss Gatskco. Any further discussion on the updated report? All those in favor say I. >> I. All oppose. Nay. Motion carries. Item D, the 2627 school year calendar. Second and final read. Mr. Schuler. >> Uh, Mr. chair, board members, uh as as we recall, we were bringing um the second uh read for our 2627 school year calendar. Uh again, uh last month, you uh had a first read. Uh again the changes on this particular calendar uh we came back to the um still starting uh before Labor Day on September 1st but um keeping the traditional uh spring break um that last week in March uh to align to Easter as well. So uh no changes since your last uh look at this particular version. Um, so at this point we're asking for a um approval of the 26 27 calendar >> and we're still done with school end of May. >> The 28th. >> Yep. >> Move approval. >> I'll second. >> We have a motion made by Miss Nton, seconded by Miss Gets. Any further discussion on the 2627 calendar? I just thought it was very interesting that the Minnesota State High School League had to change the basketball tournament. >> Oh, did they? >> Week because of conflicts with the uh facilities at the U of M. So, it's kind of like >> out of our control too sometimes, right? >> Yeah. >> When an appropriate spring break should fall. So then kind of our well um our next step then would be to kind of clear or fill in those other black boxes and get that published >> sharing um the district the final draft with the proial schools in our district as well. Okay. >> They like to align. >> So I'll share that again. They've already gotten the first read just to give them a heads up and let them know it's not official until after this week. >> Awesome. >> And then I'll work with the admin team to fill in the left. >> Okay. And as we did promise that we're going to bring the 2728 C uh calendar to you as well. Um so you should hopefully see the first draft of that in January. >> Okay. >> Awesome. >> So two years out. >> Yeah. >> Which is good. >> That would be helpful. >> And again we have a motion made by Miss Nate and second by Miss Gatskco. Um any further any additional discussion? >> All right. All those in favor say I. I. >> I. All oppose. Nay. >> Motion carries. And that ends the action items of the evening. U moving on to the strategic plan update. Mr. Schuler. >> Uh tonight just like to highlight uh real quickly just some neat pieces of of the kind of the season in terms of how our um students are engaged uh community members as well as some of the partnerships and the people um part of our strategic plan and and I think I've shared a little bit on just some of the cool performances that we've had and community outreach that our students have had. Um, couple things just to highlight again. Um, holiday performances right here at the senior uh dinner uh a few weeks back. Our our band and our choir um and our National Honor Society students were all working that. Uh but again, just really appreciated by all of our seniors in our community and it's it's neat to see how many people pulled me aside and just said, "Wow, thank you for doing this. It's great to see the kids." So, it's great outreach um students doing that. Um, also again the middle school I know and I'm sure Mr. Girtton will hit on this as well, but just they do the 12 days of giving um I saw some of the data this morning, but they collected 291 toys um and gift cards along with about $2,253 to be used um for gifts in the family for families in need right here in our town mayor community. Um the high school food shelf uh Mr. Dr. Hen and I got a chance to peek in on that process on Friday, but uh I think they bagged 52 bags valued at about $40 each. Um which accumulated about 575 pounds of food um to our local food shelf here. Uh so our students packed the bags um and were ready to go uh to families in need. Um our career uh our career and community class also made gingerbread houses uh for local nursing homes and delivered those. and our third grade. I know it does an adopt a family admittance of hope at the elementary. So, two different um holiday uh giving opportunities for students as well and staff. So, pretty neat to see how much uh our our students and families and staff give back to our community. So, that's all I had. Any questions? >> No. And that definitely falls in line with our profile of a graduate that that engaged community member. So, by doing all of those things, it's >> it's helping my students become more well-rounded. >> Thank you. >> Anything else for Mr. Schuler? >> All right. Right along to the admin reports, Mr. Hennon. Darren just stole about threequarters of my report. So, mine's going to be pretty short tonight. >> You know, it was cool. And it really did all come up from the U Pro graduate that every teacher is picking an area to emphasize in their classroom. So for Miss Capitus, that was her area was engaged community members. So that's what kind of prompted that whole thing to to do that. So again, it was kind of a cool use of what we're trying to emphasize with the kids. So um other things we're we're moving along with our schedule for 26 27 making with Mr. Gertton and kind of get that moving. So after we come back, we're going to have a parent meeting on conference or parent teacher conference night and then we'll, you know, by the end of January, early February, we'll be really registered for next year already. So that that comes up quick. Um then just to give you a quick update on I think I know Mr. Schuler heard this at a faculty meeting. We did uh some comparison of last year's like first quarter compared to this year's first trimester and compared two things. One was attendance and the other one was grades. um to compare where we're at last year. This year, our student who were considered chronically absent is cut in half. You know, if you ask me what was one reason for that, I'm not really sure I could say there was an exactly one reason, but it's been a lot of emphasis um by us as administration, by teachers, and everything. So, that's been a really positive thing that we've dramatically cut that down and we've noticed it. The other thing we're cons we were concerned about was kids going from four to six classes. what would that do to grades and specifically kids with with the number of Fs and and what we saw was no increase and in fact actually if you take a percentage of the whole grades you know we had 24 kids with I think a total of 37 Fs last year first quarter we had 26 kids with a total of like 39 but you got to remember their number of classes went up by two per kid so it actually went down so again I I think for a lot of reasons I mean I think teachers obviously changed some things up. I think kids worked harder during our leap kind of our study hall period, but just want to report back that I mean the concern that we had that it was going to dramatically impact things so far. I mean that was a really good transition. So really just pleased to see that those two things weren't impacted by schedule change. So any questions for me? >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Great, >> Mr. Girtton. All right. Good evening everybody. I'll start by highlighting the 12 days uh 12 days of giving toy drive at the middle school. Mr. Schuler alluded to that. So, uh just really impressed again with uh our student leadership, our student council and Mrs. S saying uh she set this goal of 100 toys. Last year was the first year that she raised it to 100 and there were some skeptics. Uh and midway through last week, I might have been one of those. And then the kids really turned on the gas and they just blew us right out of the water with the results. They were just extremely impressive. So again, um all these toys go back to the community, too. So everything that we're doing is going right back into our community to our children that that need toys. 291 toys initially and 2250 $2,200 in cash which translates to another 450 toys. Uh every $5 cash donation or gift card uh equals a toy. So just in incredible uh tomorrow really fun, our student council will go shopping with the $2,200 in cash and they'll spend that down for more toys at Target Monia. So they're going to win a little bit on this too. So yeah, just really impressed and it just says a lot again about our community. Uh it's not easy out there for people right now economically, but their hearts are are about giving back. So kudos to everybody involved in that. Couple of other things. Uh it is the season of concerts and those have fired up. So we had one uh on the 8th of December. We have one tonight. Tonight is a choir concert for grades 71 12 and then we'll have another one in January and another one in February. So all our students 5 through 8 that are in choir band will hold a concert over the winter months here. So those are super fun. Uh lastly, Mr. Hen mentioned we're starting to talk about our schedule for next year already. We had our first meeting this morning. So looking at those things already. So um but with that um we're in a great spot and you know happy holidays to everybody. >> Thank you. Thank you. >> Thank you, Miss Okonnell. And at the elementary we had our mittens of hope. So we had Katie Joe got to see it when she was out at the elementary last week. So, we had basically a whole Santa's workshop in one of our open classrooms um where staff helped get um toys and donations for roughly 25 families and we were there wrapping presents tonight and families will come pick those up this week. Um this week is always a fun-filled week at the elementary. So, today was our first day of spirit week with students and staff probably wearing red, green, white, gold, and silver. It also happened to mark the 67th day of school. And if you have a student, you know what that number means. So today was busing at the elementary in the best way possible. In true no cap fashion, staff pulled off a secret surprise for students by turning today into a fun and memorable 67 celebration. There were moments that felt a little skiitty in the most light-hearted, memeworthy sense, balanced with plenty of positive Sigma energy as students confidently showed up engaged and ready to learn. But most importantly, the day avoided any brain rot and instead focused on connection, joy, and community building. It was a great example of how we intentionally create experiences that students find relevant, fun, and meaningful while keeping our school culture strong. So, teachers had shirts that said six of it, and some of us had shames. Oh my god. >> Um, good for you. >> Oh, no. I wasn't meaning for you to do that. Oh god. >> Too late. >> I love it. Um, we had a song in the morning announcements that um is called 67 Mary Rism that had all the slang that they use. So, we're hoping that by us using it, it will no longer be cool, but we'll see if that works. >> Um, good try. >> We're doing what we can. Uh, tomorrow night is our first family engagement evening of the year. So, it is our glow night from 4:30 to 6:30. So, everything will be glowing with black lights. Show up in your neon. Mr. Durassel will be playing our DJ again, playing tunes. Um, the students have been making glow-in-the-dark dark dark art with MARS and light up circuits with Miss Christensen. And we'll have our glow gallery that they will walk through to see those things. So, it's sure to be a bright and memorable evening. And then on Thursday, January 15th from 4:30 to 6:00, we'll have our kindergarten roundup where we'll be welcoming families in to experience um glimpse of life as a kindergartener. The postcards went out last week, so everyone should have gotten those in the mail if they have a student in their household who will be ready for kindergarten next year based on their age. We have some high schoolers who have already signed up to help us with child care for that evening again so that the students can focus on being there with their parents and enjoying what our school is like. So, we're hoping that we'll get a lot of students from that event who sign up to be royals with us. Any questions? >> Great. >> Good stuff. >> Thank you. >> I guess Mr. Dalton, >> the football game last night. Like it's six to seven weeks. >> Good evening, chair, board, superintendent. Um just a few updates from community education. Uh let's see. Uh our catalog is is out on the streets. We're very happy with the way it looks. Um with registration is open. Just uh to give you an idea, we mail out just shy of 10,000 cataloges to our district and surrounding districts. Um, and then this year we put 450 cataloges out in the community in in high traffic places. That's up from 75 in past years. And I'm happy to report that we've already seen some registrations from people that picked up their catalogs at wherever, the drugstore, the the supermarket. So, so that's effective and we're happy with that. Um, we've got some new offerings we're really thrilled about. We've got soccer shots and skyhawks and they're all they're sports for for young kids ages two to six basically. Um we've got um first down tots, baseball tots, hoopster tots, and soccer tots. And all of those have already picked up some registration so we're hoping that those will all run. Um aquatics. Um, now that registration opened today and to give you an idea of the the uh >> demand for aquatics, >> we have 146 spots for our in in aquatics. 50 of those were taken up since 8:00 a.m. this morning. So, we we uh you know, luckily nothing is full at this point, but but we understand that we need to work to find ways to offer more more um more opportunities for that. And we've got some ideas. Another another piece that we're looking at is maybe to prioritize residents of the school district over over non-district residents. Um there we do get a fair amount of non-district residents that that come to our program. So there's a few different things we're looking at to maybe give our residents the first chance to get those classes. Um child care, we're finalizing um a new three-year-old classroom, just getting that license that'll be inspected by the fire marshal, so on and so forth. And we're um we're working with an organization called Radar, which is a consulting organization what's going to help us with hiring. We have over 50 kids on our waiting list for for child care right now. They believe they can help us get staff. It's really a staff issue that they believe they can help us get staff on board that will we'll be able to reduce those waiting lists and get those people care. Um community engagement. Um we just we just finished um participating with the Festival of Lights. We supported that. um community organization, community event. It was a lot of fun. We took the registration, we provided technical support. It was it was a good it was a good community um event and I look forward to to it continue. Our advisory council meeting, we have an advisory council meeting tomorrow night. That's a makeup from last week when we had some some fun weather. Um what we're going to be looking at that advisory council meeting is really ways to to uh may maybe the structure of the council, the bylaws of the council, how we can maybe get greater public engagement on the council and we're looking forward to that operations. We're uh continuing to work with our LEO to get um facility use operational. Um, we continue to work with our preKK transition team, which which we just saw some of the results of that. And, um, we learned a lot with this this catalog production, and we've got some ideas on streamlining that production using technology we already have on hand to be able to make it be able to make that process a little bit um, smoother for us. That's what I've got for you tonight. >> Any questions? No. >> Thank you. >> Okay. Thank you. We're just going to try to keep going through instead of stopping the meeting. >> Sounds good. >> So, Mr. View, >> we're pretty close. >> Well, hello again and thanks for allowing me to be here. Got a couple of reports um on our curriculum front. Um to excuse me, Wednesday, a couple of our ELA high school teachers will be working to align their assessments to the new standards. So, we're going to be working, as we have mentioned before, we'll be working with that. Um in our assessment uh area um grades eight, nine, and ten have taken the fast a reading. Um and as you recall, we're going to be using that to identify uh some of the kids who might need to take that second assessment uh the read the captive bas read basics, which will be beginning in the middle of January after we get back from break. Um the rest of the middle school and the elementary will be completing the fast bridge um in January as well. Uh from the professional development, we've got quite a few things on the docket. Um our K12 math team continues to participate in uh the 10 webinar series from MDE on the uh national council of teachers of mathematics mathematical practices model. Um tomorrow Becky Kanzi and Sunonny Crowder will be headed to resource training and solutions for a the first of three trainings on sec it's called the secondary support series. So um providing support for secondary class or secondary schools to um implement the read act requirements that kids who are not reading at grade level getting their targeted support. How is that going to look? So they're going to be offering some supports in those areas. Um uh the leadership team tomorrow and Wednesday will be on their day five and day six of the six day trainings for the uh 5D 5D plus teacher evaluation model. uh we've already gone through four days during the last uh two in October, two in November and now two in December to wrap up that series that is presented or or was developed by the center for educational leadership out of the University of Washington and actually the entire state of Michigan requires that for all their administrators as their uh evaluation model. Um and also as Mr. Scheler has probably told you, we're working to improve our prek K transition. Uh, so we've been working and um getting some of our our getting all of our teachers to observe. So the pre-K teachers have gone up to the kindergarten and kindergarten teachers have gone down to the prek classrooms to observe. And then we're going to get together in uh I believe January and start talking about what did we notice where where can we start bridging some of these uh the gaps that we might have. And um the teachers have written down some reflections and we'll be going over that uh in January or in February. And then um finally uh January 19th is just around the corner. We've got a full day of training for uh arts and letters. We've got two three-hour sessions, a morning and an afternoon session um for our uh arts and letters teachers. And then we'll have science of reading training for our phase one teachers who haven't had it yet. As well as in the afternoon there'll be four hours for our paras to get them uh in the loop on the science of reading as well. That's all I've got. Any questions? >> Thank you. >> Mr. You forgot to mention that to make it happen where kindergarten teachers and preschool teachers could leave and go into the rooms, he helped sub in classrooms the last couple of weeks. So, both in preschool and kindergarten, and he's still here today to to tell us about it. >> I got some fan mail and a lot of hugs. It was I had a kindergarten that said Mr. V came to my class. So, >> thank you, Joe, for doing that, too. Making it happen. Thank you. >> Love it. >> I do a picture. >> It was rave review was from the kindergarteners. >> Good evening. Um the special education department is currently seeking to hire a secondary special education teacher, a par profofessional, and a onetoone licensed nurse to support a medically fragile student. Um we've made great gains on that, so it'll be fun to share that report. Um, additional paraprofessional training has been scheduled in collaboration with Minnesota um, education Minnesota um, focusing on trauma-informed practices, neurodeiversity and mental health and that'll be free for us. So that's another plus. Middle school and high school teachers are completing first trime trimester progress reports and developing transition focused IEP goals to support students moving between buildings. Middle school special education staff are also collaborating with the reading and math intervention teachers to monitor student progress and align instructional practices. Um the district has been awarded a bright works grant to support a parah educator book club aligned with spe a special education work plan. Um the selected text is lost at school by Ross W. Green. Um and it will support PAR educators in strengthening their understanding of student behavior. Um identifying lagging skills and implementing proactive collaborative um solutions. Um at this time our K through transition evaluation team has completed 54 evaluations. Six um eight initial evaluations initial evaluations. So two are from parents and six are from teachers. and the early childhood team has um so far received 21 special education referrals year to date. Um are there any questions? >> Okay. I hope you have a great holiday with your family. >> Thank you. Merry >> Christmas. >> Mr. Scheler. >> Uh thank you, Mr. Chair. Uh board members, I just want to give a quick update on our SRO um uh situation. And uh again, we met last week. We have a subcommittee of Mr. Burns and um uh Miss Nathan uh along with uh council members uh Thu and Everson and uh uh who are here tonight. Thank you for coming along with um city administrator Dan Tolsma. We met last week and had a real good first initial uh meeting um talking about just the role and how it fits into both the city and the the school's district's plans. Um and again very preliminary at this point. Um but again really good conversation uh on a joint effort to to make something happen potentially. Um I think the the key thing now will be to meet with the county and u uh Lieutenant Wallen is the is the next uh individual that is probably going to help us come together and and help set the contract. Um if at least get that going and so eventually we can bring that to the entire board for uh approval. Um, obviously, you know, we are looking at some funding streams and options there on what this could look like. So, we continue to have those discussions internally on the school side. Um, I know the city has said they are working that into their budget um at least for the final three months of the of the year and then um we'll reup that again and we'd be looking at a three-year plan. I think we had agreed upon that if we were to go forth this would be a three-year um agreement uh at this point in time. So again, no specifics right now on the financing piece, but um Mr. Burns or Miss Nate, you have any other thoughts from the meeting and again um just appreciate the council members and and uh city minister Tolsma for taking the time to meet. It was a was a really good start. >> Yeah, I think it's a great opportunity. I really appreciate the city's involvement and bringing us in on that discussion. So really well. We'll continue to keep the board updated on the progress and in our meetings. That'll probably be monthly now as we move forward to our budget season and uh you know we're starting to get into that uh in January. So again seeing how this all plays out um will be the next step. >> So then kind of from a next steps or or or endgame from the school district side when do we have to have a decision when if this is the path that we want to go down? you know, obviously we've having really good conversations. When is that going to hit our board table for an approval on our side? >> Yeah. Um, I would believe, you know, March would be probably the March board meeting is we would bring it to you. April, you'd probably make a decision as a board to either move forward or not to move forward. Um, >> the city has said certainly if the district decides not to move forward with this that they would reallocate the dollars elsewhere, but um that you know it's certainly not binding by any means. I just don't know how fast it would turn around. So, >> yeah, absolutely. And this this would start uh you know, September uh start of the school year. Um I know the city has talked about potentially could it have worked out for them to have the June, July, and August of this summer. And it sounds like the the uh the deputy of the Carver County Sheriff's Department said we just can't find someone and turn it around that fast uh to get someone in place >> because we want to make sure it's the right person. >> Absolutely. And that's I think we all just talked about that piece was that's the key finding the right person through the process um and um >> to be successful. Exactly. >> Absolutely. >> Thank you. >> That's all I have. >> All right. Uh any board member reports? >> Um nothing committeewise, but I did uh get to go visit the elementary school, which was super super fun. Um, Miss Okonnell did a great job of putting together a tour for me to go check out um kind of our arts and letters curriculum in action. So, that was really cool to see how it transitions um from grade to grade um and how they how the students learn that, you know, that piece, their literacy. And so, it was really great. I enjoyed it immensely. >> Doing that. >> Yeah. Thank you for doing that. Anybody else? >> Southwest meetings tomorrow. >> Okay. Um, so last week we had a finance committee meeting, talked about the truth and taxation which we'll be seeing here very shortly. We also discussed sort of uh where we're at as a district from a debt perspective uh with our bonds and everything like that. Um that'll be coming uh we'll have a little bit more discussion about that in the works work session in in January. Uh my point of view is I think we're doing very well financially, you know, and that's really a kudos, you know, to to the board, the admin, and the staff for keeping us in this position. Um, a lot of districts are still having to make reductions and and and we're not. And I think that's being very wise with our dollars and I I'm very happy about that. Um, our annual audit is still not complete yet. Um, it has to be signed and fully done by uh 12:31. to the state. So, we're kind of coming up a little bit on crunch time, but SMS stated that it's going to be complete. It'll be on our January uh 26th board meeting uh for approval, but they don't need our approval prior to submitting it. >> Um Mr. Dalton talked about the community education committee. That's going to be tomorrow. Um from an MSBA side, uh we had a board meeting on the 5th and we uh reviewed and approved the legislative p uh legislative um >> document that the priorities. There we go. That's the word. Um and then we approved that at the delegate assembly. Um so, you know, have a look at that and and as we go down putting together our own legislative priorities, you know, use those as as sort of a springboard as as well. Um, couple of the things that that we didn't have as an MSBA side was succession planning. What what are your roles as a board? What is your role as an officer? And what is a succession plan for such as the executive director? It's never they've never had those. So, we're definitely taking steps into kind of creating all of those documents. Um, and if you're attending a leadership conference, our district, there's no elections because I have one more year left to serve as uh district 13, but we're actually going to have elections in six of the 13. So that the MSBA board might change greatly. There's at least going to be four brand new board members, >> and they're three-year terms and you can only be on the board for six years. So, it's a finite amount of time. uh delegate assembly uh was on the 6th. We had 36 positions. We met for four to five hours discussing all of those. I don't have a breakdown exactly um how many passed and became a position of MSBA or not, but I'd say the overwhelming majority did. Um so that was really kind of a a good thing to kind of meet, you know, 120 130 different school board members from all across the state uh for just even a short amount of time. leadership conference January 15th and 16th. Again, we have two presentations this year. Um we have Miss Russell in the school of excellence talking about the summer youth theater. Uh we've done a little bit of discussion on on that for kind of what that's going to look like. And then uh we're also going to do a presentation on the profile of a graduate during one of the roundts. So Mr. Hennon is kind of spearheading that. Uh so if you are attending there's two spots you definitely need to visit as well as the district 13 meeting and and come support me. Um so that is what I have. Um we're going to be doing the truth and taxation meeting next but prior to that as a reminder January 5th is going to be our reorg meeting with a workshop to follow after that. And then um January 26th is going to be our regular first regular school board meeting. So with that, is there a motion to adjurnn? >> Motion to adjurnn. >> I'll second. >> Motion made by Miss Danielson, second by Miss Schultz. All those in favor say I. >> I. All oppose, nay. Motion carries. Meeting is adjourned at 6:44