“It's a lot of celebrations, community connections, you know, certainly graduation coming up or, you know, events like the middle school presidential awards or capstone events or Vantage culminating events or the research event. Certainly, there's no shortage of athletic end of season things. It's a chance to be visible, to see our students in their prime, connect with the community. It's just a really fun time. The these they're busy weeks, but they're very fun.”

“I mean, I think the celebration of excellence is always a highlight. You know, we get to come together as a group and wonderful celebrate all the adults that make a difference in this district. You know, I think we spend so much time talking about the kids. It's nice to take a minute to acknowledge all the grown-ups here who make this possible for everybody.”

“Well, these goals are always under continuous improvement, and we they evolve year-over-year. Uh I will give you a really good example from our last study session. Uh Dr. Amy Leoo gave us some really good data on our immersion program and over more than I think it was more than 75% of our immersion students when they graduate from the year 2026 will have earned the bilingual seal either the gold or the platinum bilingual seal when they graduate. So that's some really significant data that that ties directly to that board goal of student learning and support. So that's that's a really good continuous improvement I would say.”

“Yeah, I think we've we've got one of the best public school districts in the state, right? And so I think that's definitely a signal like of of our level of achievement and I think that's what we want public education to look like across Minnesota. But it's something that we can't ever sleep on. We can't take our eye off the ball. And that's why our goals are sort of a living document that evolve from year to year and change based on the needs of the community and how education's changing.”

“So there's some anchor work that will take multiple years. You know, one example might be elementary literacy. That's a three or four year process of uh training our teachers using new materials. Next year it'll be new materials in our immersion classrooms and then behind that we'll be focusing on math again. So um those are multi-year pieces where what we we want to see steady improvement but will never be done.”

“If you look at something like well-being, connection, and belonging, we have longitudinal data that shows that like at our high school, we're doing a better and better job ensuring students feel connected to our staff and our staff feel like they're building student connections, but we'll never be done because we're going to graduate seniors and pick up another group of freshmen. So, that's ongoing work.”

“We use that data and uh parents feedback steers a lot of that data. Our board goals are a reflection of what our community says are priorities.”

“Uh well the board recently approved board goals. You know one of the things we heard a year ago was about cell phones and uh a lot of concerns about cell phones and access to cell phones. We really doubled down on that this year and we heard great feedback from kids across the system. Kids, you know, kids lose their self-discipline and so it we won't be done as long as cell phones are coming to school and parents are setting them. We're going to need to have systems to support it.”

“A huge shift over probably the last nine months. our our community last summer said we're really wanting to make sure you're monitoring technology use during the day over the last you know probably two months that has really come up is uh community members have said please don't continue to expand this use unbridled. So, we're doing a reset. You're going to see in our board goals, you know, clear expectations for what should be happening during the school day. Certainly, our youngest learners using much less technology. Elementary using technology considerably less. Middle school scaling back use.”

“Across the country you're seeing this push back like, hey, let's pull back on technology in schools and we want to lead the way in that.”

“Finances I think are always a big piece of work for the district. It's a it's a big public institution. There's a lot of spending that we're responsible for and the you taking care of our kids' education is a pretty sacred trust. I mean, it's it's why we're all here.”

“I'm I'm of the personal view that the budget is everything because how we spend our money reflects our values. And we spend, you know, nearly 90% of our our dollars on um on student education and on personnel in this district and trying to make a a difference in our students day-to-day lives.”

“A lot of that money comes for the legislature and thankfully we've got a group of very active uh parents who engage with the legislature regularly on the case committee. Um, and on the on the the community outreach and everything piece, I think that's I mean, that's been an evolution, but it's been a really good change the past year. I think our goals don't evolve the way they do and we don't incorporate feedback around technology the way we do unless we're out there and actively engaging with our our community.”

“I've really embraced being the chair this year and I've learned more about is the community emails that I receive that I'm that's I'm responsible for responding to emails and that has been um not overwhelming but it has been a learning curve for me but it's allowed me to interact with the community as part of what Dan is saying and it's been very um enjoyable to see the thoughtful process that our community is really engaging and it shows me that they are dedicated ated to keeping our district excellent and that's been a really um enjoyable piece for me as well.”

“One of the great things is that in a in a board like this, there are sort of roles for everybody based on their skill sets and their interests. You know, I sort of came on really interested in the budget and finance and spent a couple years as the treasurer. Um, being the vice chair now, you're sort of at a a position where, you know, with the chair, a lot more information flows through you and you're you're privy to a little more behind-the-scenes work that goes into the district on the um cabinet and administrative level. And that really helps to be able to just bring that additional level of knowledge to community conversations and let people know what's going on, what we are talking about and working on.”

“It's important. I've I've realized um just being starting from when my children were in kindergarten and volunteering through all I have a graduate now who's going to be walking across the stage how important this this work really is and how important it is to have such strong leadership and connection to the community um and having a really strong working relationship with our board like we do. There's not there's not just one person, right? It's really important to have trust in each other and and get the job done. It's the students who matter. That's why we're all here.”

“Yeah, I mean, I think I think people can be motivated to do something like this and run for elected office for a lot of different reasons, but once you land where we are and you're in the position to govern, it it's really about communicating effectively and working effectively as a team. And um, you know, we have hard conversations and frank conversations. That's why we're here. But uh our job is to push through those and get to the other side and figure out what's best for the district and then in lock step just do that as a team and help the administration give them what they need to do the best for our students.”

“You know it was a nonfunding session. So our expectations were tempered. We would really um I had said back in January when I met with our community advisors or their community support group, we're laying the foundation for the next year's funding session. And we had many opportunities to connect with our elected officials. Some of them tech text me weekly or email weekly and you know we have people who have testified at the capital. Paul Bourgeois is a very wellrespected voice in the capital who testified on some of the things that we're working on. Um, I feel confident that we got inroads into the capital.”

“You know one of the things that we're going to have to be very intentional about is it's an election year and there's a going to be a lot of turnover in both the house and the senate Minnesota. So, we are going to be working in September just letting the community know here are things that are important to Minnotonka. As you talk with elected officials as they come door knocking, make sure that you ask these questions. How prepared are they to give our local community the ability to fund our school system? Because the state has a deficit budget. They're going to be cutting from education, not adding to it in the next bienium. So, our community continues to say, "How can we help ourselves?" We need to ask our elected officials, are you prepared to give communities the chance to support themselves?”

“This session, um, one of the things that came through is going to be a vote on the ballot in November about the education land trust. That that could have a a hundreds of thousands of dollars swing for us. It's certainly, you know, our budget over the next five years is looking to be seven or eight million dollars in deficit spend. We need a couple different strategies to close up that hole. That will be a little piece of it. it won't be the answer. You know, people will vote yes on that and it won't raise taxes necessarily. It's a a land trust that they're going to invest in differently, but every $300,000 counts towards that $8 million deficit. That was probably one of the few positives out of this session. That and a lot of discussions about what needs to happen next year.”

“The legislature hasn't touched the two funding streams that are locally driven, the board approved levy and the voter approved levy for over a decade. And about every 10 years, they have to say, "Okay, let's bring this back up to what current dollars mean." And that that's the biggest piece. for the legislature could make a bigger jump in year-over-year investments rather than the 2 and a.5%. You know, we really need five or 7% one time to get a catch-up.”

“It is unique. Uh, and it's an opportunity to do what we can as a district to look out for the long-term finances of our district and to try to help the general fund as much as possible given what Superintendent Law just spoke to about the the budgetary challenges facing public education.”

“This fund would be different. This would be more like a traditional trust fund where folks could dedicate a sum of money to the district and we would never touch that. But eventually the amount of money in the fund would grow so big that we could start to use some of the interest that that fund earns to help our budget and help our programming and pay for things that we're having trouble paying for elsewhere.”

“This is not something that's going to happen and we're going to see a benefit in the next two years or five years. But the goal is for folks who have a long tie to this district and who are concerned about the long-term future of this district to give them an opportunity to invest in public education in a more direct way.”

“The board can choose at that time which program they want to make sure lasts. This is just an investment in the legacy of exceptional programs in Minnotonka so that in tighter budget times down the road there's an opportunity.”

“No so we've we've got a lot of a lot of current problems and things that we wrestle with and current responsibilities but like boards before us who established the foundation for uh the district's you know health that it is today through open enrollment or created innovative programs like our Spanish and Chinese immersion programs. Those were things that didn't pay dividends right away at the time, but they they they were a foundation for the future. And so, while we're wrestling with the problems that we have to dayto-day and yeartoear, we also want to keep our eye down the road and do everything that we can to invest in the future of this district.”

“It's been building. I think that this is a national topic like our our there are state leader or state school leaders talking about this. There was national webinars about this. School districts are starting to scale back. So, it's not surprising that when you expand opportunities, at some point you hit a limit. And I think for for certainly, uh, some of our parents, we've hit that. And we hear it and we see it within our own classroom. And so, um, I think we're constantly evolving with how we deliver instruction. And this is probably a reality check that that has expanded too far and we need to pull back.”

“We hear it from teachers, too. It isn't just parents. prek or K experience might be minimal to nothing and the senior experience might be much more rich because they're going to be launching into a world that's much more digital and we we need to look at that and say even at our senior and high school level how much of that can still be tactile paper and pencil.”

“However, um, there's no cost-free solution here. When we we used to pay for textbooks and textbooks used to run $150 to $300 a textbook and they'd get outdated in a year. We buy less textbooks be because we'd buy digital subscriptions if we stop using digital subscriptions. Those funds will go back to textbooks that get outdated quickly. So, uh, you know, there's a there isn't a necessarily a straight cost savings to this. There's just a how do we help our teachers make this transition to be age appropriate with technology conscious of what kids best you know as their pedagogical learning accelerates through the system how much technology is appropriate at each level and acknowledging like um there if if we could save millions of dollars by stopping using technology and deliver high quality experience for students that would be we would do it right. We we think we're being very costefficient and best practice and we're constantly learning.”

“We want to meet with our teachers about what's realistic. And then our goal is prior to the start of the school year at a board meeting, we'd be sharing, you know, here's here's what you should be expecting because parents want to know what should I expect, how do I partner, how do we, you know, for parents that don't want their tech their iPads to come home, how do we support those parents? for parents that want to know how do I limit my child's access to things? How are we, you know, we are constantly providing thicker firewalls to prevent students from accessing things they shouldn't? And how do we partner with parents so they know what their child what app should they be using? Um, that should be a big step forward in the fall.”

“Well, um, the board has a goal of engaging the community in a variety of fashions. And we know that every time community members get to see behind the curtain, like when we went through the facility task force and had 25 community members go through every one of our buildings for an intense period of time, you know, really two or three hours a night all summer long, those people came back and said, "Oh my gosh, there, you know, they recommended almost $200 million in improvements. we uh presented to the voters and got approval this year thankfully for 85 million. But all of those people consistently said there's need to meet the needs of our current students. So we our past practices when we invite people in and they can understand what's happening, they become advocates. They we hear their questions, it helps us message and communicate like oh that's a perception people have. we should. So, we're doing this to get another group of 20 or 25 people into our system to understand our system and help us spread the message and also to hear their feedback about, oh, I that's so different than what I thought was happening in transportation or in nutrition services.”

“Yeah. I mean, I don't I don't know that there's much that I've done that's been more fulfilling than working for the district and helping, you know, look out for the education, the future of our kids. I think it's it's been fantastic for me personally and I think it's uh an opportunity any community member should jump at because this is public education, right? It belongs to our community. It belongs to them. It's their investment and we all believe in it because we all want this for our kids. So, it's an opportunity for everyone to, you know, pitch in and help, you know, row that boat in the same direction so we can make sure our kindergarteners have uh what our seniors have right now.”

“Our students, you know, coming across the stage, that moment of being in front of everyone is can be nerve-wracking for students, but to hear their parents so proud and to see those students so happy to turn this corner in their life, hoping that so many of them, you know, I ideally 100%, but hoping they're all excited, well prepared. It is one of my favorite moments. and and students generally speaking, it's one of the most joyous moments that they've had.”

“It is so joyful. That was the word that came to my mind and it literally is making me nervous and excited to think about it because I remember my first one and I remember saying to superintendent law afterwards I just said what an overwhelmingly joyful experience that was just to see all of those years o”