We are gathered on the land of the Dakota and Ajiway peoples. I ask you to join me in acknowledging the Dakota and Ajiway community, their elders, both past and present, as well as future generations. St. Louis Park Public Schools also acknowledges that it was founded upon exclusions and erasers of many indigenous peoples, including those on whose land this dis this school district is located. This acknowledgement demonstrates a commitment to dismantling the ongoing legacies of colonial power and the district's desire to support the ongoing work of local indigenous communities to thrive in our schools.

An activity that was challenging for me in third grade was our flashlight project. It was hard because I wanted it to be perfect. When I got down on myself, I remember what Miss Failen, our language teacher, told me. She said, "If you misspell, it's okay." And Ms. My third grade teacher reminded us to breathe in and breathe out to get through tough things. In the end, it wasn't so bad and I was happy with my drawing.

This year we did a supermarket project. It was about learning how to add money. I use a car with as much money as I want. I followed the rules. Even though I didn't know much English, the first round was difficult for me. I try to do it right, but I think I did it wrong. As the rounds as the rounds went by, I realized that it doesn't always ha have to be perfect. I just had to keep trying until I could do it. The more times I tried, the better I felt, and I felt more hopeful until I finally got it. I felt confident that one day I would be able to do it correctly. This project gave me hope that I can do difficult things.

My job was an inclusivity trainer. Um, I had to go around Biztown and do an accessibility audit to make sure it was welcoming, welcoming, and accessible for everyone. That job taught me to think about other people's needs and make sure everyone feels included. It helped me understand how important it is to create spaces where everyone belongs. Bistown also challenged me. One of my responsibilities was to give a quiz to all the CEOs, but all of them were on break during my work time. Even though I tried hard, I wasn't able to reach all of them. That experience taught me about problem solving and staying flexible when things don't go as planned. I learned that sometimes you do your best even if everything doesn't work out perfectly.

One learning experience I'm most proud of that shows my brilliance and high expectations for myself is playing low ball in gym class. Mrs. S teaches us the right techniques like stepping with the opposite foot when we throw. And she sets up the space so we can all be successful. I've practiced a lot and I've improved my skills. This experience has helped me feel like a dreamer and innovator because I set a goal for myself and worked hard to reach it.

In fourth grade, we did a music project called Elder Wisdom. We interviewed an elder about their life story and turned their lessons into a song. This project helped me become a connector because I had to listen with empathy and communicate with an open mind. It also showed authentic community engagement because we honored someone's story and learned from their experiences. I learned that everyone's voice matters and that we should share our collective responsibility to help each other feel valued and included.

Um, we worked collaboratively with um the the um classroom teachers um and we taught um the instructional assistance. They took a vital role in our intervention. an intervention, reading intervention this year. Um the instructional assistants went through about 10 about 10 sessions of training and they learned um using the FastBridge site, using the um the screeners, the reading screeners. Also, they um they also um instructed um students as well too in small groups. And um they also did progress monitoring.

St. Louis Park Public Schools sees, inspires, and empowers each learner to live their brilliance in an environment that centers student voice and experience to create racially equitable learning that energizes and enhances the spirit of our community. It's a really great reminder to start our meetings that way. Um, because finance is not and shall not be a place where we don't talk about our mission, talk about students, talk about the importance of racial equity.

The reason why we want to increase our fund balance, it is so important. So, we we're just not planning on setting money aside just to sit idle. We want to have the flexibility in case for unforeseen expenses that might come up. So if for example, if we have a $10 million fund balance sitting in the bank, if everything held constant, that's additional four teachers we can hire every year just by having the healthy fund balance. It also serves as a financial uh buffer for protection against um disruption in state funding or federal funding. It provides the district with optionality and flexibility.

Our second budget recommendation around uh fund balance is to maintain a structurally balanced budget. What that means is the budget we present to you here in a couple of months revenue is in the equal total expenditures. In the past, we've been doing the opposite. So that's going to help stabilize and protect the fund balance. It's going to avoid structural deficit. Support strong credit rating and lower our borrowing costs as well as preserve flexibility amid enrollment, economic and cost pressures. It also demonstrate discipline and stewardship of public funds.

One of the things we want to just remind us is that the an important thing about student enrollment is to try to figure out how to hold our student capture rates. Meaning the number of students that live in St. Louis Park and choose to stay here in St. Louis Park public schools and make this their their choice for education.

Recommendation number five, uh from the FAC, is about student fees and essentially all of them, all student fees, meal prices are going to stay the same, uh with the exception of the high school parking, which is an annual fee. We're going to bump that up from $100 to $200, which is perfectly in line with surrounding districts.

This is around class sizes. This number has not changed in, you know, as long as I've known. So these are the guidelines that we use for class sizes. If you click into the that hot link there around guidelines, it will show you that our class sizes that we actually report are in every grade level lower than this. So, we don't staff to try to maximize our our class sizes. We use this as a guideline because of the way students show up in cohorts. We can't always stay um you can't always get 23 students in every classroom, but we try to stay below them.

What we want to make sure we pay attention to this year, our recommendation is that we reduce the variability of class sizes at mostly the high school and middle school level so that we're more transparent. We make sure that we're clear about all kinds of things and that we're paying attention to low enrollment courses and know that and that the community knows that. And we want to improve staffing predictability in all kinds of different ways.

Recommendation number eight is just to focus on understanding and addressing uh the different key cost drivers that we have within the district. Um and so that's [clears throat] a lot of analyzing uh reporting um you know transparently reporting things, sharing t