I pulled this item for separate consideration It's a $50,000 grant. Um, that the Office of College and Career Readiness, I believe, is submitting for Saint to the Saint Paul, Minnesota Foundation. There is a reference of the City of Saint Paul Right Track program in there as a partner, and I just wanted to uh, um, I will be abstaining from the vote just because there's a reference, um, to my employer in that.

The sale of these bonds did commence this week, yesterday, as a matter of fact, uh, June 22nd, the most favorable bid coming from the Raymond James and Associates with a true interest cost of 3.78%. Additional information will be provided tonight from Mr. Hart, and these proceeds again will be, uh, related to projects identified within our facilities plans. The bond closing will be on July 14th, at which point the district will receive these funds.

Moody's Investors Service, and they did affirm the school district's AA2 rating. Um, acknowledging the strong support that your community provided as a part of the referendum last fall and the work that you've done this spring, uh, to be having considered a balanced budget here for fiscal year 27 were major parts of their affirmation of that bond rating.

As a point of summary, uh the district is now presenting, we will present tonight as you've seen in the past for several times now, a balanced budget for FY 27. This is due in large part to a successful passage of the November 2025 operating referendum vote.

I, I am, um hopeful. I, well, I'm, I'm pleased I should say that um, we are passing a balanced budget for the first time. I know we've done several years of deficit spending and the truth of the matter is. We have deficit spent um, the amount that our board, uh, in our, our the way we govern, um, says we can and so there isn't additional funds so I just feel like that's also really important to reemphasize as I know you have continued to do throughout this process, um.

At the same time, I am so very grateful for our community for stepping up and and for voting yes for that referendum because this would have been so much worse, so much worse if the referendum hadn't passed. The cuts would have had to go so much deeper, um, and there are, uh, again, like so many programs, so many staffing positions that were protected because the voters stepped up and adopted that referendum um.

Uh, our community came forward and told us that they wanted to see a greater commitment to music and arts, and we are doing it. Um, we have uh, through board parameters we've seen the administration work to make sure that educational supports were protected uh, that we maintained our investment in pre-K, um making sure that we're, we're allocating dollars for the, the critical early years, um, where, where there was so much need, we, uh, did not, um, uh, you know make cuts to, uh. Class size, we did not rely on additional composite classrooms.