Good evening everyone and welcome to the August 10th, 2026 regular meeting of the Prior Lake Savage Area Schools Board of Education. Thank you to everyone joining us here this evening as well as those watching online. We appreciate your engagement and interest in Prior Lake Savage Area Schools. I now call this meeting to order. Please stand as you're able and join us in the pledge of allegiance. >> I pledge algiance 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. >> Okay, all board members are present this evening. Um, next up is our mission statement number five on the agenda. As we begin our meeting, I'd like to ground our work in the mission of the of Prior Lake Savage Area Schools, which is to inspire and empower each student to reach their full potential. Our mission is an important reminder of why we are here and who our decisions are ultimately intended to serve, our students. Uh, next item on the agenda is the strategic plan. Our work is guided by our strategic plan. And tonight, I'd like to highlight our second pillar, optimize resources, um, which is prioritizing efficient and effective use of fiscal, human, and capital resources through excellence in governance, administration, and staff as we move through tonight's agenda. This provides an important lens for our work and keeps our focus on the long-term direction and priorities of the district. Uh now we will be moving on to one of my favorite parts of our meeting which is Laker Pride. Tonight we have the privilege of recognizing Elizabeth Kabuzar, International Braille Champion. [applause] Director of Student Support Services, Chuka, I will turn it over to you. And Elizabeth, I'm sorry if I said your last name wrong. Please correct me. [laughter] >> It's okay, but it's Cuz Very good. >> Okay. Well, thank you, um, Chair Bullian, and good evening, Dr. Wner, and board directors. We're here tonight to honor Elizabeth um, who was an incoming fifth grader in our SAGE program. She was crowned the 2026 International Braille Challenge Champion in her division after earning first place or and earning first place in um the finals international finals in Los Angeles, California. Yeah, I think this was just this past June. And she advanced there after winning here in Minnesota the regional Braille Challenge. And she qualified among the top competitors worldwide. There were more than 2,000 students that competed worldwide um with the top 50 advancing to the international finals. This challenge is really the only international academic competition of its kind for students who are blind or visually impaired. They test skills including braille reading comprehension, spelling, proofreading speed, and accuracy as well as interpreting tactile charts and graphs. This was Elizabeth's third appearance at the international finals in her first um championship. So, Elizabeth, with that, we want to honor you tonight with your um your love of learning and determination are are great. I know Elizabeth wants to say just a few words. So, >> love that. >> If you want to step just one step closer to me, you'll be in front of the microphone. >> Okay. >> Okay, >> that's good, right? >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Go ahead, Elizabeth. >> Thank you for inviting me to this meeting and for the recognition. I'm happy and proud to be a part of Pearl Lake schools. I love Sage and I'm disappointed that it will not continue for others. I hoped that the school board and district can figure out a way where all kids can be challenged to reach their full potential. Thank you and have a great night. >> Thank you. >> Thank you, Elizabeth. [applause] All right. Next up is open forum. In accordance with board policy 206, the board provides time to receive citizen input. Each speaker will have up to three minutes. Please respect the time limit and speak as you prefer to be spoken to. Uh we appreciate everyone who has taken the time to be here and share their perspective with the board. Uh, our first speaker tonight is Aaron Pravat Pro Pravatchka. Praanchka. >> Get close. >> Please correct me. >> Provancha. >> Provancha. >> Yep. All right. Thank you. Uh, hello and good evening members of the board, administration, and community. I wanted to start off by mentioning some case law from 2018. That case law is Knight versus Trump. The courts concluded in this lawsuit that social media is considered an open public forum when elected officials use official pages to communicate to constituents. As of recently, we have city members that have been oppressing or blocking individuals due to their expressed views. I spoke last time about the need for a policy regarding sitting school board members and their official pages that represent them as an elected official. We are in unprecedented times when it comes to removing the voice of the community. Which brings me to my second talking point. The proposed enhancement to the policy committee. I've read this proposal and it's written with an an administrative convenience in in mind by using words like efficiency, streamlining, and workload reduction. But let's be clear about what's being proposed today. re removal of the community from the policy formation process. Under the current policy committee, real people have a seat at the table. Two teachers, two principles, and eight community members. They sit together talking through complex ideas and challenging their assumptions. [snorts] This is building policy with the community. Tonight's propos proposal dismantles that table by stripping away deliberation and replaces active community voices with a passive web form. It turns the current process into a suggestion box where feedback is filtered, summarized, and curated by the community members before it ever reaches the board. This moves us back to closed door policy crafting disguises operational efficiency. When decision-making is concentrated at the very top and broad participation is pushed to the side, that's not inclusive governance. The long-term damage of this shift could be profound. Public education relies on fundamentally on trust. And when parents, teachers, and neighbors realize their seat at the table has been traded away for a website form, that trust will likely vanish and cynic cynicism will take its place. This enhancement will alienate the community, staff, and student body, the very people these policies are meant to serve. Let me say one more time, efficiency is a goal for administrative logistics, not for policym. This proposal is not written in the best interest of the education of our students or the connection with the community. Every person I have spoke to recently agrees with me when they say they want greater transparency and involvement. I urge our board members to reject these changes. Thank you for your time. >> Thank you. [applause] >> Our next speaker is Ashley Capuccino. Good evening board members and superintendent WGner. Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight. My name is Ashley Cappuccino and I'm a parent, taxpayer, alumni, and volunteer in this district. I'm here tonight to ask the board to establish clearer expectations for how board members use social media. Director Lisa Atkinson has used a Facebook page titled PLSAS school board director for approximately four years to share district information, board meeting recaps, policy discussions, and communicate with constituents. Board members Johnson and Mason also maintain similarly branded me pages using their elected titles. Although the page includes a disclaimer stating that their views expressed are those of the individual board members, they are still presented under the official titles and used for board related communication. Last Friday, after I respectfully challenged statements about district business, asked questions, and corrected the historical record, I was blocked from Director Atkinson's page. Since then, Director Atinson has offered several explanations for blocking or restricting people, including fake profiles, non-residents, misinformation, bullying, harassment, and Facebook AI or moderation assist. None of those descriptions applies to my conduct. I am a district resident, parent, taxpayer, and active community member. I did not threaten, harass, use profanity, or spread misinformation. I asked questions and challenge statements about district business. This is also not isolated. In a recent community poll, 44 unique people have reported being blocked, having comments hidden or removed, or being unable to comment because of page restrictions. I want to be very clear. This is not a request for the board to mediate a disagreement between Director Atinson and myself. Respectful disagreement is a part of representative government. Elected officials should be able to be questioned, challenged, and sometimes criticized. The concern is whether a board member should be able to selectively restrict constituents from a page presented under this title, schoolboard director, while continuing to use that same page to communicate about district business. There are legitimate first amendment questions here. The US Supreme Court has recognized that a public official's social media activity may constit constitute words um may constitute government actions uh when the official is using the account in an official capacity including in cases involving schoolboard members. Given that, I ask that all any constituents currently blocked or restricted from the board related communication pages be restored. I recognize that under policy 209, individual board members do not speak for the board as a whole and that these pages include disclaimers. However, when multiple board directors maintain pages branded with their elected titles and routinely used to share district information, board meeting recaps, policy discussion, and communicate with constituents about board business. Those pages can reasonably appear to be communications made in official board member capacity. That is exactly why clearer policy is needed. The public should not have to guess whether they are interacting with an individual citizen, an elected representative or a candidate. That ami ambiguity be I'm almost done. The ambiguity becomes even more concerning when the same pages used for reelection campaigning. Board members absolutely have the right to campaign and use social media to do so. But official communication and campaign communication should clearly be separated. A page presented as a board director communication channel should not simultaneously function as a re-election campaign page. Doing both can create the appearance that district identity, authority, and communications are being used to support a particular candidate. I am asking that the board place social media use on a future agenda agenda and establish clear expectations that apply equally to every director. At a minimum, those expectations should address what con constitutes an official board member page, what constitutes a campaign page, whether those functions may be combined, how campaign and district related communication should be distinguished, and under what circumstances constituents may be blocked or restricted from pages used for board related communication. This is bigger than one Facebook page or one disagreement. Clear boundaries protect the board, protect candidates, and protect public trust. Thank you. [applause] OUR [applause] next uh our next speaker is Sarah Waters. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. My name is Sarah Waters and I am a parent of two high students at Prior Lake High School and one uh recent graduate. As much as I would prefer this board to spend its time to focus on budget and academic concerns than sports, I was compelled to come speak after last meeting's lively discussion about the MSHSL and an issue concerning less than a fraction of 1% of athletes in this state. As a former high school athlete and mother of athletes, I'm also a big advocate of supporting equal opportunity in the well-being of girls in sports and quite frankly all athletes. Therefore, I'd like to share some numbers and statistics reflecting some other impactful issues and threats to girls participating in sports for your consideration and advocacy as appropriate in local or state levels. [snorts] Access. In the 50 years since Title 9 was enacted, the number of girls participating in athletics at the high school level increased from 300,000 to nearly 3.5 million. The number of women participating in the collegiate level also rose 600% during that time to more than 200,000. Yet, the core participation opportunity requirements of the legislation are currently under attack, as is the institution that enforces it, the Department of Education. If programs fail at the college level, will youth sports thrive and survive? Cost. Parents spend more than 40 billion annually on youth sports in the US. An average of more than 1,500 per year per family. Any club parent will tell you that $1,500 dwarfs what we are spending on a club sport um in travel sport. Yet, it's really hard to be competitive in varsity sports if you're not participating in club sports. Health studies estimate that female athletes may be two to eight times more likely to injure ACL's than boys. Depending on sport, 50 to 200, thousand or 200%, excuse me, more likely to experience a concussion, as much as two times as likely to suffer a depression, and almost two times as likely to suffer an eating disorder. The scarcity of female specific research in sports science and medicine represents a significant barrier to optimizing athletic care. I hope you join me in my personal call against past and proposed billion dollar cuts in health studies specifically to those for women. This point I'm going to leave my numbers and talk about mental health in sports. And I think because I think that's the area that this board can pay most attention to. Um, as a parent, and I'm sure many of you have kids in sports nowadays, you know, this is now it there's like a 365 day expectation for your kids to be participating in their sport. There are offseason practices. Sundays are not sacred. Church is not sacred. Family is not sacred. I would urge all of you to look at where you guys can impact burnout culture in sports in our schools. And I am not talking about mental health awareness nights or t-shirts or policies that can be inrun. How can we impact that culture in our schools today? Thank you. [applause] That concludes open forum. Thank you to everyone who shared comments with us this evening. Um, now we'll move to item number nine, which is administrative reports. Dr. Wagner, I'll turn it over to you. >> Okay. At this point, uh, we haven't had any, uh, board committee meetings. Uh, does anybody have anything they need to report on for board committees as far as we haven't met, so I don't know if there's anything to report at this point. Okay. Uh so we'll move on to administrative reports. We'll start with uh child and nutrition services. Um director Malone is going to present on that. >> Directors and Superintendent Wagner. Thank you for having me. Um I always appreciate time to stand up here and tell you guys about my favorite topic, feeding kids. Um, I'm not Did I [clears throat] Oh, I think it's here. This again. Do I go forward? Maybe go back over. Thank you. All right. Thanks everyone. Um with Okay. And I'm going to complicate it even more by having two computers. So bear with me. It was queued up earlier and then we I think we had a um an update happen because this is not the slideshow. This is a PDF. Okay, that's okay. We'll deal with it. So, um I wanted to um say thank you again for having me. Um happy Monday. [laughter] >> It's been a day. Um [gasps] anyways, um so speaking of feeding kids, look at I I wish I could enlarge that top left picture of that student and her tray. There are so many fruits and vegetables on that tray. I just love that picture. Um there's another picture there of Five um a Firefox meal and then one of our garden bars. Um, so did you know that last year you had 10 restaurants in your community that served that opened up at 6 a.m. and served 1,238,275 meals all in 172 days. Um, they have the strictest health code of any kitchen in the whole country. They operate on $4.81 a plate. And can you guess who that is? Um, for lunch they offered [laughter] I'll give you more hints. Um, they offered two hot balanced meals and one cold balanced meals to all the elementary student students in our community. Three hot balanced meals and one cold to all of our middle school students and four hot and one cold to our high school students. Um, next year we're actually going to increase that at the high school to five hot meal options. And um, we're going to switch things around a little bit to kind of have some efficiencies over at the high school. But um, can you believe it? And we did all of that in 172 days. Um, for less than a price of a latte, we served those students. Um, and we don't just cover food on that $4.81 reimbursement that we get from um, state and feds. We have to cover our own in child nutrition fund too. We have to cover our own employee salaries and benefits, um, labor costs, equipment, custodial services, um, utilities. I'm sorry I'm not advancing this. Um, utilities, repairs, we pay for our own trash, our own software, and much, much more. All for that $4.81. Um, so I'm going to give you a little bit of school nutrition 101. I won't get too in-depth. This is a really kind of boring slide, but it's got a lot of details on it. We won't go over the whole thing. Um, but most people think, you know, everybody eats, so they assume serving school meals must be pretty easy. You know, put healthy food out, the kids will take it. Yeah, it is not that easy, you know, and if you can do that at your house where you just put out healthy food and kids eat it, I applaud you. But if you consider the wide variety of students that we have and just the wide variety of students of at my own table at home um and they all grew up in the same house um it's very very complicated and not only do we have to serve those healthy foods but we have to consider all kinds of things like meal pattern requirements fruit vegetable vegetable subgroups whole grains milk um we have a meat meat alternate which is basically the protein group um we have to use offer versus serve um we have to uh uh adhere to the byamerican provision. So, um because we take federal funds, we adhere to the biamerican provision, which right now it's at 10%, we're allowed to have 10% of our goods and services and processed things um come from non-domemestic sources, but by 2031 it'll be 5%. And it doesn't sound like that big of a deal, and it's not. We really do obviously want to purchase from um all American sources, but things like bananas are not distributed in the United States grown and distributed in the United States. Pineapple is not, you know, you can maybe get away with not serving pineapple, but bananas are pretty big staple, especially for little kiddos. Um, even the canned fruit. So, we have a canned option and a fresh option of fruit on every line every day. And we in Prior Lake Savage Schools don't serve anything with high fructose corn syrup and the fruit juice that is in this the canned vegetables or canned fruit, excuse me. Um, they can't find it domestically. So, it's not a byamerican and it's kind of a it's a choice, but um we're choosing to buy things that are not um that have natural juices in them, not high fructose corn syrup, but it's now not by Americans. So, just a lot of these little details that we have to deal with. Um all of these requirements are different by age group. So, K5 is one group, one requirement. Um 6th through 8th is another. 9th through 12th is another. Uh one of our middle schools serves a high school. So, we've got two different meal patterns at that school. Um, there's nutrient standards for calories, sodium, saturated fat. So, everything is measurable. You can't just put out healthy food. Um, in addition to that, we have to um record everything we do because if you don't document it, you didn't do it. And so, I apologize because I think there was a link in the um presentation that you guys probably weren't able to open. But this is it. Um, and this is our production records. We have to keep these production records on record um for three years plus the current year. So that if anybody came in and said um how much brown rice did you serve in September of 2023, I would have to go back and tell them exactly how much brown rice I served, how I prepared it, how much I threw away, how much I cooled down, what I did when I cooled it down. Um all of this has to be filled out. And each of these things um pertains to a regulation. So go back here. All right, we're almost done with the boring part, right? Um, so this here is an example of what you might see if um you are a community member is looking at our menu. This is actually not our menu. Um, it's just an example. And then what we see is in the back end how all of those items credit. So again, it's not just put out healthy vegetables or put out vegetables in general. It is you have to have a red orange subgroup. You have to have a starchy veg. You have to have an other veg. You have to have a green leafy veg. and they have to take a certain amount of all of that. So all of this has to be um recorded, documented, um and it's not just as easy as, you know, let's serve healthy foods to kids. Um [snorts] so even with all of those crazy technicalities, we still do a lot of really fun things here in Prior Lake Savage Schools. So this slide here, top left, um we've got some high school students. um we partner and um we actually are guest speakers at a nutrition class at Prior Lake High School and then those students um a few times a year will either help us serve or they'll come down and do try it Tuesday with little kiddos. So these guys are um serving at the high school. Um that next p picture is um we partner with the indigenous food lab. So they um asked for community partnerships and we volunteered and basically what they wanted to know from us. It was interesting because we thought, oh, they're going to teach us how to get indigenous foods on the plates of students, but really they were like, no, no, we want you to tell us what to do. So it was this really neat um conversation that we started and we've had with them for um a little over a year now. And they really want to do what will work for kids and what kids would like. And then we need to tell them how to do that um with all of those fun regulations that you saw. Um the top the two top right pictures um I think you guys probably remember um Prior Lake Savage Area Schools was the first award winner of the Minnesota Department of A farm to school grant or um award. And so since then we've had a lot of partnerships with the Minnesota Department of A. A lot of really neat opportunities. This was last year. Um they had uh greens, apples, and different peppers that they wanted students to try. And then they wanted to um interview the students and put them in these farmer stories. And so they did. Um the farmer stories ended up being really long and long-winded and stuff like that. So I didn't link any here, but um you can find them on the Minnesota Department of A website. Um bottom left there, we had a chef come out and do some knife skills for one of our professional development days. Uh that middle picture is just a really beautiful picture of a ramen bowl um at I think it was a middle school. And then here we have two high school students that are doing the um um try it Tuesday. So kids tend to try things when other kids and especially big kids are um trying to feed it to them. So that's a little trick that we do. Um, and then bottom right is um [clears throat] a picture of the students or I'm sorry, Gl the Glendale team um celebrating um school lunch hero day. Just realized now that I probably not going to be able to click on another link because of the PDF here, but um what else are we doing? So, uh learning in the lunchroom. We do as much as we can to teach kids about where foods come from and to be adventurous eaters in the lunchroom. So, um, we've had this try it Tuesday program that we've been doing, I think, for at least 10 years now. Um, in the beginning it was really so that kids could be adventurous eaters and try something and not feel like it's, you know, um, scary because it's like their whole tray or something. So, a little try it and then we would eventually get that on the menu. Um, now after doing that for 10 years, nine months out of a year, we're like kind of running out of ideas. So, now we kind of just do fun things, too. Um, so here we've got that top left. There is the um corn and blueberry salad. That's actually an Indigenous Food Lab um recipe. Spinach and feta pastry. Fun. It was delicious. Um, talked about the culture of it, but not we're not going to put that on the menu. Kefir we also did last year. Not going to put on the menu, but kind of a fun thing to try. Um, [snorts] and then broccolini we have on the menu. But, um, we also have tower gardens. Um, currently in two schools at Firefox Elementary and Glendel Elementary. Um the kids uh there's a learning team that brings kids down, the kids test the pH, they do all the planting, they do all the harvesting, and then they get to display it on the school lunch line. And um all the kids are really proud of themselves when they get to eat their own what they grew. Um here they were having a contest on who could find whose root system was the longest. So this guy I think is the one who won. Um farm to school. We still have a really robust farm to school program. Um for uh last year we worked with 10 farm partners. Two of them were Prior Lake farmers. Um top left there is Casey's corn. We every year do a corn husking relay. I know you guys have heard about that probably so many times, but uh we get a bunch of corn. We need somebody to husk it. So we do relays and you get bragging rights if you win. And then the next day we serve it as like a picnic lunch. Um that top um tray there is the one that I think I'm not going to be able to click on. So, I think you guys should have been able to click on it. The Minnesota Department of A um asked us if it would be okay if they included our farm to school program in their story map. So, if you click on the Minnesota Department of um agriculture link there, it'll take you to their web page and our tray is like the backdrop of that. And then you scroll down, look at Prior Lake Savary Schools, and you can see all of our farm partnerships and everything that we've done over the last um several years. Um those are microgreens. Um it's a picture from Spring Lake Farms. Um Matt Erenss is the farmer and he's a Prior Lake alum and so we've partnered with him. We've had um his microgreens on our menu for several years now. Um I just couldn't get a good picture of it on a tray. So um the next tray there is shrimp and grits. So we try to have, you know, things that kids might recognize that they eat at home um on our trays um and all kinds of varieties. I was actually just in North Carolina and had shrimp and grits down there a couple of times and I'd say ours rival their theirs. Um those are also some um local rainbow carrots, local watermelon radish. Watermelon radish was a thing that was on try it Tuesday probably eight years ago and now it's on our menu every year. So we get that from a local farm as well. And then um this is one of our farmers um cattle farmer partners and then that's just a student choosing healthy foods. So yes, so click on that story map if you can. Um lastly, we um we used to have gardens in almost like edible gardens in almost all of our schools and co kind of squashed that, but one of our gardens that is still alive and robust is our um high school garden. Brian Olsen and the eco team over there um have been planting that. So they plant it and then we um child nutrition helps kids company with with a partnership with Kids Company. We we have a garden club and so um the kids at Hamilton Ridge right now are the ones that are coming down and they harvest and they pick things and they eat things and they challenge each other and they have a ton of fun. We have an intern from Mano State, a dietetic intern. So, she's there doing a little activity with them about beans, I think it was. Um tomorrow, it's already Tuesday morning and tomorrow they're going to do a pizza party. So, they're going to get to pick whatever they want to out of the garden and then bring it back to Hamilton Ridge and cook flatbread pizzas with their fresh toppings. So, we're doing lots of fun things even with all of those regulations. [laughter] Um, and then lastly, I just always like to share um the grants that we receive. Um, so last school year, we re received um a food and equipment grant from the agriculture from um MDA. And then um we actually uh were asked if we wanted to take a share of some of the monies that weren't used by other schools. So we did. We got $1,400 out of that. And then this year um we got $30,000 for the food grant. So one to one match. So if you guys have any questions, I'm here. >> Yeah. Thank you, Director Malone. Board members, any questions or comments for Director Malone? >> Just one. >> Yeah. >> I was curious about the chocolate milk. Is that something we are obligated to keep serving? >> We are not obligated. >> Is that something we would consider removing from our options that we're providing kids? I know that was always a hot topic with elementary parents. Um just again, no nutritional value. A lot of sugar, a lot of carbs in there. >> Yeah. So, it actually has a lot less sugar than you might think. It's not the same chocolate milk that you can find on a grocery store um shelf. And I don't want to I'm not going to quote it right now, but it's a lot less sugar than you think. Um, and we're not required to serve it and we do not serve it at breakfast. We only offer it at lunch. Um, but it's something, you know, we could talk about. >> Yeah, I was curious. Um, yeah. No, thank you for everything you do and and all that you serve our kids. I think it's great. So, um, appreciate that. >> Thank you, >> Dr. Johnson. Um, just one thing, uh, any impact as far as the high school when I know when we switched last year, um, have you seen any major impact from going from what we used to have to this? >> Um, I'm not sure exactly what you mean by impact, but um, all the kids are eating, [laughter] >> I would assume. Yes, >> they're all eating. I haven't heard a lot from kids, to be honest. So, >> um, yeah. and you know a lot of the mainline foods which you know we went from like a meal and allocart program to really a more of a meal program now um and we've expanded the number of meals that we have so um I haven't seen I haven't heard a lot of feedback from kids a little couple rumblings here and there but not much from kids >> okay >> that works I knew the alakar program would be obviously going away but um just if you had heard anything bigger then that answers my question. >> Yeah. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Mhm. >> Director Atinson. >> Yeah. Thank you. And I'm going to um go on top of um Director Johnson's question. Any impact to our budget? Because I know we had a healthy fund balance from the all cart sales, the coffee shop sales. Um what what impact did it have to our budget either positive or negative? Um going on the national food lunch program? >> Yeah, I don't have those numbers in front of me and we're still in the middle of our audit. So I don't I don't have those final numbers right now. >> Okay. I'm just curious if we circle back on that. That'd be interesting to look at. >> Sure. >> Just it it to me it's an unfunded mandate, >> you know what I mean? So, >> anyway, um I just want to say thank you to you. We've always had just like the most amazing lunches, but when I heard we all of our lunches and have no high fructose corn syrup. Is that correct? >> Yeah. >> 10 years ago we did that. So, >> Okay. That's like really impressive. But that's probably why they're so great. >> Thank you. Yeah. I spent all summer trying to find a ketchup without no freaking high corn syrup in 2016. It literally took my whole summer. Um, and it's easier now. I mean, it's now, you know, it's not as hard. It's not as unknown. But >> in 2016, I had to buy little from our distributor little household ketchups for a little while till they would get it into a commercial size. But yeah, so we took those out in 2016 from all the mainland items. >> Do we offer um also offer gluten-free options? Just we do. Okay, that's wonderful. >> All of the allergens. Yeah, we have a menu for all of the allergens. >> I'm impressed with our farm to um I want to call it farm-to-table program. That's incredibly impressive. And so, thank you for everything you do. I'm our lunches um heard nothing but good things about him. So, thank you. >> You're welcome. Thank you, >> Director. >> Yeah, I just wanted to say thank you and also to your staff because those folks take such pride in their work and they know all the kids' names, which always shocks me. >> That's a lot of kids. >> Yeah. Um, and they're just they're just wonderful people and the cinnamon rolls are amazing. [laughter] >> Thank you. Whole grain. >> We they're and I know frosting and all of that, but I mean you just it's a cinnamon roll >> and you have to do it. And they're just really good and they just the staff is just wonderful. And every time I walk in any kind of any building, it always just smells delightful. And from someone whose kid is a burrito bowl every day. Mhm. >> And every day. >> Yeah. [laughter] >> Um and [clears throat] they're trying all sorts of things and that's that's because of you all. I wish I could take the credit, but I can't. And it's just it's great. Um so, [clears throat] thank you. And I didn't um I didn't realize that the no high fructose corn syrup that you can't find that products without it domestically. That's really interesting. >> The canned fruit. There is not a producer of canned fruit in the United States that has a domest like the the juice in it. >> Yeah. >> So >> you're saying for the canned fruit specifically, right? >> Correct. Yeah. So anytime we get a big number 10 can is what they're called of canned fruit. We buy it when with juices. So the pineapple is in usually pear juice um or even just the little like dole fruit cups or whatever. Those are all in fruit juices. And there is not a domestic source for those fruit juices. So yeah, I was just at a conference um and USDA was like, "Yep, you're right. We we still have not found one." So >> wow. Well, at any rate, thank you. >> You're welcome, >> Mary. >> I'd like to echo what Director Olstead said and say thank you very much. I've had the incredible opportunity to uh serve at all the schools, I think, now at least once. And uh the the operation there is is unimaginable. It's actually just like a the best run ship I've ever seen. >> Thank you. >> And I love walking away with samples. >> Yeah. >> Um >> I did want to ask you about the grants. Um I know that this is a bianium year and there's been some projected cuts in those types of grants and the aggra grants and stuff like that. Do you have any insight into what may be coming um this coming bienium year or on the docket? >> I I don't have numbers specifically. Um the USDA about a month ago did say that they are going to open up more grants for schools. Um, but the way that the grants work is that either the Minnesota Department of A or the Minnesota Department of Ed will apply for the grants and then they are awarded state level and then they disseminate that out to schools. So, it's kind of above us. So, when I'm applying for these grants, it's with the Minnesota local agencies. Um, and so it just always depends on what the federal agency gives to the state of Minnesota. And does is that is that impacted by the lack of funding for SNAP to our state right now or is that included? >> They're not exactly correlated. Okay. No, it's the local foods for kids, the um Patrick Levy grants. >> Okay. >> Um those are the ones that end up in schools for food and um equipment. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Yeah. >> Anyone else? >> Thank you so much, director. >> Thank you. >> Thank you for Thank you for having me. Thank thank you for the report and for all the work you guys do. >> All right. >> All right. Next up would be uh Director Catherine. Just going to screw it all up again. Here's down there. Good evening, Superintendent Wagner, Chair Bullion, and board directors. I'm going to talk a little bit about um some uh enhancements that we've been talking about from a policy committee standpoint. Um I'll go over some of the stuff that you have in your board packet and then uh open it up for any questions that you have. Uh first just want to talk a little bit about how we kind of ended up here. Um last year we had 14 policies to review and that we were still pushing it towards the end of the year to even get those 14 policies in. This year we're sitting at about 85 policies that we need to review. And based on that workload uh towards the end of last year with the policy committee there was people in the committee both um you know principles, teachers, community members who were discussing how can we become more efficient with how we're currently doing our policy committee. And that's where we started having some of these discussions. At that point in time uh Dr. uh Thomas was involved in those discussions. we started having meetings with the board uh members that were on the policy committee about um how we could look at a structure uh within the policy committee. Um and then at that point in time uh superintendent Thomas then suggested that we waited until um we had a new superintendent to get that individual's input and once Dr. Wagner started we got you know uh him involved in the conversations right away and uh you know through those discussions we kind of ended up where you have in front of you uh what we're kind of looking at it's very similar you know from having the discussions with Dr. Wagner of what he's kind of been used to in his previous districts as well as from some of my communications with other districts, what seems to be pretty common place um with a lot of other uh districts in regards to how they run their policies um and get them to submit it to the to their school board. Um so once again uh you like I said, you have the enhancement in front of you. talks a little bit about the background, how we, you know, a little bit more about it, how the current process is structured, um, who's involved with that. Um, and right now, just to give you some, you know, uh, we the the two principles that we had on the committee are no longer with the district. So, we would be looking at having to replace those two. Um, out of the eight commu community [clears throat] members right now, I believe if we were to stay with the current structure, we would have to be replacing probably at least half of those um due to their term limit expiring. Um, so we would have to um, you know, overhaul pretty much the whole committee the way it was. And that was another reason that we looked at trying to maybe possibly look at a different structure for how we um, are reviewing the policies. What we want to look at doing is trying to find a way to um you know have the uh stakeholders who are involved in these policies who actually then have to be the ones to enforce the policies to have the input in regards to the policies. So, I'll get to kind of the document that's uh here in the in the the process that will kind of lay out who uh whether it's from an executive director here at the district or a director of a department that who's kind of responsible for that policy who whose department it touches probably the most and then um then it would be their responsibility then to seek the input of the others that they need to help uh bring that policy. So, at the start we would every policy has to go through a three-year review. there are some policies that you have to review annually. Um so we would set that up on a on a yearly basis. And then the step two, like I said, would be that of the administrative um review process. Um they would look at all the different channels that they need to. If they had to get principles involved, they would get principles involved, teachers involved, they'd get teachers involved. If it has to go through another committee, they would take it through that committee. It would kind of be their responsibility based on the timeline of when we want to get that policy to the board for uh for first reading. uh it would kind of be their responsibility to make sure that if they have any suggestions, recommendations, changes that it kind of follows um in line with it with that timeline. Uh leadership review then at that point in time uh we would probably you know we'd bring it to our senior leader group just to once again have them you know review it before we do anything with it. Um the public engagement section would be an open forum on the website. Uh once again, there's, you know, districts around the state that are currently collecting that information for their school boards through that kind of a format. Um just based on, you know, with technology and the way that you can do that today, it's it's just a more efficient and effective way to gather community. And this way, instead of only eight community members, it opens it up to every staff member. It opens it up to every person in the public. It opens it up to every student. Anybody that would want to make a comment or give a suggestion on a policy, they would have the availability um to do that through this kind of format. Um and then after that it would be a committee review. So then it would be brought to the committee. And as you can see what the structure of the community would be is I would chair that committee along with two board members and the superintendent. And then we would be inviting any members that needed to present to that meeting. So if principles wanted to come in and talk about a policy or if another director and executive director needed to come in, they would be invited to that meeting to come in and talk about the policies that um are going to be in front of the committee that day. And then we would bring it once again to the to the school board for final action because at the end of the day they are the school board policies. So the the board has to approve any revisions or changes to the policies. So they would actually have the final say on that. Um so once again kind of setting up our structure of how we would be reviewing those. Um like I said it follows the same kind of structure we had last year pretty much an every other month type of meeting starting you know with August and then October and so on and so forth. um you know wrapping up with the final meetings in April to make sure that then that way we have enough time to get everything done um by the time the school year closes in June. Some of the benefits as I've discussed before when you have 85 policies and 14 people sitting around a table um it you know like I said we had 14 last year and there was times where it it slowed down tremendously and we were even struggling to bring 14 policies to completion last year. So this way it still offers opportunities to give input in on policies. Um but it also allows us an opportunity to take a look at policies that are very heavily statutoily driven that we can just say we don't have a lot of say in these policies. Um let's just, you know, look at them, make sure there's no uh red lines from MSBA, and then let's just keep moving those policies and get them in front of the board for approval. So, just once again, it's just another way that we can try to get through a large amount of policies that we're going to have to get through this year. Um, so a couple of the other documents, once again, this is the policy review process. As you can see, um, don't mind the colors. That's just my kind of of of my own notes for myself to understand um, which policies we would that uh, that we need to deal with. But as you can see on the district admin to review um who would be responsible for those in the different areas that we have um as far as the different departments that would need to be involved in making recommendations on those policies. Um and then once again if they need to have anybody review it where where the public input timeline would come in then what tenative you know uh policy advisory committee meeting we would have the tenative study session the tenative board date and then the last revision of that policy. So once again, just kind of laying out a timeline so that we can stay on task and so that way we can make sure that the policies are getting to the board for the approval during their three-year cycle. And then the last document is actually something we worked on um the committee worked on last year. It's this district policy tracker. This is one way that we established last year of being able to keep um people up to speed on what we're doing with our policies. The biggest thing around what we all learned last year with me being brand new, we had new members and we even had existing members sitting on it. When we were looking over the policies and we were seeing changes, there was no documentation to why these changes were being made. We could see that changes had been made, but we couldn't find anywhere, you know, with Martha leaving um we were losing probably our resource that we could go to and say, you know, why did this change happen? Why did that change happen? So we created this policy tracker as a way to now document exactly you know why you know so then that way uh you know if when I'm not around or other you know policy committee people aren't around then the next group can come around and say you know exactly what it was uh who made the change all those different kinds of things. So um see if I can find here let me just make it full screen like this. So down at the bottom we have kind of like our threeear cycle. So all of these that you see right here once again, you know, it's a few hundred lines of policies that we're going to have to go through this year. But if you go back and look at like 2526, this was all the policies that we did last year. And you guys, I'll get you you all have access to the to these to these links and I can definitely I've already shared them with you. Um, so you could, we've made notes of why we made the changes, who made the changes, was it a policy committee recommendation, was it a board recommendation, you know, was it a clerical in nature kind of thing? Is it something that just aligned to statute that we had to do? So we document all of this in there so for future years, you know, uh, people can see why these changes were made, who made the changes and the recommendations and then when it was approved by the board. So this was actually something that we created as the policy committee. we created this last year to help. Um so then that way after we get through 2728 when we get into 2930 now we can just come back to see what we did in 2526 and it hopefully should keep speeding up the process in years down the road when you can see what you did in the past and why you made those changes. So those are kind of the three areas uh once again from how we're looking at structuring this and like I said I think a lot of it just um is um you know purely from a standpoint of when when you're looking at 85 policies that have to get in front of the seven of you this year. Um how can we make sure that we're still doing that the best way possible? And then like I said started with conversations actually through recommendations from policy committee members and then was started those conversations with superintendent Thomas and then it transferred over to to Dr. Wagner. So I will open it up for questions >> or members. Director Smith. >> Yes. Thank you. Um so just out of cur we mentioned that the uh um policy committee begins this month. When is the first policy committee meeting that's coming up? >> We haven't established that just because I didn't know I mean what was going to happen you know what this was going to look like um once again if we move forward with this I mean I would probably be looking at establishing that um you know sometime before the study session. So then that way if there are some policies that once again are very heavy statutoily in nature that we don't have a lot of say in if we could get some of those in front of you by the study session in August. Okay, that would be my goal. Um if not then we would probably just be having more of a formality meeting to discuss the timeline. Are there certain policies that we might want to switch around on the timeline? Um some that might want to move up different things like that. Um so we can start having those conversations and then the first full meeting would be in October. Okay. So, and just to understand correctly, so you would be proposing that this review process, this new um enhanced review process be implemented for this coming school year, correct? Okay. >> Yep. >> Um you had mentioned um you know the kind of the background and the and the genesis for these conversations. Um and you mentioned that there were principles that that you've kind of been discussing this with. Was there any other feedback offered or solicited? You said maybe community members, board members, anything else that kind of contributed to these conversations and what those viewpoints were? >> Yeah, I mean I think like I said what it started as is when we saw only 14 policies last year and we barely got them done in May. >> Uh I think that's kind of when we were having our April meeting. I think a lot of the conversation started then you know how you know what are we doing and how are we doing it and then that's where you know it just kind of started and some of the community members you know feel that if um that we should probably be trying to align a lot of our policies with MSBA and if that's the path that we want to go down uh then you know why do we continue to have the amount of um back and forth I guess in regards to to that and So, a lot of them were just saying, "Is there a need for us, you know, all to continue in this format if we're going to just try to align to what MSBA is recommending?" >> Okay. Um, you mentioned other districts um and looking at their their process um and when it comes to the committee with actually having, you know, community members um as as a sitting part of that committee or some sort of an online portal. Um are we in our current uh situation in our current format are we the outlier here or we or is it more is it more common to see that that online portal or is it more common to see kind of a setup that we've got? >> Yeah, I would say I don't know if outlier is the right word. I would just say that having that many people sit around a table and discuss policy is not common in a lot of districts. Whether they're using a portal to gain that feedback or whether or not um it's very heavily driven by the board and then the board seeks out help from who they need help for on what policies are, you know, governing whether it's like a lot of the 400s as you saw on there are very HR specific. So in a lot of districts they would reach out to people you know in my role and and ask for input and help and then that person would then be you know going out and seeking input from others that they need to get the input from. So I wouldn't necessarily say an outlier but I think the structure is not that common from from what I've seen. >> Okay. Um and then I had a question about uh policies that are updated maybe out of sequence out of that threeyear cycle. Um happens from time to time. Um, how are these handled now and would that be handled differently under this proposal? Because right now it looks like the executive director of administrative services would develop the annual policy review uh schedule, but would that include those out of cycle or would those be brought in in another way, shape or form? >> Yeah. So, every year um MSBA, you know, they come out with their policy, you know, updates and things like that. So there's times where they say, "Hey, we know this one's out of cycle, but you got to do it right. You got to, you know, review it now." And so you have to add it into your cycle. So those have to get added in. Like last year we did the the weighted grade one was out of cycle. Uh but we reviewed that one and now that one would be on the cycle this year. So at that point in time, um the goal would be to to still probably review that one this year with hoping that there wouldn't be a lot of changes since we just did it last year and then update that for the three-year cycle at that point in time. But if MSBA comes out with something that you have to review, then we have to add that in. >> Okay. Um, and is is that kind of the only situation where they're where they're updated out of cycle or is there are there >> Yeah, unless a statute or something like that changes, you know, then we would have to make sure that our policy that maybe applies to that then would have to be looked at. But yeah, other than that, it's they kind of >> guide us along in and what policies um what changes they're making, which then guide our decisions and what policies might need to be out of out of cycle. Okay. Um, and then when it comes to the administrative review, um, you know, there's this, uh, section here that says prepare a summary explaining proposed changes and the rationale supporting those recommendations. Is that something that happens now or how how is that communicated now when changes are made and the rationale behind it? >> Yeah. So, I mean, once again, it's going to come back to kind of putting some of that rationale on the tracker as far as when we're looking at that and also Yes. I mean the r that's kind of what the role that I would be you know that I did last year when we brought the policies and just kind of explained whether most of these are clerical in nature or most of these are statutoily driven those different kinds of things are how then um that admin summary would be presented to you. >> Okay. So, but in in this new proposal, the assigned administrator um would be preparing that that rationale and and the supporting recommendations. the the thought process would be they would bring that to the policy committee meeting, share that with the policy committee at the meeting and then once again if the policy committee then decides that you know we're going to adopt these changes or make these changes then we would put it into the policy and then at the when it comes to you for the first reading I would then be the one presenting those changes. >> Okay. Okay. Um, and then when it comes to the public engagement piece in the portal, um, what would be the proposed amount of time that the, um, that that would be open? >> Yeah, I think that could be open for discussion. I mean, quite honestly, I mean, the simplest and easiest way would be just to put up all the policies that we're going to be reviewing that year and kind of, you know, kind of the timeline that we've already have put together, put that out on the on the policy page so people could see that and then they could offer up any comment. um you know at any point in time to any of the policies we're going to be reviewing that year, but at some point in time I would have to then pull those comments for any policies that we were going to be reviewing at the committee meeting to then share those comments with the committee folks at the committee meeting. >> Gotcha. So right now comments are made when there's a committee meeting and there's a policy kind of up for discussion on that agenda. That's when comments when made would be kind of made but in this they would just kind of be open. It would I mean like I said it could be up some districts some districts only >> list the policies that they're going to be doing at the committee meeting and then open up for public comment like two weeks prior to that meeting and then you can only comment on those certain policies that they're going to be discussing at that committee meeting. So once again the the structure for comment like I said the easiest thing to do would just be open open it up all year round and let people comment when they would want to. Um but once again we could you know discuss how that would look. So with the with the piece that you know comments being summarized um by administration and provided to committee members for for consideration um just wondering is there any way or is there a mechanism for folks in the community who are submitting feedback you know what are the checks and balances there to verify accuracy or to make sure that their that their comments or their suggestions are adequately captured and maybe incorporated or not incorporated and why not like you know I think for the for the the rationale right now um I feel like that's kind of the piece that's missing is you know those comments are live and they're happening in the moment and with this you know like like it was said earlier you know trust is a big thing and we just want to make sure that if it's getting in here and it's getting into the system that it is being used in a way that's um that's going to uh you know honor what those what those suggestions are and that they're getting there. So >> yeah, so I mean we've we talked about that at our senior leader meeting actually and uh Dr. Zumbush offered you know her services as well. I mean those would be the comments would be directly coming to me. I would be the one probably receiving you know an email saying somebody's made a comment and then I would be the one kind of having that but she offered her services and her expertise in regards to if I needed help in you know you know looking at the data summarizing those in a way that I could bring it to the policy committee. uh the intent would not be to you know uh only share certain comments. My intent would be to bring every comment to the meeting um and and have the you know have it reviewed and looked over once again without trying this format. I don't know if every meeting I would be bringing 600 comments or six comments you know I I don't know uh until we try it. it it's hard to say if it's 600 comments at every meeting then we might have to look at some sort of rationale on how can I summarize maybe whether it's AI or different kinds of things like that what tools do we have available to help us summarize what these comments are saying >> yeah and I think you know for me that that's a little bit of the concern because you know right now you know like you said in the example and what kind of led to this this discussion is you know barely being able to kind of get to the finish line which is the 14 that you had and if there's 85 and like you said if there's hundreds of com. I mean, it just it it it kind of creates a different problem of its own. Um, not that that's um again, not that that's something that can't be addressed or or or thought through carefully, but um but I do think that that that we run the risk of maybe um running out of time the other way just because of the the comments that do come in. So, okay. Um appreciate your work on this. Thanks for answering the questions. Really appreciate it. >> Thanks, >> Director France. Um, Director Cotherarn, um, one of the issues that we've had with policy committee, um, is that when we first started it in the first three years, um, they decided to continue doing it in numerical order. And in the very first year, going over those first 85 policies or more, it became really evident that a a lot of those policies didn't need to be in numerical order. You could balance it out over the three years. And there are references in the actual policies that were when you do something in the 100, it's referred to then in the 300, it's then referred to someplace else or in a 400 that's referred into a 600. So there was some work with the committee to make it more even through the years. Um, make it much more palatable, easier to get through. Um, there is absolutely no logical reason why all 85 policies need to be reviewed in one year. um that was just a a pattern that was developed when we first started trying to make sure our policies were updated and doing it numerical order. So that would make it a lot easier. also made that reviewing one policy with the reference policies in it, you could get through that really quickly. Uh the other problem that we ran into was that when we reviewed one policy that had reference policies in it of different numerical orders that weren't being covered that year that we found that we couldn't change them because then you had to change three other policies because you want to keep the language the same. Um, so that was being worked on by your predecessor before she left to make it sure that when you did have the policy committee, you're really only reviewing maybe 10 or 11 each year. Uh, other than the ones that had to be reviewed um um statutoily every year, that sort of thing. Um, so I was kind of surprised when I heard that that reference that, oh my gosh, we had 14. We were struggling because we couldn't find things to put on the calendar. um that had been talked about repeatedly um and was even brought up one time when we had an issue with the policy committee uh disagreeing with a recommendation made uh by a board member. So um that it was just kind of surprising that that's the reason there's again some of these policies are written very discreetly and they can be combined also. Um so that was something that could have been done pretty easily as well as it went through it. right now um with the number of policies that we have uh trying for the public to try and find where to find something is not easy um with the way we've organized them because again the MSBA came up with a new numbering uh pattern over two and a half three decades ago and that's been a problem with a lot of school districts that's why you see the policy numbering and the policies being different um you also see that the MS SBA creates policies that are template policies. Um so the large portion of the um of the districts do not use the MSBA template as has been mentioned multiple times. Um also when we started the policy committee um we did so after reviewing other metro district um ways of gaining community engagement and the board had voted to have the public involved in the policies and that has really helped because the public now the the committee members now have a greater understanding about how school boards work. It's it's there's a lot of laws that are applied. we can't just come in and say, "Hey, we're going to get rid of all this staff because we don't want to pay for it." It turns out that you're legally obligated to have them and here are the roles and here's what they're obligated to do and here's the statutes they need to abide by. So, um it first of all, I'm I'm struggling with the reasoning for this change being 85 policies in one year and 14 in another when that isn't even required or needed. That's something we imposed upon ourselves. um which was supposed to change. Um second of all um we had removed the engagement committee the public engagement committee uh in favor of having the public involved in these committees. So if the committee is really to board members, you and the superintendent, that's not really a committee. Um, and that certainly isn't engaging the public and understanding how the school board works because the interaction and the people sitting around the table, the the feedback on that, particularly uh focusing on transparency was incredible. Um, and if that's where it's going to go to, then why not just invite the public to that meeting? That would be an easy substitution. or just take it directly from the subject matter experts and deliver the policies to the full board that it was done prior to trying to gain public engagement on this process because they could always email and they could always listen to the board meetings and the documentation and the reasons for the policy changes were always in the board meeting notes. they weren't in the change log because the first year the policy committee was on board they asked about a change log and the policy committee didn't want to go through that. So, um, so what they did is they made sure that the subject matter expert when presenting the policy changes to the board, uh, that ended up in the board notes and like you said, Martha isn't here, but she did a really good job of of of putting some of that in there as well as obviously publicizing uh the board reasoning um, and publicizing the video that we've always done. Um, so I'm struggling with this from the lack of public engagement and the fact that we don't have a committee anymore. Um, also with the fact that we're making these changes a week before the policy committee was supposed to meet to begin with um, and traditional ways from the last four years that it's been in place or five years actually that it's been in place. So, um, changing it all of a sudden at the beginning of a year with minimal public transparency, uh, which is what the public engagement in this process is supposed to make. And then using the fact that there was so many policies in one year and not enough in another year. And also those policies aren't all supposed to be discussed by the policy committee. A lot of the 400s actually go to the teaching and learning committee. um some of the six and 800s or whatever go to finance committee. Um they don't all go through, you know, and and they're decided on that and presented to the board that way. They're not all decided by one committee. I don't know when that started, but that that started after I left the policy committee. So there's a lot of uh the reasoning behind this and also the lack of public transparency and and the and the and the purpose of it was public engagement uh as well as going through one round and then deciding how we're going to rearrange these so they aren't topheavy in one year and not heavy in another year and actually going by themes. that doesn't even seem to be included here and that's what was kind of expected after the first three years going into the second three years of the policy committee which didn't really seem to happen. Um so that's that's I'm not sure if that was any of these points were ever discussed uh that were developed before and the reasoning why we had a public policy committee. >> Sure. So I is is that the question like yes why why it doesn't that none of those things seem to be even considered? >> Yeah. So I mean I can't speak to the history. I I wasn't here and I appreciate your your historical knowledge in regards to that. Um yeah Emily left me some notes about what she was working on prior to her leaving and some of that was reshuffling some of the policies. Whenever you're looking at that, regardless though, you're going to have some heavy years because you have to then you have to build policies in on top of other policies that are going to be out of cycle if you're going to reshuffle the policies. So, at any point in time, we were going to have some heavy years. So, I don't think you were going to avoid, you know, and I'm not sure it would ever have been at 10 a year because I don't think we only have 30 policies. So, I mean, we would have definitely been doing more than 10 a year at any given year. But um so yeah, I mean that's it's definitely still a possibility to look at trying to get away from the heavy loads. Uh we've had discussions around that. But even if we couldn't do it this year, there was just too many to do this year to tackle on to then try to tackle on some 600s or 700s on top of that. Now next year with the six and sevens and the 78s and nines, um sure. Could we then maybe grab, you know, some of the 100s and 300s and start doing those? And then when you have your 100, 200, 300s, could then we then grab some 400s and then look at it that year. I I think we could, but this isn't a one-year solution. I mean, this is going to have to be something that's, you know, done over the next, you know, 3 to four years. So, um, and then as far as the public engagement piece, um, I mean, I guess everybody's going to have their own interpretation of that. Right now, our public engagement piece is eight people. That's our public engagement piece. to me this way it opens it up to a lot more than eight individuals who have to fill out an application and then are picked by myself and then the board members who are on that committee. So um yeah, once again I think you can look at it however you know different ways you want to look at the public engagement piece, but I don't think anything's wrong with offering more people an opportunity to give feedback on on our policies than what we're doing right now through eight through eight community members. So once again, I understand that there this was structure was similar to how this district used to operate um previously is from when I've talked with some of my fellow colleagues. Um and then regards to you know having some of these go through like you mentioned the 400s those are very heavily HR policies. So not sure why they would need to go through teaching and learning, but once again those policies as they're laid out in that diagram. Um for instance, there are going to be some that teaching and learning are very heavily involved in and Dr. Warner's been kind of tasked with those policies and she's aware of how many of those policies she has this year. So it would be I would be relying on her input and her expertise in those policies along with the teaching and learning committee and along with our principles and along with our teachers you know but she would kind of be the one that would be spearheading those policies to then help bring that information to the policy committee. So I do feel that we by this structure we are gaining the insight of but to just drop those policies on my fellow directors. I just don't I I couldn't do that in in in good conscious cuz as we're continuing to cut staff, all departments are short right now. So, asking them to take on more workload than what they're doing right now isn't fair, but asking them to kind of be the the uh champion of that policy since they're the going to be the ones that are going to have to enforce it. Um that's where I'm I'm leaning on their expertise. So once again, it didn't this this didn't come about as a way of trying to limit engagement or limit involvement or any other kind of format like that. It was just simply as a way going um you know there's 85 of them that we have to get through and having 14 people sit around a table discussing these it does bring it does slow things down and and like I said we barely got through 14 14 of them last year. So that's where this conversation stem from and that's where some of this was created. Okay. So, I I understand there may have been um some issues getting through 14 of them, but I I was on the policy committee before when we unfortunately did have to go through it almost 90 of them one year. And the consensus was is that again the policies are written in very discre discreet chunks and sometimes they actually form a story where you could do four or five policies combine them into one like an HR handbook that sort of thing and that's what we kind of discussed because let's say you're going through a benefits piece on one piece but then you're going through a different part of the benefits piece on another policy that's at the end of the year or maybe even the following year. And that's what we said we could probably when we looked at them and we condensed them, you're dealing with the exact same topics at different points in time and if we just looked at the policy and said these 20 go together, okay, they form kind of a handbook of everything that has to do with, you know, one area or another. And by separating them out, you actually limit your ability to change them because you've got definitions in some of them and you've got repetitive statutes and stuff like that. Again, the discussion was that the MSP MSBA templates have been they're 30 years old some of them, right? Or maybe more. Some like we mentioned before, one of them I found that was actually in a paper copy that they just moved on, which was the mission one was developed in 1971. it turned out um it doesn't apply today but they keep them in there for a reason. But what we discussed is you put those together and instead of having 20, you know, instead of having 80 policies, you may have 20, you know, 20 that actually cover the exact same thing and they're all kind of shiruitous because they reference the other policies in the bottom half. And if you just take a look at those and kind of combine them, just like we do like with the student handbook, it's all referenced to individual policies, but they're all mentioned in one handbook. And when you look at that handbook in in in its holistic form, it tells a story. But when you're looking at the student policies and you're going from just one individual piece at a time to another, that's what Emily, Director Herman, was actually working on. And that was the direction of the policy committee. By the way, even though there's eight community members, there's also obviously principles, teachers, board members, and stuff like that in there. And those eight community members do rotate in and out. And the feedback we got from the public transparency portion was huge. And again, it also met with our strategic plan for for engagement, which we were wholly missing on these. Um and unfortunately without people getting involved in learning and also rotating out we actually lose the touch with that community. So I would suggest that even though the back end of the process with sending it to all the subject matter experts and going through everything remain the same either add the public back into the committee that only contains the superintendent you and two board members regardless of who those two board members are or skip that part and send it directly like we used to do from the subject matter experts to the board as a whole. So the reasoning and the original purpose of it with the owners of those policies actually hit the public as much if they choose to listen to the board meetings. Um that would be a way to actually improve transparency if we choose not to have a public policy committee there. >> Yeah. I mean, I appreciate the the feedback and I mean, I can definitely take it, you know, talk with, you know, Dr. Wagner and, you know, but uh yeah, this, like I said, this was this is what we'd come up with for tonight's meeting. >> Any other board members? Director Olad? >> Um, yeah, I actually have several questions. Um, and thank you, Director Coern. I know I I asked you a question after deadline. Um, and I emailed it today and I appreci I was not expecting an answer and you answered and I appreciate it. >> Sure. Um, thank you for that. Um, but before I get into my questions, I have a procedural question. So, this is under administrative reports. So, what is the action that's expected tonight? >> There's no action on this. The action would be on the roster >> because the policy committee roster is is in is in the consent agenda. >> So, you would be taking action on the roster. >> Okay. So there's no action on this. This is just me presenting kind of under an admin report of a something that I'm in charge of. So that there's no action needed here. This is just a a report for you, but the action would be the the roster. >> Correct. Okay. All right. Thank you. Um just wanted to make sure I was clear on that. Um Okay. So I I am all for efficiency where we can do things efficiently. um all for it. Um I fear that this might have the opposite effect. Um and I I I guess I personally I wasn't aware that we are having trouble getting through 14 the or I should say the committee was having trouble getting through 14 policies this year. I realize we're the last stop when it comes to policies and we don't know how the sausage is made sometimes, which is sometimes a good thing. Um, but I w I wasn't aware there was so much so many issues with getting through 14 policies. So I guess my question then was why didn't we know about this beforehand if we were having some issues so that we could have talked about this, you know, at more in depth or anything like that. I know the conversation started with Dr. Thomas and then I think appropriately so like let the new superintendent come in and you know have and continue those conversations. because I think that was fine. I had no idea those conversations were happening in the first place. So, I guess I personally, which I realize this is not the intent, but I feel kind of backed in up against the wall a little bit with this um because there are meetings coming up and we're doing things completely differently for a board committee that we're not doing with the other two. And I realize every committee is different um and made up differently and things like that. Um but so I I just I can't help but feel that way personally. I am not speaking for anyone else. I'm just speaking for myself. Um and I fear that it's you had mentioned something about you know you don't want to ask the team and the admin your peers on the administrative team to do more work but I feel like that's what's going to happen and I have a couple of questions about that. So when we look at the part of administrative review, so step two, so each policy will be given to an assigned administrator, they can review it. They compare district policy. They evaluate operational impacts. They consult with legal counsel. And I didn't realize that just anybody could go to legal counsel and I fear our bills would be higher in this instance. >> But yeah, that's all right. >> I'm sorry. >> They can't. I mean, they would they would probably come to me and say, "Hey, is this something we should run by legal?" And then I would either give them the yay or nay on that. So it like an added step for you in you know with something that yeah it's current I'm sure it is current >> um recommend revisions prepare a summary in all of these different things and I I just I I I don't I don't see the efficiencies there. Um I understand it and I think I actually really like the fact that an administrator who's charged with you know implementing said policy has a real hand in it. I appreciate that part. Um but um and I guess you could say that about every policy, you know, for the whole entire district. So I guess I don't know if that's necessarily a question, but just a comment I had. Um and then will it be you that's tasked with compiling all of this public feedback? To your point, you could get six comments, you could get 600 depending, you know, is that something that we are a lean administrative team. Is that something that you can take on? >> Yeah, I mean and just to your to give you some clarity, I mean the administrative review is is a process that is had been established. I mean it would have been established prior to me that the people who need to enforce these policies or or know these policies should be people looking at these policies. It shouldn't just be done by, you know, the person in my role or the superintendent or a couple board members. It should be done by the people who are going to be working these policies. So, that's not that's nothing new as far as additional responsibilities for, you know, one of my, you know, cohorts or anything like that. Um, and then as far as the public review, once again, we don't know until we know, right? I mean, that's that's the biggest thing right now is that this is something we're trying. And I could easily be back here a year from now and saying, "Holy cow, that was a massive failure on my part, and we need to look at doing something differently." But I don't I don't know that until we try it. And then kind of getting back to your point is, you know, a little bit about being maybe feeling like whether it was blindsided or not. Um, that kind of stems a little bit from I didn't know what I didn't know coming into this policy committee. Um, I didn't know where the inefficiencies were until I was nine months into it, >> 10 months into it, and then by that time starting to have conversations with other policy committee members going, was it always this way? you know, you know, and you know, some of the feedback I got is like, well, sometimes they would just come to us and say, these are the changes we're making, and then the committee members wouldn't even [snorts] get any say or get even feedback on that. So, I didn't know where the inefficiencies lied until I was 10 months into it and then started getting more conversations and that's when the conversation started happening with the the board members who are on the committee as well as Dr. Thomas about, hey, if this is what everybody's feeling like, you know, what can what can we do differently? And so that's where the conversation started. So it wasn't one of these things like, hey, let's cram this in on August 10th. It was just a timing thing from I didn't know what I didn't know and then we were getting a new superintendent and and all of those kinds of factors kind of led us to where we're at tonight. >> Okay. I fair points. Thank you for pointing those out. Um um I'm not sure where I am on this and I I feel like we need more discussion. Um but I mean the whole point was to I mean as it says here, you know, the structure provided a variety of perspectives, which was kind of the point. And and I realize opening it up to the general public, it's [laughter] kind of like be careful what you wish for. Um but no offense to our general public obviously, but um I mean I liked the perspectives and I liked I mean that's that's committee work. That's that's getting, you know, getting your hands dirty and like expressing opinions and different perspectives on things. Um which I appreciate. Um um not sure where I am with this, but I um I appreciate the I appreciate the um answers to my questions. Thank you. >> Anyone else? >> Point of information real quick. Um it's when does policy committee start meeting? Because dire director Catherine, you said October, but I'm also hearing that it's this month. When is the first meeting? I'm confused. It hasn't been established. >> Okay. >> I mean because I mean if we would have I mean if you look at the other two committees once again they're just right now I mean in theory all you should probably be have all three committees should be probably having their first meeting in August but simply because there's an application process and all of that has to happen. The board has to approve the rosters can only do that at a regular meeting and so all of those things take time. So, I know the other two committees right now are in the process of getting those applications, selecting new members for that and I believe their rosters will be coming to the September board meeting. So, I don't even know if they're going to be having any meetings prior to September um before those rosters get approved. So, once again, that's where nothing has been no date for the policy has been established because I didn't know what this was going to look like. Um, and so that's where once again, um, by after tonight, I'll have a better idea and then I can start setting some firm dates. I mean, I have them in the back of my mind. I have them on my calendar already that I would like to know what what what those dates are going to be. Um, but nothing's been uh published. Can I can I just add that in the when it started the first policy meeting was always before the first board meeting in case something got had to be statutoily changed or went into effect with the new school year that sort of thing because of stuff done at the legislature and and sometimes it was a rush through because of things that actually went into July 1st and they needed to wait for the policy. So typically the policy committee um when it first started uh almost always met in August and the committee roster was um voted on uh in the first board meeting of August. The other committees have traditionally met once a quarter. Um the teaching and learning meeting has um usually doesn't start until after school starts in October. Um, and um, that is that's been the way it's been since since I've been here for the last 11 years or so. Um, so there is there was an established cadence. Um, it doesn't mean it has to stay that way by any stretch, but there was an established cadence for that when it started. And the finance meeting also usually meets for the first time in September. Um whereas the policy meeting meets for the first time in August and of course the first time that the policy committee went in they met twice. They reviewed each policy twice before it went to the board and the board was the third uh review unless the board wanted to table it for uh more discussion. Um that's the way it normally was, but the policy committee met more frequently um with the materials all the policy materials sent out to each committee member. um at least a week in advance with the documented redline changes in each of the of the policies. Um and again they reviewed it twice uh because sometimes there was a lot of feedback or questions from the committee and it was taken back and then um updated. So that's the way uh it was done before. We also in even prior to that um we started reviewing policies um from administration usually by the first study session in August and mostly because we wanted to keep at least two or three policies on each board meeting to keep a regular flow. Anyone else? Director Mason. Thanks. Um thank you. Um, I actually really like the public engagement online and um, I appreciate this. I really I think a lot of feedback that I hear from parents is just I think sometimes they're uncomfortable reaching out directly to the board or um, you know, speaking up here at a meeting and and I think that them being able to utilize a form is is um, very valuable and I think it allows us to reach a bigger audience in our community and and provide more transparency. So, I actually really like that. Um my question around this too is just around um a little bit of of what director Smith asked around the out of sequence because I you know we have policy 208 where anyone can propose school member >> schoolboard member employee student resident of the community can propose changes to policy can they use this form also to request changes um generally like to anything at any time and >> I mean it's a great question I you know we haven't we didn't really discuss that if that would be you know ideally when the tool I was thinking of would just simply be for the ones that we were reviewing that year to give feedback to the ones that we were reviewing that year. Um I don't think that I mean it wouldn't be you know we could easily put something else on the policy page where I guess if somebody wanted to make comments on something that's out of cycle we could have another option for people to make comments of out of cycle policies but the one that I was figuring would just be those that were in cycle. >> Sure. Okay. Um yeah I mean I I really like that. Um, I think people hopefully will take the time to fill something out online versus like coming to a meeting and um, hopefully that provides more transparency to our community. Um, with any changes, I love that we're going to try something new, but um, you know, how do we kind of measure the success of this? So, um, you briefly touched on that, but maybe can we set some like metrics or goals of like, you know, just making sure we a getting feedback from the community. Obviously, if we've done this for a year and there are no comments on there, we're not we're not reaching people. Um, but then also like is it saving you time and creating those efficiencies that you were looking for? >> Yeah. No, that those are all things we've talked about from like a leadership standpoint. And I, you know, yeah, for sure the public engagement one's a huge one. Like you said, if we don't get anybody commenting on anything, then it it's not serving the purpose that I would want it to serve. And then I would definitely want to relook at how we're engaging at that point in time. Um, but yeah, I mean tracking. Yeah, that's going to probably be the biggest one. As far as workload and those kinds of things. Once again, there's a lot of stuff that goes on behind the scenes to get any committee to to the point, whether it's the teaching and learning, whether it's the business and, you know, ops. There's a lot of things that go on behind the scenes by all of us that, you know, um, I think director France pointed out, you know, I had to have red lines out a week to two weeks in advance. And I mean, all of those kinds of things take time and they take, you know, yeah, they take time. So to evaluate if something's more of a timesaver um that might be a little bit more challenging than understanding the feedback we're getting from the public is is a pretty easy data point. Um I think the other thing that we've all talked about is just simply um you know how are we doing in regards to um you know getting the policies reviewed. You know, I think that's another easy thing that we can look at is that, you know, are are we becoming more effective in going, okay, these policies are very heavy statute driven. We don't really need to spend a lot of time on them. Let's just look at them and get them get them in front of you guys to get the approval. So, I think there's few things we can judge, but the for me the biggest one's going to be the community aspect and and how is that being utilized? And if it's not being utilized, then yes, I I would definitely want to look at another way about going about getting that feedback. >> Great. Thank you. And just last thing, I think um I had, you know, asked out just some schoolboard members too and looked around too and I I think it feels like the policy committee isn't really the norm. So, you know, I'm okay with this. Again, I feel like we can hopefully reach a larger part of the community. Um but and I think some, you know, the other committees comparing them, you know, they're required in some instances, too. So, but just that committee to review meeting, of course, our board members change every January, but that will also be published and open to the public as >> Yeah, it says it in the thing that all the board meetings will be open to the public. People are more than willing to come and attend those and um and you know and and listen and and see what we're talking about. So, yeah, I mean that's they'll be published and just like they always have been. >> Okay, great. Thank you, >> Director Johnson. >> Just quick comment. Thanks for all the work you've done. um all the people you talked to from all the committee members, myself included, all the other HR directors that I know that you contacted out there, as you said, a lot of work is done in the background and I know putting all of this together, you've done a tremendous job. Uh the policy tracker, I know how much work you've done in that. Um it's a great tool. Um everything you've provided us is phenomenal as always. So, I just want to say thanks. >> Yep. Thank you, >> Director Atinson. >> Yeah. Thank you. Uh, you know, the charter development falls under that managerial role and so I appreciate one your experience that you bring into our our district from your previous role, HR role in your previous district. Um, and I appreciate you like reaching out to other um to find a way to um, how do I say broaden the engagement create efficiencies just to reiterate these meetings all the policy committee is not going away. It's a board established committee. We established that in January. All committee mo meetings are open to the public. So, um I think that I actually like this because like I said, it opens it up to um a wider range of parents who maybe um can't come to that one scheduled meeting when they're sitting at home and they're looking at the policies of especially because this year is the 600 series policies. I remember going through them in the past and these are probably our most highly engaged um policies with our parents with the students in the building. So, um the other thing I I wanted to add um is that it might be I was looking at other districts and they tend to have a drop-down a main dropdown on their somewhere on their websites that says policies and then that's where they have the link that these are the ones that we're reviewing. That's where the portal is. Um, ours is kind of I won't say it's hidden because I know there's always room for improvement with everything we do. And just because we did something the way we did before, it doesn't mean we need to do it currently. Um, but ours is under um schoolboard. So, you have to go to schoolboard to find the policies where maybe adding it might be wise to if we can move it to a different dropdown so that more people can find it and then we hopefully will get more engagement on those. So, I I I love this. I I'm really excited about um how do I say um what was I going to say trying to open this up to more feedback to to other communities. And regarding your um point, Director Mason, I think um a lot of I don't think a lot of our community members know that anyone at any time can propose a policy. So I would be fully open to that um allowing them to provide feedback on that link that in the portal. So >> yeah, and my plan was to work with director Zimmerman, you know, she's the expert. We actually just hired her replacement. So the two of them are far more adverse in website development and that kind of stuff than I ever will be. So working with the two of them to figure out, you know, how we can make sure that it's, you know, up there for people to to give that input. So >> the other thing I have to say is um I also love, and I don't know if this was done in the past, how these committees will go through other committees that are they're relevant to. So that's going to take some extra time as well. So I think in in all in all we're hitting more touch points of people than those eight members that were part of that committee. So I remember when this committee was established back in the fall of 22 and um the comment was well we'll try this and if it doesn't work we'll try something different. So coming in um into this role I appreciate you bringing your perspective and um the proposal that you've put together for this charter. Thank you. [clears throat] and then I'm gonna have a comment. Um well, first of all, um I want to do I do want to reiterate that it's a heck of a lot of work for you to do this and we've been very strapped uh on the number of administrators that we've had in this role for years now and definitely underresourced uh and uh under um uh underreued. if that's a if that's an word. Um, you know, I know that there's some people in the community that said that we've had this, you know, 37% increase and administration and all that. Obviously, that isn't true. Um, but, um, I do want to reiterate, and this is really important, that the numerical review in numerical order and doing them one at a time was self-imposed. that is not something that we were ever intending to keep. Um, and that was stated even when we started policy reviews on a regular basis because when we started this back in 2015, the problem was is that a lot of these policies hadn't been touched in years uh except for the statutory required. So the way that they broke it down was to try to break it down into 100, 300, 400 first year, 500, 600, 700, and then do the 800s and the 200s a year after that, etc. That left it lopsided. It also left a lot of reiteration. So I would ask that you look at that first because that was the general feedback for years that we don't need to do it that way. The other thing is is we need to find a way to actually get community engagement. um doing the form and asking people to email in without actual interaction did not work before and we're going back to the same thing we changed from because it didn't work in order to gain the community's trust and that transparency. Um so that that definitely needs to be considered. um reducing your workload, nothing. You you're going to obviously in order to fix it, we're going to have to drop a little bit more before subs below subsistence level in order to come back up. Um but the other thing is is I would highly recommend again that we go directly to the full board instead of having this committee then and do it the way we used to do it all together. not do everything we used to do and add this hop off point because it it does it doesn't add anything but time and a delay. Um and also lack of transparency. Even though people can sit in the meeting, um they can't contribute to it live and that's going to be that's not going to go over well and a community that every survey we have, they really want more transparency and trust. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. Thank you everyone for for your comments and thank you Director Catherine for your work in this. I think, you know, having sat on the policy committee for a couple years myself, um, and these conversations that have been taking place to find efficiencies, to find more engagement, to do all the things, I just appreciate cuz, um, it while it may feel um that change comes on suddenly, it there's really been a lot of thought and effort placed in this. So, I appreciate all of that. I think that um anytime we change anything, it creates question um question on the board, question in in the district, qu question in the community. So, I think that's that's common and it's nothing that we can't overcome. Um I think transition um your you were new to your role last year. We have we've had a lot of transition on the senior level and that slows things down. And so, um, I think it's important that we, um, you know, listen to each other well and take in, um, you know, the expertises that that we do have on this team. And so, I just appreciate all the work done to that. Um I too um given the uh what's being um placed on the consent agenda I I think my question would be is the first and final read at the board level is that going to still stay with two. >> So that process is not changing that's my one question. Um it has been the will of this board um to align with MSBA um on board policies. they are a huge resource and so I I appreciate that that's not nothing's changing with that. Um and I I think that um allowing for more community input is always a positive thing. It's just figuring out how to receive that engagement. So, um yeah, I I think I just wanted to say uh thank you for all that work and and just confirm that the first and second read stays the same. >> Yeah. And that's why on the chart there where it shows it would go to the policy committee this date would go to this study session and to this regular meeting kind of trying to lay it out that way so you guys would see when the first reading would come and then when the final reading would come. >> Okay. Well, if no one has anything else, thank you so much, Director Catherine. Appreciate it. >> Thank you. [clears throat] >> Moving on to the superintendent report. >> All right, we'll move into the uh enrollment report from uh Director Ryder. >> Thank you. So, in your packet is the kindergarten enrollment. So, this is for this coming school year and um it has been updated for dates all the way through July 31st of 2026. You will see that we have um 470 students enrolled in kindergarten at this point in time. We should be looking at about being 97% of the way through. And if that's the case, that puts us at possibly having 485 when school starts by the numbers. Um, so we're not too far off from the 489 we budgeted if this all happens. Right. So that's our projection with regard to um, kindergarten enrollment. At this point in time, um, as of today, there are 102 students of that 450 470 that are um, open enrolled as that compares to just being three more than what was listed as of June 18th in the um, information. So, that was a request by someone to just clarify how much of our 470 was open enrollment. That's 102. Um this is a process we would continue to do. We every Friday we do the enrollments for kindergarten and um there are lots of calls happening. Um people are working non-stop from the time they get here till they leave. Um working on just calls, responding to families and um working on those enrollments. So it's it's pretty hopping right now. So that's good, right? Uh so that's all I have for the enrollment. [clears throat] Next is the finance report. >> Yep. >> Yes, please. Thank you. >> Um so with regard to the finance report, um today was the start of our audit fieldwork. Uh so they worked remote today, but they had all of our information submitted via their portal. And um because of that then that always kind of puts kind of a almost like a freeze on the month of June, right? because we're still working on some entries there. So, when you look at your um consent agenda and you would normally see a financial board packet or a bank reconciliation, you will not see that until the audit is complete and then we'll catch up with those months. However, for June and July, you're going to see the activity for all the other areas that we normally provide to you. And so, those are listed in the um consent agenda. Also in the consent agenda is um a draft budget calendar which um can be updated as board decisions around committees are reviewed. Okay, because I know that's a topic of conversation. Um there is a truth and taxation meeting date that there is a form I need to submit by the end of September. So there's plenty of time. However, that has been incorporated as well since we received that from the county. And um that is setting the truth and taxation meeting date at December 14th, 2026, which is the only board meeting we have scheduled in December. And it would be at the start of that meeting at 6 p.m. Um, additionally, you will see in the consent agenda related to finance the child nutrition, bread, and milk bids. And that concludes that report. >> Thank you, Director Ryder. >> Okay, all that up. >> Go ahead. Any questions at all? No. Okay. One thing I have to add is that um as far as that we had the night to unite on August 4th last week. Um we had four stops. Um first couple stops were a little thin as far as uh activity there, but the last two stops I thought had, you know, decent um showing for residents and the and the community, that type of thing. Uh prior lake days we had on August 8th on Saturday. Uh thanks to all the board members who were there. Appreciate the help with that. A lot of staff members. A kudos out to uh Miss Zimmerman and and the work she put to organize that and get that going back getting that going and having that organized. Um our third annual back to school celebration will be held on August 20th from 5 to 7 at Lake High School in the lower lot. It's a communitywide event with food trucks uh family activities and then stuff the bus school supply drive. Um then we have the all all staff back to school kickoff on September 1st at 7:30 a.m. Uh all staff will be the event will be at the um Prior Lake High School. And then um I've met with uh Jason Wedell and Casey McCabe. They're going to meet with the the buyer of this property to have a discussion on kind of next steps to get kind of an update to see where that's going to go and what's going to happen and that type of stuff. So, as of right now, um, before 4:00, I hadn't heard back from them as far as what discussion they had, but I met with them earlier today at 11 o'clock just to discuss what options are out there for the buyer and and what information has to be shared or worked with with them within the city and that type of stuff for moving forward. Um, we have our board retreat uh on the 24th. So, the work the board retreat in and of itself will start at 4:30 and then a work session will start at 6. Um, I went to a conference uh last week uh MASA conference and it was an interesting conference and they talked a lot about all kinds of different things between um special ed funding and AI. And one of the interesting things that they brought up with AI is that now with e-learning days um some schools now have to reconfigure and figure out what they're going to do for e-learning days because kids have now figured out how to use AI to superimpose their own picture to answer questions online. And so then that way the kids aren't not really even live um on an e-learning day and that type of stuff. And so you know as technology advances and moves really fast we have to move with it and try to adjust and adapt. So it's one of those things where you have we have to look at how effective now our e-learning day is going to or yeah e-learning days is going to be for us if those are the things that we have to resort to for like bad weather and those kind of things. So, but outside of that, um, just time right now. >> Thank you. Is that any anything you >> You're good. >> All I got. >> All right. All you got All right. Next, we'll move on to the approval of the uh agenda before I entertain a motion. Are there any requests to modify the agenda at all? Okay. Hearing none, I'll enterain a motion to approve the agenda as presented. >> So made >> by Director Johnson. Is there a second? >> Second >> by Director Atinson. Thank you. Uh it has been moved and second to approve the agenda as presented. Is there any discussion about that hearing? None. All in favor say I. I. >> I. Oppose say nay. That motion carries 70. Okay. Next up is the consent agenda. Um the consent agenda items are considered routine in nature and are enacted by one motion. There is no separate discussion of these items unless a board member or citizen requests that an item be removed. Any request for removal must occur prior to the approval of the consent agenda. The consent agenda includes financial items. Approval of the July 20th regular board meeting minutes. the budget calendar setting the truth and taxation meeting for December 14th um child nutrition service items and the 202627 board committee roster and personnel items. Um before I entertain a motion, is there a request to remove an item for the from the consent agenda? >> Um yes, please. We discussed removing 12 C the budget calendar just for adjustments to that with the committee timing and getting those ahead of the stud uh study sessions. Thank you. >> Okay. And I and I would like to remove 12F >> 12F. Okay. And I will move uh 12 C and 12F to unfinished business. Number 15. Is there any other items from the consent agenda? >> Hearing none, I'll entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda. Less item number 12 C and less item number 12F. So made >> uh second. >> Is it okay? uh first by director Olad and a second by director France. Thank you. It has been moved and seconded to approve the consent agenda uh less those two items. Um is there any discussion? >> Um Chair Bullion just um if I may just an appreciation for our uh retirees. >> Yes. >> For their years of service. So thank you. >> Yes. You're welcome. Um okay. So if that's all the discussion uh we will say all in favor say I. >> I >> opposed. That motion carries. And as far as district retirements, Director Catherine, did you have anything? Sometimes you do share, but I I did say um uh I'd like to also recognize the district retire retirement. So thank you uh Director Alstead for doing that. Um on behalf of the board, thank you for the service to the retirees. Uh most importantly to the students, families, and staff and community that you've served um so faithfully. We wish each of you the very best in retirement. Uh the best is yet to come. I believe that. Okay, moving on. Um let me just keep scrolling. The consent is big. All right. resolution for acceptance of gifts. Uh we'll um our generous donor is the Prior Lake Lions Club in the amount of $1,224. Because this is a resolution, a roll call vote is required. I will entertain a motion to approve the resolution for acceptance of gifts as presented. >> Still made >> by Director Smith, second >> and a second by Director Johnson. Thank you. It has been moved and second to approve the resolution of uh for acceptance of gifts. Is there any discussion? >> Hearing no discussion, we'll proceed with the roll call vote. Uh Director Atinson >> I. >> Director Johnson >> I. >> Director Mason >> I. >> Director Olstead >> I. >> Director France >> I. >> Director Smith >> I. >> And that and I say I. So that carries uh 70 and the resolution is adopted. We'll now move on to um personnel items. I see no personnel items for the board for board action this evening. Director Catherine, do you have anything? >> Yeah, that's correct. No action. The only thing I would just quickly update is that I know every year when we go through the spring cycle, we talk about, you know, all the non-renews and the ULAs. And just a quick update, I mean, we uh have been fortunate enough to bring uh as of today 17 individuals back um that were either UL8 or non-renewed back in the springtime. So, uh once again, it's it's just the nature of the beast when it comes to school district um staffing. But yeah, we've so far today been able to bring 17 of them back. >> Thank you for that update. All right, moving on to unfinished business and we have items number 12 C and 12F uh from the consent uh being removed. I think uh Director Mason, do you want to talk on 12? >> Yeah, I was just asking about the budget planning timeline and potentially moving some of the finance and ops committees advisory um advisory committee dates um just so they align better so they uh occur before the study sessions. And so I don't know if this is a discussion we want to have now or just keep it >> as is and move in later. >> I think we should move it to the work session because that way we can just put up a calendar, look at the dates. >> Okay. So is our preference to just not approve this for now or do we need to approve it and edit it later? >> Uh I would say we I would just table it. >> Okay. I can make a motion to table this then. [snorts] >> So I I have a question for uh Director Ryder on this. Um, do the does the finance committee meeting dates change or does our budget calendar planning calendar change? I think that's my confusion on that because some of these things obviously you can't change. We we have certain dates in here that we kind of have to meet. Um, so is is since we don't have a finance committee, you know, finalized yet or or schedule necessarily finalized yet. Um, what it's kind of like are we talking the cart before the horse? Are they really that aligned or does one really become more variable than the other? >> Um, the format is similar to what was present when I arrived and so it's been continued. It's a combination of modifying dates by like one or two just because of the calendar change, right? Um but the topics are pretty much in sync that way. There's also um I did find a need to push back the um like the 5-year projection because we we tried that in October last year and it was too soon. Need to wait. >> Okay. >> So that's been shifted. With regard to the finance and operations committee meetings, um last year we frontloaded quite a few meetings due to the budget um sorry the boundary changes and that whole conversation. Um so there were even quite a few more meetings last year than what we would normally anticipate having. Um there are five scheduled in here once we get past the I think it's the January or February meeting. Um let's see where is that finance one? Um January 5th according to this this timetable. Um you know once you get past that point in time our process for working on budget kind of moves beyond the input stage from community and into the conversations internally with principles and departments and things of that nature and the board. Um, so that's where I'm not quite sure how much needs to kind of happen again until you get to probably May. As I was talking with um, Director Powers today, the fact of the matter is that you know that long-term facility maintenance that that should probably come to um, in more final form in May so it can be approved by the board in June and get that kind of more embedded. you we we have it on the agenda here in September as something to talk about, but it's like that's great for planning purposes to get ideas, but you need the final form when you get towards the end of the year, right? So, just trying to kind of sync some of these things up and [clears throat] align them. Um, you know, I think it all kind of depends on where we land with the format and process we want to use for committees. I I guess one of the questions that I had is um and we need and I agree with um with Dr. Wagner that we need to table this but typically we see the budget planning be not codependent upon the finance committee meetings. The finance committee meetings were then finance and operations meetings I should say now were then scheduled around the need also like you said you frontloaded some last year because of the boundary changes and a few other things. Um, usually we see the budget planning, the things that you actually have deadlines for that need to happen by that time or when your threshold is and then the committee meetings then are not part of this and they are scheduled around that to make sure they not only occur before the board meeting uh but also you know maybe more of them are needed based upon the topic and based upon what's going on financially. So that was just my confusion about this one having the committee meetings in the budget planning schedule. >> I mean if it's the will of the board to separate it from the budget calendar, it can be done. I know for purposes of preparation of materials, it is something that I'll be looking at cohesively. But yep. >> Okay. Thank you. And I I agree to table it for just the reason why I said so. >> And just I think clarification for the community too. the um September 22nd uh finance and apps committee is scheduled and published. So >> we've put the date out there. >> Yeah. Yeah. Just it's out there just so everyone is aware. >> Yep. >> Thank you. >> So um tableabling this to the study session. There's nothing that no action that needs to be taken to table it or the table. >> I did. >> You made a motion and you second it. Perfect. So if there we've had the discussion, any other feedback by board members? No, the only thing I have to say is when I was on the committee, which was last year, there was feedback that um rather than that the the comm or the community was looking to give feedback to decisions that would then come to the board. So aligning those meetings before um the board meeting was really important versus just going to the finance committee and updating on what on what we talked about at the board meeting. So that's something to um take into consideration um as you guys are looking at the calendar committee dates. So and I think that this calendar looked better when from when it just I just eyeballed it. So So that's I just wanted to provide that. Thank you. >> Anyone else? Okay, no more discussion. We have a first and a second on the table to table this item. Uh all in favor say I. >> Oppose say nay. >> And that passes 70. Okay. The next item will [clears throat] be 12F. Director France. >> Yes. I would also suggest tableabling this until the board has had a um a more thorough discussion and more um um uh time to absorb the change and a uh previously policy uh made committee that involved the public on purpose. Um so that my motion is just to table it for uh more discussion >> to the next >> well to a study session or to the retreat whatever we need to do whatever we have time for. Let me put it that way. I'm not quite sure what our retreat schedule is and we're time limited by that. >> Okay. So there's a motion on the table to to table uh item 12F. Is there a second? second by director Olad. Any more discussion? >> Um I'm not sure Dr. We've been talking about this since Dr. Thomas was here in the end of the last meeting. This is an administrative managerial decision of you know developing the charter is a managerial function. It's not a board governance function. Our governance is to review the policies. So I think, you know, I respect the fact that um Dr. Cawthorne has worked with a lot of parties to bring this proposal forward. I think it's very well thought out. Um we've got a lot going on on our district. So I think to take more time on this also going back to I can't go back I was only I've only been on this board four years, but I do recall when it came to the board before and it was the conversation was well we'll try this and if it doesn't work we'll go back and try something different. And so I just respect the work that you've done and I think spending any more time on this um is kind of a discredit to the work that's already been done by not only the committee members who provided feedback but also by Dr. Cawthorne, Dr. Thomas, Dr. Wagner. Many people have had touch points on this as well. So I don't support that. >> I would like to add that that is um factually incorrect. A board committee is a board committee and that is governance. Um and this 12F is the committee established by the board not by the manager the managerial. >> Any other any other um board input discussion comments? Director >> um I I am not seconding this motion to table to discredit anything. Um I know that this took a lot of work. These weren't conversations that we were privy to. So, I I just would like some more time because this is a board committee. Um, and policies are important obviously. Um, and I agree we do have a lot going on in our district and this is important and I would just I I do not see the harm in waiting two more weeks for more discussion. Anybody else? Okay. With a a motion and a second on the table to table item 12F, I will take us to a vote. All in favor say I. I >> I >> oppose say nay. >> Nay. >> We need a vote. >> I'm an I. Was there Maybe I need to do a roll call because I don't know if all I >> roll call vote. Okay. >> Director Atinson. >> Nay. >> Director Johnson. >> Nay. >> Director Mason. >> Nay. >> Director Olad. >> I. >> I'm an I. Director France. >> Hi. >> Thank you. Director Miss Smith. >> I. >> Thank you. Uh that um >> got it >> is tabled >> 43. Thank you board members. All right. Uh moving on to new business. Um looks like we'll now move to um item 16A, approval of the Education Identity and Access Management Board Resolution. Dr. Wgner, I'll turn it over to you. >> Yep. So basically every school district has to have the superintendent approve the the the approvals of on MDE they have submissions of data and like whether it's suspensions, finance reports, whatever. When all that stuff gets submitted then the final approval comes from the superintendent and then MDE needs to have uh something in the board minutes stating that they've approved that the board has approved the superintendent to be that person to approve all those things. It's bunch of formality is done every year. >> So, um I will entertain a motion to approve the education identity and access management board resolution as presented in our board packet. >> So, >> uh that a motion by director Smith and a second by director France. Um is there any questions or discussion hearing? None. with the first and second on the table. All in favor say I. >> Oppos say nay. That passes 70. Okay. Um, next up, the APAC response letter. Sorry you guys, my scroller is not working. Okay. We'll now move to item 16B, the American Indian [clears throat] Parent Advisory Committee response letter. The board is being asked to approve its response to the letter of non-concurrence submitted by our American Indian parent advisory committee. Dr. Wag Wagner will be meeting with them tomorrow and we'll report at our next meeting if there's anything necessary for the board to know. Um board members, is there any questions or discussions regarding the um the response letter? [clears throat] Hearing none, I'll entertain a motion to approve the board's APAC response letter as presented. >> I made >> by Director Olstead. Is there a second? >> A second by Director France. Thank you. It has been moved and seconded to approve the APAC response letter as presented. Is there any further discussion? Hearing none. All of those in favor say I. >> I. I. >> Nay. Say oppose say nay. [laughter] That passes. Motion carries 70. Okay, moving on to policy. Uh we have no policy items for board action this evening and then future events. Uh upcoming uh the next scheduled board meetings are a August 24th. Uh Dr. Wagner touched on the board retreat from 4:30 to 5:45 and then study session following at 6:00 p.m. Um, and then the the September regular board meeting is September 14th. Um, that brings us to our last item on the agenda and I will entertain a motion to adjurnn. >> So made >> um by Director France. Is there a second? >> Second by Director Mason. Thank you. It has been moved and seconded to adjurnn. All in favor say I. I. >> I. >> Oppose say nay. No opposition. The motion carries and we are now adjourned. Thank you everyone.