Welcome everyone uh to the business portion of tonight's agenda. Um if everyone would rise and join us in the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Okay. All members are present at this time except for Director Olstead. I will now take a motion to approve the agenda made by Director Bullion. Is there a second? Second by Director Johnson. Discussion hearing. Hearing none. All in favor signify by saying I. I. Opposed. Motion carries 6. Moving down to new business, uh the annual survey results. Dr. Thomas. Thank you, Chair Whiteboard directors. Um tonight, uh we have Dr. C who is going to be joining us from the student education group. Um each year, uh about this time, we share the cumulative results with the board around our stakeholder feedback survey and the big themes that are emerging. Um, and it's great for us, uh, as a team of leaders because we take this feedback very seriously. And, um, just a quick little story. A couple weeks ago, we had a lines of communication, um, interaction with our, uh, union leadership. And, uh, a question was asked about do you actually read the stakeholder feedback or do you like use AI to kind of generate themes? and we share that no, we actually read every single one of these thousands of these um data points that come from our students and our staff as well as our families. And um yes, we can use tools to help synthesize things, but it really helps us to read it, to get the context for it, and we set our goals around a lot of this work um throughout the district. So, it's something that's really important to us. Um I think it's something that the board also highly values. Um we are in the process of working through the uh redaction of that uh big data set and when when it's done um for the board you can come in to uh review it in the office as we do every single year as well. Um so with that I am going to um turn the conversation over to uh Dr. C. Well thank you Dr. Thomas. It's so lovely to see so many of you that I know I've had an opportunity to interact with previously. Uh for new members uh who are serving as directors on your board if we have not had the chance to personally meet yet. My name is Casey Blhoviaak and I serve student education as the vice president of leader coaching and I'm really humbled to be with you this evening uh going into what is uh nearing the end of our third year of a partnership with Prior Lake Savage Area Schools and for each of those three years I've had a connection with your district as one of your leader coaches. Um as Dr. Thomas shared. I'm here with you this evening to provide you with your third annual report on the student education experience survey results. So, I'll go ahead and share my screen so that we can take a peek into the uh really what I know you'll see as the great experience that those that you serve and your students, your parents, caregivers, and your staff are reporting on this most recent survey. In the short presentation we have for you this evening, we're aiming for four key outcomes. The first is I will spend a brief amount of time just reggrounding us in the three experience surveys that you provide to uh those in Prior Lake Savage area schools so that we all have the same understanding of what that survey looks like. We'll provide you with some really nice celebrations which I know you'll be pleased to see in terms of the summary of the 2425 results. And then we'll peel back just one layer and look at a report of the student, parent, caregiver, and employee experience results so that you have a slightly deeper understanding of what we're seeing from folks as they responded this year. and then leave you with one important takeaway before I invite um Dr. Edwards to provide a little bit of context on how the team is already actioning around these results. Each of your three surveys are administered in the same window, so they run concurrently for each of the three groups that have an opportunity to respond. We wanted to just provide you a little bit more context that there are of course different question items and as there are different question items there are different numbers um of of survey items that uh students, families, caregivers and employees have the opportunity to respond to. And then in addition to those standard items be it 20 or 15 depending on the responding group there is also a question on our surveys that is called the net promoter question. And so for students when they respond on the survey there is one net promoter question that asks them about their satisfaction of the overall school district. Family and caregivers have the opportunity to respond on their satisfaction of the organization and then on their child's school. And similarly, employees have the opportunity to respond on the organization and then the individual school or department that they directly serve. When we take a peek at the survey results for each of those three categories, in addition to seeing mean results on a one to five scale, you will also see some calculations that we call top box and top two box. When we refer to the top box percentage, that is the overall percentages, excuse me, percentage of responses that are a five out of a five. Your top two boxes then become responses that are a four and a five. So just for clarification, a five is strongly agree, a four is agree, and again that five being strongly agree. As we get prepared uh to take a peek into uh some of the quantitative or numeric results for those three surveys, we want to take a moment just to provide a bit of background on what a net promoter score is as well as how that's calculated. For those of you that have seen these results previously, you know that that net promoter score, unlike those survey items of 15 or 20 that are the questions that folks respond to, the net promoter score, you respond on a range of a zero to 10. And it's a score that's used across industry. Many businesses as well as other productf facing organizations provide this survey to those that they serve. And it's really seen as a gold standard of enthusiasm or loyalty that folks have for an organization. And so unlike the other survey items that have scores that range from one to five, the net promoter score range is actually quite broad. Net promoter scores can range from a negative 100 all the way up to a positive 100. And so when we start to look at your results, we really coach our partners to aim for net promoter scores that are in the positive. Again, scores can range all the way down to the negative 100, but a positive score on a net promoter survey means you have more promoters. So folks that respond a nine or a 10. Then you have detractors, responses that come in at a 0 to six. And I'd be happy to answer any questions about those scores or the methodology behind them after we have a chance to peek at the results for your district. Overall, as we look at the results that came in for the 2425 school year for prior Lake Savage area schools, the overall mean from each of the three experience surveys increased. So, an indication of improved experience for your students, your parents, caregivers, and your employees. As we dug a layer deeper and we looked at the 50 survey items that folks had the opportunity to respond to, 46 of those 50 survey items increased this year over last year's reported survey experience. You are also going to see increased response rates from your parents and caregivers and your employees from last year. And this final celebration is uh really one to be proud of and it's one that you've maintained over your three years of this particular experience survey. Your student experience responses come in in the 70 to 75th percentile nationally. So very strong results. When we look at others across the country that provide this same survey, your students are reporting a highly positive experience much more so than those around the country. So, we'll take a peek now into just one layer deeper for each of those three survey results. So, I'll orient us to this screen because we will see similar tables for each three of the reporting groups. You'll notice in table one, you have three years of results available to you. So the 23, 24, and 25 results from each spring, we've indicated with arrows whether the 25 results are either a decrease or increase over the previous year. So on your student results for this year, we had a slight dip in responses and a slight increase in the mean. You can see the top box percentages of reporting uh for student responses and again highlighting that highly successful mean when compared to student surveys nationally. This is really a place of maintenance of that highly positive student experience overall. You'll notice down here students have that opportunity to report on their net promoter question. Maintaining a positive net promoter score is a good place to be. And we see that coming in um at 3.71. Just about 32% of students reporting a nine or a 10 on that survey question. To provide you with another layer of detail for the results that we received from students, we've highlighted a few elements on this slide. The green star indicates the survey item that saw the largest increase from spring 25 over spring 24. And you can see that that's students reporting that they enjoy their specials or electives. We've noted with the yellow boxes the questions that or excuse me the survey items that are coming in as your greatest strengths. So students believing that learning is important at their school that their principal is a good leader and that they have opportunities to be successful at their school. We've also noted in the survey item or items that are boxed in red the opportunities that present themselves for us to get curious and work alongside students to understand what better would look like. And you can see those two items noted for students. Students uh feeling that others are nice and show respect to one another and that they report liking to go to school each day. I'll note we did see um a a small increase there. Um so while opportunities seeing some small movement from their reporting on those experiences. Next up are the parent and caregiver results. We've broken this first slide into two. So it will look a little bit different initially than what we shared for students but the data will be uh largely the same in terms of the categories. Parent and caregiver participation was up um a nice amount in spring of 2025 over spring of 2024. And it's important to note alongside that increase, you also experienced an increase in your overall survey mean coming very close to a 4.0 um in the 2025 administration of the survey. And then again, as you take a peek at those top box percentages, roughly 35% of overall responses were a five out of five. and just almost 74% of all responses were a four or a five. When we compare those results nationally, we do see those coming in um right around the 20th percentile for benchmarking. Parents and caregivers, as you saw in that introductory overview, have the opportunity for two net promoter responses. The first question asks them about recommending the organization or the school district as a good place for their child to learn. You can see that while the result is still positive, which is where we want to be with net promoter scores, there was a slight decrease in spring of 25 over spring of 24. Parents also have the opportunity to respond on their child's school and you'll notice uh this number was an increase which is of course a celebration from the 24 administration to the 25 and I'll also ground for you it is very common to see higher levels of satisfaction from parents related to their child's school rather rather than the larger district simply because they have more opportunities for ongoing connection and interaction with their child's school. So that difference in score is very common from what we see with partners around the country. having a moment to look at those 15 survey items that parents and caregivers have the opportunity to report on. Similar to what you saw with students will share that the highest increase we saw on a survey item is indicated by the green star which is item number two. parents reporting they believe that school rules are enforced consistently at the school. Then those two items boxed in yellow as the celebration believing their child or the highest numbers and the celebration believing their child has the necessary supplies and also believing the school provides a safe environment for their child to learn. And then the item on the survey that presents an opportunity um and also one that stayed stable from last year to this year is receiving positive phone calls, emails, and notes about their child from the school. I'll note from our work that we do with partners around the country that is very frequently an opportunity that schools and districts are working to get curious about and increase the parent experience in that way. So, not uncommon to see that come in as one of the lower survey items. The final survey that we'll take a peek at is the results from your employees. You'll see an increase in responses from 24 to 25 and similarly an increase in the overall survey mean. Just about a quarter of responses are coming in as the top box. So a five out of five. Just about 2thirds coming in at a four or a five. You'll see the notation for the national benchmarking that survey mean coming in in the range between the 20th and the 25th percentile um across the nation for those responses like parents. Employees Oops. Yep. Sorry. Employees do have the opportunity to report both on satisfaction for the organization and the department or school that they serve. You'll notice that both of these increased a very nice movement here under the delta column for the perception of the organization. Um, still an opportunity uh for movement but some really significant growth as you can see there. And then when we look at the perception of employees for their department or school, also really nice movement in a positive direction on the net promoter score. And similar to what we saw from parents and caregivers, the perception of the immediate work environment is stronger or higher and something that we see across the country. Our last peak at the survey takes us into the items that your employees in Prior Lake Savage Area School had the opportunity to report on. You'll see the two highest items for growth on the survey indicated by the green stars. Both of those items relate to organizational information um and how team members across the district perceive that the first item relates to communication and that second item that saw the highest area of growth is creating a culture of success for employees across the organization. The highest two items on the survey for employees talk about having a clear understanding of expectations as an employee and then believing that their work positively impacts those that they serve. The opportunity from the employee survey presents that um feeling like organizational level resources are allocated to maximize effectiveness across the organization. So certainly a lot of information presented to you tonight. I know that many of you are not seeing this survey report for the first time. But before I turn it over to Dr. Edwards. One of the takeaways that as a coach and someone who has the privilege to look at these survey results from partners around the country, what I really hope you take away from the peak at the survey tonight, particularly as you saw the mean growth, the net promoter score growth in most areas rebounding participation from the adults in the system. is that ongoing commitment to continuous improvement. Your leaders continually getting curious about the experience of those that they serve and the commitment to asking that question and then acting on what better would look like. And so with that, Dan, I'll turn the floor over to you and then certainly Dr. Thomas, with your direction, address any questions that may present themselves. All right. Thank you, Dr. Casey. Uh, yeah, I'm going to pick up from there and and, uh, emphasize a word that Casey uh, spoke of uh, frequently here in the presentation was the curiosity around the data. Uh a couple of weeks ago, we engaged with our learning leaders, which again represents all of our uh building uh leadership teams, as well as our directors and assistant directors, and we came together around this data to look at the composite results of uh our district and uh went through an exercise in which we evaluated those areas where we uh have seen the greatest growth, those areas uh where we saw some uh positive uh maintaining and uh asked ourselves and got curious about why is that uh and what are our efforts that are resulting in that uh performance and then what are the areas that we haven't seen the results that we want to see and yet we uh maybe have been engaged in some work around that and it's not yet uh delivering the results that we want to see. So for example, a concrete example I'll give to that is that comment about positive uh uh feedback home to parents. That has been a goal uh that a number of our schools have had a part as a part of their school continuous improvement uh plan and yet that result is not being seen. So what efforts have we been engaged in and what efforts are we wanting to uh further develop or possibly shift as we move forward. So with that exercise that we did collectively as a team around all of our uh district data. Then following that each of our uh site leaders and department leaders were provided with the summary data for their particular uh survey for their particular school or department and uh we have asked them now and they've begun to engage in this uh to bring that uh data back to their respective in the case of school sites they're built they're building instructional leadership teams and engage in that conversation. So they've begun that here uh in late April and early May and we'll also be bringing it uh some of the summary of that conversation with their uh leadership team to the broader staff uh community throughout the month of May and back to their builts uh where they'll engage in looking at their uh goals that they had set in their school continuous improvement plan as it relates to the stutter survey uh because that is one of the goal areas that are uh continuous improvement plans have in them and uh begin to identify what are those things that they want to uh make adjustments for as they as we head off into the summer. We've uh previously not done this deep dive into the data until our end of the year leadership retreat that occurs in June, but this year we moved that up so that we would go through that with our leaders and then have them go through that with their sites before we go home uh for the summer so that they can begin to uh shape that school continuous improvement plan and be uh have some preliminary uh goals and conversations around that and then uh come back ready to have a a fully uh adopted plan in August uh for our school continuous improvement plan. So, kind of moving that up uh now that we're in our third year of uses usage of this data. Uh we want to really make sure that we have an opportunity as uh Casey alluded to specific to the student data. for example, uh engage some of our students around uh what is it that uh help define possibly in some cases have uh focus group conversations or with student leadership groups uh to understand what would a we're we're constantly asking ourselves what would a five look like? Uh what what are what would that look like from the student experience? What would that look like from the uh staff experience? What would that look like from the parent experience? So, we'll be uh engaging in that work and have begun that already to this point. Chair White, I'll turn it to you for uh questions from the board and in conversation. Are there any comments or questions for either Casey or Dan? Mary. Um Casey, can you help me understand a couple of things? uh one when we look at the students and the top box and the top two box percentage the 34.35 and the 69.49 respectively that says it was in the 70 to 70 70 to 70th percentile and the national benchmark. Um whereas when you go back down to the parents you actually have a larger top box uh two percentages at 3536 and 73 80.84 respectively. and yet that scored in the 20th percentile. So that's my first question and that I I think I kind of understand where that's coming from, but I'd like to hear it from you. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for the opportunity to explore that a little bit more deeply with you. So when we uh create our benchmark reports, the benchmark reports I would I would separate that from the discussion of of the top box. So when we look at the benchmark reporting, we're looking at the the range of where we see those scores reporting nationally and what I would say why you see the difference in the percentile ranks between the adult I'll just put the two together. I would say employees and parents and caregivers as adults. Those benchmark numbers are lower than your students. What we see in Prior Lake Savage is your students. While the mean numbers come in maybe at a similar range as your parents, your students in Prior Lake Savage Area School District view their experience much more positively than we see students around the country reporting their experience. So, it's not necessarily the same benchmark numbers or means that translate across those benchmarks. It's really separating out each three survey groups have their own benchmark reports. Okay. Did that help? That's kind of what I thought your answer was going to be. Um but it it the the disperate you know responses and stuff like that on a national scale and why adults judge differently than students and how to compare those. I think um I would like to you know actually when the learning leaders are looking at those and and seeing the actual data behind that I'd like to see that broken down a little bit more um to actually understand the the impact and how you actually satisfy both population groups I think is what it is right. Um uh and then another question that I had had to do with um the I think it was the parents um you have in yellow on the parent caregivers the table three the item means an overall mean by survey administration on that page number six um that's highlighted in yellow and that's a negative0.03 03 on the I believe my child has the necessary classroom supplies equipment for effective learning. And I'm wondering why that was highlighted in yellow versus other numbers that were not negative that were not Oh, I see what you're indicating. Yep. So, one of the things that we were seeking to do on that particular slide was call out items that were on the higher end of the survey, the um the response, not necessarily the change. So, let me show you what I mean there. Give me one moment. Okay. So what um item number six, correct? Correct. Okay. So this column here that has the delta indicates the change in the 25 survey over the previous year. So, this item here went down slightly, but is one of your higher items on the survey for overall scores. We probably should have also boxed number four. I'm treated with respect at this school, but our aim there was to highlight some of the higher individual items by the the mean of that item, not necessarily the change in results from this year over last year. That makes sense. Okay. And I do wish you had highlighted number four too because that was what I was really confused kind of about under understandable and I absolutely own um that there should have been a yellow box around that one as well. So very good eye and good catch on that. Um, and then my last question is actually to the administration because I'm noticing that our overall parent g caregiver response was quite a bit higher than last spring and I know we had some discussions about this last year because the timing of it, we had the we had the strategic plan going on, we had other surveys going on, etc. But I just like to hear from administration on why you believe that the number is almost you it's quite a bit higher um than uh what we had last spring. So I'll just share that uh one of the things that u we discussed last year was during the time of this administration we are going through um some really tough negotiations that went very public and we believe a lot of that got captured in the the results of last year's survey and um you know as as we worked through some of those concerns or some of the issues that we were having during that time frame. I think parents saw our abilities as uh administration, teachers, etc. to work through some of the challenges that were maybe keeping us apart to kind of bring us back together. And so I think we're picking up on some of that that we've started this year and we've gone through this year um in a very different fashion compared to when this was administered. I think that's the largest from the central kind of overall district uh perception. Then in terms of the connections uh for our schools where our parents really meet the district if you will. One of the things that we do as leadership team as leadership team members is this notion of rounding and how we can begin to address. Um so for example when I take a look at where something went down I think uh Dr. Edwards alluded to the uh the positive phone calls home that you know as we start to unpack this we're going to bifrocate elementary compared to secondary because elementary was a very specific universal goal and so do we have differences between elementary and secondary and is this picking up more of the secondary and if so we understand that um and so we would have rounding conversations okay principal Lex tell me a little bit about what your efforts were to engage engage families at home. Um, what were your intentional efforts? What types of calls? Where where are your logs? And so we do these rounding. So when I go to schools and visits, I will round with this data to start having these be some entry point conversations. I think I might even talk to a couple of you as well as board directors when you're going out to schools last year that use this because this is where this particular school might be um focusing um on some of their efforts. And so I think the intentionality that our school leaders and their leadership teams have had around their parent metric scores to ensure that they're having a better experience as parents. That is something that I would attribute to because we've now woven this directly into their continuous improvement plans frontward facing and that's something that as we know that's out there kind of what gets measured gets done and so I think some of that's being picked up this year as well. Yeah, and I was just going to emphasize that just a little bit in terms of weekly uh or monthly communications to parents, making reference to the work. And I think part of that is uh helping then call attention to where our focus needs to continue to be when parents are taking this survey and they're saying, "Well, uh you're saying that, for example, positive notes home is something you're working on, and I'm not feeling that." uh that's you know part of that curiosity thing that we'll engage in and continue to engage in but putting that out there uh in front and I think uh the fact that we're in year three of utilization of this data uh to to drive both the school continuous improvement plan and our communication strategies uh with our parent caregivers I think is is evidenced here by you're listening to what we're saying um and therefore we're going to give you the feedback because I think we all know that about surveys if uh if feedback is given and there isn't action around it um we're less engaged to participate and I'll just add one last thing to that the intentional we and we've talked about this as a learning leaders group um the intentionality of our learning leaders um to explicitly explicitly uh declare when they are taking action around an aspect of this survey so for example um again just we'll just keep using this I When when we do a newsletter or if I'm meeting with my PTC, I'll tell my PTC, you know, based upon our school data, it looks like positive calls home was something that came up fairly low. As a result of that, we're doing these three things and being very intentional over the course of the year that you're calling out when those three things are happening, keeping that on the forefront of um our parents' minds that you said you were going to do this. you you are showing evidence that you continue to do this and so if I don't ever hear anything of it then I think nothing gets done right so that was one of and I think about another district that I was in that was one of the things that we learned of our just just kind of breathing life into what we are saying we're going to do and letting folks know when we're doing it. Um so that's very much on the consciousness of uh our stakeholders whether it's our students or our parent caregivers or our staff. That's that's another piece that we've talked about too. Director Johnson. Yes. So, um can you give me or tell me the reasoning uh why you chose to ask the students if they would recommend the school district versus recommending their school? Yeah. So, that's a question. Um, it's on our standard set and um, I'd have to go back and I will be honest with you, I've never had anyone ask me that. So, I don't want to give you an answer that is constructed solely from my mind. Um, but I can go back and ask our expert sur uh, survey team around that and Dr. Thomas uh, forward that back to you um, to be able to share back with with the board. Is that reasonable? I'm sorry that I don't have a a direct methodology on that for you, but I want to make sure you have accurate information on that one. Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate it. And then um one other thing, uh this one might be for uh Dr. Edwards as far as the two items that were uh annotated in red. Do we have the data? So, it's number 15 and 16, and I can read them out to you if you if you would prefer. Okay. Um students for students. Yeah. Yes, that's correct. Um do you have the data broken down into grade level, elementary, middle, middle, and high to see where that is coming from to see just I think like Dr. Thomas was was saying earlier if it is more focused in an elementary, if it's in a middle, if it's in a high to really dig deeper into that. So, so we we have the school data broken down uh not disagregated by grade level at a particular school, but each school receives their data. And I think I mentioned earlier that one of the exercises that analyzing this data right now gives us a chance to engage with some of our student leadership team to help understand uh better uh what what a a higher score what a five would look like. Um so we have the data not broken down by individual student uh grade level but by composite of the school grade bands not grade level. Yep. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Just Yeah. One other question about the participants for the students. So I saw the participant level dropped quite a bit um for students. Did you administer it the same way? And I'm just curious like what are all grades given the survey um and how was that administered? Yes. Uh we did administer it the same way and that's a speaking of curiosity that is a curiosity when we uh because we approached it in a similar manner to each of the past two years. We're a little bit perplexed by that and curious about that and uh we'll continue to analyze uh that and again engage with our students. Um is there a reason they're not participating? Uh we approach it in the same manner. So and sorry is it all grades that are given the survey or Yes, all grades. Yep. Go ahead. Oh, that was that was actually my question was about the grades. Um, but you answered that, so thank you. I had one other question. Um, when you get get into the um net promoter questions, particularly when we're looking at the ones with the parent and caregivers where there was a drop in the net promoter score or in the employee group, I believe there was a No, that one actually went up. Um, how do you dive deeper into that data when there's not like in the other ones there's more specific items, but when you're really referring to the net per promoter score and you see we see a slight drop um more of a drop from 2023 than even from 2024. How do you dive deeper into that data to really understand what what are they what's what are the reason for the drop? Director Atinson. So what staff will end up doing particularly at the building level um which I think is where this conversation can really take hold is um every building gets their raw data set u and so the building principal will start to look at um the comments around um certain questions that would uh inform um context for this. So, if I begin to see a theme that's coming from some of the uh narrative for my parent group, that gives me an opportunity to then go back to my parent leadership group um and just start having conversations and or even with my teaching my building leadership team to say, I'm seeing these two themes coming out in the the qualitative data. Um and this is what we encourage our building principles to do is not to go into the comments right away. use comments as context um to inform what you're seeing quantitatively. So when we look at that, that's where um individual buildings can begin to have those conversations with their parent leadership groups or they're building instructional leadership teams um and maybe that becomes a conference question too. So if I'm at the you know parent teacher conferences, we might have a theme that we want to explore. So we might ask that simple question. So those are some strategies that principles can do, not necessarily unilaterally, but that's one way that we can begin to get at what's behind that net promoter score of that particular question. Um, and then be, you know, see what the responses are from there. So I yeah, I appreciate that and I think that's relevant for the second part of that question on how likely are you recommend school. But what I was wearing referring to is the first part of that question where it's really about the organization. So it's a higher level and as a parent who goes to conferences and I get seven minutes to talk to my teacher, I don't think we're going to get to those questions. Yeah. So how are we as an organization taking a deeper dive into this data particular to the organization? Again, very similar to what I was sharing. So rounding conversations for me would with principles and Dr. Edwards and others would be to understand what are you hearing at the building level that's important for us that we can begin to aggregate up. And so when we start hearing those same themes say, okay, I'm hearing this consistently across secondary or I'm hearing this across elementary or this is just in general K12 a theme that's coming up. That's when we begin to say what is a district level strategy then that we might be able to take on um because it's impacting multiple schools or we know that we have a elementary or a secondary uh area that we need to focus in on. Um so for example um this this score uh when you take a look at that slight dip that came in the summer or the spring of 20 sorry spring of 24 uh that dip there. One of the conversations that we were um kind of looking at was marrying that with some context around um safety specifically on the bus and that became a pretty dominant theme. So, and and that's something that we said that's a district initiative that we need to address. And so, uh with the support of our deans and our transportation company, we did summer PD and training around uh behavioral management, student engagement, um strategies, etc., so that we can begin to disrupt maybe that being an aspect that we can manage at the district level. So, that's kind of how it works both at the building as well as then at the organizational or at the district level. Thank you. I appreciate that. Yep. I just wanted one clarification on the students. It was 312, grades 312. We do not uh survey our kindergarten, first and second graders. Well, thank you. Um I'd like to just say um first of all, I'm very pleased with the takeaway. the um I I do believe we have a commitment to com continuous improvement and I appreciate that the scores reflected that. So I wanted to say that first. Um questions uh Dr. Edwards or Dr. Thomas um as the discussions take place with the learning leaders and the built teams um and goals are being set for the upcoming year um how is the strat plan utilized for filtering because you know the survey there's many many questions surveyed there's there's many and um when we have a lot of focuses sometimes we have no focus And so, um, I'm wondering how the how you'll set the goals in aligning that with the the Strat plan. That's my first question. Yeah. Uh, we I'm trying to recall how much conversation we had at the board table around our school continuous improvement plan specific with the new strategic plan. uh we we modified our school continuous improvement plan to reflect the new strategic plan as we set course for this current school year and our intent is to continue to do that. We've been in conversations with our learning leaders and they've frankly seen that alignment and appreciate that and want to continue that trend. So within that, taking each of our priorities uh specifically and looking at questions that get at that specific priority to narrow down the question we might want to focus on, the area that we might want to create strategies around and measure uh the results of. So definitely uh honing in on that is is an important exercise that we will uh engage that each of our sites will engage with their builts and create their skip that does have that alignment. Very good. Um and then my second question, last question. um after you you had mentioned end of April going into May having these discussions, will the um will the findings or the um summaries of those discussions come back at the board table or is that just maybe in our individual one-on- ons? I'm just curious if that'll be a future discussion. Vice Chair Bolian, those would be coming by way. So how it would be reported back would be in the school continuous improvement plans as well as the department continuous improvement plans. Um all the learning and where they say okay this is where we need to focus that's where they'll be and again part of our strategy is to make those frontward facing as well. And so that would be uploaded so that the community could also see like this is the focus area that we're working on. And then every fall when buildings do their state of their schools, the expectation is that they're covering that and this is built into that state of the school address as well. And that will be permanently uploaded um for the community to be able to watch and learn as well. Thank you. Are there any other questions or comments for Casey or admin? Okay. Thank you, Casey. Thank you very much. Thank you, Casey. All right, moving on to our next item of business, the 202526 uh meal prices. Director Malone, good evening, Board Chair White, Dr. Thomas, and everybody else. How are you? Very good. The weather passed us. So, my kids are all home safe. All right. Mine should be queued up here, correct? Yes. There. Here I am. All right. I have a fun picture there. Today is our first day of child nutrition appreciation week. Um on Friday it's nationally recognized as school nutrition lunch hero day. So I have a fun picture of some of our um Glendale staff there. Um all right. Uh before I do my meal price request and my wellness update, I thought I'd just give a little um picture of the landscape of what's happening nationally and at the state level with school nutrition programs and nutrition programs in general. [Music] Um you know as you know we have school nutrition programs to feed kids healthy foods and also support domestic agriculture. Um, in fact, the School Lunch Act of 1946 was enacted to um make sure that our young men at the time were wellnourished because they were enlisting for war and many of them were coming to um their um were coming malnourished. And so, uh, the other part of it was that a lot of the domestic agriculture and the farmers because our young and older men were out at war, um, the agriculture was rotting in the on the vines. And so, they thought, let's do this, um, to support domestic agriculture and also make sure that our young people are um, well nourished. So, that is why we have school nutrition programs. Um, as you probably know, uh, school schools receive federal and state reimbursements in the form of cash or, you know, it's kind of money that comes into the O2 fund, which is the fund that is for school nutrition programs in Minnesota. Um, and also in entitlement dollars where we can use those entitlement dollars to purchase domestic agricultural products. Um, the state of Minnesota also gives us um, uh, reimbursements also in the form of cash and also in the form of grants. US Department of Agriculture again also um gives us reimbursements or grants. Basically, we can apply for grants. Um in February, the budget res resolution in the US House passed a bill that directs the House Agriculture Committee to cut $230 billion from its uh budget. And the majority of these cuts were aimed at nutrition programs. So, um, nutrition programs such as school nutrition and SNAP, which is the, um, supplemental nutrition assistance program. Um, the first big cut that school nutrition, um, programs experienced was on March 7th when USDA announced that they were cutting about a billion dollars of money going towards nutrition programs, again, SNAP and WIC and um, school nutrition programs. 660 million of that 1 billion was directly um allocated to um basically farm-toschool grants for schools um which is part of the Patrick Lehey farm-toschool grant program. Um in addition to those cuts um as I've shared in the past, school nutrition programs have also had their supply chain assistance funds um eliminated which in Prior Lake was about $300,000 per year. And then the keep kids fed act also ended the same year that the supply chain assistance funds ended which was um 2223 um and that was an extra 40 cents per lunch and 15 cents per breakfast reimbursement. Um when I was at the US capital in March um with other school nutrition professionals, we were really urging both sides of the aisle to reconsider these um you know these cuts. School nutrition programs the money that is funneled in from the state goes directly into the state of Minnesota. So, if I get a grant from the Minnesota Department of Agriculture, um those funds have to support farmers that are in Minnesota. In fact, Michael's Foods, who is a local Minnesota based company, um they have some farms that are on the border of Wisconsin and Minnesota, and the cows walk across the border. And same with in Iowa. and the Minnesota Department of Agriculture has eliminated them from a um receiver of our grants because we can't prove that every single egg is actually uh laid in Minnesota. Wanted to put the appropriate word there. Um so anyways, very you know very very specific what we can do with these funds. Um similarly at the the federal level money that comes in from the um federal government uh schools have to follow the byamerican provision meaning that we have to um all of our vendors have to um declare that they are um producing their goods and services in the United States. So really dollars that funnel into school nutrition programs go right into domestically um supporting kids our future and our um local economies. So that's what we were advocating for when we were at the um US House and um Senate in March. Um luckily feeding kids and supporting farmers is generally a pretty bipartisan um topic. So we were received pretty well, but but still um the cuts are still out there. Other things that are in that a bill um that can possibly um affect us and this is at the federal level. I'll get to the state. They're kind of coming, you know, they they affect each other. But the first one is um the community eligibility provision which is um C up there. Right now the community elig elig eligibility provision C is at 40%. And again it's a federal program. So, if a district can um is can qualify for C, meaning that they have 40% of their students that qualify for free reduced price meals, then the feds pick up the whole district and the whole district is free, which means that now the whole district is on the federal government's checkbook or, you know, the money is coming from the feds. So, you can see how that would affect if this changes the state of Minnesota, which they're proposing to raise that to 60%. So, if they if it goes through, then you have to prove you have to have 60% of your students that qualify for free reduced price meals in order for the feds to pick up the whole district. Um, Emily, yes. Can I interject a question really quick because I'll forget it. Yeah. So, if we don't reach the 40% then is it the then it's federally not covered or does then is how does that work? Yeah. So, I'm kind of speaking on a national level. Right now, Prior Lake Savage Area Schools does not qualify for C. Okay. Um but but if you um if you could see how it would affect Minnesota if that changes the 20% of those schools that are now um not going to qualify because they are 59% or less then they would become a state you know they'd be they be a state responsibility because with free meals for kids we heavily rely on um the federal reimbursements um to have free meals for kids be a viable program and effectively spreading then the impact aid of uh food nutritional programs to more districts and so we receive fewer dollars. Yes. Yep. Um and I kind of I'll touch on it a little bit even more so it'll kind of make a little bit more sense as I keep going here. So if C changes um it's about 42,000 schools in Minnesota that would drop off of the federal government's checkbook and end up on the state government's checkbook basically. So, meaning that free meals for kids would be more expensive for Minnesota if that changes. Um, another thing is this broad-based categorical eligibility. Um, they're proposing to take that away. Um, so what that means is that if a family applies for services with the Department of Health and Human Human Services, for example, for Medicaid, SNAP, WICK, they are automatically um eligible for free meals for kids or free reduced price meals or they're they don't have to fill out that application for educational benefits, which is traditionally what they would have to fill out um to apply for free reduced price meals. So they fill out one form with one agency and then we all share that information and they qualify, you know, based on their income guidelines for all of the programs. What happens is these families are typically filling out many forms and they kind of get form fatigue and when they get to school nutrition programs, it's back to school time. You know, it's really hard to get families to fill out those forms. So it's been really great um that we've been participating in this broad-based categorical eligibility. So, if they're already qualifying with Medicaid, SNAP, WICK, they automatically qualify for us. The way that that helps the state of Minnesota is that if they qualify for free meals, the government, the federal government is picking up that bill, right? Um, can I can I just add something? Now, the federal government picks up that bill through the agricultural department, correct? Yes. Okay. Yes. And I think that's a that's a significant thing because that also then helps the farmers. Correct. Yeah. So it's not just schools that are affected. Correct. Yeah. The um school nutrition programs um all of our funding is administered by the US Department of Agriculture. Um so I'll just leave it there. Um so uh the last thing that they're proposing in that um a bill is that um income verification for all applications at 100%. Meaning that if a family fills out an application for WIC or free reduced price meals, they have to also provide income verification at the time of application. So they would have to have their last two paychecks turned in with their application for educational benefits. Um, I don't know of any system that even has that capability. We don't have that. You know, our our online programs right now where families can fill out that online. Um, you know, they would be dropping off very sensitive information about themselves if they were filling out a paper form. We don't have a way for them to upload it at the time. So, that's a really tricky one. Um right now we have an income verification process that we do every November where um we are told by the state of Minnesota um at random selection who we have to verify and then we go through that process with a small number of families um and that's already it's a difficult process so it'll be tough but um but that's in that a bill um then and that's all at the federal level and then the Minnesota bills there's nine of them total. I've just kind of highlighted these three. Um this uh Senate File 2965 is um providing a free milk without the purchase of a meal. Um so students that brought a home lunch or did not want to eat the meal would be able to come through and get just a free milk. There's been a lot of confusion around that, I think. Um so that's that's that one. It's got quite a bit of support. Um, House File 2387 is um expanding what's allowable to be paid by the O2 fund and um possibly being able to pay for some of the 01 fund things that are traditionally taken out of the general fund. And then the last one is House File 2201. This one is the more complicated one. It's um essentially adding a fourth category of eligibility. So right now we have free, reduced, and full pay. This one is actually they're calling it enhanced eligibility. So if you um qualify or if you are at 500% of the federal poverty level, which for a family of four in Minnesota or federally is about $156,000, then you would qualify for free meals or free meals for kids, excuse me. Um but anybody else would then be full pay. So we'd end up with another category. Um they have free meals at breakfast still in that bill. This would only pertain to lunch. Um clearly that means that we're filling out forms again. So that's kind of the biggest um hurdle that we'll get through if if that one does go through. Um any questions about stuff going on? Yes. Question. Good. Um the it was House File 2387. That's the one that can backfill the 01 fund. Is that correct? But only after three years. Did I read that correctly in the bill? So it's you have to have uh um the surplus after after three years. Yes. Mhm. Okay. Yeah. And then the the Senate file I'm sorry I cut you off. No, you're fine. Um they I I the details of it have not been quite worked out. Um school nutrition funds O2 funds are a mixture of federal dollars and state dollars. And so it's a little bit of a gray area of how they're going to figure out which dollars are state dollars because that's the money that would be able to backfill as you said right the 01 fund. But the federal dollars would have to stay in the nutrition fund. Okay. And then just going through the the Senate file bill, it mentioned a lot about kindergarteners. Is that for everyone to have that or is it only for the kindergarteners? I don't know. When I read it, it just was really muddy. Yeah. So, the um this is for everyone. The kindergarteners already have a free meal program. Okay. Yep. Got it. Thank you for the clarification. You're welcome. Any other questions? anyone and that's stuff. All right, continue. Okay, I am going to bring in a display for you to visually see what lunches look like today at Prior Lake High School. I've got my assistant over here, my Vanna. So, these are um every day um at all of our secondary schools, we have four lunch options. So, we've got what we call the blue line, the gold line, the laker lunch, which is a grab-and-go sandwich. It's the same thing every day. And then we have the bowl line. Um, yeah, I think if everybody can hear me, I'll just quickly point it out. So, this is um the Laker lunch. It's a graband go item available in different areas or they can just grab and go, go through the line. Gets them through really quickly. Today, we had tiki masala on the menu. Um, and then you get fruit, a veg, and a milk with it. This is we had um a salad bar on the menu today and you got a choice between white chicken chili or um homemade chicken rice soup. The white chicken chili is also homemade. And then these were the toppings that they offered today. You get fruit, the red stick and milk. And that's $3.25. And then the bowl um you can choose between beef or chicken. And then um we have a nacho, a burrito, and you can put it on rice or you can get fruit and milk with it. So currently our options today at Prior Lake High School, they were all $3.25 each. Lunch prices at Prior Lake High School have not changed in about eight years, since 201718. Um we all know a lot has happened since 2017 2018. Um the US Bureau of Labor and Statistics estimates that prices for food were 32% higher in 2024 than 2017. Um so I'll just give you you know this is probably well known by some of you but a short time after we had that 20 27 2018 school year um global pandemic happened and so it was not the time to raise prices anywhere and price uh school lunches um ended up being free then for the 1920 school year. Um, Prior Lake High School did go on that free meal pandemic feeding um, for one year. Um, and then we decided to go off of it because we were not able to offer the students what they wanted. Um, but we decided of course to keep meal prices stable. Um, then coming out, I don't know when COVID really ended, but you know, if you say 2022, it was kind of dying down. We did not want to change prices at that time either. our community was still going through. We were all experiencing things together. Then, uh, Governor Walls implemented free meals for kids, um, with a three-month turnaround, fourmonth turnaround, I think it was, for the 22 23 school year. Again, not the right time to raise prices for Prior Lake High School when we were choosing to not opt in to the program at that time. We were we had already opted out of the school meal program and had decided not to opt into it and we were told by the Minnesota Department of Ed at the time, you can't anyways. We only have four months. There's no way that we can get you on to the program. So, we stayed off of the program. But at the end of that school year, right around this time about a year ago, we decided that we would survey um our community. Uh we did a couple of surveys. We decided to remain off of the program. the board decided, I should say, to stay off of the program last year around this time. Um, so that was last year. We did not raise the prices. Um, we are now almost all the way through our second year of free meals for kids. Um, again, if you guys have noticed what's going on with grocery bills in your own homes, imagine what Prior Lake Savage School's grocery bill looks like. It is enormously higher. Um, you know, the center of the plate is one of the things that we talk about when it just to make kind of talking about meal prices easier. So, center of the plate used to be 60 70 80 cents about, you know, and if you were at 80 cents, you were making sure that you were balancing the rest of your week or your day with some um less expensive items so that you could serve that higher price 80 cents. We at a$150 solid, you know,$180 sometimes for that center of the plate. um you know, wages have gone up, prices of everything have gone up. Let's not even talk about eggs today because nobody wants to hear about that. But um everything is going up. So, um what I would like to do is um request that we raise the prices from $3.25 to $3.75 at Prior Lake High School. And this would be effective for the um 2526 school year. Nothing else would be raised. Breakfast at the high school would stay free. Um price of adult lunches and adult breakfasts would stay the same. It would just be the um price of the lunch. So you'd get all of this for $3.75. Okay. Um, I will entertain a motion to accept the uh 50 cent price increase for the 2526 school year at this time by Director Atinson. Second. Second by Director Mason. Any further comments or questions? Uh, one question. Johnson. Yes. uh do you foresee in the future of having to come right and I understand all the things that happened in the last since the 2017 2018 and I do not wish that upon us ever again um having to come back and ask for another raise in prices. Yes. Yes. Everything continues to raise. So I h I looked at a history of our school meal prices. is I think we have history from like 1983 um 1983 to late 90s you know we raise prices every other year or so um starting around the 1999 early 2000s I have it in front of I don't I don't have it immediately in front of me every year we raise prices about 10 cents um and you know what what we're doing with the school nutrition program is we're covering all of our wages all of our benefits the increased price of um energy the increased price of trash trash recycling um paper, you know, it's not just food price increases that we're paying for with the um meal increase. So, we're paying for everything. So, I don't know of anything that's gotten cheaper in the last from year to year um really. So, yes, I do anticipate having to raise meal prices um more in line with what we used to do, which was every year we asked to increase, you know, five or 10 cents. That's more typical. Dr. Friends, so I have two questions. Yes. Um, and I understand these the answer to these questions probably won't change the outcome, but I think it's important that we uh talk about them. And one is where do we compare with other districts that aren't on the food program with our meal prices that are off the free lunch overall? Yes. So, in Minnesota, there's one other district. Um, it's Byron, but um uh I want I think their meal prices I haven't looked it up recently, but I want to say they're like seven or eight dollars. Really? Yeah. Um I was at a conference u well actually when I was in DC uh somebody spoke um from Texas. They're not on the program. Their whole district is not on the program. He's on a He's got an $8, a $10, and a $12 high school meal. So, we're still pretty low. And we're I think we're pretty low compared to the alocart at the hybrid schools, too, right? Yes. Yeah, we are. Okay. Because I think that's an important uh statistic. Yep. Um the other thing is is looking at our overall budget. As you stated, we're going to be going through negotiations again. So, it's just constant, you know, obviously increases in cost of living, the cola stuff into uh many of the other uh aspects of running the nutritional program, but um with regards to cost versus our our revenue stream and all that, um where are we breaking even? Are we dipping below the x-axis here? I mean, where where are we overall? Not dipping below. Um, and you know, we our access is wonky because of the last couple of years. It's just been really hard, but we are we are consistently um producing revenue. Is that that is that your question? Yes. We have not we have not gone into our fund balance to cover any costs since I've been here in 11 years. But I assume if we don't raise Oh, the the that trajectory will start to go negative. and possible will it go negative in the next couple of years? Are we trying to stave that off? Um, again, going back to Director Johnson's question about the continuous increases. Um, do we have a projection? I I don't Okay. Because it's because we've come out of COVID and free meals for kids. I my my estimates are just I I don't have anything to compare to. One year to the next is so different. Um, you know, I used to be able to look at it because, you know, we had 45% of our kids eat lunch and I just knew it was happening. And everything lately has just been so um unpredictable. Um, wages and benefits, everything's been very unpredictable. So, I haven't I cannot say that quite yet. Um I would say that with so we are in the second year of free meals for kids and if I can compare you know free meals for kids and our participation in that if I have maybe three years I could call that a a trend. Um but right now I've just got one and a half years of that and then I've got and and I'm comparing then while the high school is not on the program their trend. So it's I got like one and a half years of data right now. Does that make sense? It does. But thank you for answering. Yep. Director Justin, I did a quick Yeah. Google search. So, looks like Byron High School's got three different meal prices. 410, 4.85, and 5.85. Okay. For lunch. What kind of lunches do they have? They've got What's on the menu? Okay. Baskets, pizza, graband go is 410. Baskets, pizza, graband go. So that was with the free milk uh with a bottled water is the 4.85 and then the chef meal is 5.85. Got it. So they're above us. Um Yeah. Yeah. They're significantly above us. We also allow our kids to eat um as many fruits and vegetables as they like. We don't do portion sizes for those. Um and as you guys know, we have larger portion sizes at the high school. Um so and they still can pay for doubles. And they can still pay for doubles allocart. And they can buy al cart. Trust me. I know. I'm sure you parents understand. Me as well. I've got kids there. Any other comments or questions? All right. Hearing none, we have a motion and a second on the table. All in favor signify by saying I. I. I. Opposed. That motion carries. 70. Annual wellness update. Director. All right. Thank you. So I will keep going here. Uh so I am required to do a wellness update every year. Um it doesn't change that much from year to year. So those of you who were here last year, it's going to look very similar. Uh we do a trienal assessment and we did that last year. So um I don't I didn't have any requirements to do any more of a um assessment um evaluation this year, but I thought I would just kind of explain um what a local school wellness policy is and who regulates it. Um the federal law requires that uh local school wellness policies um are in place for participating schools in the national school lunch program and school breakfast program. You have to have very specific goals around nutrition pro promotion, education, physical activity, and other school-based activities that promote student wellness. Um I won't read all of those. Uh it's, you know, basically saying that we have to follow the regulations that we have to follow every day. Uh we can't, you know, advertise foods. can't um use food as rewards. Uh we have to follow smart snacks in schools. Um our wellness policy is on the um child nutrition tab of the our website. Um it's under that cute little green tab right there. It'll take you to our trienal assessment. We use the wellsat. Um so there's a copy of our trienal assessment which we did in March of 2024. And then there's also the wellness policy there. Um, our area for opportunity is to add opportunities for our community to provide input to our wellness policy on our website. So our our uh wellness policy, I don't believe, is up until 26 and 27. Um, we just had a Minnesota Department of Ed administrative review. The only um suggestion that she had for me for our wellness policy was that we um we have to designate somebody as a wellness coordinator. So it says over and over that the director of child nutrition will implement this, will oversight this, will but I it's never stated that the director of child nutrition is the wellness coordinator. So a little bit of a tweak of language will go in there. Um and then also just allowing our community to provide input to the wellness policy should they want to. So we can post that on the public notices of our website when we are getting closer to re-evaluating that policy. And that's really it for me. Any questions? Questions for Director Malone? All right. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Next item on the agenda is a readact update. This is a update only. No action will be required. directors Edwards and Herman. All right, I will kick it off here and uh we will have then uh anou that we would uh ask for action on, but we wanted to set some context around that. Um back at the uh teaching and learning, I think it was the April teaching and learning meeting uh now should have remembered it was April or May. Yes, was it April? Uh we we did uh take the teaching and learning committee through an update on where we are at in our progress uh with regard to the read act. Uh just as a reminder, our teachers uh K5 teachers, our intervention teachers K12, our special education teachers K12, uh as well as recent addition, our EL teachers were added to this list. Um have been engaged in the redact training. We chose uh the OLA uh uh program and uh that is a we it's a 70 hour uh it's it's was advertised as less than 70 hours but we've found that 70 hours is is uh what we've uh found it to be necessary in order to do well. Uh and so we are in year one and coming to uh conclusion of year one. It has nine modules and those we have gotten through modules. Uh the target was to get through the first four modules of that uh the conclusion by the conclusion of this school year and we're progressing well in that. Uh we're seeing that our teachers are seeing a lot and we shared uh information about this with our teaching and learning advisory around uh the implications of the science of reading that is the foundational uh body of research that was uh behind the readact and we uh we have taken our teachers uh through that training. They've been engaged. It's an online training uh as well as some follow-up conversations in their respective learning teams and we look forward to that work continuing as we move forward into year two and complete the the training at the conclusion of next school year. Uh we were given that extension uh as a result of last legislative session, the May of 2024 legislative session. The original timeline would have had us completing it by this July. uh on June 30th. Uh and we chose the two-year path for multiple reasons. One of which was most of the teachers impacted by this, specifically all of our classroom teachers at the K5 level were engaged and are engaged this year in year two of our math implementation. So we had taken on that uh lift. Our teachers had taken on that lift. And so we felt uh it would be best to spread this work out in the redact training and over the course of two years. and we've had very positive response. We've had a a great uh experience and working relationship with uh our teachers and our team, our small team in the LA uh teaching and learning office that has been supporting our teachers, our curriculum specialist Gwen Molden, our uh special education curriculum specialist Sherry Anderson, our two of our lead uh folks as well as some other administrators. Uh Katie Sherman, our principal at Five Hawks, was one of our first people who participated a year ago in a crash course in a short amount of time to help us decide that this OLA training was the the route that we wanted to go as a district. And so they uh have been instrumental and others when you when you mention names you uh risk miss leaving some people out but those have been some very instrumental uh people in helping our teachers to uh work through the training to date and we are looking forward to uh completing the training by the conclusion of next school year. And this is a segue into the next item on the agenda. uh I'll just kind of give uh some introduction to that in that we engaged with teachers uh and heard their feedback about how it's going and and some of them want to finish it out uh ahead of schedule if you will um and they want to continue uh in that training and not have a long gap over the course of the summer months. So, uh, we had set out a course to do modules 1 through four this year and modules 5 through nine during next school year. Uh, a number of teachers we believe are going to be interested in continuing that during the summer months so that they can uh, complete it while it's fresh. Uh, as well as um, be prepared. A number of those people we anticipate are probably people who are part of our literacy committee who are beginning to look at resources associated with the readact which we just had our first presentation to that committee last week with one of the approved uh vendors that uh through the readact was approved to be uh an adopted uh curriculum through MDE. We have additional uh presentations coming up here in the next few weeks around that. So we anticipate that a number of our teachers who are part of that and others want to potentially complete the work and you will see a uh memorandum of understanding to reflect that in the next piece. And uh I think the other uh comment that is with regarding to readact is once again we will continue to vet those resources throughout the summer months uh and bring updates as we are making decisions uh either to the teaching and learning committee which has our last meeting here in a couple of weeks. So we we won't have had our presentations from all the vendors at this point. Um, but we will certainly keep that committee up up to speed as well as you collectively as a school board here moving into uh the preparation for the upcoming school year should we identify uh some resources that we want to field test in our district next year with relation to the implementation and preparing for full implementation uh of the readact the following year. So that would be the 2627 school year. So, uh, those are the comments related to that, uh, that we wanted to give as context to the next item on the agenda. Sorry, before we go to the next item, are there any questions for Dr. Edwards? I have a question. Hopefully, it'll make sense. um with some of the staff wanting to uh continue through the summer months and not wait until the next school year to resume training. Um does that take additional resources or is this a on are they doing it on their [Music] time? Vice Chair Bowling and members of the board um this goes in a little bit into the the next one under theou. So, we'll have two different tracks um that will provide an option for our staff. Um and one of the tracks during the summer will provide them compensation time to flex that time throughout the school year. If they choose to do the school year track, then they would have that time during contract time to complete those hours. So, there's two different tracks that they'll have that option to um select from um and then have the corresponding compensation from there, whether that's the compensation flex time or it's being completed during their contract time during the during the school year. Thank you. You're welcome. Any other questions? I did. And that's kind of uh piggybacking on uh what um Vice Chair Bullan just asked. Um you know, we had talked a lot in the in the about the read Act and how it was going to take some of the time from our full day staff um days off uh during the uh during the school year that we had authorized the administration to do. So if some teachers take this and some teachers don't, how is that going to be balanced against going into those um uh teacher meetings that talk about let's say you know the the test scores and how students are doing and stuff like that. Is that going to disrupt that in some way? So, so the the plan has always been uh that for over this two-year training that any of our staff development time, staff development days or most I should say most of our staff development time and days been committed to this uh participation in this training. Uh we we do have some requirements for live session uh engagement and those requirements uh continue to be uh altered as as we learn uh from MDE and the interpretation of the read act. Um but we will have those live sessions during our professional development time. We will also uh we are beginning to have conversations with regard to goal setting for learning teams for next year that may include or could include work uh related to the uh redact implementation or uh continuation of math goal setting that we've been doing. And then our our we will continue to utilize our principles and their respective builts will continue to have conversation about utilization of staff meeting time uh for some of that work as well. Thank you. Any other questions? All right. If there are none, we'll move on to the uh memorandum of understanding. Director Herman, anything further? Chair Chair White, members of the board, thank you. I just want to say thank you to the um PLCA leadership um for meeting with us on this. We had a really successful um negotiations to come up with thisou really putting together um multiple feedback that they hear on their end and our end to come up with this plan to offer options for our staff um to to complete this robust training. So what you see in front of you is an agreed upon umou between the uh district and the union that we're presenting for your consideration tonight. um that covers all of the required um negotiated items in order to spend the professional development dollars that are allocated for this. Um so you'll see all of the different items between eligibility, compensation, um and the rest of the the required negotiated items throughout theou. All right. Uh is the chair will now entertain a motion to accept the readact memor memorandum of understanding. Is there a motion? So made by director Olstead. Second. Second by director France. Any further discussion? Hearing none. All in favor signify by saying I. I. Opposed. That carries. 70. White. Chair white. Uh there was one other thing not related to the read act that I uh related to uh professional development and our school calendar that I just wanted to call attention to. It uh school calendar as you recall for next year was adopted. Um, and we are just making a couple of slight edits in conference dates at the elementary level, but when we post this out, uh, just wanted to acknowledge that we had a couple of, uh, we have 10 hours of conferences built in in each set of conferences. And we previously have had 4hour uh, sessions and two four-hour sessions and a two-hour session. We're going to shift to two three-hour sessions and a 4-hour session to accommodate with the the calendar and with anticipated uh larger class sizes at our elementary level to make sure we can get all of the conferences and just to be more efficient with our time as well as align with the other components. I just wanted to call attention to that. It's it's kind of under the oposes of the of the um staff development plan and flexibility to to meet our our needs of our students and families uh and and staff and what they have for training needs as well. So, okay, appreciate that. All right. Next on the agenda is a resolution approving the layoff of certain administrative assistant employees. Director Herman. Uh, Chair White, members of the board, um before you you will see the um one resolution um for approval of a layoff of a administrative assistant. We did reduce 2.5 FTE. We also reduced um multiple positions by a set of days. All of those individuals were given the opportunity um via the collective bargaining agreement um for their layoff provisions which included bumping provisions. Um fortunately we we had a situation where the vast majority had an option to go into a vacancy or they chose to stay in the role where their days were reduced. Um and one individual that chose right of refusal to um instead of bumping into position to go on layoff. So um this is the only um impacted individual um all others have either remained in their position or taken a vacancy. All right. Thank you. At this time the chair will entertain a motion to accept the resolution. So made by director France, second by director Johnson. Whereas as a result of fi financial limitations, the district needs to reduce positions and expenditures in various areas served by the district. Whereas article 9 of the 2024 through 26 collective bargaining agreement between the district and the Pry Lake Savage Federation of Administrative Assistance contains seniority and bumping provisions in the events of layoffs. And whereas the administration notified the affected employees and the bumping process took place before May 1st, 2025. Now therefore, be it resolved by the school board of ISD 719 Prior Lake Savage as follows. That the layoff of the following administrative assistance is approved effective July 1st, 20125. Brook Whan.5 FTE Laker online administrative assistant. We have a motion and a second on the table. If there is no discussion, this requires a roll call vote. Director Olstead. I, Director Johnson, I. Director Atinson, I. Vice Chair Bullan, I. Director France, I. And Director Mason, I. And I, that carries 70. All right, we have reached the end of the business portion of the study session. Yep. Uh, anybody wouldn't mind, we will take about a 5m minute reset when we come back here at 7:40. Thank you.