Okay. Like to call to order the uh Shockby School District School Board regular business meeting for May 12, 2025. Tiffany, can you please do the role? Zitic here. Valdez here. Peterson here. Smith here. Aldridge here. Johnson here. Brophie here. Michelle and Sha here. Please join me in the pledge of allegiance. I alian 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. All right. Good evening everybody. Uh, next in our agenda is the favorite part of our meetings as the saber pride portion of our meeting. And, uh, we are, uh, so Andy's getting ahead of himself. Um, first up is item 3.1, the introduction of our newest student school board member, Brian Ban, who's here. Um, we've got a slide up for Brian. Um we conducted uh interviews uh with a number of excellent candidates and I I said this before um it's just always uh inspiring to talk to these these future leaders and uh Brian is no exception. So it was it was tough decision but uh uh we uh we selected Brian and we're pleased to have him here tonight. So uh do you have any any employers? Anything you want to say? Um, I would just like to say that I'm really excited for my position next year and the year following that. And I would like to thank all of you guys for giving me an opportunity to share my voice and represent the Shaki student body. Awesome. Great. Well, thank you. Looking forward to working with you starting in July. So, yeah, let's uh let's all welcome Ryan. Could we do one quick picture since he's here? Oh, yeah. Okay. Just right right over here. Should we chat as the mentor? Be good over here. [Music] So the real Brian can stand in front of the great hair. You guys want to just get a little closer? Thank you so much. Thank you. Good to see you. Welcome. Next on our agenda is item 3.2, two aspiring teachers 2025 student scholarships and our presenter is Sarah Wearberg our assistant director of LTE and is Shauna here she's she's on the list a very busy season have a lot of speak on behalf of Sha Wilson and doing the bulk of the coordinating of this grant so we have a really amazing grow your own grant that we have received multiple times in a row and you can go to the next slide um so we $500,000 in 2025 and it's being used for the creation of this educators rising club for student education competition FCCLA which is family career community leaders of America uh the creation of aspiring teacher scholarship which is very exciting and supporting career exploration through college business so this grant like I said we've already gotten 750,000 but we've doing some pretty awesome things with it so educators rising over 50 participants uh have had over 50 participants in college visits, student competitions and service projects and we've had over 45 high school students sign letters of intent to enter to enter education in the last few years. So this program has really done a lot to get our business teachers give a sense of what the awesome life you get to live and become and it's working. We have a lot of interest in terms of that the LA competition five students to qualify the national so the aspiring teacher scholarships this is a really cool part of this program uh these scholarships are awarded to students of color who major in education the grant is something we're meant to be they're really trying to increase the number of teachers of color that we have in our classrooms and that's where the intent behind all of this money um with the aspiring teacher scholarships it guarantees placement for student teaching and for two years of employment. It funds tuition up to $25,000 per year. Students get a MacBook, they get all their license paid, and they get check and support from the year. So, it's a pretty phenomenal program and opportunity for students. And in 2023, these four students were recipients of the aspiring teacher scholarship. So, they are busy doing their daily learning. In 2024, we have these three students as recipients of the aspiring teacher scholarship. And this year, we have one wonderful recipient recipient of our aspiring teacher scholarship. So, yeah. And so, Annie and Shauna are the ones that are championing this in the high school, doing a lot to get our students excited. And I do have some special highlights that I'm supposed to read out for you. I don't want to miss this one. They're right here. Let's see. It says, "We've recently received another grant. We have sent eight students to college and that has used up all of our funds. Uh with this new grant, we'll be able to sustain the scholarship for the next two to three years and send an additional 8 to 10 students to college for education. In addition, we fund our educators rising club and send students to the national competitions in education through the FCCLA. And want to give a really big shout out to Shauna Wilson who's doing a ton of the work and the support and the champion of students in high school. So that's really wonderful. Um and so the goal is for like these eight students that they would all come back to shop if possible. So and I think that was a really brilliant way into the grant is that they come back to shop to work for two years after they get their license. So they're guaranteed employment here. So it truly is growing your own, maintaining your own and Chair Smith, if I may too, the photo that is on the screen here was from the wonderful event. It's held every year and and Shauna Wilson and Annie and others. Um that was the most recent photo of folks uh in our student body for aspiring teachers. So you can see the the uh scholarship recipient and others in there. It's pretty novel and we get a lot of kudos from the model that we usually have found. [Music] Yes. All right, Andy. Next, our agenda is item 3.3, our spring activities update and presenting is Andy Brown, our activities director. Welcome. All right. Thanks. Um, always good to be here. A little uh presentation's a little bit shiny and heavy today. Just a little bit. So, um, we're excited to host the state speech tournament again uh this year for the um second year. Um, it's a fantastic thing to have all these students from all these other schools uh come for a two-day tournament. We're hoping to not do it again now for at least another six to eight, but uh we'll be happy to do it again before too long. Um our kids that are there um not competing do an incredible job of hospitality and greeting people and marching around selling ice cream and playing music and they said we we just get a just dozens and dozens of positive comments on it. So our coach Justin Bertrram is the big organizer and we just um get a lot going. We had um all of these students competed and we had um these five students and the two of them on the right are a pair um uh go into the finals in that place. So you can see on the left there, Shaya um who's in the red took third. Um Bush run Fatma on the side took sixth, Sha took sixth, and Abbe um took seventh in these different categories. Um so some really uh great performances there. Um a side note that Shea um who's in the front in the red is also one of our two chosen graduation speakers. Um, as of about a week ago, we had um uh 12 students audition. They auditioned via video and then we have um seniors and staff members vote um on who um you know based on those snippets of speeches who they'd like and um Shane was one of our two vote there. Not surprising usually somebody on the speech team makes the uh makes the cut there. Um and our other one is actually on the next slide as well. So um Deca um got back a little bit ago from the international conference um in Orlando, Florida um where we had all of these students competing. Um John Schubert was a um was a finalist. Um so they kind of whittle down. They have these massive numbers and they whittle down depending on the event. Medalists like Emerson Duncan as the list means that they kind of made this uh last batch of 30 and then that gets taken down to somewhere around 15. So John was one of those 15 and then they place the top 10 after that. So those are those are rough numbers but um all of these students got to go and compete. You John is the one whose head is kind of hidden a little bit uh behind the guy with the blue in the back row there. Third from the right but uh just to the right of him as his twin brother. So you can kind of get the idea. So John is John has given a speech. Um is you a few years ago we had twins do it. So we asked about him and Charles said absolutely not. That's that's John's deal. Yep. So we had those students compete. Um then on the next one, uh Shauna has qualified for National History Day, which has I think been a dream of hers since sixth grade is probably when you first did it. Yeah. In middle school. Yep. Um, and so she's been kind of working and refining and refining and refining and uh um has gotten a lot of help, I think, from Josh Fish, who's a history teacher and um has has been a really committed advisor and um planning on going with to Maryland um in in June to put this documentary that she's made on the um on the national stage. Um and part of qualifying is that she's got a mentor from the state who I think had an incredibly long session a few days ago. for four hours to be and so they um so she got a lot of useful critiques and you can correct me if I'm wrong but Mr. fish indicated that you kind of like put your documentary out there and then they say now remake it from scratch kind of. So you have to go back and kind of redo the video about this new guidance. So they said good enough to get you there now you got to make it good enough to move. So that's so that's the goal. But yeah and uh this is as those of you have been in in these meetings for a while probably might remember that we picked this off just because Sha was so interested in doing it. And so, um, when she was a ninth grader, um, we just had or actually even as an eighth grader, just found kind of a mentor who would help her out. And then in ninth grade, we kind of said, "Okay, we can find someone to do it." And got a couple more kids. And then she's been working hard to recruit. So, the club is just kind of um, growing organically. Um, and so it's just a a great example of what I feel like my job is, which is just to find what kids are interested and excited and just help them give help give them the avenue to do it. So, um, we're excited for her to be heading out there. Um, on the next one, as we just talked about, we have the FCCLA. Um, it's just worth noting here that three of these five students that are going are the recipients of the Grow Your Own Grants. And so, that's covering a ton of their travel and registration expenses and stuff like that. You know, we put all these um national qualifiers and things out there. And um those uh we don't budget for any of those things. We don't cover it. um it at the cheapest they tend to run about $1,000 a student when all the things are factored in and some of them significantly more. So there's a lot of fundraising and paying and so that's just another place that the grow your own grant is helping last year and this year as well getting some students there without needing to cut those checks without needing to do the fundraising some of those things. So really um really helpful um there. So those students are headed to um Orlando as well uh in July. Um we had the lead talent show uh just a couple weeks ago. So, just a couple snippets of that. We had I think uh 17 acts, some faculty celebrity judges um and uh just a wide variety of performers. I didn't have a photo of the winners, but it was a group of of girls calling themselves the hijabi dancers and did kind of this dance/ comedy routine that uh that brought the house down. So, so they were the winners there. Um next up, what we're really excited about, we've got Harry Potter and the Cursed Child this weekend. Um and uh you may have seen some of the snippets that were um that made the news um some stories that were there which were pretty great. Um and uh we have sold out the um the Friday night show um which is uh in the thrust stage and so I don't think that we have ever filled that um auditorium for any concert or anything that's ever been there. Um so we've got um every seat is is spoken for right now. Um so if you're intending to go, you should probably get in and get a ticket uh for Saturday. going to be one of those that you can just walk up and uh and get to. And if you can't make it to any of those three performances, Christie might be able to tell you how to how to sneak your way into Thursday. So, and Mr. Brown, I can I can play the quick WCC one with your with your outstanding son that's in there as well. Craft and wizardry from the world of Harry Potter. Shakabe High School is among a select group of schools chosen to perform Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Only 29 schools across the country made the cut. Photojournalist Tony Peterson swung by the school today to learn why this honor is in fact magical. Was Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and then we're doing the high school edition here. I mean you are working with students constantly. One moment. All right. Where were we? How did we do this? It became available for general rights back in May of last year. So when I saw it was available, I knew our students would really enjoy putting this story on stage. So, um, you went ahead and applied the rights and we were they were granted to us and we've been preparing for this adventure ever since. The rehearsals are going great. These are actually donated from Stratus and these are all 3D printed with a really high impact polymer. This is a really technically complex and challenging show. So, our students have really risen to that occasion. It's just wonderful to see all these different brilliant creative minds come in and add their own spin on all of these different um parts of the show. Hi, I'm Savannah. I'm one of the stage managers and we tell our runners to move things on and off stage. It's a really fun story and really brings people together. I'm Valerie and I'm the other assistant stage manager for Stage Left and we keep the magic going. It's beyond cool. Like the lighting is something I haven't ever seen in any of the productions I've been here at the high school before. zoomed in on to where the main characters will be during the show. Our house crests were designed by a really wonderful group of students in the arts and communication academy. I was excited, but I was also very stressed because of all the guidelines that follow with this with we can't do anything from the show, from the movies, can't do anything from Broadway. So everything that we created had to be based off of what the book says and what the scripts say. We do a lot with ourmies at Chaki to really communicate with them. For example, we're working with the arts and calm to design things like the house crest. You can see our set is incredible. It's amazing. It's going to just wow anyone who comes to see the show. So, it's really cool to see when we're all here what kind of magic we can make on stage. Come see Harry Potter the Cursed Child. Hope to see you there. It's a real honor, but also a real awesome opportunity to show what we can do. Maybe you can see the resemblance there residents in my house. All right. Yeah. So, um yeah, so we're just we're just really excited about that. Um we had a problem this last weekend. Uh third year in a row Canerberry Event Center continues to be a good venue for us and we're figuring out better ways to to make it work and um and fill it up. And so um that's been really good. Um another kind of highlight this spring something fun that's been going on is um we've uh hired a new ultimate frisbee coach. Um Ty Spitzky is actually an alumni who graduated just two years ago. Um and uh and is coming back and coaching our team. He's a student at AU. Um and just kind of by quirk of other programs kind of struggling to get enough numbers. We wound up first um incorporating a a handful of kids from Eden Prairie and then got a handful of kids from the Chaza program which are themselves from Chaska and Southwest Christian. So we have this we're hosting kind of this big co-op program that has really helped kind of our numbers and our success. So, they're having a um a really um really successful season um right now. Um another thing just to just to bring up, I'll try to send something out before it happens, but near um I think it's May 28th. I'll have to remember my date. Wednesday morning, we're got we're doing kind of the uh fine arts equivalent of the athletic signing ceremony. Um we brought it in a couple years ago and then I took out a little hiatus but we're going to bring it back um this year and kind of keep it in perpetuity where we just sort of honor our kids who are um going on to fine arts opportunities whether that's a BFA or joining collegiate ensemble or those who have gotten music scholarships and things like that. Particularly um this year we have just a lot of talent going out in that senior class and a lot of kids who are trying to pursue um these arts opportunities at a higher level. So we're hoping to do that. Um, and we do have we just recently had a as usual a full slate of uh all state band and choir um recipients, but there is a a band concert in 40 minutes. So that takes a whole bunch of them out. So um we'll invite them um on June 9th and hopefully we'll talk about those and those students and see most of them there. So I think that is all of the things I wanted to mention. So as always lots happen. Thanks for having me. Thanks. Next on our agenda is item four, the consideration of the agenda as presented. So moved. Second. Have a motion by Brophie and a second by Aldrich. Any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor? I opposed. Motion carries. Next on our agenda is item five, public comment. This is the time where members of the public can participate in the meeting without being part of the meeting agenda. A member of the public may address the board on an agenda topic or on another topic. We allocate a total of 15 minutes for public comment at this meeting. Each individual speaker may speak for up to 2.5 minutes. The sign up for public comment has been conducted online and in person prior to this evening's meeting. No one has signed up for public comment prior to this evening's meeting. We will move on to the next item on the agenda. Next on our agenda is item six, consent items. So we have some personnel items and the schoolboard meeting minutes. Make a motion to approve. A motion by Aldridge and a second by Peterson. Any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor? I opposed. Motion carries. Next on our agenda is item seven. This is a resolution for donations approval. See our donations on the screen there. Um, I just would like to thank so many people in our community for their generosity over the last few weeks with teacher appreciation week specifically. You can see here that there's a lot of donations um for that event to make that as successful as it as it is. Um, and also there's one other item here um Christensen. I um noted on here that the amount of instruments and money that he has raised u with the Eagle Scout project to start them program here in Shaki um is very commendable and probably something that maybe we could highlight um at a saber spot later at the beginning of a meeting sometimes. That's truly outstanding work um by one of our students. I'll make a motion to approve the second a motion by broine a second by Alch. Any further discussion? Tiffany, can you please do the vote? Sit. Yes. Valdez, yes. Peterson, yes. Smith, yes. Aldridge, yes. Johnson, yes. Roie. Yes. Resolution passes. Next in our agenda is an information item. Item 8.1, executive budget summary for fiscal year 26, preliminary budget. Thank you. And here to present is Zil Manazi, our director of finance and operations. Good evening. Thank you for the opportunity to present uh for your review tonight uh the 2025 20226 adopted budget executive summary. Um before I begin uh thank you to our communications team Tiffany and Amber for uh the graphics and color that they've put into this document. Our our team in finance is great with the numbers but as I've often said before the graphics and color are not our special team. So, thank you to the the communications team for their hard work in getting this document ready. Uh, I will give you the headline that I'm not planning to go over all 44 pages tonight in this document. I'm sure my colleagues behind me are devastated to hear that. Um, but that's not to minimize the importance of uh the document. Uh I expect very few if any changes to this um between now and when we're going to ask the school board to approve this on June 23rd. U so my encouragement as it is every year is is uh to get this to you ahead of time. So so you kind of review it and please reach out either through Dr. Redmond or to me directly if you have any questions on the document between now and June. Um, that being said, I do want to review nine pages, uh, and and they're in, uh, kind of all over the documents. So, if you want to note these on the on the table of contents, I'm planning your review, page three, five, and nine. And then we'll go and look at some enrollment information on pages 15 and 16. uh if you're looking to do sort of a deep dive self-study, I'm not going to go over it tonight, but pages 25 through 35 are sort of an overview of all the different funds on the revenue and expenditure side. And then I'll go over some uh of theformational section, specifically pages 38, 39, and 40. And then just a quick touch point on page 40. We'll dive in. Oh boy. Sorry. [Music] Thank you. You can see that finance we use Dell and here is my specialty. Um, so starting with with page [Music] three go here. I can run it for you if you want. Oh, that's okay. Um, thank you though. Yeah. Uh, a budget is nothing more than developing some assumptions. And you can see that our major budget assumptions in this fiscal 26 budget are included in the bullet points on the page. uh three main assumptions are operating levy authority of $1,371.84 84 cents per pupil for taxes payable 2025 zero car call. Our operating levy is tied to inflation. There's a 2.34% inflation factor. The standard operating levy cap uh for next year is $2,266 per pupil. Uh the state aid per pupil formula increase is 2.74% bringing the formula allowance for fiscal 26 to $7,281 per pupil. And then our enrollment projection, our budget enrollment projection of 7,457 students for next year, a decrease of 82 students or about 1% from this year. So those are the main budget assumptions that we use um in our budget building document. Skipping now to page five. Uh if you were to ask what what is sort of the main page that you would want to really zero in on, it would be fa page five which shows our statement of operating and nonoperating funds both from a revenue and expenditure standpoint and from a fund balance standpoint. So starting first with the general fund, that's what we've spent the bulk of our time looking at in recent meetings. You can see that reading from left to right, you'll see the fund balance. And in the general fund, that would be the fund balance in total to include not only our unassigned fund balance, but our restricted fund balances, assigned uh committed, everything is rolled up into that general fund in total. Uh you can see the revenue in the general fund of 125.5 million and expenditures in the general fund of 132.2 million. And as we go down below, you can see the the fund balance intact. I'll get to that shortly. And then looking at the food service fund, we're projecting to start next year with a fund balance of just shy of 2.9 million. So a healthy fund balance in food service and just a slight deficit projected in food service right now. That's uh fairly conservative budgeting related to some unknowns on on food prices and employee contracts for next year. The community services fund you'll see is projected to start at 190,000 and we're projecting a slight surplus in the community service fund. So, good to see that. Lisa Ron, our community ed director, um develops much of that budget projection and community service fund is projected to end year just shy of 600,000 as of June 2026. Our debt service fund, which is the revenue used to pay the principal interest on our voter approved bonds, is projected to be relatively stable next year. Uh as is our internal service fund, our ISF fund. That's our self-funded health and dental account that's projected to end the year at 1.43 million. So, those of you who have been on the board for a while, you'll recall that uh a handful of years ago that that ISF fund was in a pretty critical low point and and has rebounded to a healthy financial position projected for next year. And then lastly, our trust fund, which is OPED, stands for other postemployment benefits. And our scholarship account is projected to end the year at 5.7 million. So down below you can see the fund balance breakout. Um, and we've looked at this previously. So our unassigned fund balance in the general fund is projected to end next year at 13.18 million which is good for 10% which is the mid-range of our fund balance um policy. In order to do so we are expecting to utilize a significant portion of our um restricted fund balance which you can see um towards the bottom under the restricted category. Um, we're also projecting to use some of our assigned fund balance. So about 1.12 million in our assigned fund balance, which is what it's there for. It's an assignment for a subsequent year budget need. So that's really the overall measure of of our financial health and and the general fund is that unassigned fund balance. With that, I will go to page nine. U which is is really our budget process and and history. So you can see that we started here at the schoolboard level in December. Feels like a long time ago, but that was our first official action on the fiscal 26 budget was approval of the calendar 2025 levy and corresponding taxes. So that set the taxes for fiscal 2026. We really started our budget building process at the schoolboard level on February 24th. Um, excuse me, the finance and facilities committee on February 24th with the review of the fiscal 26 budget assumptions and financial projections. We then spent both meetings in April looking at uh the next year's budget and long range financial projections. Here we are tonight looking at next year's budget and then as I mentioned we will bring this budget for schoolboard approval next month in June. With that, I'll skip to page 15. Spend a little bit of time here looking at some of our enrollment history and also our projections. So, as we all know, uh, our revenue is is built on or paid based off of the number of students that we have. And so, um, setting your enrollment, setting an enrollment target and meeting or exceeding that target is critical to the bottom line. Um we've talked about our our enrollment projections in detail um both at the finance and facilities committee and also at the school board meeting and you can see that uh we've been in a period of natural decline in student enrollment. So you can see dating back to fiscal year 2020, we had 8,189 students and we've been in a declining enrollment period. Since then, as I mentioned, next year we're forecast at 7,457 students. So over the last uh since 2020, uh our enrollment has decreased by about 9% or about 732 students um which is driven by declining birth rates in Scott County. So that certainly creates some budget challenges, but it's nothing new. It's something that we know and it's something that's factored into our budget projections that you've seen. Uh at the last meeting in April, the the school board approved engaging with Hazel Reinhardt to do an enrollment study and I do have that narrative in here as well. Uh we expect to receive that enrollment study uh results in June. So I may need to update I mentioned about the updates. We need to update the language here a little bit based off of when we received that at that enrollment site. And then going to our enrollment projections, you can see that our enrollment projections are driven by assumptions around enrollment. And you can see we have five main assumptions. We have a kindergarten projection assumption, an increase of four students from this year, uh 424 students, kindergarten through grade 8 growth projection based on enrollment trend data. Uh we increase our enrollment by 68 students from grade 8 to grade nine primarily driven by um students from Sachs that come in as 9th graders. Uh postsecary enrollment options PSO estimates about 60 students and then early childhood and tuition estimates based on a 5-year history. And you can see where our enrollment is projected to go not only for next year but our declining enrollment projection is is forecast to continue for fiscal 27 and 28 as well. Okay. So getting to the the end here. I'm going to skip all the way to um page 38 under the information section. Um just an additional information you can see here is another look at what the board approved in December regarding our truth and taxation meeting and the fiscal 26 operating levy. You can see that in total our operating levy decreased year-over-year by about 358,000 or.8%. Um and you can see the breakout by fund. So our general fund was very flat. decrease of 10,000 on 27 million. Uh our community service fund increased by about 65,000 and our debt service fund decreased by about 413,000. So that's just included for additional information and obviously as a budget impact for next year and then our capital projects are technology levy. So, um the community uh our community um generously approved a renewal to our capital projects levby last November. Um gosh, that should say November 2024. I'm sorry, I'll have to update that number. Uh approved a renewal to the capital projects levy last November. And you can see where that number is projected to go. It's tied to our net tax capacity, which has seen nice increases. And you can see that our capital projects technology levy is projected to be about 5.92 million for next year. And then lastly, uh we've talked at length about our outstanding debt summary, but that's included in this budget report as well. And you can see our two debt drops that are coming up here. uh one starting in uh fiscal 2027 of about 5 million and another one in 2031 for another 7 million. So two pretty significant debt drops here over the next handful of years and then at the bottom of the page our current and outstanding debts for um for our debt. uh you can see the date, the original principal amount and then the current amount outstanding and the final maturity as well. So that's really what's feeding those two different debt drops are those different either general um debt or our refunding debt as well. With all that, I'll get to the acknowledgements page. Um, you can see that in June the grand total budget revenues that the school board will be asked to approve are 167,326,700 and the grand total budget expenditures for next year at $174,16,825. Really the key budget highlights for this budget uh were projected in the general fund to remain at 10% as of June 2026. in order to do that using a significant portion of our restricted fund balance. And then as we've talked about previously and and Dr. Redmond will discuss later tonight on on his finance presentation looking at some pretty significant budget headwinds uh starting in fiscal 27. That's all that I had. I'll be in a cliffnotes version uh for tonight. As I mentioned, if you have any questions on the budget report, I'd be happy to take those uh either tonight or if you wanted to follow up um in the interim, I'd be happy to take those questions as well. The first question, why is it always me? Okay, fine. I have I have two questions and they're both on the same page. Page 40. 2034, which seems a long time from now. Why is there a drop from 6 million to four 2 million back up to 6 million for that? Yeah, I'm trying to look at that based on the final maturities here. Um because I don't have a good answer, Joe, off the top of my head. I can certainly look that up, but I'm wondering, you know, trying to do some quick calculations based on the final maturity column. Uh, I can look into that in more detail and and put it like Dr. Sounds good. Thank you. The other question is, do you do you know off the top of your head that it's fun to be um how much money that uh the district saved the taxpayers over the last several years in refinancing and refunding uh these bonds. Um I know rating has been upgraded three times and so that'll help moving forward. I know that's not your question, but if if we do have a refunding opportunity or a new debt opportunity, that'll that will help moving forward for lower rates based off of that credit upgrade. In terms of retroactive, gosh, I don't have that. I I know I have it in my document somewhere. It's several million though, correct? See? Yes, it's several million. Yes. Over the life of I know I know they want to quote a number. I know it's out there somewhere. That's another thing I can include in the wrap. But the refunding has saved taxpayers several million dollars over the life of the bonds that you see here. I should maybe get you a t-shirt with that number. And just to build on that because it's always it's always fun to get good news like that, but that money is savings to the taxpayer that does not come to the district, right? So you do you do that that magic to to refinance and that's direct direct taxpayer savings that does not come to the district. Exactly right. Yeah. And I I appreciate you saying that I do that magic. That's really our partnership with PMA uh that that plays an important role in that. They they do a great job helping us with that process. We'll get them t-shirts, too. Bill, I have a question. What is the cap for the food service funding? What are we allowed to carry over in that? Um I I've never seen a formal formal cap from MDE that I've seen recommendations in terms of fund balance. Um I usually what I've seen in in other districts is uh around 6 months. Um I wouldn't want to see it get too far over that. So that that's kind of what I've seen. And um obviously COVID and moving towards um free lunches for all there was that one year in particular that really helped our food service fund balance and that wasn't a shock to be specific thing. Uh if you remember the audit that year it was a big jump in our fund balance and that was the case for all the school districts that KD audits. Um, that's another one that I can look into because I I know where school districts are asking for flexibility with funding um and how we can spend our dollars. That was one fund that has been identified as um allowing us to have more flexibility because with the free meals for all there isn't the expenditures that typically maybe you would have in that fund because everybody gets free meals. Um and so a lot of districts funds just continue fill but you're not allowed to really spend it. Um, I mean the restrictions are very pretty tight, but I know there's been some loosening of that and I think there's a lot of requests out there right now at the capital for more loosening of the strings related to that fund um to help districts with shifting the dollars to help in other areas. Five, six years ago that was under Yeah, without a doubt uh this 2.6 6 million in terms of a percentage of total expenditures in the food service. That that's a very healthy fundamental to your point, right? So we could take some of that and use it to something else. I mean I don't know what the odds are that happened but we have a million of that to apply to something else other programs for kids that would be very for you here. So just basically the acknowledgements the kind of summary page of your presentation here it shows our budgeted revenues are 167 million and our budgeted expenditures are 174 million right is that that's correct general recap. So essentially we're eating away at nearly $7 million of our reserves next year. Is that the way I'm thinking that right? Um yes so in in total that's that's total all funds. Okay. And so um much of that is the general fund, much of that is utilizing our restricted fund balance. Some of that is our assigned fund. So that restricted fund balance that I mentioned um a significant spend down there. Our assigned fund balance utilizing 1.12 million of that fund balance on our very main 10. That's a portion of that. We do have small deficit projections as I mentioned based largely on conservative budgeting in the food service fund. I think debt service has a small deficit projection and so that's rolled into there as well but the bulk of that is general fund but essentially that's the financial situation that we're in going forward is we're spending more than we're bringing in right correct and um that would continue each year going forward if we don't do something different yes not the entire amount though because there's some stuff in there like curriculum purchases which are bigger in one year where the operating which we put money away so that there was a fund balance to spend down knowing that those expenditures are uneven over a period of time but in general yes yeah and based on the student enrollment projection probably so um as to illustrate that so and thank you Mike that's a great point um you'll see that uh our operating capital as a planned spend down so we're projecting ing in operating capital to start, oh, this is dangerous to do this. Um, start with $3 million in a fund balance and to end next year 1.2 million. That planned spend down of 1.8 million next year, that's based off curriculum purchases. In other words, 1.8 million of that 7 million that you see on page 43 is related to that. You're doing a pretty nice job with the MacBook. I'm impressed. And is there any if we get additional funding for the read act, would that be put back? I don't know where that all would go, but would that go back into some sort of a curriculum purchase account or would that go directly into training teacher to use the program or so I I I can answer part of that question. I can answer where it would go. Um the read act funding would go in this restricted other row. That's where the funding that's where the funding for that. It's a it's a restricted revenue category. Um just like student personnel student personnel aid, library aid, things of that nature, they're all in this area. Um in terms of allowable uses and things like that, I probably can't speak to that. Maybe it's as well as others. And the expenses really when we were in the budget as well took some sort of a guess what that's going to be. Yes. [Music] More questions from Thank you, Bill. Next on our agenda is an action item, item 9.1, the one-year pilot for enhanced nth grade student start date. And here present is Stephanie Welock, the ninth grade academy principal, and Jeff Policki, the Shock High School principal. Sure, take a moment to introduce the two of them. So, um, adventure academy principal Stephanie Gulak approached me some time ago, um, along with, uh, head principal Jeff Kicki to talk about something that's fairly common in neighboring districts, which is providing our ninth graders an opportunity to have the school to themselves for one day along with their teachers, support staff, etc. Um, sort of an orientation where they they have the opportunity to get all of their learning material set, meet their teachers, learn more about the facility. um and just generally start to acclimate um you know to the high school setting. Um I asked a number of questions um you know asked for some some details about what this would look like um you know for all of our students and over time they've they've come up with the report that you're going to be hearing this evening. But again, I would say that the the practice of giving 9th graders one day in a school without 10th through 12th graders uh to learn their way around is a fairly common practice. as you listen to this, this is definitely something that that I support. Thank you so much for the time tonight to go over our proposal. Um, we examine continuously how to best support graders and we can see some opportunities for further and deeper engagement or not just our staff and students, but with students getting to know each other to really build that nth grade community as they're coming into the high school. We know that the ninth grade first semester is a key time for students to not only just to build those skills, but it also is an indicator of how they do throughout high school and really to get to that point of graduation as well. So, we know that this is a really impactful time and we see an opportunity here to provide some additional supports and kind of methods for students to get acclimated to school. So, we have a variety of experiences um getting ready before the school year starts. Students come over and engage quite a bit at the high school. And then you can see during the school year, you're probably familiar with many of these um opportunities for students to come in and engage and really learn about not just about Chuck High School, but the academy model and really learn about what their future looks like at High School. So, here is our current orientation structure. Um we do a schedule pickup. All students are welcome in the building about two weeks prior to the school year. And then our ninth grade orientation has been a week before the school year starts. It is a morning session. We don't provide transportation. And we have found you can see in the the chart on the right side that two year two years ago um 57% of our nth grade students attended. In the last two years it's 51% of those students that are attending. So our underserved students are the ones that are the most likely to miss this event and therefore have those extra challenges of being faculty school that sense of belonging right from the getgo. And so this is part of the reason that we brought this to college is we'd like to make sure that all students make this really important for all students. So our proposed pilot is to take out that half day um optional orientation a week ahead of time and shift that orientation to the first day and then add on extra activities so that that first day will be all about nth grade and getting them comfortable in the building and building that sense of community. So we know that building those early connections matters. Those greater connections are going to help to greater student success. We have a list here of different ways both academically and social emotionally that students really need those supports as we um transition into high school. And as I mentioned, we really feel like this is that equitable approach to make sure that all students have access to getting started on this and feeling that sense of positivity on that first day of school without the stress of having everyone in the [Music] building. All right. As we um spent much of our time this year building um this plan, we spoke with stakeholders. Um we did speak with several districts in the area. Um we are one of the few districts in the area that don't do some version of a start on the first day. Um all of the districts I spoke with talk about how important it's been, how the impact has made, how it has made an impact, measurable impact on their students. So they will be continuing this going forward. Um you can see we've worked with teacher groups. Um thought about it from as many angles as we could. We collected some information. I'll talk about that a little bit here. Um collected information and feedback from teachers and just starting to explore this with students to think about what student could be or student feedback as well. And I think one of the things to remember is that we are we will continue with this approved we will continue to engage those stakeholders. We don't we have a lot more work to do if we're going to be launching this in September. So two weeks ago we brought this to our building leadership team and got feedback from that group in order to make sure we were bringing the best proposal forward to our teacher staff last week. Um, last week we offered our teachers, all of our teachers in the building an opportunity to respond to the survey about how they felt about this proposal that we shared with them. And 93% of our teachers are in favor of having this on the first day of school. We did get some great feedback too on ideas of ways for teachers to engage as well as for us to engage the 10th 12th grade students as well. And this is just more teacher feedback. that survey last week there. So what this might look like um we would run a full school day on September 2nd that day after Labor Day for 9th grade in the building. All teachers would be supporting the nth graders in in some way shape or form dur throughout the day. Um the morning would be dedicated to that orientation. Shift that over so that every student the airport at that time and we believe that's removing a lot of the barriers because we were providing transportation food service etc for them on the first day. What the to shift uh learning for the because we wanted to be an instructional day for all students. We would ask that 10th through 12th grade students would have an asynchronous learning day and um that would provide them then the setup for that second the second day of school for everyone on Wednesday September 3rd. Here's a an idea of how that pilot I mentioned morning will be dedicated to the link studentled orientation in the morning. And then we talked about we have talked about midday having opportunities for students to go through the lunch schedule and really get to know the kids that are in their lunches and giving them access to teachers to support at that time too. So that they really understand the routines around lunch and maybe get to know some other students and also engage with potentially counselors with with our dean and doing that warm welcome in the middle of the day and then the afternoon we rededicate to a shortened version of their schedule so that they're going through their schedule really connect with their teachers have that passing time with support from teachers and leaders and student leaders to have that experience of what feel like and then at the end of the day bringing them out to their buses and making sure they know all the routines around it without that hustle and bustle like all of the students feel really love the idea to do activities fair and opportunity right from the getgo to get all these connected to an activity for school before school I think would be huge too. So we are bringing this forward to ask for a pilot for this opportunity and if we it was approved we would spend the next 30 to 60 days really digging into exactly what that would look like. I do think a lot about communication that we're going to have with families and students around this day. What it would look like for not just our ninth grade students, but for our 10th and 12th grade students. This is still a day of school and I have some we have some ideas about the ways that they would engage online as well. Um I think one of our key components over the next couple of months would be really how do we know we're being successful with this? We want to examine this and make sure that we know that with the spending this time and energy and dedicating the state of life is having an impact. So that would be something that we're going to be looking for. What is what are the things we need to look at? Other districts are saying they're really seeing the impact, but what what are we feeling in need to know to make sure that this is going to be successful? And I do the final slide. We have a timeline here of kind of where we've been and then where we anticipate going just to get ready for this approved. One thing I would ask on behalf of the the board is as you're fleshing that out, you know, send that to Tiffany, Jim, and I so we share it to board. I'm guessing you're already planning on doing that, but I think Oh, yeah. Go ahead. I was just gonna say I think it's a fantastic idea. Again, obviously it's going to be one of the most intimidating times as a student is going into a big school like this. The only thing I think if I was a ninth grader, I'd be wondering, do I get out like a day early? [Music] We wouldn't be making any changes at all. You get this opportunity to be there. Well, and just to expand on what my colleague just said, like the data is pretty compelling that the half day really isn't serving the needs for, you know, half of that population and not taking into consideration those students are coming from a charter or home school or, you know, another environment where you're walking into a small city, let's be honest, right, with 2,800 of your closest friends and teachers and the like. Um, and I I think you've capitalized on, you know, kind of like how are we going to measure it? One of the pieces I do want to call out the the link program and letting students the be part of that experience for the bank graders. I mean that that's going to lend itself. I that's just a huge win in my mind. Um, other districts, what are they using as their kind of performance indicators or their measures of success? Do we have an opportunity to leverage some of that? um in addition to what other metrics you're trying to measure attendance you know that consistent attendance especially if we know they're coming in with some challenging attendance issues um a lot of it is academics too how are students doing academically are they able to you know carry through and really see as the classes and do well um I also think there's some it's hard to to qualitatively like examine but kind of that well adjusted how are students doing that? Are they reaching out for supports? Do they know where to go if they do need help? So those are the kind of the three big buckets that they talked about, but then yeah, how do we actually measure those pieces? And that's something to our team to make sure we have you tried collecting feedback right now. I did start to do that um recently. I wanted to make sure that this was going to be a viable option. So I have started working with um actually met with my creat leadership team this afternoon and they were all excited about this gave me some um ideas of some things that they're also committed to engaging more the anxiety that we talked about this they see that I would I would recommend asking the students in the building the freshman might know it resolution passes how much like would it have made a difference in terms of like belonging at school right now. all the stress levels if you and then maybe that could be a starting point for the data you collect next year you collect next year question is did you get any feedback from the teachers that didn't like this idea there are a couple yes and I do have some things I have teed up some conversations that I need to I was just wondering what comments they have a lot of barriers around I teach this elective class. I you know, what is that going to look like for me? I'm thinking about that switch to the online learning that first day. Um and I'm open to it, but help me like let's talk through this from some different angles. Um I haven't dug deep into Yeah. who is it that's opposed and what their opposition is yet, but we'll get to that. Yeah. because I I love this not only for the students because the students I going into into that city is overwhelming and I think it it not only will help the students kind of take a deep breath and go I think the parents will be kind of relieved too also um I would think that uh just the parents would be a nervous wreck especially if it's their first child in in going to the high school and not having them bump into a senior who could be a foot tall older than them um on that first day just might just bring down anxiety levels for all I have a question um it's more of a comment I like the idea a lot but I really worry about that first day for 10 11 12 and how much number one how much learning is actually going to happen on the first day of school typically there's not a lot of learning that probably happens. And second, um, what will it how will that impact attendance? Because I really think that kids are going to be like, well, I don't have to do anything. I don't have to log in. I don't have to, especially if maybe they're what if they're new to the district and they're picking town. How are they going to know how the system works? I just have a little bit of reservation about that day for 10, 11, and 12 because is there any benefit to the asynchronous? We we yeah, we think about that too and and you know and that would be part of that process too as far when Stephanie was talking about really really flushing that out about what that looks like. But, you know, I think about number one, the resources that we have for students, right, to be able to have access to them. And I think you can have concerns around, you know, will some see it, will some won't see it. And I think, you know, you think about it, we really we manage that every day, right? When when kids are gone, we make sure that when kids come, they have resources and the tools that they need to be successful. I think specifically on that first day of school um you know thinking to when I was a teacher of all the onboarding a lot of the procedural a lot of lot of setting the ground work that you do right and and again we it is something to think about could there be something for our students new to shaky who is a 10th 11th and 12th grade we've talked about that right so what could that look like for for students that are completely new but then for our other returning students who will have their Mac book with them that would really be a good opportunity to to lay the groundwork for, you know, whether we're talking about, you know, the work that we've done with developmental designs and social emotional learning, you know, we could get a head start on some of that work like a who am I or, you know, a biography so that when we come to school on the third, now we're going to do an activity around that, you know, and and we could we could design things in a way that, you know, isn't going to exclude anybody or leave anybody out. But but no, I think Christie, I think we're on the same page is is anytime you look at anything where you've got one class in and others that are not you you you are kind of weigh, you know, what are the what are the benefits and we and we feel in this case that you know the benefits really outweigh the negatives. But that's when we need to try it. We need to try it once to see how that how that pans out. And then part of our work moving forward is how do we make that as meaningful and robust of a day for our 10th through 12th graders as possible. And I have the same thought as Christie and you know I guess just coming out another way. It's like we're giving a lot to the ninth graders that really see all the benefits but it does come at a cost. We are taking something away when those minutes are so precious in in the school year and it seems like we we need to protect them as much as we can. I think the benefits outweigh the negatives, but but there is a cost. Y So, it's a one-year pilot, right? Um do you feel there'll be enough information after one year to say this was you know a success you know unquestionable good use of time you know to the same questions whether AC learning um and you know I'm probably witness but I know we've saw the statistics having to do with the importance of attendance in ninth grade and how that metric correlates to the potential to graduate you know there. Um, and so we're, you know, weighing that that balance. I would hope our 11th and 12th graders generally speaking at that level of maturity and we'll be able to do those, you know, some of those other kind of um off cycle learning experiences um and do that well. 10th grade, I guess we could make certainly make a case that, you know, sophomore Jake are still maybe working off some of the kinks from the first year. I really love what Johnny suggested in terms of the nth graders and potentially even extend that to the existing eighth graders. What do you want to see in ninth grade? What are some of your greatest concerns? I really think it's worth collecting feedback on the student body. Like I think it's, you know, beneficial to talk to the teachers and everyone. But I think hearing directly from students and what they're looking for would be important data, especially if you consider new 10th, 11th, and 12th graders that will not get that same course impression at school that the data is important. I'll make a motion to approve the one pilot for the grade student start date. I'll second the motion by Peterson and the second by Brophy. Further discussion seeing none. All those in favor. Oppos. Motion carries. Thank you. Next on our agenda is another action item uh item 9.2 type three transportation vendor recommendation. And back to present is Bill Manazi, our director of finance and operations. Thank you. Much easier to navigate the one page memo here summary. Um we went uh so so on your screen you'll see a a memo uh type three uh and type three is really van transportation largely vans or or small school buses uh largely special ed transportation related not exclusively special ed transportation related um and just for context we're talking this year we're in the 90 to 95 student uh trans are transported through type 3 transportation. So, not a a real large portion of our uh student population, but a very important uh important uh population of our student uh population from the transportation standpoint. So, I'd just like to go over a little bit of uh information here. So, our type three current contract is with collaborative student transportation, CST for short, and that expires at the end of this year. Um, we did a request for quotations, RQ for short, on a new contract, a two-year contract commencing July 1st, 2025. So, I just like to go over a couple things regarding our process, uh, the quotes that we received, a little bit of information on a model overview. While it may be seem simple, uh, I think it'd be helpful to the the final outcome to go over a little bit with our with the transportation model overview. um some cost analysis and recommendation in summary as well. Um so our process we initially held the transportation RFQ meeting in February and a mandatoryformational meeting for prospective service providers in March. We held that online because there were several providers that are national companies that attended this as well. We received nine quotes and evaluated each against our needs and expectations for type 3 transportation. You can see the nine quotes that we received. Um, those that are underlined, those being 4.0, school services, CST, Everdriven, First Alt, and Palmer bus service, uh, indicates a service provider interview that took place. I mentioned about the model overview. So, there's really two different models, and I'm I'm paraphrasing here. This is our words not included in the vendor information but there's what we what we refer to as a broker model which is our current service model. Um the service the service provider acts as a a transportation broker and subcontracts transportation routes to area van services. Um as I mentioned that's our our our current model and then more of the traditional transportation model. So when you see that, think the traditional model that we have with Homer bus with the big buses. So the transportation company owns their own vans, they have their own drivers. Uh they provide more of a traditional model from a transportation standpoint. All right, cost analysis. So this is some good news. You can see based off of usage and again the best way to provide an apples to apples comparison is based on current usage knowing that usage change changes from year to year and actually week to week to month to month regarding type three transportation. But based off our current usage we're paying in the neighborhood of 1.92 million uh per year for our type three transportation and uh Palmer bus uh the the quote for next year is a little bit less than that. So 1.87 87 million for fiscal 26 which will be year one of the contract and 1.926 million in the second year of the contract which would be fiscal 27. So then finally under recommendation we are recommending that the school board award the type 3 transportation primary service contract to Palmer bus for a two-year term commencing as I mentioned with the 202526 school year. Um, and then if needed, we're recommending a supplemental service contract to First Alt, who does provide that broker model type contract. Um, and and the supplemental service would be utilized if Palmer is unable to fulfill a particular transportation need. Once in a while, just to elaborate on that, once in a while, something will come up uh and a student that's located nowhere near our our school district boundary. We will require transportation and and sometimes that's really difficult to uh be flexible on that and and adjust to that request. Uh we would we would hope that Palmer would be able to do that, but in instances where they may not be able to do that, uh we would recommend um contracting with first of all for that type of service. Again, that may never happen, but if it does, we want to make sure we're ready for that. So, that's why we included that. uh our rationale for including Palmer uh was the traditional transportation model. We felt a little bit more confident with that and alignment with our current type three big bus transportation provider. And lastly, I'll just mention um we did have a chance to meet with uh our special education team at the school district and uh they reviewed this information and and they support the recommendation. Uh lastly, I I kept mentioning they without me ever mentioning who they was. Uh uh included on the bottom, Rebecca Manins and our our finance and operations coordinator and Arlon Biting, our CESOR transportation representative played a very key role in this process. So thank you to them for their efforts. Just a couple comments. First of all, thank you to Bill and the others that he mentioned there. this, you know, some some code type processes or purchasing processes are really straightforward. Some are very complex. This one is incredibly complex. I think you and your team uh have done a tremendous job. This is an area of transportation really across the state of Minnesota rife with really serious challenges in in providing adequate services, appropriate services. um consistently. And so that was also a a very important factor in kind of analyzing and the conversations and you know do folks have the capacity to do what they say they can do consistently. We've certainly seen some of those challenges uh very unfortunately in our own district uh and others are seeing similar challenges. So this is a really really important process. Uh and again I just appreciate what Bill and his team have done in terms of this became a real top priority that they put a lot of time much more time than in a typical kind of purchase process to do everything we possibly can to make sure that we're getting this right and that our students will get the kind of service that they they deserve. [Music] Hey Dr. Can I make it more complex? Yeah. Yeah. Please, especially if you're asking Bill. Yes. And certainly appreciate your feedback on this as well. Uh and I know this topic, I mean, we we talked about it uh when we were seeing some of the transportation costs even with our, you know, current uh relationship with Palmer. Palmer's been an incredible partner. Um, has the district looked given those challenges with these services, given the, you know, the unique need, what would it take if the district thought you could put your own program together? Was that even a consideration? It would take some time, right, to get a fleet of vehicles and hire the right folks to do that work. Would would that even play into some of this given the unique uh specific needs or is it best to look at service provider? And I I can answer it. We had some we we've been our concerns with the current service providers in our state that kind of the nature of it. We had some preliminary discussions of that nature. I think we feel very good that this is actually a new endeavor for Palmer. We have encouraged them in the past. Hey, why don't you look into doing this? You have a tremendous operation. you do put kids in service first. Uh so this was I believe their first kind of hey we're we're going to go out and we're going to do this type three. Um so they put a lot of time and effort and research into that. They've got far more expertise than we do. And I think that's one of the reasons why Palmer, you know, why we feel very good about um you know what what they're doing, the quote they put forward. Uh we were to be quite frank, we were we were worried early on about receiving any quotes. We ended up you know with about 10 not all of them uh fully understood what was involved or had the capacity and so but uh yeah so we we did look at that. Uh but again it it's that's an enormous undertaking. Uh but you know we were just seeing that situation and it has uh it has devolved across the state in the last few years. So that was something that we certainly had given some consideration to. Uh thankfully we had a number of folks participate in our quote process and we have a provider in Palmer who we know who we've asked those hard questions of who we believe has the expertise, the skill, the capacity to do a high quality job in this area. Yeah, that's that's fair. I just I know we work really closely with Southwest Metro retro and just I mean just thinking in terms of that specific need and at the end of the day are you in the transportation business or the education business? I'm not I'm not trying to make a case no right that you should start building your own you know fleet of and I'm not saying there won't come a time in the future but it it you know fortunately we felt like we had better options. Very good. Thank you. I appreciate that question. Um, so I have a question about the the supplemental service. Uh, the first all is because is that is that included in the projected line there with Palmer? I'm just wondering about how the pay works for that. Are they like on a retainer? Do we do we pay them per use or it would be a retainer and it would be per one-way trip. Um, and so I I don't know that there's anything in terms of a formal contract. You see in the agenda there there's the actual contract with Palmer. Um, I wouldn't recommend engaging in a contract with First Alt. Um, if if needed, it would be based off of utilization. Okay. And I and I also think I what I hear you asking and I don't want to put words in your mouth. We've projected, you know, the quantity of services and that was part of the quote process. So, if it was something that Palmer couldn't do, Yeah. we would be paying first out instead of Palmer, you know, in that part of that projection. I think that clarifies it. Thank you. Yeah. Bill, would this be something then that when Palmer's bus contract comes up that we would consider rolling into our overall contract or would this always remain a separate contract with Palmer? That's another great question. Um, I think we'd be open to it. Um, depending on how things go. I think we we're we're very fortunate as Dr. Ed mentioned that Palmer's interested in going down this road with us. Um, so I I think we have every indication that things are going to go great. Uh, if that's the case, it would be. Yeah. If if the contracts align and um if it makes sense to do so, I think that's probably something we should talk about [Music] and hadn't thought about question. No, you're just thrilled to bring a good proposal to you tonight. Hadn't gotten to the next level yet. I mean, I don't know where we're at with Palmer with our regular transportation contract, but I mean, this is two years, so I would think it would be close to being a line. It may be a year off. We're in year one of the new contract with Palmer. This this year is year one. So, Palmer's year two of the big buses will be year one of the type three. So, great question. Great opportunity. More questions. This is an action item, so entertain a motion. I'll make a motion to approve the uh type three trans contract with Homer B. A motion by Aldrich and a second by Roie. Any further discussion? See none. All those in favor? Post. Motion carries. Thank you, Bill. Thank you. Next on our agenda is another action item. Item 9.3, approval of curriculum. Uh 9 through 12 social studies, 9 through 12 English language arts, 6 through 8 English language arts options, and K through five language comprehension. It's a long list. Um and here to present are Sarah Wearberg, our assistant director of LTE, and uh Nica Summer, our also our assistant director of LT for elementary. So Sarah, the secretary. Welcome. Thank you for having us back here tonight. Um we are here to Can I vote this one first? Uh about those adoptions that chair board chairman just shared with you. Um and part of our rationale for why we're bringing this to you. Um we believe as part of learning teaching equity in order to live out our vision and our mission uh changing until all our systems measurably work for each and every student, we need a guaranteed and viable curriculum. And so that is what we are here to present to you tonight is the recommendation that those teacher teams um have made in relation to all of those content area programs. So, I was here prior to tonight with that foundational skills approval and this is the same process that I brought to you earlier this year. Um, I think if I I can remind you of anything about that. This is a multi-year kind of process that many teachers are involved in as we make these recommendations and bring them to you. So, just like we did with the foundational skills, um Sarah's going to kind of walk you through her secondary process, but our elementary process is basically the exact same. We we started with that needs assessment um driven by the new state standards, creating those evaluation rubrics, those guiding principles for us, bringing in a lot of vendors, um and then piloting. So, turn it over to you. So rather than rather than bel the point and go through that iterative process for every single curricula that we are proposing, we just want to talk a little more boldly about what that process looked like to to show you that we have done due diligence and really included all of the right stakeholders research as we uh one thing as Nick said that's important to both of our processes is teacher involvement. And before we jump into all of the steps of the articulation team, wanted to call out these three opportunities that teachers have had to be involved in the process. One of which is the articulation teams. So that's all volunteer based. Um the articulation teams make the decisions on the curriculum, the scoping sequence, assessments, pedigogy. Another key function of the articulation teams is that feedback loop. So they're bringing key messages back from our meetings to their teams of teachers often asking for survey or feedback from their teams and then bringing it back to our meeting spaces where we're making any evidence assessment together. Another opportunity teachers have had to be involved is piloting. So this has been open for any teacher who's wanted to pilot the materials that we are trying. We've had some extra volunteers at the secondary especially with our sixth through 8th BLA material who have wanted a pilot. We've had volunteer pilots at the elementary and then another way that we've involved teachers is through curricular open houses where all teachers were given an invite to come and program those materials to fill out some feedback forms um so that we can get a sense from them on on what are they seeing in the physical materials and then also what do they need from us in terms of implementation. This just again um reiterates our elementary teachers involved in our pilot process and the red uh names are those that are on our district articulation. All right. So to dive in a little bit of what the process looks like for any one of these given articulation projects. This first we're using data to determine priorities. Uh the three types of data that we focus on or student outcome data also student perception data. So getting feedback from students both qualitative and quantitative about what worked for them and the previous curriculum and instruction what changes they would hope to see and then also getting teacher and perception data. How are teachers feeling about the the curriculum? What they want? Uh we looked at patterns. We uh speculated on the causes of the patterns and then we reflected and all of our teams ended up drawing conclusions about major trends and priorities. So here you'll see teachers concluding we need rigor, we need various assessments, we need a new approach to reading, we need clear purpose in learning, we need to make connections between students lives and the material that we're asking. So the teams then turn those priorities into an evaluation rubric. This is an example from our social studies articulation team. So they organized it into domains. Each domain had various criteria. Each criteria had indicators and then truly evident partially not evident. So the teams used these evaluation rubrics when we were looking at materials. Then again when we had vendors come in to present on the materials and then again after piloting the materials. So we had three different rounds and teachers were evaluating the materials using these. So here's an example of how we synthesized all of the data. We looked at six different vendors. We everybody had their own rubric and the data was kind of all those we had fun with sheets. Fun with sheets and numbers. It was great. Um so this whittleled down our options from many many options. Each date it whittleled it down more and more and more based on our criteria until we finally landed on the top options to pilot. So these are the different options that were piloted for nine through 12 grade ELA savlin which is why they changed to HM I'm pretty sure and then common lit was 912 ELA social studies piloted another status product the broad product and the TCI product and then middle school ELA we're piloting currently status H&H common and then K5 language comprehension pilot wisdom, e education and the arts. So as pilots are wrapping up, we are doing the final evaluation and decision making looking at five data points. The evaluation rubric, a lesson observation, student feedback, teacher feedback, and then reference as well as make sure to call other districts who are using the materials to see how their experience has been and what we can learn from them about robot implementations. All right. So now we've got our recommendations for you. So the Nashville social studies team uh determined that TCI would be the best curriculum for our 10th through 12th grade. Uh TCI curriculum is very inquiry based and it prioritizes active and social learning. So that when we are observing a TCI classroom, students are going to be working together to solve problems and make connections about content to their lives. Um the reason that we're not recommending it 9 through 12 is because geography they don't have a geography curriculum. Their geography curriculum is catered towards middle school. Minnesota has a pretty unique stance on geography. It's in our ninth grade, but most national vendors don't have a nth grade option. So, for nth grade, we're hoping to use McGraill. Uh it's one of the few available resources, but it does have that plethora of digital and online resources teachers can use, especially with language scaffolds um and other supports for struggling learners um and differentiation. One of my favorite tricks that it has is you can actually toggle back and forth between two different flexible ranges. So if you have students that are struggling to read, you can go on to the digital resource. It will switch the entire textbook to a lower reading level so students can have a better shot at access. So it's a new feature. So that's what we're proposing for 9 social studies for na we proposing common lit is a rigorous curriculum. It is highly interesting. The students love the concepts that are being discussed. It pursues worthy questions. It puts complex tests in front of students and it gives teachers a lot of support in how they are teaching and approaching instruction. Their tagline is made by teachers for teachers, also structured, not scripted. So, there's plenty of room for flexibility for teachers to put their spin on it. Um, while still maintaining good bones. That's what our teachers are saying is good bones. So, we're excited about that option. Um, six English language arts. I'm asking for something a little unorthodox. Early on, we had a little bit of snag. There's a lot of passion in our sixth ALA team. We had a lot of additional teachers who wanted to pilot the materials. Took a little longer to get everybody on boarded to the new resources. So, we haven't had a chance to to do a good pilot and then we valued it. We do have our top three options, Savage, HMH, Common Lid. They're all nationally published curricula. They're all all green ed reports. We feel confident that any of them will be a fine choice. We just haven't figured out which one is best for our shop students yet. We're hoping to bring teachers in in June to do curriculum writing, which is why I'm asking for this unorthodox blanket approval of all three. Our final decision would be made of 20th. That's when we have our meeting scheduled. Uh worst case scenario, we would come back for approval and postpone curriculum writing. But since June is the time that shopping teachers are used to having that opportunity would be ideal to keep that program in 2015 and the K5 recommendation is arts and letters. Um arts and letters is our third and final pilot that we uh implemented this year. Um teachers were really excited about the authentic text. It was very rigorous for students. um the conversations students had, the vocabulary they were using, the big ideas they were talking about just blew the teachers away. Um it will help us kind of really take that core online language and literacy reading training that teachers have been going through um and put it into practice. And our teachers saw a lot of those connections when they were implementing the pilot. And an additional um positive feature of this curriculum is how it integrates social studies and science content into that ELA block. So we're really excited about that. Um which is how it always should have been in my opinion. Um so I know that that is something that um you we've already talked about time being short at elementary that integration is really powerful and then also the uh learning environment um and enduring knowledge. So really building that background in these content areas prior to when we get to middle and high school. So here is our final proposal once again for your review and we are happy to take oh sorry what's next? Um as Sarah said June will be a very busy month heading approval. We plan to bring in teachers. We plan to bring in consultants with some of the resources um and really focus on putting all the logistical pieces into play. Everything from the identification of the summitative assessments to those formative checks along the way, determining those implementation looks that will help us ensure that we have the guaranteed viable curriculum um and identifying those instructional shifts that we want to see in the classrooms. Um and then uh really helping uh our teachers helping us create those teacher actions. Quarter one, what are we going to do? Quarter two, what are we going to do? So that we have very clear indicators of progress on how it's going um all throughout year questions. Mr. Um you answer the first question kind of that onramp right K5 then leading into the the middle level um and it just sounds like arson letters is the right choice relative to the other providers don't have that or that curriculum. The question really in that 68 space uh you want to use the right tools and the right uh curriculum uh for the best learning. Would there be synergy since that common lit is being used at the 912 level to also use common lit at the 68 level? Is there any, you know, leverage or benefit by staying with a similar curriculum producer as opposed to having really kind of from a a different product at each level? Um, and I I'm asking more so in the context of just if there's efficiency to be gained, certainly not the sacrifice of the quality of education that our middle school pilot teachers welcome that same question as soon as they heard that the high school had made a commitment to common. They were asking that I think it's one of the reasons I'm so glad we are doing such a thorough pilot at the middle school level because common has a lot of wonderful things. Our middle schoolers are different than our high schoolers and they might have different seeing how the two different play out with our kids I think is very important. So we are asking that we're exploring it. We're eager to see what the dance says about and I don't want it to be about the money, right? That's not the intent of the conversation. It's really more of those efficiencies to be gained. Yeah. If if there's an equivalent, you know, curriculum out there. Yeah. The the common has incredibly strategic learning design 912 and then they've got another really strategic learning design 68. So it doesn't depend on that 612 sequence. I think what they offer in rigor what we have landed on is there's going to be work to do no matter which curriculum you land on. It's just which work does a team want to invest in. So do we want to invest in the work of adjusting like a status so that it really aligns well with the type of learning you're heading to in high school or do we want to figure out how to add in all of the bells and whistles and multimedia components to common lit that that Savis provides and Common L doesn't? So that's it. It we can't go wrong either way. There are three really remarkable curricula. I think we're just waiting to get that data of how are our kids interacting with each of them and what is its middle school. So I have a question for the arts and letters daily. So will this will this be all digital? is that you guys are supposed to be like growing. No. And actually that was one of our key look for as a team. The teachers really prioritize text in the hands of students. So um almost all of the texts will be in the hands of the students. How it's structured can vary. So sometimes the text would be one for every partner or one for a small group of students to really focus on that collaborative learning and other text will be one per student. What about so for example write a test? Yeah, it's very integrated. So kids are writing um well kids are writing daily K5. The writing looks different in kindergarten, of course, than it will in fifth grade, but um it's very um it's very authentic. So, we read, we reflect, we reflect through writing or talking. And then it it also builds on those um different text types, different genres of writing. So, they will have multiple opportunities to writeformational text and arguments and persuasive essays and things like that and narratives, of course. And then I saw one of the teacher concerns collected for potential improvements was on services and having more resources that could help students understand better to do these programs. I think that was one of the favorite things for arts and letters. They have an entire component dedicated to unique learners whether that's special education students or multilingual learners. and it's um centered on kind of pre-teaching. So they're getting a go at the material or the content or the vocabulary before their peers really setting them up for success to engage in multiple class conversations and also some reteing. So things that have been um difficult for language learners getting extra focus as well. Those are great questions. Uh just can you help me look understand what next year looks like exactly who's teaching wise [Music] K5 I can start I think mine is a little cleaner than K5 at this point so we'll be implementing all these curriculum next year there's a couple like at our our senior level there are a couple classes that are rolling out as we roll in a new scoping sequence. So like next year we'll be 29th through 11 social studies waiting for that 12th grade class to roll out and then we'll grade course the following year. So for 68 will be full on implementation and then through 12 will be full on implementation of resources. For us, we will focus on um our current pilot teams and any of our current district articulation team members that are changing grade levels. They've also been able to decide if they want to keep on it and bring their team on board. We will do a full year of writing for elementary is getting used to these instructional hubs. So, we'll be writing those instructional hubs. We'll be creating those assessments. We'll be fine-tuning the report cards and the parent rubrics and the supports for multilingual learners, special education students, um, and training our principles on the pedagogical shifts that we are hoping to see with the implementation. So that'll happen all next year. Um, and then we'll roll it out 26 27 when we have our PE days back um, after we've completed that redact training. So next year K5 will be that full foundational skills implementation. Every teacher, every classroom will do what you previously approved. Um next year we'll finetune this language curriculum and then roll it out 26 27. I have kind of a non-educator question. What's the difference between the foundational skills curriculum that we approved in March uh which was uh you know we had two two different sets the iti for K through2 and the 95 phonics and the K through5 language comprehension that we're great question so the foundational skills curriculum are the puzzle pieces that we need to teach kids how to read so ABCs right um vowel patterns um fluency like the pieces the the skills of reading and then the language comprehension is using all of that and building background knowledge and getting practice with text structures and how do we make meaning while we're reading. So kind of those two really critical important pieces that come together by the time they leave elementary. So like even in the redact when you were doing the approval of the literacy. They they have one bucket for foundational skills curriculum, one bucket for knowledge building and together they all be comprehensive. So you really need both of those pieces. They have a full comprehensive literacy curriculing the social studies in the curriculum for next year. in our current modern nature. And I just love the approach like the peer review, you know, steal from the medical industry, right? The the the same approach and I I smile at the evaluation. We do a lot of that technology space and trying to different, you know, software. So it was absolutely the you know the bringing in the cohort and kicking the tires and getting feedback from those who are just really well thought through questions. I'll make a motion to approve the curriculum for the various you roll back two slides. Yeah. Can you just read all those Chris? All of them that are presented that were presented to us, including the flexibility for um the 68 ELA um to pick the option that is best um after meeting and I'll second because it's just really easy to say second. Let's have a motion by Peterson, second by Brophie. Further discussion. Seeing none, all those in favor? I opposed. Motion carries. Thank you. Uh, next in our agenda is our final action item, item 9.4, 4 the resolution for membership in the Minnesota State High School League for 202526 and Dr. will present. Yeah, you'll see a little bit unorthodox in that part of this document is handwritten. There's a reason for that. Uh Minnesota State High School League has us send in the finish form via docuign. That is only available after the board approves the resolution. So, you get a check at when I really focus some of my best printing in there. But, uh, this is very similar to what we do every year. The front page is, you know, we're we're we're agreeing to be a member of the Minnesota State High School League and abide by its rules, which is a prerequisite to being a member of the Minnesota State High School League. And then there's, you know, a lot of the bylaw stuff there. the backside um just moving forward uh with you know the persons that uh went back I looked at our organization meeting in January I think I've got everybody captured into the right spots spaces uh here and please take a look at that if there's something incorrect u we can certainly change that but uh we simply ask the the board to approve that and then uh s same kind of uh approval process I think I go into the docu sign uh sign off on that and then it goes to the clerk via docu sign um shortly thereafter not super exciting after all the other stuff but necessary super I uh I will abstain from the vote house because I'm a high school board director make sure that I keep those lines separated So staying comfortable on this. Dr. I don't see anything having to do with uh fees associated with the membership. The understanding is they're they're in line with what our expectations would be from perspective. Yeah. And I think the the state high school league has got back on track with that as as we've come out of the pandemic and even you know there have been some funds available at the end of the year and so it's you know for that was kind of contentious two three years ago what you're referring to I I'm not aware of any contention in that area seems pretty straightforward to participate. I can just add that um we did have a budget proposal for the next year which would not be this no would be this um and there has been money going back to school districts as a member credit for the past few years and it looks like that will continue um I don't know if the amounts are going to be as great in the out years um on what I'm looking at budget stuff Um but hopeful I mean a lot of that is all based on u attendance at state tournaments and sponsorships and that sort of thing. So you know that really is it's interesting to watch that e and flow of how that money comes in if you have certain teams that are in the state tournament that are bigger draws. you're going to see more revenue come in and if you have teams in the state tournament that maybe are smaller or they don't have maybe the following um revenue can be down a little bit. So it really it's variable. Yeah. Right. It it it's rarely fluctuates and you can't predict it because you don't know who's going to be in the state tour. Yeah. And it it was more in the spirit of like no major surprises certainly in the course of justice as It's within guidelines. We're back into kind of a business as normal or a usual range from year to year. You know, we did have some of that contention not too long ago, but seems to have been resolved and hopefully moving forward that will continue and appreciate the transparency to help. I'll make a motion. Oh, I'm sorry. Question. Make a motion to approve presented. Second motion by Brophy and a second by Aldrich. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor? Post. Motion carries [Music] 6. Uh that concludes our action items for this evening. Next are two information items. Item 10.1, community conversation participation data. and uh Tiffany Olsson, our director of communications and strategic development will present. Thank you, Chair Smith. This is a very brief item just to ensure everyone is still uh remembering that we do have our community conversation and survey period open right now that runs through May 23rd. Uh there's various uh spots on our website, social media items that have been shared with families and community members. definitely applaud the city of Shakabe and the Shakabe chamber for also working with us to to share that information as well as Mikasa and our our CFLs. Uh verbally I can share right now just to to give you a few tidbits we did exceed our participation rate at this time. So we are uh just shy of 1,400 uh that have participated. A thousand was our goal. We were around that 900 mark last year. So good engagement. the the biggest growth has been in that uh sixth through 8th category. Those that their youngest child is in grades six through 8th and a small peak in those that do not have a child in the district. So that could be a taxpayer, staff member or student are the three areas that they could be categorized in there. Um a few other snapshots too is on average about 25 um thoughts are being rated per participant which is also an increase. We are on that average around 15 or so which you could imply there's greater engagement of what's going on with that open-ended question and um we still have that like roughly 50% mark of those that take the survey the closedended questions versus open-ended. So again, various forms of participation. Um we have a lot of folks that are engaging. We're above where we're at previously and we do have a few pushes coming this week um to really hopefully maybe even exceed that thousand and go up higher to the two. But wanted to make sure you folks were aware and I'm happy to answer any other questions, but we are on track for the timeline that was shared which was June. You'll be presented with that information once it closes on the 23rd. I suppose you can't really share any preliminary findings because it would potentially take the survey that's still open. That is correct. Chair Smith, and just any any idea like like what's driving the additional participation? I mean, that's wonderful. Is it do we have a different approach in terms of social media or how the word is getting out? It'd be hard for me to speculate exactly. Uh what I can say is that each year we do get really good feedback whether it's from students like Shaa, those in the community, others that are just saying, "Hey, you know, if we send out an audio call and actually include the survey links in a text message, people will be more apt to do stuff." So there's little tweaks we've made here and there, but in general, it has been the same methods that we've used in the past few years. So few tweaks here and there, but overall better community engagement. Great. Any other questions? Thank you, Tiffany. Thank you. Next is item 10.2 of district financial update and Dr. Rab will present. Chair Smith and members of the board continuation of where where we've been and trying to you know as as you give feedback uh that actually and I'll kind of point out we've added some stuff in terms of operating levy and comparable districts that uh I know Tim specifically asked some questions about that at our last meeting and then towards the end we begin to delve kind of taking even There's a diagram of, you know, how our general fund breaks down by category and, you know, as a service organization, if you're, you know, talking about budget cuts, um, how that usually works. And again, trying to build off of, I know I shared some things in the wrap as well and trying to find that kind of sweet spot as we continue down this journey of providing information in a timely and useful and uh, try not to be overwhelming, but yet give you a sufficient amount of information. Um again uh some important decisions uh in particular really targeting the 2627 school year uh and also some thought to uh you know the years that that follow. Uh the context we we shared a lot of this. I just saw one of our neighboring districts you know in writing I think it was today kind of a community notice today where and they they made cuts for this school year. Uh but they're making another I think it was 4.1 million for next school year and expect to make another 4.1 million the year that follows. Um but you know across the state many many school districts are are facing what you know Bill talked about those financial headwinds. Um you know we have a budget that is balanced for next school year the 2526 school year but it is becoming structurally imbalanced and so uh 26 27 uh certainly need to uh you know take action which which we've been talking about. Uh this has been kind of you know a a key component of of these presentations and this is just showing the revenue and we we we've used this you know during negotiations we've used it you know part of leadership team but this is that additional revenue comparison in the state of Minnesota when you get above and beyond the general allocation through the per pupil fund uh you know kind of two primary ways of adding uh revenue in the general fund. One is via the operating levy taxpayer approved. The other would be through quality compensation or QC comp. Um and on this you'll notice uh this is where you know compared to the districts that we compare oursel to those other 11 comparison districts where we stand you see shock bey that that light blue line and I would point out you know if we if we look at operating revenue uh just a shade under 8 million less per year that we have to spend on providing services than does Burnsville. And again, this diagram, if you look at the red line towards the top of this table, we've given everybody the exact same number of students as Shakipi has. So that we truly are comparing apples to apples. Uh in terms of if you were, you know, if you had this additional revenue. Uh and then if you know to Burnsville again, if you include UCOM, um they they have nine almost $10 million per year that they're spending to provide services than we are in our school district. Just for comparison, I think the question or part of the conversation last time kind of went back to, hey, do you remember when we didn't have a levy? And so that's this slide. Uh this is prior to the voters approving an operating levy in our school district in November 2021. Um and you'll see there to use that same comparison uh our difference between us and Burnsville the total uh almost $21 million less every year to provide those same services. So the operating levy has you know cut that in half um you know maybe a hair more than in half. So and then I think this is where where the questions were going as well kind of the what if we talk about the the revenue side of this equation. What if uh an operating levy were on the ballot this November for $66 per pupil that uh you know tax neutral level where 5.1 million is coming off you know the tax roles for our our citizens and you know form of construction debt ending in calendar year 20 26 being switched over to 4.8 8 million in operating levy revenue and you will see that that does you know does improve the standing of Shakape schools. Uh and then to kind of continue this theme the difference between Shakapi and Burnsville overall would be Shaki would have about $5 million less annually to provide uh the services than does a Burnsville. And then kind of going back, I'm not going to again interrupt at any time or ask questions and and kind of as we move through this, but going back to this anchor spreadsheet, which again is not a spreadsheet that ties out, but trying to give people uh the ability to track our our typical kind of categories of revenues, where they come from over a period of time. uh our you know then also our enrollment uh our teacher employment and then our expenditures broken out uh you know via the UARS or Minnesota Department of Education codes on the bottom so you can kind of track and get a handle on on those changes over time and we've talked I've shared this exact slide before you know the the state has some things built in in terms of school funding for school districts where they have declined ing enrollment uh but nowhere near enough to to hold the district harmless, if you will. And so for us, you know, that the impact um of our declining enrollment between fiscal 21 and fiscal 25 is we have $8.2 million less to work with. We certainly have fewer students. Uh but trying to to cover that gap is certainly a challenge. And then we've talked a lot about inflation. I won't, you know, go through this table again. And we've talked about, you know, the growing gap between 2021 and 2025, you'll notice, you know, uh the formula allowance. Um you know, what we'd get is that orange dotted line. Um and had it kept pace with the rate of inflation would be that blue line and you see that gap between what we actually get and what we would get if uh per pupil funding had kept pace with the rate of inflation. And you know right now that gap just the the change in the gap between fiscal 21 and fiscal 25 the last four years uh that gap grew from $569 per pupil to 1,364 or the gap increased by $795 per pupil putting that into a shock public schools districtwide number. Uh meaning that had had our per pupil funding kept pace with the rate of inflation, we would be receiving 6.6 million more dollars in revenue this school year. Uh if we were just equal and you know had our funding our pupil funding kept pace with inflation. And again, you know, we live in the real world. We're a service provider. Uh primarily we we hire people. Uh you know, their their cost of living goes up in in their lives. You know, their health costs and living cost by typically the rate of inflation. So that is why that marker is used. Again, kept this anchor spreadsheet uh just to be able to to refer back to that. We look at the revenue side. We've been through these. They're there. Happy to to you know pick that apart, but not going to not going to go through all of these pieces. Uh we've got the projected revenues trying to take the the budget work that Bill Manazi and his team have done and carry it out through fiscal 28. So we kind of bounce from actual revenues then to projected then we add the projected years in. We do the same with actual expenditures and then we try to carry that out through bill's budget work through fiscal 28 to have projected expenditures. Then we go back to the anchor spreadsheet and then getting into kind of the schoolboard focus and discussion. Said this a few times already but uh you know In terms of school funding in the state of Minnesota, there really are three options. You know, if if you have uh expenditures that are greater than your revenues, which is our situation in the 2627 school year, those options of course are to uh cut your expenditures, budget cuts, or increase your revenues um or a combination of budget cuts, you know, and increasing revenues. uh when we talk about budget cuts and we've we've gone through this part. We've, you know, begun to to look at those things. We always try to look at efficiency and effectiveness. We've added, you know, Bill Manazi and his team brought that schooly Mitchell project into our district a few months ago where we've got outside folks taking a look at how we do business and trying to find cost savings. Um and we'll, you know, more reports on that. We've got other things as we move forward. And then you know our plan that uh you know just kind of looking at things and adjusting for both enrollment and kind of uh what what I think would be uh you know with with the leadership team with Bill uh kind of that minimum in terms of permanent budget cuts would be 3 million for the 2627 school year. And then this is the slide I was referring to. This is this year's pi piraphph you have in uh bill's proposed budget one for next year. Pretty similar in terms of how we how the general fund expenditures get divvied up. Really it's that last paragraph if you will where it says 90% of of our general fund expenditures go to purchasing services salary and benefits uh or says wages and benefits on here. less than 10% of our general fund expenditures go to supplies and equipment. And again, I think it's human nature where we're in a a service business. When we start talking about budget cuts, and I've watched this over my time in education is people always try to go to places outside of people and you know what about the thermostat, what about fees, what about those. Absolutely, you should do that and look at that and we will do that. that doesn't come anywhere close to 4.8 million or more in budget cuts. Uh and we continually do that. It ultimately comes down to because we provide services that we're going to provide. You know, if you make budget cuts, we're going to provide less in the forms of services, meaning fewer employees doing that work or fewer programs or some combination of both. Yeah. So, kind of following with that, so so the bulk of the cuts have to be people. So, then the the the usual uh common thing and and I was probably guilty of this too before I looked into running for school board. It's just your in instinct is to say, well, cut everybody but teachers first. And, you know, that seems a real common take. And and so I don't know if you want to speak to that, but I mean when when our levy failed, levy operating levy that was on the ballot in 2020 failed, we made was it three three or4 million in cuts that and which were primarily admin related. Um, and and so I'm seeing I'm seeing that, you know, because this has been put out in the public now and I'm so I've been seeing some feedback and and it's similar feedback to probably something I felt as well 10 years ago that oh, of course there's there must be there must be admin you can cut. We already took it out of the couch cushions in 2020, right? There's we didn't get another couch. Well, sorry, Dr. No, no. You you both hit on again. I've been I've been uh doing this work for a a long time. I would say that's the it might be a tie or the second place that people go to. Well, cut administrators and certainly uh you know this is what I shared in the the weekly update the wrap last week where we went through a process a series of budget cuts and attempted operating levy the voters didn't approve then one that was after we had made a total of about $7.5 million in budget cuts and if you remember we restored about three and a half million in budget cuts I'm kind of rounding the numbers meaning we made four million in permanent budget cuts back in that that time period. Uh and again we we took a long hard look and really um cognizant of you know what we brought back, what we didn't bring back and what were permanent and certainly uh an outsiz just in terms of the proportion it makes up in the district. Uh an outsized proportion of that would have been administrative things, things further away from the classroom. Um but again, you know, to make $4.8 million in budget cuts, you know, and not include the largest groups of people in the school district, which are teachers, which make up, you know, roughly 60% of the budget um is very very challenging and uh probably would lead to a very inefficient and ineffective sort of organization. You think of all the work that the folks do who are supporting the teachers, supporting the support staff. You know, we've talked a number of times about Bill Manazi and the finance team and and you know, they continue to be, you know, called out for doing good work in terms of the audit, in terms of human resources, in terms of all the different state mandates and rules and things that we have to follow and having principles that understand, you know, the changes to statute and how to interact with students and make sure we get, you know, transcripts done in time and all of that work. Um, you know, ultimately I look at my job and, you know, I use Gemini. You've probably seen us with that inverted pyramid where we're the little dots on the bottom of that. Ultimately, we're supporting the work that's about student learning. Um, but, you know, the pyramid's much narrower at the bottom. It's two dots and then it really widens out. Um, but I also believe that you have to have good support to have good results in the classroom. uh certainly those closest to that the number one impact on student learning is highquality teachers and highquality instruction. you know, next is the other layers of support including principles. But all those pieces, you know, make, you know, make a school district function. And the other piece I think when we still do some of the comparisons to other districts, uh, they have a lot of positions we don't have in their district offices, uh, some of them and, you know, so we we try to run lean. And again, I think when we look at budget cuts going down that road, typically it's needs to be somewhat proportional across the district. And I'm not saying that that means every category has to be equal. Uh but in order to do it without just totally derailing effectiveness and efficiency, that that's typically how it's done. And Dr. I think that dubtales really really well into that 85% kind of rule that we were trying to track. that it's 85% of the revenue are services that directly impacts the student classroom and and if you use that as the basis right like you're not going to move the needle by trying to focus on cutting within the 15% bucket and if we go back to the spreadsheet so I was just I was trying to do the rough math in my in my head but as a percentage of those line items you know um it's any material cut would have to impact a classroom, right? Yep. And I and I appreciate Brandon, we use that kind of 8515. We found that was in a way oversimplified because some stuff needed to be pulled out of there, which is what Bill has done where you can skew those numbers by you're fixing you're doing some major LTFM projects and then all of a sudden it's like, well, wait a second, that you know, and so he tried to pull some of those. So that what we have in the expenditures part we believe is an improvement on this anchor spreadsheet so that you can see kind of the the comparable percentages of what our typical ongoing expenditures primarily the services being provided by all the different people across the district. Well and Chair Smith brought up a really good point. The cuts that were made in 2020 it's not as those dollars were never added back right they were permanent cuts. Correct. So there isn't additional two or three million dollars just hanging out there is opportunistic. Um so I think it's just a really good point. No, and I sorry I think in listening to Bill Manazi earlier we we had there was some one-time assigned or other money that was targeted and that is that allows us to do some things next school year be balanced. It allows us to continue to do that really really important curricula to continue to do that, continue to implement the readact, that training, continue to do those things as well as we can. Um, and then obviously in 26 27 we simply do not have the capacity to continue to do that at that level. No, I know that. Oh, I'm sorry. I get my word because I was the last meeting with all my questions. Um, I I just want to piggy back off of what Jeff said because that is something that is heard in every district about administration. Well, just cut administration. Administration makes too much money. But if you go back to the shared spreadsheet or whatever we all that anchor sheet. There we go. Um, if you look at our administrative costs and even with the projections up to 20 ft, it has the smallest percent increase. Um, and it also has the smallest percentage of overall change in the past seven years even with the projection. So, you know, we can cut all the administration. So, we can get rid of all the principles. We can get rid of a superintendent, which you need to have. I think that's a state statute. Um, so then what? Then we have chaos in our schools because we have nobody managing our schools. Um, and it's, you know, the people that are saying that are the same people that were saying it a few years ago when we were talking about an operating levy and had one fail and then um the next year's success. So, I just think that it's it's just it continues. I just think that there's part of still some healing in the community that people need to have from a previous superintendent. Um, I still think there's some of that. Um, but I think it's also understanding what is part of every single line item there under expenditures. You know what? Who would be or who would be under district support services? We know elementary and secondary regular instruction. We know lots of our teachers um vocational ed that again would be um teacher based special education would be teacher based. So I think it's it's really important to call out who are part of those buckets because um when you look at those percentage changes that that's where it's really eye opening in my opinion of where our money is really being spent. The administration line looks high but it really isn't in comparison to all the other expenditure lines that are out there. Um, and Bill Manazi went to watch his son play baseball and I told him, "Oh, you're good. Nobody's going to ask a question." Built into this spreadsheet, he does have tabs that will open to those things. So, we will plan on on opening those up at our June 4th special coordinator. So, one thing that uh is in the audit report that we receive every year is it shows us compared to other districts on administrative cost. everything and for the last several years shock P when it comes to administration is one to two if not more percent lower than uh the average Twin Cities uh school district the average state school district um so yeah 5 years ago seven years ago when we made those cuts and they were permanent a lot of that was in those administrative and what we brought back was teachers and counselors and things that were closest to the students. Um, you know, there there has to be efficiencies found. Um, but Dr. Redmond brought up the finance part. The audit also says they for every year that I've been on the board, they need one more person to be compliant. uh hire people that um if so it's I get the fact that we nobody wants to lose teachers. Nobody wants to say if if if we have to we're just going to get rid of teachers. Yeah. There's going to be it's got to be a broad uh base cut. It's it's going to hurt here and there. Unfortunately, that's just reality. And I I really question I guess I question probably the right word, but more concern around an additional $3 million in budget cuts on top of the 4 million four and a half million that we made not too terribly long ago because where are we going to find an additional $3 million of budget cuts? I mean, a little bit here and there, you know, smaller dollar amounts, but it takes a whole lot to make up three million. We have some ideas on that. Part of that is enrollment adjustments are added in there. So, that is part of that that we, you know, we continue to have declining enrollment. Um, some other parts of that are as we've begun to prepare for this and look at this, we've kind of looked at, you know, what parts of our what parts of our budget and I'm talking more at the district level in terms of how we operate programs and do that have adjusted for the decline in enrollment because some kind of do that automatically, some um, you know, need manual kind of uh, you know, manipulation and and to get that and understand that and others to be you know quite frank to use that finance department again if you have 8,000 students or you have 7,000 students or you know and a slight difference in employees the jobs and the responsibilities in terms of payroll and doing the accounting don't change a lot in terms of it it's you know hard to reduce you know a percentage of something you know a lot of that remains whether you have that number now if you went down to 000 students. Yeah, it might be different. So, that's part of that challenge. We've been looking at that. We feel confident that we can do that. And again, there is no I I think the other big part and and you know, there is no way to make a reduction of services, you know, where you are, you know, having fewer people working for you than you were previously to do that without pain. That has some pain. Um, and again, not to not trying to, you know, talk out of kind of both sides of my mouth because I also believe, you know, and I think we did this stuff, you can do this well or professionally or in a thoughtful manner. And I think we did a a good job of that in that kind of the 2020 through 2022 era. And I think it's important to do that. And it's also important to yes, can you do everything after you cut people and you cut some programs and you you know increase class sizes and do that. Can you do everything you could do previously? No. But it's also true that you need to continue to work hard, put students first, serving the community as a top priority and and continue to do the best that you can even though you know the the context the situation changes. And so I think that these are they're complex. They're they're challenging discussions. They're important discussions. Um there are no you know there are no easy answers. If there were, we'd already be doing them there. You know, the answers all require some thought, some planning, some challenges, and there's tradeoffs. So, Dr. And I think the slides you put together the comparable district comparison using the same population of students super compelling just to illustrate what I will say the efficiency that Shaky has you know been demonstrating in terms of being able to provide the services we have with significantly less revenue. Um, and then my kind of followup question there, we're talking about the potential of having the the $66 tax neutral because we've got the bonds bubbling up having the six or six again kind of net neutral. What happens if we look at it and say let's levy to the max 20 is it 2397 whatever the um the limit is a 24 just to see what that would look like. Right. I think I skipped over it accidentally earlier. I don't remember if we saw if we wanted to forgive me if I missed that one. Um it's still I mean even if we were to leverage the max we're still less because of the count factor, right? Um although if they if they implement the governor's budget proposal and cut zero, then we're all even, right? Then they're in our vote, right? Um, and you will notice the oddity that's some districts are over the cap that was established and kind of a grandparenting in if you will. Forgive me if I missed this one, but yeah. Yeah, you did not show this particular one recently. No, I I was in here and I kind of hesitated about that directly question. Got it. Burnsville still 2 and a half million more per year, but it's it's much closer and 2 million of that is cute. So, you know, and if and if we're going to be transparent, go back to the community and say, hey, what's it going to take to minimize impact in the classroom, you know, it would be, you know, this would be the ask and is it a question one question two kind of I we can speculate all night long, but that is a picture that at least lessens the impact if we're doing both revenue increase and being thoughtful about making some cuts to you know to get us back to as as whole as we can be to provide those services. I think that's the that would be the call best case scenario. It says with confidence I don't know how much revenue has shot loion. Um, you know, one other thing that I think would be good information to have because I do hear this on occasion and I heard it when the last time that we um we had the levy approved. Um, we didn't touch any athletic programs. People, that's the first thing they go to, why don't you just cut a sport, come two sports. Okay. How much do we really spend on athletics and activities in Chaki schools? Because I think it would shock people how little those programs do cost us compared to what we have to cut. It's a very small percentage. No, I that's great insight and that's something I think we we'll definitely bring that that June 4th special board meeting. Yeah. is and I think some of that is we we hear the incredible amount spent in division one college athletics and for us athletics and activities and that is really a continuation of the classroom outside of that uh and certainly we'll we'll give you Yeah, we'll give you that total expenditure and I mean I'm not advocating for that. No, I didn't hear that. I was more what do we spend on it exactly? I think that would be interesting that item that the community has been someone asking for and I can tell you that one of the last conversations I was in with other schoolboard members across the state about budget cuts. Some of the feedback was, we're tired of cutting in the classroom. Why don't we ever cut sports or activities? Because shouldn't we be focusing on educating and not on athletics and activities? And I would argue against that because there's a lot of educational opportunities that are learned via participating in a sport, collaboration, teamwork, that sort of thing. It's not just physical activity. Um there's a lot of life lessons that can be learned through athletics and activities, but schools and school board members are looking at what if we have to start reducing more and more based on what we're seeing with with numbers at the capital. um something I mean at some point there athletics are going to be at some point and there is the risk of when you start cutting athletics and activities that if a neighboring district has that activity or athletic program they're going to transfer their students which then causes a loss of revenue and it just you know be compit quality of our quality of our overall product to even use a business term goes down and so I think just having a detailed budget picture in layman's terms makes like to your point Christy makes that very clear you cannot make up a $9 million budget shortfall by cutting a $200,000 expense you know and so you can be like to the you know the uh the show me crowd show like, okay, here's the list. What do we cut? And the big number, you know, big numbers are hard cuts to swallow and there's some small numbers that yeah, we could cut and you'll hate that and it won't solve the problem. I think I appreciate the fact the board approved the special meeting um for June board, sorry. Um, at the last meeting, I brought that to Mike's attention um, and Tiffany's because looking at how did we communicate previously with our lobies, it's always been after the fact with the community, but let's get their feedback before we make any decisions on what we're going to do. We'll give them an opportunity in a public setting to come and talk to the board as a one-way communication. you know, not that we're going to enter any discussions with them, but give us your feedback, tell us what we should do. So hopefully we will get that interaction because to be honest, I would rather them come to the board meeting and tell us exactly how they're feeling about decisions that have to be made before we make them versus reading it online. Send me an email, come to our meeting. But I don't I mean the value of that is way more to me than reading it online. I slightly I mean it's related. So we have Hazel Reinhardt doing the enrollment study. Um I is she going to come and present it to us? Do we get to meet her and ask her? Yeah, she she came and presented it in person. We did it before. So typically she does that. We're trying to get her set up for that if she's done the June 9th and again. So that'll be done by June 9th. Okay. Well, we are trying. That's a really aggressive timeline. I know I know again it's Bill is giving her whatever information. The good news and again um and interesting we we contracted with Hazel and two days later she's in the Star Tribune as well as the state guru on enrollment. Why I want to bring that up because there was that article in the Star Tribune within like the last 10 days where she was interviewed and I remember a figure from that article that kind of stuck with me was you know decreasing enrollment averages statewide 5%. But very Yeah. So statewide decrease um but that varies greatly by district to district because we're down like what 9% across several years. um and then and some districts are up for because I said like Woodbury they've got like a charter school that's very popular too that's in a separate article that was today or yesterday but what I the reason I bring all that up is you know we're assuming decreasing enrollment due to lower birth rates but there's other possibilities too that I'm hoping to get more clarity on you know for if people are enrolling outside the district for whatever reason, you know, is they our product isn't as attractive for some reason. I'd like to get some insight on that and it'd be nice to have that sooner rather than later. But then the question I would ask Hazel is okay for for people who are enrolling outside the district that becomes kind of a recruiting issue. Does she have any insight into how we can change that? Because that goes back to the I'm jumping all around, but so the earlier question is, you know, how do we balance the budget? Okay. Well, we increase revenue or or we make budget cuts. One way to increase revenue is to increase enrollment, right? How do we do that? Do we have any control over that and it's whether it's recruiting or addressing concerns of people who for whatever reason are enrolling their kids elsewhere and what can we do about that? Can you repeat that question? I'm kidding. No, I' I've got the gist of it. And we've been Hazel is is scientist, demographer, not not marketer, not. And again, I was going to kind of conclude that having her she's done three previous studies in shock that helps her to turn things around more quickly. She will tell you what is and what kind of gets projected out. We are doing some work internally. Katie Ross, our our new Mars coordinator, our data person input, has been working with Jim and Tiffany and I um and is going to work some with Bill and we are digging through some of that data. The number one driving factor has been declining birth rates, period. And that that's a Scott County thing. It's across the state. It's across the nation. There are other factors and we're trying to see if they've accelerated. The pandemic makes it interesting but charter schools have grown you know in our area that is that is also another an option for students where we have students who have you know uh left us for that although sometimes they come back and then sometimes they leave again. there is a slight increase in in homeschool and then we are looking at all of those other things and we just met with her again the end of last week to try to go all right how do we take all this data make it longitudinal and pull it and make sure we're pulling we're running the same query so we're getting the same data set um and we're very close to having that and we want you to have that and we've done you know I think we've done some general presentations we want to have more substance. So, we are are working on that um to be able to do that. I think the other point that got mentioned and I I I found it fascinating, you know, my son played college soccer at W Oshkosh and somebody kind of talked about, you know, school choice or whatever and it fortunate for him. It was after his senior year and he had a loved wonderful experience there educationally playing soccer. uh they decided the way to solve their their one of the budget challenges was well we're going to cut the men's soccer program. So you had 25 athletes just say they were paying 10 grand a year in tuition for round numbers and they thought all right we're going to cut this program it's going to save the you know 180,000 in expenses. I'm pretty sure none of those 25 would have enrolled there. I know my son wouldn't have and so you would have had in that case and it's a different deal but 25 fewer students at you know 10,000 a year so I I I was perplexed by that word because you could really see the math they had boiled it down I'm like that's not going to save you money and so I think you know kind of the point being made you know why do people choose to come what what moves people how you you know some things we try to compare apples to apples And even like activities versus the classroom, um we we do make cuts in activities and it's you know fewer coaches per number of athletes and some you know some of those pieces as well which is what we tend to do in the classroom. It's fewer adults with more students and so um but you know when you start wiping pieces out and that you know and that goes both ways. That's you know in academics you know we did make some changes to our college and the schools courses and some things I I think those you know have a different impact when we're increasing class sizes and similarly you know although it's easier to restart that you know if you cut an activity for students some are easier to restart than others and some will uh I can't remember who said it you know some will you know I've got other options now to go to other school districts and So um it is a different you know it's a different world in terms of mobility and options for students and we have seen some real positive trends and again it's more anecdotal where we have had students move in from places they never moved in before for themies a shaky for other things. So but trying to quantify that trying to do that becomes tricky but we are doing that work. So next So, um, you know, having the the the ability or the the uh opportunity to look through our budgets and being part of the finance, having presentations from Bill, forgive me if I'm wrong or correct me if I'm wrong on this, but I'm just looking at like big picture wise. This is like a tiger in the weeds. This isn't just all of a sudden next year we're going to be 79 million or two years from now 79 million challenge here. this year, if I remember right from Bill's presentation, we had some one-time revenues from like the sale of the school that kind of patched us over that we didn't have that we maybe be running a million or two deficit. Now, next year, we just talked about next year's budget. Even if you take out the one time expenditures, the curriculum, we're probably four or five million short. Joe, you know what that chart looks like, right? The three to five to seven is clearly where we're going here essentially. And so, yeah, I don't see any cuts or any ways to not diminish our product of of our schools. And I even love how our our meetings are are constructed. You've got all the cool things that our schools are doing to start out with. You know, we get to see that. And then we got to sit here and talk about how do we keep that or what does it take to do that and going from three to five to seven to9 million dollars in losses without making really drastic cuts to our profit essentially and our students experience. I don't see any other solutions at least not any reasonable ones. No, that I think you I think you what you shared is is spot on. It's, you know, and and partly, and again, this isn't the only graph, but there's a structural imbalance in terms of state funding. I mean, you know, and I think this graph shows that, you know, inflation's real and as a school district means, you know, if we're buying food, we're, you know, purchasing transportation, we're purchasing, you know, through salary and wages, those services, they cost more in the real world. and and it you know in my mind that those two lines if you had a structural balance in your state funding for public schools they would just tend to stay the same or or you know we don't have that and that's it's been a challenge and it's not a new challenge. It kind of varies from time to time but really over 30 years that you know it it's a tricky challenge. We try to you know we try to find efficiencies. We try to continue to be effective. Um, you know, and you know, I both I'm looking at, you know, Jim and I both we spent some time in, you know, in a school district that, um, they made they made deep budget cuts for the better part of a decade and, you know, and then finally passed a a smaller operating levy. But the stuff on that list, they blown by. I mean, it it wasn't which activity to cut, it was how many of these activities are you cutting for next year? and then it would repeat itself. And I think what I learned is I mean that's a harsh reality but also how you how you discuss these things, how you organize it's really important. But there there's no there's no Yeah, there's no secret sauce. There's no mystery to this. Uh you know, less less revenue in terms of real buying power is a is a real challenge for public schools and we're seeing that across the state. Well, and it's rhetorical, but name another industry that doesn't adjust for inflation. Name another industry that has a cap on revenue, but like it's just and to try to to operate in those, you know, it's speculative, you know, but Yeah. And there are and there are industries where you can increase output and efficiency and do that and generate more revenue but not in a service you know a we can get more efficient we you know we try to do that and be more effective. Your primary driver is enrollment and if your primary driver is declining basis and your parent and even if our enrollment were steady we would still fun. Yeah. Uh I believe Wisett is I don't know if they're not on our list but they were making budget cuts so they said their enrollment had grown they're looking at schools another elementary school which while cutting a budget in the operating side need more space for kids logistics of of this though is still always going to be a challenge right asking for a third le in a fivey year period or whatever we're going to have to explain this to everybody and see it right and and um to Mroy's point earlier I'd almost rather we have the opportunity to go over it all and be done with these levies and just work work with that as our product obviously you might have to have a one or a two a two the two question deal as we've done in the past but um a $79 million gap I mean we could look at we could look at it a couple different ways but I just would hate to have to do this again two or three is kind of my whole point of that. If if the 4 million or $5 million proposal doesn't quite get us there, why are we even proposing it? You know, like we need to there's certain outcomes that are very understanding of those. I mean, I think we can go for gold and go to the cap, but I still am very concerned about three, four years from now that it's again we're going to be back in the same spot because when I the last meeting I was at, um, so previous to a couple weeks ago, my concern was that it wasn't even going to be enough to get us very far. It was a band-aid fix, I think, is what Joe called. Well, yes. And that's at the cap. So then what? That's why so many districts are cutting because they're already at that cap. They don't have they can't go out there. They're out of choice. They're out of options. Exactly. They're maxed at the amount of revenue they can levy, right? And there's there's no other alternative to unless the state raises unless the state jumps in and changes either the two the 2% or twice doesn't pass the option. Correct. Correct. Because the problem is is even if they're at the max, you get two to 3% from the state and you're spending 5% more a year, it's just the math just doesn't work. It's just you're basically every year you have to cut something to make that 5% go down to 3%. Because it's just that's math unfortunately. Help me understand this piece of it because I'm thinking trying to think through this in my head. The last time we went out for a levy, a lot of it was in regards to teacher compensation and increasing our teacher compensation to bring them up to the middle as close to the middle as we can get and bring back all the cuts. This doesn't do that. This is a this additional revenue is really a filling the gap of where we're short and not a whole lot more than that. Is that correct? I think in general it's continuing the same level of services and Bill is also he hasn't built in extravagant increases but trying to build in reasonable increases for that. You know the anchor chart you know showed you know the movement there. We we did spend that money exactly the way we said we would trying to move teachers and support staff towards the middle which is also you know an important piece too. We want high quality people in front of our kids working with our kids and to try to compensate them fairly. But yeah, I think that's why, you know, maybe the bigger difference and not that there weren't other school districts kind of going back into 2020 uh that didn't have financial headwinds to borrow Bill's phrase again. Um and our situation was in a way very unique then. We were the only one without a a voter approved operating levy in the entire metro area. Um, and you could see, you know, kind of, you know, to somebody's point, we were doing the best we could to try to, you know, try to do what we could with with less revenue. I think what we're seeing now is is kind of that the structural challenges at at a state level of you know we're seeing well many many school districts nearly all uh are facing those same financial headwinds where kind of to Joe's picture you know I 2.74% on the per pupil formula this year which is tied to inflation um you know but the question is now we got good news from our health insurance. Other districts have a 12 14 18% increase in health insurance. So 2.74% doesn't get you that far with with salary and health insurance. So I think we're seeing that ongoing you know what I always talk about as you know teaching economics. there's a structural imbalance at the state level in terms of revenues and expenditures, you know, for public schools. And we are not alone. And in some ways, uh, we're entering this frey later than many of our peers in the area. And some of that is, you know, it is due to the one-time money. It is due to being very conservative with some of the budgets over the last couple years and trying to move forward. Um, but you can only, you know, we're in that situation where the 26 27 school year, there's there's no way there's no way to dodge that. And I think clarity around that message of where this funding would go. Yeah. Because that was a big part of the messaging a few years ago was teacher compensation. And I don't really feel like that is the primary driver with this. You could say the primary driver is not having to cut teachers trying to keep class sizes the same or increase them by a smaller amount than we might otherwise have to. And we've been doing some of you've been doing that math behind the scenes. And again, please reach out. I've tried to take notes as we do this. If there are things that that you know, Bill and I, you know, we we'd like to accommodate if you think there's some things in that June 4th presentation. I've got some of the notes already, but other pieces and again we still have to do it in a timely manner but uh trying to you know share information or be prepared to answer different questions. We certainly want you to have the information that that you need and as decision makers, but we also again I you know want to do this you know eyes wide open in front of our community. We're you know we're a public entity. All of our data is public in terms of our finances. Uh we're happy to share that, happy to help people understand where we're at. Uh and you know, we've done that. We do that every month just routinely, you know, with Bill and his budgets. And you know, certainly uh to point out, you know, there there are no easy solutions. There are no painfree solutions. Uh and and it's a challenge that u you know certainly being faced by many other school districts. possibly. Although some of those are at the cap, right? That be one thing that be nice to see is a list of schools that are already list. Yeah, we and we can do that. I was rather Yeah. and off the you know Udina is very they're very close to the cap the others above them Hopkins Burnsville and are all at the cap they're actually they've been grandparented in above the cap at an old number that would pretty much be all metro area like outer outer state probably not we can we can find a list we we've got that somewhere and it's easier for me to get the metro ones through AMSD but we but yeah there's lists where they do those runs and yeah I don't know that yeah there there's some smaller districts that have have deoperating whether or otherwise in greater Minnesota have supported their schools. Yeah, that well that Yeah, we we don't have time to get into the whole fairness or lack of fairness in terms of different communities and how the referendum market value gets made up and what proportion is commercial industrial, what proportion is residential and how the state izes some of that in tears, but uh you know very very different and you know I think that in some ways you know shock has has a pretty strong commercial industrial base too which is the raising the same amount of money in two different school districts even if everything else were exactly the same. the makeup of your tax base, your tax changes, how hard or how easy it is in terms of the hit on residential taxpayers. It's not uniform. If you look at that chart, if this is what was decided or voted on by the if that was the decision or direction that we went with the 96 additional 196, which is the third largest school district in the state of Valley, Rose Egan, look at where their um leving is in comparison with being that large school district and just be behind by $700,000 but we but we made them they have the same number of students in this example as we do. Yeah, but then the count if that goes um Yeah. And that levels the playing field. You've gone the wrong direction. I'd rather skip the 2 million than everybody lose 2 million. Yeah. Any further discussion? No. I'm thoroughly depressed. So I I want to end it with what I said 5 years ago when we did this. If if it comes to a left, if it comes with cuts, the shock residents get to decide what kind of school district that they want. Good last word. With that, we'll move on to uh item 11. uh committee report some other information. Uh let's start with Tim. Uh the only thing I've got was yet another action-packed night of celebrating teachers and all just the incredible work that we talk about. So all this conversation about money, it's that connection in the classroom. So it's going to be part of that. Um nothing from the committee but on the subject of community engagement um I've gotten contacted by handful of parents um with some concerns and uh been attempting to uh learn more about them and vet those concerns. Um so uh one was the woman that emailed us um just today um about uh wanting to transfer schools and um it's just hard to know because I don't know everything. I don't know what all she's gone through, all she's talked to, how true everything is. So, I'm just trying to learn. Um but uh some uh some concerns that I'll probably bring to Dr. Um, oh, and the other thing on the topic of community engagement is through the course of this, um, somebody, one of the people raised a concern that the school board didn't respond to their email. Um, and I think it's probably important for us to establish some kind of um, protocol for who responds to community emails and uh, what do we say? um just so that that doesn't happen. I mean, it's I don't think this is like a widespread issue, but it's an easy thing to address. Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. I'll I'll comment on that, too. I think it one the one incident in question um a a parent in the district raised a concern and it was going to significant concern uh for them. Um, and historically we we've we we answer as a district. That doesn't necessarily mean it's from a board member, you know, so it'll be Dr. Revan or an appropriate person on behalf of the district, but to your point, um, this person made the point that nobody from the board responded to them. Sure. And that kind of resonated with me because I hadn't really considered that. It's like, well, the district is responding. Nobody was ignoring this person, right? Their issue was being addressed, but it was a valid point that nobody from the board answered them. And so, I kind of took that to heart that somebody from the board should reply to at least at least as an interim just say, I'm forwarding this to the superintendent for action, but the board has received your your email, right? And I think I think that's appropriate. And so I I have taken that as as something for myself. So that's good feedback is when so it feels uh it can be feel like we're being hamstrung when someone CC's the entire board because now we're subject to open meeting law. You can't reply all but I will I make a point to reply individually to the person to say thanks for your email. It's it's going to the right place or I've directed it to the right place. um you know and then some kind of comment directly related to you know their kids being I'm sorry this doesn't happen in something like we're human beings you know you know that's a really good point again I'm glad you brought up as well similarly um there were two separate issues one someone new new to the district who was and I ordered a gym because they were questioning you know zones would change um just in terms of where they wanted to place their student. Uh another parent had some questions about um just health care for for a student with some special needs and I was very clear like hey let me put you in touch with the right people. I hear you. I you know you know um for whatever reason you just said we can't respond as a board because there's rules around that communication perspective but you can actually absolutely empathize and just say let me let me put you in touch with the right people be that that conduit and then give it to the experts let them let Dr. and you know respond to really hard questions and typically the chair of the board is a spokesperson for the board sort of a communication so from a response from the board it should come from Jeff as chair of the board currently the community doesn't recognize that but you know well they're CCing everybody I totally understand and and the the intent there is that we don't we don't risk having two or more different responses that conflict with each other or, you know, just don't align with each other. You know, we want to we want to speak with one voice. Uh which is why why we do that. Um and and so yeah, I I will take that on to make sure, you know, if if a response from the board is warranted, I see that it's everybody's I'll I'll I'll try to reply as quick as I can. Um and so yeah, that's that's all good good feedback. uh was at the uh teacher celebration Thursday and I had a board and I do love it. It's a great event. Um and believe it or not, before our next school board meeting, we have graduation at Takata on June 5th, I think at 10. High school graduation June 7th, believe it or not, for our next meeting. Unbelievable. school the the year's over already. Um yes, build on that that the Saber of the Night event for the teachers was was great. Um and and yeah, looking forward to to all the the great things we have coming up. Um got my tickets for Harry Potter this weekend. Really looking forward to that. And uh and we have personnel tonight. And that's it for me. Um yeah, personnel tonight. Um Southwest Metro just continuing work on strategic plan and I believe that will be brought forward to the board meeting next Tuesday night um hopefully for approval. Um so a lot of good work, hard work has been put into that. So that's great. Um unfortunately I wasn't at the event on Thursday night which really disappointed me. I've missed a couple of them because MSBA's annual meeting uh is at the same time. So I was in beautiful St. Peter for two days last week and um we approved the budget for for the next uh year. Um there will be a 2% increase in dues from MSBA for next school year. Uh which is very small amount. Um and then during that meeting um the next president-elect for MSBA. He was selected. Um, and that is Tim Rearen from Rock Ridge, which is conglomerate schools in Northern Minnesota, Virginia, Evec, Gilbert, Gilbert, Gilbert, Gilbert, Jamaican Restaurant. All right. All right, then. We had uh three really good candidates for president-elect and so it was really hard to pick and uh it took us a few rounds of voting which is very unusual and was new to MSBA for the uh individual to be selected. So smoking white. I was just going to say it or not that was all going on at the same time that we were doing our election. So there could have been. Wow. that and then I had a state high school league board meeting last week as well. I think that was on the remember Tuesday or Wednesday and uh we also discussed initial budget for um 25 26 school year as well. Um and more to come on that and I'm lucky enough to be on the finance committee for the state high school. Um, we have personnel tonight. I was at Saber the night. It was a great event. Um, happy to hear that the community conversations have increased. That's really a great testament. And I bought my tickets to Harry Potter. So, I'm excited about that. Next week, I plan to go to the other ceremony. I believe it's next Thursday. I thought it was this week, but it's next week. Yeah, the saber night event was awesome. That was my first one. It was pretty neat. And I think those things are uh really impactful for times like this when we have to talk because we see people that have had long distinguished careers and their co-workers and colleagues give them accolades and principles giving them crap and all that stuff. was entertaining. Um, I also did a little bit more of the tour of the schools. Dr. Redmond and Mr. McClos brought me around. We went to I skipped one of them because I stuck around at East Middle School for extended time frame which brought back like deja vu from the eighth grade because that school looks just like I remember it. And it was but it was awesome. It was a really impressive visit. I mean that bell rung and there wasn't a kid in the hallways and I walked around with Mr. Alice from every his routine. He does every morning. He's got timed out. He's quite he's quite a routine type individual. So, that was awesome. I appreciate you guys again. Uh yeah, earlier today I was at the edi conference at Mystic Lake um where I spoke with uh some folks from trouble about some of the work our student school board members are doing and we were invited this week to speak at a conference University of Minnesota about partnership we have with Scott County and the work that we're doing on attendance and some of the innovative strategies that we're using. Tiffany, uh, Chair Smith, my super quick highlights are summer school registration closed on Friday uh, through 9th grade, incoming ninth graders, and excited to see all those students that'll get an extra boost over the summer. So, the targeted service team is doing great. I believe you will be a part of our steering committee meeting that we have for themies on Wednesday. We have two a year and it's being hosted at the link center and I know Elizabeth Deer and Mr. Picki have have done a lot to hopefully make that successful. Um we did hold our technical last systems and structures leadership meeting last week on Wednesday. Um had some good progress and that was held at the Shockby Library. And then a couple events, there's all sorts on the list, but we also have a fun day on May 28th which is National Decision Day. And then there is also senior awards and saber showcase and all those things happening at the high school. in addition to many concerts and many awards at our elementary and middle school. So, if you're ever just free and want to rounder around between now and the the first June 5th, just let me know and I give you about 10 choices of where you could go. Thank you, Dr. I just want to uh tell you a couple things about your presence and and again I I love that we've got people who get involved and involved at the state level in doing that but you know saber the night's a great example you know board members showing up um you know and again I I I know I say it every time you know Nick joins us for those walking around walkthroughs classroom visits in the morning people appreciate seeing our board members out and about um more than I think we know and and I I just I applaud your efforts to do that. I know you're all incredibly busy people and your own families and work and things like that, but uh your presence uh means something to our staff and our teachers and our leaders and uh they really appreciate you showing up and I think it's the the most you know we can talk about how much we care. showing up really demonstrates how much you care. So, thank you for doing that. Uh you you continue to do that very consistently and and people do notice too close to you when you're walking around. You want that future. We can't be holding hands as we walk around. No, that that would be odd. now. So, next in our agenda is the upcoming meetings and important dates. So, we talked about uh a lot of things going on. Um uh yes, we got a band concerts yet this week. I think there's there's one right now, right, that we're missing. And then but we've got more coming up here. And then um s showcas senior awards. Uh yeah, lots lots of great things coming up. And then and Harry Potter and then of course graduation, feather ceremony. Yeah, lots of lots of great things. So, anything else uh we should bring to attention? It's either on this slide or Okay, with that, I would entertain a motion to adjourn. Second motion by Peterson, a second by Brophie. Uh any discussion? See none. All those in favor? I oppose. We journ.