We were just there. >> What are you doing? How are you? >> He's going over at the high school. >> I don't know. Hey Ray. >> Ray. >> What's this whole thing? Blake's leading Penn State. You see that? Blow it up, man. I didn't call you out. I always did. >> Don't do that to me. >> I I you know, part of what I wanted to ask you is I was wondering where those things come from. >> I'm just making sure you know what you're talking about. >> Blake blinks leading towards Penn State. >> It's on the internet. It's got to be true. We're going to talk about everything. literally literally Here we go. No way. I'd like to call the school board regular business meeting for Monday February 23rd >> here. >> Brophie >> here. >> Peterson >> here. >> Aldridge >> here. >> Johnson >> here. >> Smith >> here. >> Sha >> here. And Brian >> here. Please join me in the pledge of allegiance. >> I aliance 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. >> Welcome everybody. It's good to see a room full of staff and community members. Thank you for being here this evening. We're gonna we have a pretty full agenda, so we're going to jump right into things tonight. Um item three on the agenda is our Saber Pride. And tonight, our first item is our Shaki Educational Endowment Foundation SE or SE 2526 grants. And here tonight to present is Joan Block, seat president, and Jenny Smith. All right. Good evening everybody. As they said, my I'm Joan Block and I am um here tonight along with a few other peoples representing our April and Jenny with me tonight. Uh representing the Shy Educational Endowment Foundation and I know many of you have been familiar with the foundation in the past and I think some of you have some booklets in your desks right now uh which is our current grad booklet. If you don't have a copy of the booklet, I know there's a reference in your board packet, a link to the booklet itself. So that is um a listing of all the grants that we awarded this year. Uh and again, the criteria is that we're looking for ideas from teachers that are creative and innovative that they don't have the funding to do right now because of budgetary issues. Um, so they write a grant, they apply, send the grant to us, we review it and take a look at them and see what ones meet our criteria and then award money towards those grants. Uh, this current school year, we fully or partially funded 20 of the 23 grant requests that we received. Uh, we had a variety of requests. We get them from all the buildings, all the different programs. This year in particular, it was really interesting. We had requests from two programs never had before. We were not able to fund both of them, but we received a request from the early childhood um screening program and we received a request from summer school this year. So, we love that the word is out there that we are available to award money to lots of different things that they would ordinarily be able to do. But I really want to um introduce a special guest tonight. Debbie Arterberry is here. Debbie Arterberry is a half time language pathologist at Pearson and she's also halftime um assistant technology teacher in the district. Debbie is what I call one of our bluepoint flyers. Debbie has been in the district 10 years and she's had eight grants so far which is a pretty amazing number. I'm sorry you don't get any special awards but no extra points for that. Um she's here tonight to share with you much better than any of the rest of us can what SE has meant to her in her programming. Um how has affected her students and her thinking about what she wants to do with with students. Uh I retired from the school district as an SLP just a couple years after Debbie came and I really one of the things that I regret is that I didn't more time to work with her because she had knowledge about an area that I was very weak in and I could have really used her expertise so many times. Uh so I'm I'm really grateful for her to her tonight for taking the time from her personal life to come and talk to you a little bit about what you thank you for allowing me to be here. Um I practice my 8-year-old daughter which went went really well, but it's not the same thing. So, um my words, but um I thought you'd speak for most recipients that we are extremely grateful for continued support every single year. Um as Joan mentioned, I got eight grants. Um and I mostly my grants are mostly geared towards special education students with an emphasis on functional communication, participation, inclusion. Um I'm I want to take a minute to talk about vocabulary. That is something that um has been the focal point of most of my grants. Nine years ago, the ST department approved and supported the implementation of a districtwide core vocabulary framework um to support functional communication for our complex communicators. But because of the continued support we seek, that's become more than a framework. It is in all of our buildings, all our setting two and 73 program and it is it's been embedded into daily activities, lesson plans, activities. It's throughout our special education program um and grant it's consistent carryover into bins and and um sensory bins and book bins and and other activities that are helping inclusion with our kids to to participate in the general period of time. Um materials from these grants are available to all special programs are available within districtwide and they're often on a rotating basis so everyone everyone wants them. Um so that and that's again that's been a huge support from because every year it's something that kind of it's just built on that and it's become such so much more than what we thought it would ago. Um and then secondly the opportunity is what makes SE so amazing. Every school year brings new students, new challenges, new celebrations and new ideas and annual grant availability allows vision to come true and be a reality we have these great ideas and make it robots but with that funding available it can happen. Um so please know that you're investment in the classroom every day and so we are so grateful Do you have any questions for I I think she has not fully explained how much work she puts into all of these materials that she often times she gets the basic material but then it's a lot of duplicating and copying and paper punching and binders and books and things She spends hours on these materials and it's just I had the privilege of going out to the building several times and seeing what Debbie is doing with our grants in the building and she really takes them to the next level. Wonderful to see. So, thank you for your time today. So, I think we're ready then to present the school board with some money smiles. I love the smiles. So, we have a big check tonight for $29,415 in grant money that was awarded this year. >> I kind of wanted to hold it like Gilmore, but this is this is good, too. We could put you in front. Our next saber pride item this evening is shaky in the news. And tonight we are honoring our national facts teacher of the year and also our national distinguished principal award finalist. And here to present is Jeff our high school principal and Jim. >> That's right. We have national champions. Well, Chair Peterson, members of the board, Dr. Redmond, Mr. Mccclaus, thank you. This is a uh this is a very fun event uh to be here. uh you know leading leading up to it we know we knew Shauna was recognized as the the Minnesota you know fax teacher of the year and in the mail I had this this big box come in and there's this banner in there and so we would we so we I I knew about it about a week before she did and so we needed to plan something uh fun so we were able to bring our our whole staff together before school we had students present and uh just gave Shauna the the proper for recognition uh that she deserves. I know in the board packet there's a little blurb about about Shauna, but you know just you know in in a nutshell I I use you know for the allstar rockstar teachers I use the phrase a lot kid magnet right who who are your teachers in the building who are kid magnets and that's definitely uh who Shauna is uh on top of being just collaborative uh innovative um just overall she creates the environment that students love to be a part of and just brings energy and is a champion of education um exploring ed and multicultural education. Um I already know some students that are in her program that I know we're going to want to stay um as soon as we're able to and it it starts with her. So just congratulations. It's such welldeserved honor to be the 2026 National Mats Teacher of the Year. Congratulations. >> Okay. >> No, I I Well, yes. I would like to say I just really appreciate the district and everybody who supports CTE, especially family consumer science, as we move to the academy model. Um because it really the application was like a love letter to what we do and it's what we do is because of everybody who provides financial support and moral support in tough times or makes things work when you know fridges break or whatever you know what happens in our job. So um thank you for just supporting us. We're really important and our work is awesome and we love it and we feel loved by all of you too. So >> what do you want us? Okay. Fun fact, was just here. Her daughter was part of the presentation. >> That's right. >> If we get Mr. Bell to to come forward. So, um I am equally pleased and excited to announce and to share that um you know Derek Bell has been named a finalist for the Minnesota Elementary Principles Association National Distinguished Principal Award. And much like uh Shauna Wilson in the uh schoolboard agenda, you can see a very nice write up about Mr. Bell. And you know, it it does highlight his incredible work on proactive systems of support and the work he's done to improve the uh climate for student learning um at um at Sweeney Elementary School, the the work that he's done to make it a more inclusive school, reducing student uh referrals. I'd also highlight his incredible work in instructional leadership. You've heard a lot about our implementation of a foundational skills curriculum this year, a win time. Um, you know, and just all of our work adopting new curricula in both math and and next year with our arts and letters and literacy. Um, so it's just it's extremely impressive the the culture and climate that he's been able to build at Sweeney Elementary School. And this is an award um that he is he is very worthy of of being a recipient of. Uh he's respected by his peers. He's a leader in his in his professional learning community here in Shakby public schools and it's a great honor for us to have Derek Bell as one of our building leaders. >> Thank you. Um, real quick, I'll just say uh board chair, thank you um for letting me speak here just a little bit and all all of everybody you guys. I just want to say thank you to Jim and Mike for supporting me of course, but going through this process of just you know application process and and and then eventually the interview process in May uh forces you to reflect deeper on the impact you have and you hear Sean up here and other teachers that we have you don't really stop and think what the impact is not just the day of or the week or the year uh when you when you stack them on top of each other it's it's powerful and it's been it's been honor to to go through this process with with some of the staff that's maybe but for my own self I I was telling Jim about a week ago I said I feel better coming to work having gone through the reflective nature of this application uh so win or lose uh I feel honored to to work in shock as principal especially at swing elementary so just thank you for for the recognition uh you know I'd love to back in May as as the award winner. We'll see what happens. So, thank you. >> Hey, just messing with us. Thank you. Awesome. Our last saber pride item tonight is um it is public schools week and as chair school board and president of the Minnesota schoolboard association it's an honor to recognize public schools week this week. It's a time celebrate the essential role public schools play in shaping our students and strengthening our communities. Public schools are the heart of our communities, preparing future leaders, supporting local economies, and bringing people together around a shared commitment to opportunity. This week highlights the important work happening in our schools every day and the dedicated educators, staff, and advocates who support our students. Public schools continue to evolve to meet new challenges while equipping students with the knowledge and skills they need to thrive in an ever changing world. Providing a public education is also one of the greatest freedoms of our democracy. It reflects the belief that every child regardless of background deserves access to an educational opportunity. Public education empowers individuals, strengthens, informs citizenship and ensures that the promise of our democracy is available to all. I'm especially grateful for the education I received in the Minnesota public school. It helped shape me into the person that I am today. And now as a school board member, I have the privilege of helping create those same opportunities for current and future students in Sh public schools, ensuring they are supported, challenged, and prepared for their own bright futures. At the center of this work are locally elected school board members uh have been entrusted to represent your values to listen to and lead and advocate the students at the heart of every decision. Here at Chak we are clearly a strong public school built with a strong team. Public schools week reminds us that when we invest in public education, we invest in the long-term strength, stability, and success of our entire community. Together, we are not only educating students, but are building the future of shopping. Next on our agenda is item four, the consideration of the agenda as presented. >> So move. All right, we have a motion by Brookie and a second by Johnson. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor say I. >> Oppose. Motion carries. >> All right. Our next item is item five, which is our public comment portion of our meeting. This is a time where members of the public can participate in a 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 pertaining to school board business. We obligate a total of 15 minutes for public comment at this meeting. Each individual speaker may speak for up to two and a half 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 meeting. So we will move on to the next item on the agenda which is item six and that is our consent agenda. I want to make a note that we have added 6.6 to the consent agenda items today. Um that is for the FCCLA field trip which will take place in May. So I wanted to make sure that that was called out. Otherwise we have personnel items um our regular um business items any of our bills and authorization the same our wires and then there's also a master Make a motion to approve. >> I will have a motion by Smith and a second by the consent as presented. Any further discussion? >> Seeing none, all those in favor say I. >> I motion carries. Item seven would be our donations. And tonight we have a nice list of donations once again from our community as well as um an item that has been added this afternoon which would be the addition of a donation of a food truck um that was brought forward to um the uh finance committee before the board meeting tonight and has come to be added to our donations list as well. You can see more information on that vehicle as well. Any discussion question? >> Yes, there will be. And if you want to pop that up, this is uh well, we already were talking about VNC. We've got other educators talking about the vision, the ability to make uh our learning activities real life. Uh our folks who are working with our culinary arts students have uh they've been visioning a truck that they could turn into a food truck. And this one with help from Heather Proski and the Shaki Chamber kind of m materialized in Prior Lake and it has a value of $12,500. We're paying nothing for it. There will be costs and if you scroll down and this is in board book. Uh right now it's been renovated. It's not an ambulance anymore, but to turn it into a food truck will take some work and this is a really neat educational impact part of it because even looking at it through the you know engineering and manufacturing our academy students there will play a role in the inter to redesign our culinary arts in terms of how to use it. Uh and then you throw in business and entrepreneurship. There's an opportunity to in essence start a small business, arts and communication, all kinds of things that designs. Bless you. Um and then you know the ability to support you know our culinary arts but other activities and so yes there will be money that needs to be invested in that. We invest similarly in student learning and all kinds of hands-on real life projects. Getting a vehicle without having to pay for it is a huge jump start to this. Uh and then the rest of the work will certainly keep you posted. But it's you know maybe the message is if you can kind of vision this and envision these things or dream about it. Uh sometimes they do just show up. So >> well and I just up on the fact that it's a learning experience. I would hope that We have discussed that >> actually Jeff what is the person's name who's donating? >> Tom Ellis. >> Yeah. Who's a res and so really grateful for him thinking thinking of us and working with us. >> Thank you. >> Additional questions. I entertain a motion to further donation as presented. >> So we have a motion by any further discussion. Please do >> Johnson. >> Yes. >> Thank you for all their generous donations to our school district. Item eight on the agenda is anformational item. Uh the first item here is our Native American education update. And with us tonight is Justine Mobile, our Native. Um hello all my relatives. Um Thank you for having me. Um, Chair Peterson, Dr. Redmond, and members of the board. I'm happy to be here. Um, so today I just want to give you an update of how our school year has been going. Um, we've had a lot of new additions this year, and I'm just really excited to tell you all about them. Um, so this is a highlight of our Native students this year. We have a total of 249. That was as of last Tuesday. So, we've had a couple move in, we've had a couple move out. Um, And I would like to highlight too that Sweeney has a total of 34 this year. Um, our Sweeney native groups have really taken off. Um, so I have two groups of 11 at that school, which is awesome. Um, tonight we're going to go over some highlights that touch on three college visits. Well, four college visits. One was in or one day had two college visits. Um, so we've been to Mano State, the University of Minnesota, DC DC and Inver Hills Community College. Um, we also want to highlight our academy champion partnership for our arts and calm academy with the Shaki Medaka community. Um, they have been really vital in supporting our native students in our school. We have our career day for our high school students on this Friday and my assistant Jessica has done a really great job of getting new jobs and new speakers each year. Um so this year we have a youth worker, we have a realtor, we have a a marine, we have um a person in indigenous leadership, um we have an IT manager and a networking engineer. And then we also have a historic preservation officer and a cultural department director. So a wide array of stu um speakers to showcase different careers that students can get into. Um, we also spent the last couple weeks having a speaker day for our middle schools. Um, which is kind of like a mini career day. Um, our middle schoolers can't last as long in in something like this. So, for one school, we had an author, a woodworker, and a ASL and Spanish translator. And then for the other school, we had a comedian motivational speaker, a Dakota language um, instructor, and a wildland firefighter. So, it's just really cool for students to be able to themselves in those jobs, ask real life questions, um, and kind of start dreaming about what they want to do next. Um, so next we're going to talk about how we are empowering teachers to further incorporate native culture. Um, so for our professional development opportunities, we are attending the Minnesota Indian Education Association conference in March. Um, we have our Indian ed team going. We have a few members of our equity team going. Um we have a couple principles and teacher leaders and then a few members of our LTP team going. Um last year we had 17. Um so I'm really excited. We also are bringing members of our AP pack and of our um community as well. Um, on March 10th, we are partnering with the University of Minnesota and we are having a professional development on star stories that's going to bring in Ojiway and Dakota perspectives on those star stories and be able to tie them into the science curriculum at the high school. Um, and then we have our smudgebased professional development for teachers that's kind of ongoing um, whenever they need it. Um, we also made a planet to kind of go with it. Um, we've done some professional development on affinity groups, why they're important, what do they look like, the things that they include. Um, and then we've also had our NPAC members as part of our professional development at the high school, just kind of going over history and language and how it ties into school and curriculum and all of those things. Um, like I said, we have a lot of community partnerships like the U of M and SMSC. And then this year, I'm really excited that we have partnered with a lot more teachers in the classrooms. Um, so we hired Dan Meyers to our Indian team. He works mainly at the middle schools and so he's done a lot of work with partnering with people at the middle school and then it's freed me up to do some partnering at the high school as well. So, we've done a culinary unit with the culinary three students where we talked about wild rice, uh, cedar tea, uh, three sisters soup. Um, and we got to try those items with them. Um, we've done some history lessons on Wid Kuster's last stand and Native Americans in the Civil War. Um, we've done some culture visits to um, elementary schools about smudging, about fur fur trade trunks, about culture and the medicine wheel. And then we've also partnered with uh the men's group at the middle schools for confidence. Um I just wanted to also give a an update on our course proposal for the Dakota language class. Um so January, February, we've been recruiting students through the registration process. Um which has been really awesome. I looked at the numbers a couple weeks ago and we have quite a few or incoming nth graders that are taking it. So, that's really exciting. Um, and then we're looking forward to hiring and training a teacher after that. Um, we did apply for a language revitalization grant and that grant is for two years up to $500,000. So, um, I worked with Sarah uh W and we wrote that grant to make sure that we have the opportunity for those classes. Um, we should hear about that grant very soon. And then fall 26 our course begins. Um so for relevant curriculum that meets the needs and interests of American Indian cultural heritage um our elementary native groups we have 55 students just short of our goal of 65. However, we're up five from last year. So we are making progress. Um there's a picture of some of the activities we've done. So the picture on the left is about constellations. We talked a lot about Ojiway star stories, the code star stories and how they connect. Um the picture in the middle is about a buffalo robe. So we talked about like geometry and how the buffalo robes turned into star quilts. Um and then we made a native group star quilt. And these star quilts are hung at each of the elementary schools. And in the bottom left of that star quilt is a little bit of learning for teachers and other students if they wanted to more about it. Um, our middle school native groups, our goal was 85% of students attending. At West, we have 88% and at East, we have 96%. So, we're doing great at the middle schools. Um, there's a lot of interest there and kids are really engaged. Um, at the high school level, we are currently at 64%, which is up 4% from last year with a goal of 65. So, just short again, but we are moving in the right direction. Um, and then this is a picture of one of our high school groups learning about sacred medicines for um here's a picture of our November Day of Pride event um that's held in partnership with the fifth grade music department. Um this year has been bigger than ever and we've had even more student dancers which has been really cool. Um and previous year they years they've always been high school dancers, but this year we actually had um four or five elementary dancers. So them being able to take the day from school and come and showcase their heritage is is pretty awesome. Um we also did a really awesome collab with the multicultural ed um class. So we I spent a day with the multicultural education class talking about um culture and oja boy language teaching them some of the games. So there's the moccasin game there um and then there's the venia game which is like a bird game and so I spent the day teaching high school students about it and then in the following days they got to teach it to little students um so K through 2 grade students. Um, so it was really awesome to give them that real world experience but also give them a little bit of cultural background too. Um, so that was one of our highlights for this year. Um, we've also partnered with community ed and the our parent committee did a dancing with traditions a journey through powows and native American cultures. Um, I would say this class was extremely We had a lot of interest. We had a lot of great questions. Um, so much interest that we had other school districts actually reach out and ask us if we could do it for them. Um, and we've also done a similar presentation for Sachs. So, that's been really awesome and life changing, too. Um, our family events this year have really taken off. Um, so we have done um native lacrosse, we've done tandrome making. We've done mini moccasin ornaments. Um we've done bead work. We've done um like a smudge face renewal. And so those um family engagement events are being more and more attended to. Um and they range from elementary students partaking all the way up to high school students going by themselves. So, it's been really cool to see that community grow um and everyone kind of getting to know each other better. Um and that brings us to our drum and dance nights. So, our drum and dance, um previously we were collaborating with other school districts in the south metro. Um this year we decided to host our own drum and dance and we had over 70 people sign up which at the first night I was like, "Oh my goodness, how are we going to handle this?" like, "Do I have enough food?" Um, but it has been incredible. We've had um littles come and learn. We have students who are teaching the younger students. We have elders coming um to help with bead work. And we have like four or five students who are working on beating their graduation caps. So, it's really become like a great sense of community and a place that students keep asking for. Like they're like, "When's the next dance?" Can I come by myself? Can I bring my friends? Like all of these cool things. Um, so that's been really exciting. Um, and then we're continuing the work on our smudging space. So we are collaborating with the creative professionals design class. Um, so we have an aid video project happening and that video the purpose of it is to have available to incoming ninth graders and incoming teachers so that new teachers are aware of the space, what it's used for, how to kids access it, all of those things. So there's a group of four students working on that right now. Um, and then we have an avidia trifold pamphlet that's being created as well. And that trifold pamphlet is um the audience is a teachers so that when they come for new teacher workshop week that can be one of the things that are in there if they're at the high school so that they know exactly that we have that space. Um we also partnered with the literacy event and um we had authors Carol Lindström and Joanne Zacharias there. Um Carol Lindström is the author of My Powerful Hair, which we got from our SE grant a couple years ago, into all of our kindergarten classrooms. So, that was really cool to open that up. I told her about it and she was like, "Absolutely. I need to come read for your students." Um, so she was really fun to have. And then Joanne Zacharias is from SMSC, so hers it featured a difficult language as well. That was awesome. Um, Nika and I are working on our culture trump project. So, at each of the five elementary schools, they have a bison trunk and it has um like a buffalo robe, some hand drums, some moccasins, like parts of the buffalo, um, bladder, parf bones, porcupine quails, all those kinds of things. And so Nick and I have kind of audited those um trunks and making sure that they're all consistent. So we're going to work and make sure that everybody has the same materials, everybody is um up to date on how to teach those things um so that students are getting the similar experience on those cultural products. Um here's our upcoming field trips. Um, kindergarten, first and second, we have the multicultural ed class. Um, third and fourth, we're still kind of working on something. Um, fifth grade is going to Ho Chaat T. 6th through 8th is going to the Vedote. The freshman are going to the Landing and Richard T. Anderson. Sophomores are Lake Riley. Juniors like an and senior seniors go to Big Island. Um, so this map on the side was made by a Dakota consultant. Um, and that just shows a small piece of that field trip series um because we end up on Big Island for the seniors as like a big finish to their um schooling. Um and this all of this is like sacred land. And so to take the students there and be like, "No, your land isn't gone. You can still connect with it. You can still be here. You can still um take up space." has been really power powerful. Um but then also making make sure that they know how to connect with that space. And then here's a few save the dates. Um so the south of the river pow in collaboration with um South Metro School Districts is Saturday, May 2nd. Grand entry is at 100 p.m. And then we honor our graduates shortly after grand entry and that's at the Burnsville High School. And then our annual feather ceremony will be at the link Event Center on Thursday, May 21st. questions. >> I was at the event for the literacy event with the fantastic. >> Yeah, >> you can kind of casually throw out there that >> we do have a couple people that are interested in like seeing how it's going to go. Um, so I think the biggest challenge now is just seeing whether or not we get the grant and how we need to pivot to make it work for for the instructor. >> Yeah. So, there is interest and I've I've told a lot of people about it. So, I'm very hopeful. >> A sense of why the interest in the high school levels like middle schoolers are really fired up. Is it just like teenagers are busy or >> I >> I do feel like some of it is teenagers are busy. Um some students have like co-op and online classes where they're not in school, but there's also students who don't want to miss big classes. And so I'm just really like, okay, you go to class, that's great for you. Um but we're here if you need us kind of thing. So I always want students to be able to make that choice. Um, and so I think a lot of them at the high school level especially are like, "It's more important for me to be in class." Um, but there's some students who will come for one or two groups and then maybe their next semester is harder so that we don't see them for a few weeks. >> Can I follow up to that? >> Do do you think that the addition of elementary programming is leading to a higher level of middle school interest? Yes, I would say that because since I've been in this program, we've had the middle school grow. >> Um, and so yes, my most engaged students are like the six current sixth graders, so I started with them in fourth grade. So, yeah. >> Carry through the high school. >> Let's hope so. great work to participate in one of your meetings and just learn a lot what you're doing. So, thank you. Thank you for your support. I truly appreciate it. We are going to move to our action items uh tonight and our first item 9.1 is our pack of nonurrence and our presenter is warrior. Hello my name is Um on February 9th the committee voted non crime and on behalf of the neighbor we would like to formally share a set of recommendations intended for education and educational equity cultural responsiveness and systemic support for students and families across the district. Our committee appreciates the district's continued commitment to Indian education and values of support that has been provided to date. With that appreciation, we also share a strong desire to continue growing in this work, including a measurable reduction in the achievement gap students over time. We believe the following recommendations will help ensure that education efforts are intentional, sustainable, and carried out with fidelity across for the system. We want to thank you for your continued partnership in these recommendations. One, tribal nations training for educators, administrators, and school board members. We recommend required ongoing tribal nations training for educators administrators and school board members to intentionality planning. Native perspectives and history should be intentionally embedded into planning rather than supplemented or isolated content. Three, increase staffing, professional development and use of funding. Four, the dream catcher project. We recommend this district support of the dream catcher project. This is a trauma program that is culturally responsive to culturally responsive initiative aligned with best practices for supporting students not just students and their their leaders are actually quote it's good for students it's good for all students I we mention the dream budget and five shared responsibility and consistency and implementation in Education staff will not should not be expected to produce, carry or sustain this work alone. Responsibility for native student success must be shared across department, students, schools and leadership. We appreciate the district's commitment to this work and over additional support involvement leadership and administration including opportunities for school board members and administrators to be present and hear directly from our community as we offer these recommendations in partnership with the shared goal of improving outcomes for students and families. We welcome continued dialogue and collaboration appate your Any questions? >> Yeah. So the dream project and this project particularly works with the special program. So in this project they work to address program. So it's more of a trauma informed reaction rather than automatic students or any student for that matter into special ed. So they teach they teach special educators to be more. It really is just trying to culture. So the reason why that is because it was just a different way that it's better to respond to those types of rather than automatic child. So at the Bible public school district the way that I work with that as one of the ways that we work with that is that whenever we have a student who is who has behaviors we don't automatically okay students in special ed we try to respond in ways that are culturally so that we can go in there cultural cultural so that can work as far as student responding student. responding in Spanish cultural ways that will help less become a part of me or racial educate and get ideas for cultural things that we can put in their ideas. So if a student needs this much for example like what would that look like? How can we do it? How can we teach about it? Other questions >> regarding planning to be more organically put into the curriculum examples of that process. I think like I can speak to this for sure is there's individual teachers who are really good at reaching out and getting some of this feedback. I think where the int intentionality needs to come in is getting it across the board. >> Yeah. And to respond to that, like I also want to commend your superintendent superintendent, your curriculum specialist came to our classroom at Burnsville. We have a classroom there at Burnsville High School. So we had a great time with them. Our curriculum specialist with them. talked with them about how we integrate curriculum education for all into curriculum wide and part of that comes being able to work with our staff and not in a way where we're trying to force Indian education on teachers is definitely thing that we're doing as a collab as far as providing PD this year on the culture and then people who wanted to first and then from there a little different with Burnsville because we're providing that PD for them as part of opportunity to our teachers so that next year we're going to be calling our culture bearers. They will be the people who are responsible at each site to help other teachers use the culture truck as a tool to these things into the curriculum based off of EA education for all standards at each level. So we are building these culture trunks in a way that it responds to each standard on the each grade level standard. So just being able to work with our curriculum specialist on those standards and being able to just build it in just little by little we don't we don't expect and I don't think Justin's also in that same expecting every teacher should do this because I understand that teachers already have enough on their plate as it is but it's If you get enough teachers who are willing to do it for a few times and then it helps to build that momentum for other teachers to feel empowered to do that and feel safe to do that knowing that we've trained them enough within that information. um want to thank you for the continued partnership and collaborative work and I think the things that you laid out here. We've got a good foundation and we want to it's we have we share the same goals. We want to move forward with intentionality. I think there's a lot of good things happening. We want to continue to build on those add new ones and I've taken some notes just even here some reflective thought. So really appreciate time and effort. We're incredibly, you mentioned it earlier, not to embarrass Justine, but we're incredibly incredibly fortunate to have her doing this work in our district. She's an amazing person and educator. So, thank you. >> Consciousness right now. As great as Justine is and as committed as our NAPAC is, it's not lost on me. We have a team of a thousand educators. >> Justine can't do it alone. Um, other people can't, but we need to continue to expand and we've seen a lot of growth just like you've seen growth in the program. We've seen growth in the number of our folks who have learned great things are bringing them into the classroom and it's great learning for each and every kid. So, we we really You know, we value that partnership already. We want to see it continue to grow. We want to get more and more of our team as embedded as we possibly can. So, I think I'm done now. So this is an accepted motion to >> approve. Second motion by Smith and a second by Johnson. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor say I. >> I motion. Thank you so much for your time presenting. Item 9.2 on our agenda is another action item and this one is in regards to our language access plan. And tonight we have Sarah Wber, our assistant director of learning teaching at secondary and our multiordinator. >> Yes. And I I really just get the pleasure of introducing Annie. requirements to have a language access plan and Annie and others in the room, Ray, Tiffany, some others worked on this. And one of the one of the wonderful things about engaging this process was learning. Oh, do a lot of So Annie will share with you what we learned about ourselves and what we reflected on and all of the the glows we we got to celebrate. Yeah. So really this is about our language access plan. And if you take a look up at the screen, really what that means is we are going to formally create a plan that if you look You can say we've done a lot of this work already because it's the right work to do and language access says we need to make sure that we're providing individuals who communicate in a language other than English with the timely and access to communication just as English language speaking peers. So we want to make sure that everybody has access to all of the great things that we do in our schools in the same manner. And when we think about this, this was really a time for us to kind of bring this codify this and make this formal. And when you look at the vision that we have in our district, this really aligns. We've been doing a lot of this work, but we don't have a formal plan. Making this a system allows us to make sure that we show support makes shows we have high expectations for this work and to make sure we can measure it and see if it's working for all of our all of our folks in our system, in our schools. Um, this was a formal requirement by the Minnesota Department of Education to make sure that we have a plan that identifies our language needs in the district that make sure we describe and have a plan for interpretation services for all of our students including our cultural family leaison telephone video interpretation and emergency communication protocols. This really started through MDE back last year. We started having conversations and MD provided some background and some good information and understanding around best practices in interpretation and translation. Then they brought this state statute forward and this year we are building that plan and need to bring it toward to the school board. Um and MDE is working with us to make sure that plan is in compliance and then we implement that plan next year. And what's really interesting about this plan is you're going to take a look at some of these requirements. So I'm going to put these up on the board and have you take a look at these. And you can see why I was the star student in some of these meetings is we do a lot of this work already. And so it was so fun to be able to kind of check what we do in Shaki. So when we look at this list, um it was great. We've met actually all of the state statute requirements prior to the state statute. We have strong cultural family leaison at each site in our four most predominant languages here. We have integrated district and building communication so that our communications goes out in the multiple languages that people are prefer. We use propio which has both and video inerson interpretation. We have accessibility through our website now through Seesaw and through we encourage making sure that we use those so that everyone can use this in a language that they need. We have translated documents and information. We use communication for our access testing and then we monitor our language data yearly to ensure that our translations and interpretation meet the needs of those students and community members within our school system. So, it was really fun to say, "Hey, we're doing a lot of this already." In fact, we checked every single box that MDE said we need to require. Then, Tiffany made it look awesome on our website, so it's super easy and accessible. It is a 13page document, which you all get to read, and that's exciting. But let's say you just want to know what we're going to do next year. What are we going to do to home this? You can go right to this website, you can drill down and pick out just the part that you're most interested in. And it's there for everyone. It's going to say pending board approval right now because we want you to make sure that you approve this. And then it'll be there for all of our everyone to see so that they can see what our foundation is, what our directives are, and then a breakdown each year, what we're going to monitor and take a look at. So, what would I like you to do tonight? Well, we'd love for you as you've taken a look at this language access plan to approve the plan as presented today. Um, and then any formal adjustments that we need to make um will be made to the plan and it's posting to note board approval to abide ND guidelines. So, we'll make sure it says pending board approval. We will obviously continue to make any of those formal adjustments. Next steps we know because of our vision that we're going to continuously change until all systems measurably work for our students. So that means each and every year we're going to review the usage. We're going to update translated materials and we're going to make sure that we're gathering information from our stakeholders to make sure that our plans, our translation, our interpretation is up to snap for all of those stakeholders. We're going to review predominant languages spoken annually from our district. And one of the things that we're really going to try to continuously improve on is that emergency signage everywhere in our district to make sure that it is um both written in not only English but in all the predominant languages so that everyone has access to that. And then we're going to continuously look at our annual training for staff around Proprio and how they can access translation services to ensure that all of our staff, all of our teachers continuously know about all the options available so we can communicate families in real time. What questions do you have, you know, ahead of the curve already um with respect to the evac evacuation signageification plan? This might be a question as well. So what is that in terms of scope beyond just what the school can do because obviously partnering committee you know the larger group that supports that program. >> Yeah. We're going to work with our language access committee and make sure that we involve all of those stakeholders. But right now, we are working on just making sure that our emergency exit signage and and things like that so that when our students when our families are in the building, they are able to see all of those signs and have it in a language that they can access right away. So, lots more to come that we can >> Yeah, I know it gets really complex and the whole unification plan and with building, right? >> Yes. All of that. Right now, we're really just looking at when people are in our buildings and if they need to make an emergency exit or they need to know where to go. We're gonna make sure that all of that signage is there and labeled for everyone. >> Peterson vice chair's question when it comes to actual communication that would occur to a family in an emergency or reunification process. So this would be additional physical elements that are standard in our schools in addition to the direct communication. >> And I would just add to the signage question um that the crisis and safety committee is constantly reviewing topics like this and trying to figure out where do we start and how do we continue to you know provide access to people of of you know of all languages and all you know other challenges that we face. So definitely something that crisis team will continue to talk about. >> I have a question about the predominant language. How many languages are we going to be translating into? Because I know there's many many many in our district. So can't do them all, but what are the languages that we're right now? We have our four our top four languages. um Spanish, Somali, Russian and Vietnamese. So those are automatically already things that we translate into for our multilingual department. We translate in any So when people come when students arrive and enroll, they tell us through the Minnesota home language survey what their predominant or their first language is or their most predominant language is. So we keep a record of that and that goes and attaches to the student file for anyone that needs an interpreter. So anyone that needs an interpreter within those languages, we ensure that it is connected to the student so that we can always call with those languages. Um and then for our multilingual department, we always make sure that we communicate in that language. So every year we review the languages in our department and then we send out for translation any important documents around testing or access or placement. So we currently have over 60 languages. So our folders are very full with different languages but we send out that communication to those specific. Is that a decision that we make on the top ones that are the top four languages or is that something that's driven by what percentage of students that speak those languages? >> That is a good question. There isn't any guidance for MD about what to do with the top communications. That's something I think that we get to locally choose. there is guidance around um communicating testing scores, communicating program placements and that that needs to be done in a language that families understand. So, we do that, but I do not know of any guidance of like if there's a certain proportion of students that that they have like a cultural let me make sure I'm correct. >> Fantastic. >> So, we're we're basically getting to our formalized plan of all the great services that we provide. >> Yes. >> Right. uh the state said we need to make sure that we have this in a formalized plan and we we said sure we can do that because we already know that this is best practice and we do this for allian so it was a really shiny moment actually a really great moment for us to say oh sure you just want us to write this down on one sheet of paper no problem accessible so it's >> look how cool this looks it looks amazing right looks So easy to read. >> Yes. >> Items. So I move into a motion to approve the language access plan as presented. >> So move >> second motion by Roi and a second by Valdez. Any further discussion? Seeing none. All those in favor say I. I. motion carries. Thank you for coming. >> Item 9.3 is our ninth grade day one presentation and our high school principal Jeff is here along with Stephanie our nth grade. >> Yeah. Good evening once again. I am going to turn over and introduce Stephanie Lea the ninth grade academy principal who will be leading the presentation. >> Hi, thanks for having us back again to talk about the first day of school. Um we won't talk as long I think as we question them. Um, just a reminder, we went through a a new process last school year to prepare for a board presentation with you to make sure that we learned everything from local districts about what they're doing for that first day. So, we learned a lot. Um, we asked a lot of questions to stakeholders, mostly students and um our teachers before we launched that we came to May and then we came back to actually the summer that transition was really important. This plan and implemented it on September 2nd and then got a lot of information from our stakeholders. So, we're back here again to ask for an And I'm not going to claim that all of this is due to the ninth grade first day of school, but I we have seen behavior referrals decreasing um our overall attendance rates for quarter one were um higher compared to last school year. Other factors involved there. Um and we are also demonstrating Our next steps to really get ready are to continue to collaborate with teachers. We have some teachers who really have some teachers that um we've got some areas of growth. Um but we learned a lot from that first day students. So we'll be really looking to those um teachers who were engaging all of their learners um to that and really help us um prepare for that first day. about how we make sure that teachers are prepared for that first day. And then the other thing that we're looking at is exploring the inclusion of other student groups. We do all offer all of our students are welcome to come into the building that day whether they're 9 through 12. potentially just settled in the school year. So that's one of our big hopes for next year. So we are here to ask for the schedule for us to continue that first day of school. That would mean that our nth graders would be in person. This is our class of 2020 29. I'm already thinking about the class of 2030 because we're already talking about that. >> Question would be the only school district that would be doing this or is there other schools? >> There are a lot of school districts. We were to everyone who wants to jump on board with this. >> Um, and I'm doing this for memory, but I recall looking at some of the, you know, graduation statistics and performance in nth grade, right? Speaks volumes to how well you will do over the next high school career. You mentioned a couple of those metrics like referrals or down in terms of student success. Are is the intent to continue Those metrics are metrics as we continue >> to us. >> Yeah, those are always ongoing. And then to the degree you can correlate it specifically to this building I think it such a strong like like Stephanie said you know you just can't look at that one indicator but I think it's provided such a strong foundation for the start of the year that it just this year I mean there's a lot I'm sure there's other factors but it just it's felt for just I think we brought it up maybe uh at the last video that we were talking about this but the whole idea of the online learning for students kind of and that kind of being a challenge just the first day of the year you know like the material and the content of that day was maybe a work in progress has there been more thought processes that >> for sure you know like like Steph mentioned we had some teachers that did a really good job that experienced higher levels of engagement than other teachers. So the advantage of having done it once is and and we do this often in professional learning and we've talked about this would be something that we would do in May is that we would model you know use some of those teachers to help our other teachers you know how do we model that on that first day. So I think the second iteration of this we'll be able to to build off that because I think it's hard anything that you're doing for the first time. I think for some it's hard to, you know, to wrap your head around it, but now that most of us have done it, we'll have new teachers coming on board, we can prepare for it better in May. I think we'll be able to to to raise that up. I mean, we all know at the end of the day, right? We we all know to be in person is the ideal um situation, but we know what we're getting out of this by providing it for the ninth graders. But definitely taking those lessons learned from the first time around and then how do we build that up to make to make that the best um experience. We can't burn through. >> Just want to make sure as much as we like having Steph and Jeff come to our meetings, what we're asking tonight is for you to approve this as an ongoing part. You know, this would be, you know, we're into the foreseeable future. We're not going to have them come back year after year. Now, we will ask for some of that feedback and some of that data as part of high school updates from my vantage point when we looked at this. I thought it went really really well this year. So, you know, I certainly support the effort and uh especially with I love the question about hey, what are we doing with the asynchronous online? I think it went okay and I think there's certainly, you know, having done it once opportunities to enhance that. But certainly would uh would encourage you to approve it or you're not quite there yet. If you've got other more pointed questions, throw those out. But wanted you to know this was not an annual event. >> Yeah. No, Chair Peterson. And I would just add much like connect and assess is a regular part of elementary and our elementary teachers appreciate that opportunity to get to know their students one-on-one in the fall. I think our high school is in the same situation where, you know, as um Tim said earlier, you know, giving the ninth graders the opportunity to have the building themselves for a day, really start to build relationships with their teachers. It's not just that the ninth grade year is so critical. We know that before winter break and nth grade is that time period where kids are really figuring out if they fit and if they belong. And I every every sign has been in place this year that this this has had a wonderful impact on this year's nth grade class. I don't think this might not be a question for you, but for Dr. Has this been thought about doing this for sixth graders going into middle school? >> Yeah, wait a half hour. Spoiler alert. >> I just remember ninth grade that first day in big school. >> Um >> and and that year our our middle school burned out. We had sixth through 12th grade all in one high school. And uh yeah, so as a ninth grader, we weren't we weren't lost. It was kind of blended in really nicely, but it's still that that that sense of overwhelming where where um kids could just be like, "Yeah, I don't want to do this." And being able to only have 600 students in the school instead of 2400 just makes it an easier transition. >> Then all of a sudden you're a little fish in a big pond >> and and you're taking two schools of one also that also helps >> just build. >> In all seriousness, we've been doing a lot of really things for our sixth graders. I think they were influenced by seeing the ninth grade day as a separate special day and so they're coming with that proposal a little bit later. Um but it, you know, to to have the building to yourself and a lot of the things you just mentioned, you can't replicate that. To Jim's point, if we can get students off to a good start when they're a ninth grader new to the high school, a sixth grader new to the middle school, there is all kinds of research that supports good starts really have a long-term impact for students in education. questions. >> Yeah, another non question, but just like on your topic of good start, uh what you guys shared last time, it was pretty eye opening to the relatively low attendance of the orientation day. And then just to bring orientation to you. This is another action item. >> Motion to approve. Second motion by a second by any further discussion. >> Seeing none. All those in favor say I. >> I. Item 9.4 on our agenda work agreement. And here to present is our director of human resources. >> Good evening. Um this in this uh cycle of 202527 we actually have three groups. So you've already um seen the teachers agreement. This is the unaffiliated uh agreement and it involves people supervisors managers and their professional staff who aren't certified teachers. So the um you kind of see a summary of the highlights of that 2% 2.2% 2% in terms of our salary model and then our health insurance is three% this year and 8% next year in terms of the district's contribution overall uh settlement number of 6.53 which is in the ballpark of what you saw previously. >> Any questions? >> I was just going to keep the insurance piece of it as consistent with the from September. Correct. >> Yeah. I was just ask >> a motion by Smith and a second by Johnson. Any further discussion? See, all those in favor say I. >> I think item 9.5 is our A and I threeyear plan is our learning teaching. >> Good evening. Um, thanks for having me. Last time I was here, I I shared with you the results of our three-year achievement and equity plan, what those numbers were. Um, you'll you'll see some of the new goals that we have set forth for our 26 through 29. Um first thing up the purpose of our ANI um aims to boost student achievement foster equity by reducing academic disparities promotion promoting racial and economic integration. First of all reducing disparities where I talk about uh in these goals you'll see academic achievement uh based on race, ethnic, ethnicity and economic status. We'll talk about um increased integration, our um create equitable access. We'll talk about our our um advanced placement courses, um our cultural relevant education, uh our student outcomes, we'll talk about our graduation rates, and then last uh but not least, our staff development, promoting hiring and retention of our diverse staff. So, first goal, um last year, this was this goal was our Hispanic and our black population. uh we thought to capture more of our um student population uh in shock schools that we would look at our free and reduced population when it comes to graduation. Right now that number is at 77% uh graduation rate. Um the 2025 numbers have not been released yet. We won't get those until May. So, um I'll even though this uh our achievement integration plan is due the 15th, I'll do an addendum to that goal once I get those numbers um and change that goal once we get those numbers in May. Okay. The things that we will the strategies we'll have we'll look at our AVID numbers, our developmental design programming, um our teacher recruitment, our MTSS programming, um caring committee conversations, and our family engagement opportunities, which I'll talk to you later more about later. Um, next was our goal of um, integration into our advanced placement and concurrent courses um, with our black, Hispanic, and our indigenous population. Um, and what we're trying to do here is if if you look at the first one for our black population, we have 18.3% of our students are black or have identified as black. We want that same number into our advanced placement courses. So you can see we're um a little under 3% um short of that. That's what we're going to try to work towards with that. Um with our Hispanic um little over 6% um we're trying to get that increased. And then the last the numbers that you see there um I I I met with Justine and Perry Wilkinson about you know why is the number so low for our indigenous population for our total number. Um and the number that we took was our federal the kids that from a federal um they they chose that's the number that Perry decided to go with. We're all working together to see if we can get our federal and our state numbers with that to get a a different number with that. So we're working with Justine and Perry with that number. Um again looking at our AVID um I think the one thing that we're going to look at this year or next year that we're going to start is our um our mentor our mentorship program. looking at our uh taking some of our average students at the high school, working with our middle school students and our middle school students, working with our elementary school students. Um I think that peer mentorship is huge. You know, when kids can not only see themselves, but and kids can just explain things to kids a little bit different than what we can sometimes. And um that role model is serious for for some of those kids. And um we're going to start that program um this year um well this next coming school year in 2026 um which is going to be this pyramid and it's going to be big um and so I'll be working with all of our admin our principles working with our admin programmings um and then working with our students at the high school middle school and our elementary age kids to to pump up that number as well. Um, next, uh, looking at our family, uh, family engagement nights. Um, you know, last year that was a goal for us, just to increase that goal, but now we want to take this to another level. Um, so we're going to establish a Latino parent advisory council, um, a Somali parent advisory council uh, with listening sessions. I I think it's very important to listen to our parents about the barriers um, that are happening at why they can't make these meetings and what or even um not only from conferences but our engagement nights throughout the district. You know what what is it really? We can all guess and say these certain things but to sit down and talk with the parents and find out exactly what do they need to attend these nights. Um I always think about um you know you look at sports and I think coaches will even tell you that they'll say you know the more parent involvement you know in sports the more the kid gets involved the more they want to do these certain things right it's the same thing with education and we've got to get our parents when it's important to parents um it it it really helps this right not that it's not important to parents but when we when they're going to a school event and say I'm going to this guess what that means to that kid Right. And I think we can do a better job with that. Um, so we're going to really look at that. I've met with our CFLs about this. They're super excited about it. I'm looking at getting two to three for our elementary, two to three for our middle school, and two to three from our high school to uh to have this council set up. Um, you know, with with getting feedback from surveys, um, you know, obviously signing ships and sheets and things like that, but giving you the numbers as we get those in that. Um, next is our collaborative goal that we work with Prior Lake and Jordan, which is our caring committee conversation March 26. Put that on the calendar. I'll send that out to uh to Tiff. Um, but I'd like you to come and check this out. I know Mike and Jim came to the one in Jordan that that they hosted. I'd like to um have you come and check this out. It'll be at our link be at the link center at Prior Lake um uh from 10 to 12:30. Um, and these caring committed conversations, how we elevate student voice, you know, I look at it as building leaders, you know. Um, I was just at U Lyola, Maryland to watch my daughter play, but I was um on the way into the arena, they had this big wall that just has all the different groups and the different things that they're doing, all these different ways to raise for uh for voice groups and all this like that. It's the same thing we're doing here, but you're building leaders. You're building leaders throughout this um you're getting that comfort level that they can talk in front of peers. Um, you know, that when they go on to college and when things go wrong, they have that voice, hey, I spoke up about something here that I didn't I didn't agree with. And learn how to to have disagreements and still feel welcomed and and to walk out a room and say, you know, hey, we had a disagreement, but you know what? Um, I I see your point. I see your point, you know, and exactly your point, too. And, you know, let's meet again on this, you know. Um, very powerful. Um, And I want you guys to kind of see that. So, if you could make it, I think it'd be good. Um, >> did you have a date for that? >> Yes. March 26th from 10 to 12:30 has the links and I'll get that all sent out to you. Um, so and then we look at we always get our a all of our student affinity groups. We go I go to every leader of every affinity group. Every affinity group in our building and I say, you know, we need two to three, you know, to come to this and we get the leaders of those groups to come. Um some even if they're not leaders, they'll come out and say, "Hey, you go." Um but every kid comes out and we have a you can click on the survey, you can look at some of the things that we'll be asking them after each one. But um those have been going really well. Um, and then last but not least, um, looking at our, um, to increase our percentage of teachers of color from 4% to 5%. If if you look at that, I know it's, you know, trying to go a percent a year. You know, it's tough. Um, but I mean, I look at our Dakota language, um, we're going to get a new teacher in that, um, from next year. You look at our grow your own program. We have two, um, from our CFLs that are still going through it. They'll be ready in a couple years. Um, I think we and you know and but they need that encouragement as well. You know, I'm just one person, but I think um the more you can see, you know, Anna and Evelyn and have those conversations with, hey, how you doing? You know, what do you need? Keep pushing through this thing. We need you. Um, I think it's going to be good. And and they're both awesome. I mean, they're going through some things, but they're still finding their way to to be a teacher in this district. So, um, so those are those are our five goals. Anything else you'd like to add? Chair Peterson came to one of our meetings just to kind of see what you know uh with some of our admin and our specialist. Uh Jim was there as well just to kind of you know start to formulate the plan and look at some of the things that we do. question. So explaining to your graduation rate and I like how you're saying change the distribution does that require parents to apply for that? So do we feel that it's a better data set in terms of being able to capture those students as opposed to saying >> right right you know we we we brought that up in the meeting of why um and um we just thought we would capture more students this way instead of just saying the Somali Hispanic you want to add anything to that Jim >> because it's a percentage of students It's not like increasing by a set number. So if we had, you know, a certain number of forms that came in one year, it's what percentage of those forms are we are compared to the next year, what percentage of those forms are >> right. So the distribution you can still measure over year based on that as opposed to the quantity of >> right. I just I just have a quick comment. I cannot tell you how much I love the student program. I think it's going to be absolutely fantastic because younger kids seeing older kids achieving everything just gives them I can do that. I just love it. So I'm so happy that >> also for the older students have studentity. >> It's it's good both both ways. >> Love it. >> I just had one thought. It might just be the way my brain works for goals and stuff like that. Just even this one specifically trying to help 4% to 5% of teachers. It's kind of an arbitrary number, right? Like we know how many staff we have and all that would be For me, I think it would be a little bit easier to like strive for that number, you know what I mean? Instead of a percentage small change, but like in all the numbers might make it more attainable or feel more attainable. >> I still love to use like percentages of two equivalents and all that. Like these are people though, you know? Thank you for that. you know, a percentage of our total teaching, but then essentially two more teachers. >> Chair Peterson, and with this particular goal, what I would say like the the most critical part is the pipeline and having people interested in going into teaching and we know that one of the areas that people rise to from teaching is pair professionals. And right now, um, you know, we've we've got, I want to say 50% of our pair professionals are actually staff of color. And that's a group that really does start to look more and more like our student body. With that, you mix in the fact that we have the um the grow your own grants and I believe we have between I want to say between 15 and 20 of our current existing staff in college um you know working towards a degree to um to to become teachers and and we will have positions for them as part of the grant. So, um, you know, when I look at this four to 5%, I I believe we'll not only meet but easily exceed this if we continue down the path we're on. So, really well done. >> As an a student myself, I'm really excited to see where the peer-to-peer mentorship goes, especially because I know um it's public speaking and just being able to connect with students that you're not necessarily friends with is you kind of overcome in AVID. But being able to connect with the younger AVID students or just younger students in general, it really builds that connection with students, especially since there are a lot of I guess sibling ties to AVID like um as an older student in AVID, I know a couple younger students just cuz siblings, cousins, but also um another thought for the caring committed conversations. Um, I think the last one I had someone re reach out to me about it, but there was no really followup after it and then it happened and I had no idea about it. So, um, that's just one thing I just wanted to see clarification about communication on that standpoint because I know some other students did get to attend and I heard about that. I just love to have the caring committed conversations opportunity be open for you know a broader set of students if available together as we'll make sure question. >> I just appreciate all the work that goes into this being part of the kickoff meeting for the development of this plan was I love the conversation and the discussion brainstorming of where we go from here. We continue to what we currently have started. So, thanks to everybody that's on that work. >> This is an action item. You do have to approve it, right? Unless you want to come back again. >> Second. We have a motion by Roie and a second by Aldridge to approve the ANI three-year plan. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor say I. >> I oppos. Thank you again. Item 9.6 is an action item and this is the read memorandum of understanding for the secondary teachers is still here to present. Um, this is actually an update to memor somewhat familiar with previously, but there's been some changes, which is kind of a natural process here. So, this is just an update to this one would replace the existing moving forward and Sarah worked on this. to edit this way to beer to those two. I'm here. >> Questions to make a motion to approve. >> Motion by Smith. >> Second. >> Second by Paul. Any further discussion? Seeing none, Those in favor say I. >> I. >> Thank you. >> 9.7 on the agenda is now Joe's topic of the sixth grade school. >> And here to present we have Ellis, our East Middle School principal, and Chase, our West Middle School. Thank you for being here. >> Yes. Thank you for allowing us just a few moments um to chat with you all about hopefully welcoming our sixth graders into the building on day one um so they can have a chance to acclimate and get used to middle school without twothirds of the other student body. Um so currently we do a lot of onboarding with our fifth to sixth graders. all of our days in the spring and events in the spring that we do, we are going to continue to do. But we get um from parents and guardians, the thing we hear the most is the spring events are fantastic. The kids feel great, the families feel great, then it's all summer and then open house with a thousand kids embodied in the building and it's chaos and crazy. And so we are really looking as a way to transition our kids into the middle schools, um ease anxiety, build confidence, build some relationships, do some community building like Steph and just looking at them in high school. Um so this is what we're proposing. Sixth graders on the first day, seventh and eighth graders will do asynch as learning um virtually, which Clayton's going to talk about after I talk about our sixth graders and what the day might look like for them. Um one big reason for this change is we find that we spend two to three weeks at the beginning of the school year just getting our kids used how to open a locker, where to find everything, where their resources are, how to use their iPad. And we're really hoping that we can use this first day of school to help them feel good about everything that they need to know about middle school, so that on day two when everybody is in the building, hopefully they can breathe a little bit and feel a little bit better. Um, this is not set in stone. This is just some preliminary thinking of what the sixth graders day might look like on the first day of school. We know that we want them to spend the bulk of their day with their advisors, community building, getting to know the buildings, how to do their lockers, um those sort of sort of things. So, we book ended the day with advisory activities. Um we do want them to visit every one of their class periods so they know where it is and to see their teachers and hear a little bit about what the class is about and again do some community building in those spaces. Um and then you'll see a fifth hour, big chunk of time. Um we want to we want the to keep their assigned lunch. It's going to be a small group of kids in each lunchroom, but they can see the other sixth graders that have that same lunch as them. So then on day two, they're not so overwhelmed about finding, you know, connecting with the people they know and finding a spot. Um they'll still have uh 15 minutes with their fifth period teacher to do what everybody else is doing throughout the day as the kids visit their class periods, but then we have a large chunk of time for kids to get their iPads to get set up in their iPads without feeling rushed. Um, typically our sixth graders get their iPads on the second day of school in science classes. So, no teachers, no sixth grade teachers use those devices until at least the third day of school. Um, without seventh and eighth graders in the building, we will have a whole lot of support from all of our staff and helping um this period of the day where kids are working on their iPads and getting set up because we will have seventh and eighth grade teachers available um to buddy up with sixth grade teachers during that time. So, this is just that this is a rough draft. We're not by no means done with the day and planning. Um, after today, depending upon where where we go with your approval, we we plan to get groups of teachers and committees um created to get all the details out to. >> All right. So, your question would be, what's going on with our seventh and eighth graders? So, um this is in chronological order. Something that would be newly proposed is to have a pickup day for devices ahead of time and thinking about the asynchronous learning uh for success. So there would be uh some hours available for students and families to be able to pick up at that time. We would still keep open house and have the devices available. Again, that's where our highest percentage of students come through. We'd still have that sixth through 8th uh open house. seventh and eighth graders would do the asynchronous uh learning virtual on the first day of school, which would be September 1st, and then join our sixth graders and staff uh fully on the second. So, that's what we're looking at for that change. All right. And then what would the day look like? I'm sure there's some questions about that. Uh one idea that we have right now is an actual consistent model and experience for all students. So, we would have a committee development. Uh and this would start um after the the proposal if proposed we would pull a group together um and that all of our students are basically have the same experience especially with their core subject areas. That's one of the ideas that we have. So it's it's more of like they're all doing the same thing rather than following these individual courses all over the place. It reduces the redundancy on the first day of school for the get to know you activities. We have some ideas for that. Students accessing their content on the that they have ahead of time via Canvas, well planned prior notifications and training happening in spring prior to going into the summer. Uh so the students know what to do for that first day and then uh clear plans for the device distribution. Um we're also thinking oh you can you can go right ahead. We're also thinking about um what would the seventh and eighth grade teachers be doing? And so when was talking about like device distribution for instance or locker help, our seventh and eighth grade teachers would be teamed up with sixth grade teachers. So we would really break down that student ratio support during the day. Um we've also talked with uh with sea and thinking that all teachers regardless during that day would still have their prep and they would still have their duty free lunch. So that would all be encompassed into what the day looks like. We spent time with tech um talked with food service, transportation, all of the the leadership connected with the district that can readily support this first day. Um so they are in agreement that this can be done. We've also talked a lot with Shockby High School and learning about uh how the ninth grade day went and um we we're really excited we've had a partnership along the way. All right. And then with the board recommendation, what we're asking for is the school board to approve an adjustment for the first day of the 2627 school year for both East and West. And based on the approval, um, we would get going in the next 60 to 90 days to really build this out with the committee. Um, and then we would have a finalized well thoughtout plan. Um, and then we would have clear communication with our sixth to 8th grade families on how that would look ahead of time prior to the school year. So it's not like a summer. they would know like the students in the spring. Um and then you would be updated afterwards through all of these different avenues which would be student survey, family survey, teacher survey and then conversation with our department leads on how it went and then be ready to present that feedback to you. Would this just be a temporary plan just kind of like how we did last year with the nth grade? >> Yeah. So, we're asking for a one-year approval and then we'll come back with with data and information that collected afterwards. >> Okay. >> So, looking at these components at the end, we would then bring back all of that data. It's been interesting, too, that we did talk with our um our sixth grade students. I had um Courtney McNeely was was coming up with some of the ideas with us and she asked all of her ELA sixth grade classes what would what would be helpful on the first day of school? And they were like, "Oh my gosh, my mom." And she just started collecting all of this information. this would be amazing if we would have known this, if we would have had the time to do this. And so that really catered to the the proposal. >> So the teachers have been we've been in discussion with them on this. Yeah, both of our leadership teams are in full support of this plan. Um regardless of whether they're a six primarily a sixth grade teacher or >> we did talk with our staff, our full staff, both of them at at the sites knowing that we were going to come here. >> Follow question. Are there other districts that have experimented with this before the school? >> Yeah, there are other districts that do this. Um I know that there are some districts who do a a sixth grade only day but not during the school year and attendance is actually pretty low um just because parents have to transport, right? And it's it's not an equitable experience in that situation. Um so that is one reason why we're leaning towards the first day of school doing it like this. But there are other districts that And I have a completely question and I don't want to make Brian nervous but I'm doing this so long since I had kids in middle school. >> So do all those students turn in their devices at the end of the year. That's part of >> that was the biggest hurdle. We were very interested in doing this with Steph when she started and we were like we just need a little bit more time to figure out that hurdle getting all of our >> do quite a bit. What's the risk? You send the devices home over the summer and hope they come back or >> So, we're going to try the pickup and then we committed, you know, any stragglers, we're going to try and home deliver what we can to get them in their hands before first day of school. >> Brian already put in for vacation. >> No, I'm kidding. >> Um, couple of questions. When my kids were in school, they had the sixth grade center at Pearson. So, they got to avoid the sixth grade, but then the seventh grade, but it was kind of they got everybody like I said with the ninth graders taking two schools into one. We're taking five schools into two. So, that's a big deal trying to like, you know, see everybody coming in. So, I do like that. with the surveys. Are you going to survey the students like the seventh and eighth graders or the family of the students? See what it's like if they like that first day is always it's special no matter >> what grade you're in. Like is it going to be like I'm missing the first day experience even though the second day is really the first day but it's really the second day. That makes sense. >> We'll ask all stakeholders for feedback and how they felt about the day. >> Okay. Absolutely. One item I know in the high school level we used like some students 12th graders 11th graders and also on board this process. Is that something we do with seventh and eighth graders or eighth graders? >> Yeah, we've tapped into um talking about AVID helping out and then also NJHS and student council. So yeah, so student leaders opportunities questions. Um, so I think I heard through the presentation some of the challenges for sixth graders are set up like so much bigger, right? So many more people. So to just take away some of the student body and let them focus on what they need. Our hope is that confidence will go up, anxiety will go down, parents and guardians will feel better sending their babies to us on the first day of middle school. Um that's what we're hoping to achieve. We have four minutes passing time built into that schedule as well. So they would have that, you know, getting class to class. Uh, I trust you guys. I hope at least one kid that I know that will be excited about this and I have several moms that skeptical. >> So, I want to be able to explain to them >> the value of this. >> Yeah. And we are trying to build out something that will be um meaningful and effective on the first day for our seventh and eighth graders. Um, I would say the biggest complaint from them on the first day of school is they it feels like the same thing every class period, right? Get to know your game, community building. And so, create an experience for them on the first day even though it's virtual um and not in the classrooms and in our buildings that hopefully will be meaningful for them. What would be a percentage? Let's see if I can say this correctly in my head. A percentage of students, the sixth graders showing up that would that we you consider a success? Because as you said, if you do it a week before, not everybody's going to show up because of just scheduling and everything. Well, 95 97% of students showing up. And what about for seventh and eighth graders? What if they just don't want to log in? Yeah. I mean, >> yeah. I mean, we're gonna have to kind of see how how this trial year goes, right? We're we're hoping to do enough prep this spring still with them so they know what's coming. It's not news over the summer for what's going to be happening. Um, and if we can communicate with families so they know what's happening and they have an idea of what their day will look like. We're hoping to have a a high percentage of our eighth graders engage as well. >> That know what that percentage is after September. very well >> and I think a lot of it will be that on boarding in the spring if we can start building out some Canvas courses and say when you go this is the course this is where you're going to look for this this is how it's going to work this is how you're going to engage one better think through this the seventh and eighth graders and how they're first a books so the seventh and eighth grade instructors are going to be assisting with the sixth graders on boarding right so most of these classes are going to be like selfled classes as not Um, yeah, I'm just I I feel like I don't know how much like meeting your peers and things like that is going to get done if it's just part of the hurdles and things. This is a twothird of a big group of kids we're talking about. I'll make a motion to approve. Second motion by Aldridge and a second by Valdez to approve the sixth grade middle school. Any further discussion? See none. All those in favor say I. >> I. >> Thank you so much. I get that vacation schedule. >> Item 9.8 on the agenda is another action item and this is our revised fiscal year 26 budget. And with us this evening is David, our director of finance and operations. Good evening. So, wanted to bring to you tonight the FY2526 revised budget. Um, this is just a slide that shows you kind of where we're at in our fiscal year. We're at the revised budget. After this one, we'll do a prelim for the next fiscal year. These are the funds that the school district oversees as we work through the fiscal year. Fund one is the general fund, fund two food service, fund four is community ed, fund six is our building construction fund, which we only have LTFM bonds currently. Fund seven is debt service. Fund 20 and 21 is our internal service fund, which is our health and dental insurance. Fund 18 is our scholarships and fund 45 is our trust, other postemployment benefits. This is just a timeline of kind of where we were at at one point in time in 2017 18 we're at 2% fund unassigned fund balance and now as of 24 25 we're at 10% fund balance. Um there are five classifications for fund balances in the general fund. Non-spendable, restricted, committed, assigned and unassigned. This next slide will show all of these fund balances combined as one for the general fund. Oh, after I talk. Sorry, one step I'm already one step ahead of myself. So when you approved the FY2526 capital budget, here's the parameters you approved it around. You approved it, you approved it around student enrollment of $7,475. State aid increases we we knew at the time was 2.74% or 20 7,281. Operating levy was a 2.34% inflation factor and expected we had contract negotiations for teachers and unaffiliated employees. This is what you approved for your FY2526 adopted budget. This general fund is all of those funds that we had talked about, committed, restricted, assigned, and unassigned combined along with non-spendable. Um, that was projected to decrease by $6.7 million. As of June 30th, 2026, our food service was supposed to see a slight decrease of about $100,000. Community uh community service fund was roughly going to increase about 300 well $400,000 construction fund showed no revenue expenditures. Like I said, we have LTF fun LTFM bonds that we're going to spend at 26 27 on HVAC systems. Um debt service um we do levy 105% that is what all schools do. Um so you'll see that fun maintain that throughout time. um internal service fund was supposed to see a slight decline of roughly around $50,000 and the trust fund which included OPED and scholarships was going to decrease by roughly $30,000. This is the breakdown of our adopted 2526 general fund. So our unassigned as you can see was supposed to increase by 191,000. Our nonspendables stayed the same. Uh restricted, which included long-term facility maintenance, fund balance stayed roughly the same at 2.6. Well, stayed exactly the same. Operating capital was a reduction of 1.8 million. Capital projects levy stayed the same. Restricted was was a reduction of 2 almost 2.6 million and unassigned was a reduction of 2.4 million fund balance. And committed stay the same at 414,000. I guess I'll jump back real quick. I just want to show the bottom. We are showing a decrease of $6.7 million in the general fund and that is all funds combined. When you approved the 2526 uh adopted budget, our 2425 active enrollment came at 7,659. The adopted budget was built on 7,475. Our revised January enrollment is 7 571 which also includes the early uh graduation students at the high school. The overall general fund revised revenue budget increased by 6.96% or 8.7 million. The following are the main increases of the do from the adopted budget to the revised. Enrollment is up by 114 kids students from the adopted budget which is also still a decrease from previous fiscal year where we ended at 88 kids. State aid special education has been revised to reflect current estimates from MDE. Federal revenue includes updated federal special education revenue estimates along with title and title one title two title three local other local revenues are updated estimate interest earnings increased estimates for MA billing or medical assistance revenue along with miscellaneous fees and other revenues which are your donations. The overall general fund revised expenditure budget increased by 3.57% to $4.7 million from the adopted budget. Uh the main reasons are as follows are the salary and benefits. Uh because of the higher enrollment, we need additional classroom instructional teachers and also we finalized the contract for the teachers negotiations. uh purchase services. The increases for that and supplies were a contract transportation budget increase along with operating and techn and technology levy supplies and materials budget increase. This is going to be the revised FY2526 with all funds combined. Uh as you see on the left hand side the fund balance of July 1st 2025 that is our audited information that you approved during when the auditors came in December revenues are 1 sorry 340.3 million expenditures 136.9 million uh that shows a projected fund balance of June 2026 of 33.5 million food service we are seeing an increase now um from our fund balance of 3.3 million with revenues at 6.5 expenditures at 6.2 million um which shows a slight increase of roughly $140,000 at 3.5 million. Community service fund uh we ended last year in 25 atgative 110,000 fund balance. We projected to decrease fund balance again to $295,27. Um we'll come to that at the end of the presentation. Construction fund. Uh I increase the revenues based on interest earnings that we are receiving on those bonds sitting in our account. Um which is $79,000 $79,000 which is fund balance of June 30, 2026 of 1.7 million. Debt service fund we are showing just a slight increase by roughly 39,000. Internal service fund uh revenues are projected at 12.6 million expenditures at 12.5 which shows slight increase in our fund balance of our internal service fund which is that health and dental insurance. Um also the last one is the trust fund which is our hope and scholarships. We're showing revenues of 612,000 with expenditures 442 which slows an increase of 180,000 and our old trust in scholarship for next one will be the breakdown of the general fund which is includes those assign unassigned nonspendable restricted assigned and committed. The other side is increasing at $76,000 which will keep us at that 10% fund balance. non-spendable stays the same. Uh we will true that out once the audit comes finalized in June, July, once we're working on that. Restricted includes long-term facility maintenance, um which is a slight increase of 172,000. Operating capital, we are reducing that by 2.5 million. This is because of the curriculum purchases we have made for this year for the future. Operating capital, which is our tech levy, you may as well which is increasing at $345,000. Um other restricted is a slight decrease of $34,000. Our assigned fund balance um is a decrease of 1.2 million and our committed which is the facility rentals is an increase of 250,000 which shows really truly the deficit spend in our general fund of 2.6 million for the current So, I ask you today to approve the revised budget and then we'll come with long-term financial planning for the future and then also the prelim budget for next year in June of 627. >> Um, sorry about this. What was the the explanation for the community service fund? >> Yes. Sorry, I was going to Um we are slowly spending down our community service fund which we've done last year. Um but we are working and working with Lisa directly to consolidate and kind of look at what we're spending those funds on along with program areas. There's multiple programs that are included at you know school readiness CF we're breaking those down and looking at what the salary benefits are what they're generating for tuition building also taking it from the state levy. So that is to come we're slowly uh bringing those back to a reality and Dr. touch a little bit on it. I know you have previously. >> Yeah I think that's the main part and that's that health work group that you're part of I think is really looking at that. I think the other piece is we're doing a comparative analysis of our ongoing facilities rental budgets and you know the there as well. But certainly we're aware of both of those things. The health work group is obviously a very involved sort of work group uh to really make sure that our structures moving forward in all of those different programs at Pearson are well structured and appropriately structured. We're looking at like I said the the facilities are part of that budget as well. you know, those conditions. There's some pieces of it that, you know, you want to make sure you get it right with the fix, which is why we're looking at that facilities over the last two years. But, uh, certainly if it's it's not corrected by them, we'll have to make corrections for next year. comment. This is great news. I really I mean to go from 6.7 million deficit to 2.7 $4 million increase. That's just great. It'll be interesting to see what it looks like when it's done. October, November. >> Well, I I think one thing I like to talk about and I'm new at shock be doing the budget for the first time is that on my last two years, my first year for 23 24 I was half% off on salary. The second year after that, I was 2.5% on salary after my revised budget. So, I'm hoping there's not much change. I would say there's still some conserv to the budget. But I would say we probably >> we had adopted sorry we had adopted the budget before we hired you or right at about that time >> before I started July 29th. >> Yeah. Yeah, that's what I thought. >> Did you say 2.5%? I think you meant 0.25. >> Oh, sorry. Two. Yeah. 0.25%. My bad. 2.5%. It was 0.5% and then 0.5%. Yeah, I didn't go the opposite direction. So, I promise that. My bad. >> I'm sorry. >> Thank you for correcting me on that. >> Well, there were other people I noticed like decimals right now. >> You got worse. >> I'm surprised I didn't catch that, but it's been a long week today. >> And I think it goes down to the budgeting style. I do um I do a macro level, which is a roll forward method based on what we spent here today. That's December. But then I also do a micro level where I break it down to each individual employee and what they're taking for their health, dental, where they falling on the salary grid. Um, so I do different I do do different methods to kind of see if they align and make sure that I am working in the right direction because I don't have a second person to look at it. So I do get concerned not having a second set of eyes. So it's my paranoia. >> Well, I know somebody who could probably >> I mean come on. Well, just a comb, but it really improved enment cuts that were made this in a positive way. Um, one thing I had, and this isn't the plan, this is the budget, you know, that's going through, but I hadn't done that until I seen this chart today where our uh our uh capital funds at 10% two years in a row. First time we seen 10 two years in a row for money that's been doing. So, kind of the sort of the big about you talking about the unassigned >> unassigned sorry >> yeah and the big thing about the unassigned you actually have to do add to it if you want to keep it at 10% because as your expenditures grow >> your unassigned also has to grow with it to keep it at that 10% so that's where people don't quite understand like well it's always going to be that if you just keep the same amount of money in well truly it's not you have to add to it every year because everyone every school district's expenditures are growing >> and we also that wasn't typical positive results. >> They're not affected from a motion to approve this year. Second by favor. >> Well, they're swapping out. David, I just want to say thank you. Um, we get to see the first drafts. We get to ask a lot of questions. David's ability to understand the thoroughess, the data, the details, and with our other groups has just been really at a high level. So, greatly appreciate your efforts. Um, I think he actually enjoys revising a budget and creating a new budget and I'm not making that up. Um, but Jim and I get a, you know, we get a chance to ask a lot of questions and just been very impressed by the depth of the answers, the understanding, and often have thought about it from multiple kind of different directions. So, thank you. Yeah, I'm actually more excited to do the premium budget. My goal ever since I came into school finance when I started to bring a budget is to have a budget that I don't have to revise. >> And so that's always been my goal. And at right at Yetta right now, I've been kind of watching their board meeting. It might not have to revise it too much, but I wish I was there to say that. But that's my ultimate goal is to bring a prelim budget that's so good that we're doing really minor We're going to shift to anformational item before we go back to our table. He is going to provide us with budget. >> Yes. So perfect. So this this now includes Thank you. So now as you've seen previously, this includes now the updated revised budget since you did approve it. You know, you didn't. I should have had that's probably a second backup one with the adopted one on it. Um, state aids now with the new revised budget at 99.8 million, which is pretty much right in line with previous fiscal years. We're right in line between we're in between the 25 school year and the 24th school year. So, we're at se 37.05%. Uh federal revenue can eb and flow when you're making those draws, but right now we're at 5 5.52%. Uh property taxes just a slight decrease some to some baitment funds in that. Um we're still at the 77.02%. We do have money when we got paid in May and June that are sitting in the once we do reconcile those with the come that will go up to 100%. local fees were at $4.5 million which is 44.24% of spent to date which is looking fantastic to act where we want to be. Um when you look at the expenditure salary and wages even just small adjust like well large adjustments and millions on it even makes just really small adjustments in where we're sitting to you know spend to date but we're at 48.9% which is well with line in previous fiscal years. Uh employee benefits at 49.18% um just a little bit up from previous fiscal years, but there are some things that we have to make adjustments at the end of the year. So when we make our oped draw, those will offset some of those 220 codes, bringing it down slightly. Um purchase services really right in line with previous fiscal years at 44.6 1%. Um supplies as you had known that was a slight higher when we were looking at it with the adopted budget. Now we're at 67.23% which is right in line with previous fiscal years. Um equipment is at uh 77.03% again with the with the Rabi budget looking really in line with previous fiscal years and other expenditures um was a kind of a drastic increase at 2.1 2.1 million which you're seeing 15% spent uh year to date, but there is an adjustment on that for um multiple language. So ML, how MD makes us record things. We had to do it last year. It's a journal entry. So whatever you spend over your a lotment, you have to kind of do it in and out. So it's a revenue code that gets, you know, credit and then you debit the expense in that ML to bring it down. So it's kind of interesting how it works. That's MD's way of tracking that overage that we spend on ML. So really when you look at the total grand picture we're really with revenues we're right in line with expenditures right on par >> we didn't have a chance to look at this in the finance committee meeting >> no it was on there >> I know it was on there but we just didn't have a chance to talk about it earlier asked this question before so with the local uh peace interest we have the revised budget 4.5 million we've received two which is 24% considering that 71 12th of the year through January is the do you think the revised budget is too much or >> I don't because it's a great question though so that also goes to the ML when you have to do that journal entry that adjustment for ML right >> the offset is a 649 which uh source code which is captured in that local feed so it's you'll see that at the end of the year it'll pop back up >> be interesting to see how that work >> yeah so I can show Thank you. >> No, but I thought about that too when I put it in here. I thought, why is it soft so much? But then I remember the ML. I started looking at it again. But that gets captured in that local 649. It's the offset of that. questions. >> Yeah, I was going to say >> I'm making my last appearance here. You're not going anywhere. >> So, we are back to action items under 11 on the agenda. And our first item 11.1 is the optimum busing of high school students starting in fall of 2026. And David's still with us. And so, Mr. >> Uh, from my understanding, we were going to reference what we kind of talked about in our previous uh February February 9th board meeting. Um, I don't know. We're going to pull those slides up. >> So, you guys already seen these. Uh what we are looking at is doing an optin busing for our students from 9th through 12th grade for the next fiscal year. They will fill out a form through infinite campus. That data will be collected. Um the students will work uh 8th grades will work for their advisor. Yeah. Yep. And then the 9th through 11th will work with what we'll do is we'll find and I'll coordinate with Clayton at the middle schools. But what we'll do is likely March is we would just maybe in the second block is that we would do a designated time just to scoop up, you know, a lot of the students who are eligible for the busing. And then after we do that, what we would continue to do is we run ad hocs so that as we get towards the end of the school year that we are doing outreach and capturing those that haven't filled it out so that by the time we get to the end of the year there's no surprises. We reached out to people. >> Can I just ask one question? So is it parents that are going to fill it out or >> it' be the student? The student would be filling it out the next day after it's approved through infinite campus. The parent will be able to see that notification also log in and look at what they've chosen. >> Yeah. >> So kind of the gist of the whole thing is students will opt in through campus. That form will be accepted by our infinite campus through our technology. It will be then offset to it'll be transferred over to Palmer. Palmer will use this information to build more precise routes instead of doing kind of like here's 80% of the students at the high school. 80% is going to be transformation based on previous years activity is going to give us you know actual information of what we need for these students and how the road should be built up. Um, is there a is there any guidance in this? Or I'm just picturing like students who who drive sometimes, but not always. I mean, I'm just I'm just picturing a student saying, "Well, maybe I'll never take it at all, but I'm going to sign up anyway just in case." You know, that that type of thing. >> Yeah. I mean, that could happen. Then we would be able to know watches the bus stops. Um, so we would know after a few days that student not showing up on that bus stop and then we'd be able to do outreach. >> Okay. >> What happens follow after the fact if they chose it and then all a sudden we're noticing that they're not taking the bus. There would be follow up saying, "Hey, we saw that you chose this. Are you going to take it? Is just missing a couple days?" And then that would be the follow. be the first one to kind of charge them with other districts that are looking at >> very in a lot of other districts question what our last meeting about I worry about like I worry about that Um, but I also worry about kids that might say, "Nope, I'm going to drive to school." And then for whatever reason, they don't have a vehicle anymore. Accident, car breaks down, consequences, something happens um, what do we do then? >> It doesn't limit them. So, let's say that situation does happen. They have a car at the beginning and they lose it. So what they would do is they would reach out either the student or the family would reach out to the front office at the high school tell the admin professional or secretary there that hey I need transportation they would be able to log into campus complete that information for that student then it would be routed within you know the next 24 hours we've already started we've already met as our team so what will happen is because right after this initial time there'll have to be someone on our side that does it so we're going to do that through the academy hub offices So it'll be the academy principles, myself, the dean. So if a student comes, if it calls the main office situation, it goes to that appropriate administrator and then we're already kind of working out kind of like that flowchart of order of operations to make sure that we're consistent of those. And so that would get vetted through an administrator. and and our approach with it is is that like we're going to work, you know, we want to go to working with kids, making sure kids are getting to school and getting what they what they need. But there'll be a process in place and I think when the communication goes out, it'll be in there to to reach out to the office and we'll sort source that through the appropriate people because we want kids to be able to get to school. And I don't want to oversimplify it, but kind of a reality check because we know what students ride the bus today, right? >> Compare that to who fills out the optin and it's a reality check, right? to make sure that the numbers aren't. Yeah, we will we will work with Palmer directly and Sean in the routing and getting that list of students that is taking bus now and then comparing it to the list of students that are completing the form and making sure that we follow up with students that are have opted in for transportation in the current fiscal year and saying asking you opted in this year or you not opting out or opting in next year for it. So we'll have those follow conversations as we move forward to make sure we do capture every student that does need transport there too is um I'm all for creating more efficiencies something that's makes sense to try and go with but I think that's something we got to track and manage for sure too. So, how essentially are we going to be able to realize the the savings of this is the hours from Palmer that we'll be able to tell that would have less routes and less less cost I guess of busing and then you know to compare that number or or even an admissions doesn't come down to a number to the potential added uh staffing issues of kids needing a bus and not that school have to deal just something that that uh hopefully works out, right? But I just want to make sure that like you said there's not kids um needing to school. >> Yeah. I I think we what we'll notice is the efficiency on the beginning first like first week couple weeks of school is not having so I would put it is Sean builds out these routes and adjust them as time comes on. Students aren't going on within consecutive days and he's adjusting the route but to give us the efficiency of the information up front. Then we can make those small tweaks as students fill out those forms to pick up those students. But we'll make sure that every student that needs transportation will follow up and make sure they have it. So we I would would say we would save on long-term billable mileage. Um but I wouldn't say it would be to a degree of huge savings. Uh this is more just to create the efficiencies for students making sure that they opt in for that transportation. So it is somewhere on the track or notice like I don't it's not so much about money situation but is it is it worth the effort you know if it gets to where there's more problems then the efficiencies end up adding something that we should probably try to track >> yeah we'll track it I think it will be fairly simple especially with the ridership it will be trackable what we're gathering in the first initial push out from this you know February 24th to the June 5th time frame we'll be able to know right If we have a good solidified number of students that transportation >> and if you said a bunch of other districts already doing it and they continue to do it, I imagine it works, right? >> Yeah. And I I think a really important piece like we've already talked about this at the high school is right, especially as we get into May, it's going to be important to, you know, to to really run that report and make sure that we'll have designated people that are going to make a personal connection. And you know, I've got CFLs in the main office, you know, near the main office if we need to utilize our CFLs and and uh so that that key thing is that we're getting all our really good information, but most importantly is that students that are eligible are going to continue to have that opportunity to transportation. So hopefully at the end of the day, it should be seamless for for our kids and families. I'm curious how many kids. >> Yes. Across the board is equal. >> Sure. >> About 40%. >> And there's a big shift during sophomore year. and all kinds of cool factors to approve the opt. Any further discussion? All those in favor say I. >> I. >> Next is 11.2 which is our west middle school bathroom renovation project. >> Feels like December all over this time. I know. >> So, this is just to get your approval for West Middle School project. It is funded by LTFM. Um, it was part of the 10-year plan we did approve in July, uh, June. Um, we had kind of a budget for it of 525,000. We had 13 bids that came in. Um, the low bid was, um, Appidana at $298,000. And this would be the kind of a similar thing of what we did at East but now at west for their bathroom. >> When is the uh the east project going to be done? Just I'm just curious how how it's turning out. >> Chair Peterson, I can answer that. We we completed it over the summer and um it's and I would just say that if you talk to the East administrative team, it's it's really been a huge positive for them. Having the single user bathrooms has just cut down on a number of different challenges and problems. Um it's it's doing a good job of helping keep students in class and um it's it's a it's a very simple upgrade that has made a a positive uh change in the learning environment. We had that meeting our committee meeting prior to this that there was a lot of data construction for $289,000. discussion. All those in favor say I. >> I. Thank you. >> Next is 11.3 and that is our school resource offic. >> There we go. Well, this was fun. I enjoyed this one. So I got to work with Nick Reinhardt from the city of Shakipi. Um this is for our resource school resource officers that we have at our both our middle schools and one at the high school. Um this is to maintain the three resource officers we have for the next three fiscal years. Um what I was able to work with Nathan um was to adjust it so align more properly with our fiscal years. So from July to June because what it what the previous contract was was from a from a January through a December. So more of a calendar year. Um so this adjustment kind of lined up really nicely with our fiscal year. The total cost for the first year is 293,700 if I remember correctly which is just a 2% increase from the previous fiscal year and then every year after that it's 2%. But it is but what you read in the language it is limited to that number. So at the end of the year we will reconcile to the you know what they paid out in salary benefits to the officers and then bring bring those costs into what they need to be. So >> questions >> yeah I'm just I'm just curious how that uh this basically covering their their salary right is that is that a >> um from their their regular salary if they were not. >> It wouldn't be a change from their regular salary. It's just what their salary is as an officer. >> Got it. Just add on to that district's contribution 50% off the salary and I was making% increase in terms I think it totally makes sense to get this in alignment with our school year versus our calendar year. So, great job. Thank you to the city for being open to that change. So it was really nice to work with their director. >> We we continue to be very pleased with the partnership with Shak City. Our SRO's I think do an outstanding job. part of our team even though they technically work for somebody else and just really appreciate what they just the care and compassion and support for Sh public schools that they bring to their jobs every day by altern. I >> motion carries >> 11.4 is our safe routes to school for presentation for elementary and our assistant superintendent call. >> Thank you chair Peterson. Uh this fall I brought this opportunity forward to the board and shared it with you for a first time. Um essentially this is a partnership with the city and mindot through a grant program called safe routes to schools. Um it it is designed to encourage students to walk or bike to school by creating safer school zones. Essentially what the grant would fund uh if you take a peek at the map over here would be we would move the entry to the front entry to Sweden down by Sand Ventures um and you know create that longer pathway into school for cars thus moving a number of automobiles off of Adams um which both the city um and and state deem to be a to be a hazard right now. Uh the only expense incurred by the school district um you can see there are six new parking spots. Those would be the darker shade of asphalt um that we would choose to put in because it would create more parking in front of Sweeney. The city would do that work for us and then they would bill us for it um upon its completion. Um there's a large tree that we're making sure that we go around. Um it's not something that we want to damage or harm. There's two smaller trees that we're going to make an effort to move because they are in the path of of the road. But um since I brought this to you the first time, we've run it through our legal team who sent uh back a number of uh areas they wanted us to to work on with the city. The city accepted all of uh all of our legal team's advice um as just as friendly amendments, if you will, to what the easement proposal would be. And so tonight, we're asking um you know, for you to vote to allow for the easement um accept the easement terms that we've uh worked on with the city um so that we can do this work. Construction would begin in June and be completed before the start of school in September. >> I just have a comment. I was talking to a teacher this weekend uh that uh a Sweeney teacher that also had go through Sweeney. And apparently this large tree is very popular. It has a long history with kids that have have done like events like relays and whatever involved in the tree. So it's really good because the trees being preserved. >> Yes, we we spent a great deal of time out there visiting the tree on a rainy day and tree was happy it was raining. But yeah, no, we we made sure that the uh the um and it was interesting. I learned a lot about drip lines and things like that and how they figure out where the road can and should go and they will be avoiding the tree. >> Yeah, we're outside the drip lines. I learned a lot too. It wasn't just Jim. Yeah, because we look at it and go, "Oh, here. We had experts who do this for a living. Tell us where it was safe." >> Jim, on an unrelated topic to some degree, related in a different way, I should say. We've learned that there's a few kind of busing inefficiencies with Sweeney just because of the size of the entrance already where some of the buses have to wait for to come in and pick up students. Will this alleviate that? Will that help? But will they be able to get maybe another bus or two where they'll actually be able to load students quicker >> in the You mean in the front of the building? >> Yeah. Is that where the buses are coming in or No, that is all that's all just the pickup entrance, right? Okay. So, that >> Yeah. Yeah. No, this is Yes, this is the parent pickup entrance because what we're trying to do is get the cars off of Adams, which is creating a backup and a hazard. And I think right now people are pulling into Sand Ventures and doing a U-turn out of there. I wish I were up there, you know, kind of pointing to it, but right now people are pulling into Sand Ventures, driving around that little c, you know, that little roundabout and then going back out into the street to to try to keep cars off the street. So, this >> this will create an efficiency for people picking up. >> I'll just I'll just add to that. Unfortunately, no. We're not they're not doing anything with the busing and which relates to the next topic we'll be talking about because that same teacher I talked to uh was concerned about the time changes because the busing is very inefficient this week. That's what I was hoping >> and not a tonight issue, but this is something that we have begun to look at kind of facilities and planning with we have work to do in our parking lots where some of them need resurfacing over the next few years. And with that, we we have a lot of access points challenges um at our parking lots. So, not an immediate fix, but something that is absolutely on the, you know, on our radar at a number of locations. We we just um they're not designed to to handle the kind of bus traffic or sometimes car traffic that that we get nowadays. So, not a not a great answer, but you know, we're working on it preliminarily and uh looking at at some of those things as we're what are the life expecties of different parking lots and again trying to kind of like adding the parking spaces here. It's advantageous. Somebody's already out doing asphalt. They're already staged. They're there. There's a cost savings to that. We want to look at those through a comprehensive, you know, kind of lens and over the next, you know, whatever there's a time period, three to five years, maybe more, but looking at those things holistically and across the district, there certainly are some challenges, but unfortunately, this isn't solving any of those. >> One follow question, this might additional maintenance area, is there a material snow removal incremental associated maintain relative to what we're doing today. >> I would say inconsequential to what we're doing today and frankly those were a lot of the things that were cleared up by our attorneys in the easement. Who is responsible for clearing snow? Who is responsible for filling potholes and and all of those things have been worked out. >> Yeah. space. >> And this is very similar to what was done for some just not parking. It was the extension of the sidewalks with the same school money. Great. >> Yes. Yeah. Yes. And this is this is like I said, this is a grant. Um the city actually secured the grant for us because it's our it's actually the city engineer Alex Jordan who we've been working on and they've just identified Adams as being um a real problem traffic area during drop drop off and pickup time. granted to build it's not material relative to it'll be able to get done. >> Yeah, the timeline I was given was mid June to mid August. >> That'll be interesting to see how it works. This is another action item. >> Motion to approve. >> Second. >> We have a motion by a second by Smith to approve the safe routes to school plan for elementary. See none. All those in favor say I. >> Oppos. Item 11.5 is our uh the topic of due to the change in number of student contact days the start and end times for um our schools throughout the district. And I'm going to start off with uh just giving a little bit of background um around this topic how we got where we are today. Um myself along with Jeff and Caroline have been part of the negotiations team for the two three contract cycles here in with our sea members and during the past three I think it's been three contract cycles two for sure that SCA has brought forward the same request four days at the end of the school year in exchange for adding 10 minutes to the school each time the district negotiating team has listened and bargain it's important to clarify that the the district negotiates in collective bargaining agreement with the leadership of SEA who represents their membership. We don't negotiate directly with individual members outside of that process. Until this most recent contract cycle, the board really wasn't interested in moving forward with the proposal. However, because SCA leadership continue to bring it forward on behalf of their members, we took a more serious look at it during the last negotiations. And we did have concerns um simply ending the school year earlier did not seem to address the increasing pressures on teachers, particularly with the new curriculum implementation and other initiatives over the past several years. We believe that if four days were to be removed, it would be more meaningful to distribute them throughout the school year to provide intentional pauses for rest and re-energizing of our staff. With that in mind, the district negotiating team proposed an alternative to remove four days from the calendar, add 10 minutes to each school day, and distribute those four days throughout the year rather than placing them at the end of the year. This represented an accommodation to a proposal SCA leadership advanced over multiple contract cycles while adjusting the structure to better support staff throughout the year. As negotiations continue, both parties There were going to be some unknowns with this process. Our three tier busing system was likely going to determine where the additional 10 minutes could be placed during the year. We also considered the impact on other bargaining units, recognizing that changes to the instructional day will affect multiple employee groups. And from the beginning, our goal was to keep as many employees as possible. On September 12th, a tenative agreement was reached with sea. The leadership team review draft calendars for the next two school years taking into account a late Labor Day start or that Labor Day is actually late in the calendar. Changes in the state law allowing a start date no earlier than September 1 and then the impact of the proposed agreement. SEA members ratified the contract. The board approved it on October 6th and the school board approved it on November 17th. We've all received email in regards to this topic. And I I'll be honest and say that as a school board member and being part of negotiations for a while, this topic became very frustrating. Um I've had some very candid conversations with district leadership as well as with SCA president Anderson leading up to the meeting tonight. Um and after speaking with President Anderson, we agree that this issue really isn't on the school board in the sense that it represents a failure to listen. The district negotiating team listened to SCA's repeated request. We collaborated on a solution. We reached a tenative agreement and that agreement was ratified by the SCA membership and approved by the board. I feel the final agreement reflects compromise. It's not perfect. Wasn't set out to be perfect, but it's a great example of finding common ground to be meet the needs of both parties. I'm not fully aware of how this information ated among SCA members prior to application. While President Anderson shared some materials with district leadership and the board prior to tonight's meeting, the board and district administration are not responsible for communicating proposed changes to SEA members before a vote. That responsibility rests with the SCA leadership. I want to acknowledge and thank all the teachers who have reached out to share their concerns with the board. But this board values feedback from our staff, parents, and the community. While we may not always agree or be able to implement suggestions that are brought forward, we do listen carefully and we do take that feedback very seriously. I believe everyone at this table recognizes the exceptional quality of our teachers, many of whom have directly impacted our own children, whether they are currently in our schools or have graduated from public schools. As we move into the discussion tonight, I would just ask the board to keep three things in mind. First, this was not a district initiative. It originated from SEA and was negotiated, ratified, and formally approved for the collective bargaining process. Second, the decision to spread the four dates throughout the year was intended to support our educators by building in strategic breaks, not to disregard their needs. And third, the situation underscores the importance of clear and consistent communication. When changes affect schedules, workloads, and daily routines, it is essential that expectations and impacts are communicated communicated clearly so that all parties share a common understanding. I remain committed to listening, supporting our teachers and all of our district employees, and upholding the integrity of the bargaining process that brought us here tonight. So, before we move into the next part of our conversation with Dr. Redmond and Mage. I want to ask if the other two members of the negot I thought you know just just like you said um we this is the third one I've been involved in and I thought this year's went the best of the of the three. I I thought we uh we both sides uh negotiated in good faith and and came to came to what I thought was a was a good compromise. Um so like you I was I was initially uh surprised by the the amount of messages I received. Um, and uh, I guess I'll I'll just say since I have a floor, just shout out to Sweeney. Sweeney really uh they're they they are they're really engaged and uh and I think that's a credit to you know principal Derek Bell from earlier just the I you know initially just the surprise of of getting that many messages but then when you think about it they're the the the fact that they're willing to communicate to us their concerns directly when I think if we look back in this district uh you know 10 15 years ago probably would would not be willing to engage with us that well. Uh so I I I guess I I look at that as a positive in that way that um that members of of the district feel that they can reach out to us and that we will respond and that we will listen. And and I did I I read everybody's messages and I read them again today to make sure I was very clear on on everybody's points of view. And I'm just appreciative to those who reached out. Um, but I just I just go back to what what you said. I I think we all worked in good faith to get this collective bargaining agreement done. And I I think um our way forward I think uh you know there's really only a couple options um you know for what we're voting on tonight you know and we can talk about that in further discussion but I don't know I just to start with I thought the negotiation went really well uh overall and And so this this issue of the particular, you know, where to place those 10 minutes um kind of came as a surprise to me honestly. >> I definitely appreciate all the emails that weed um back, you know, we thought that this was all communicated before, but we did have some very meaningful conversations in the negotiation. We did our best in good faith and I think this was, you know, something that was positive. Um, four days, you know, for the staff. Um, no, we couldn't put this at the end of the school year, which many people probably thought that would be, but again, it gives, you know, teachers that opportunity for four days throughout the school year. Um, I don't have anything very well summed it up very well. >> Yeah. And then Jim will add some details. I put uh what's a progress checklist and and really this is meant to be a summary of kind of this process. And you'll notice the first thing, you know, the first line there is teacher collective bargaining agreement was approved. And there's a check in that box. Within that, and you've already talked about this, but within that, um, there was part of that agreement was to alter the structure of the teacher work year, uh, to reduce that by four days, which then would alter the, you know, the number of student contact days. Um, and as you alluded to, adding 10 minutes of student learning time to the now 167 student learning days. in that part absolutely part of the collective bargaining agreement. Uh I think the you know the desire of having a school year a work year with a little bit less chaotic some some more time to do some things uh kind of built in where there there's opportunities makes some sense. Uh but really pointing that out that that first line on this progress checklist, you know, that's the catalyst for everything else on this on this progress checklist. And certainly the second thing, student calendars. Yeah, we would have had to do student calendars. But if we didn't approve, you know, the change to the the teacher work year and student school year calendars, we wouldn't have created a calendar with 167 student contact days. We needed, you know, we would have made it like we have this year, 171. And everything else on the list was impacted that way as well. And a lot of work went into this. And I want to applaud the efforts of teachers, principles at the buildings. the next one did a lot of really good work adding the 10 minutes of student learning time to each day K12 uh in each of our school buildings and that on its surface you go oh that's pretty easy you just do whatever no you really have to examine the structure of your learning day what do you want to add what do you want to prioritize how's that going to work in the flow of a a really tightly scheduled school day so some great work there uh lots of work with Palmer bus on future transportation schedules. I think we looked at a two-tier busing. We said, "Hey, could you Boy, it would be really, really nice if you could take 10 minutes out of your busing, 7 in the morning, uh, and in the afternoon. But we're really we're we're at the limits of that." And Yep. Could they have come up with a schedule that cut 10 minutes out? Yep. But we'd have been running buses late all the time. And so that wouldn't have solved the problem. And so that wasn't available. um we weren't, you know, it said we weren't successful at reducing the total time needed for transportation and we retained a you know we we needed to retain a three tier busing structure. We did make some changes with individual schools within that to make things a little bit more efficient moving forward. We also established a work group um for Pearson at the early learning center. Uh little more complex there. It's a different uh you know it's a different It's a pay for service. It's a lot of other things. It's a shorter total day. There's some differences where, you know, boy, you go to the elementary and go, "Hey, we can add 10 minutes of student learning." And they go, "Yeah, we got some ideas how to do that." There's kind of a maximum, our three-year-old and four-year-old learners, there's kind of a maximum efficient or useful time of learning. And so, uh, there's that said, we're studying that, uh, over an extended period of time to how to how to make those changes there moving forward. Uh, kudos to our our HR team, uh, and lots of others. They've worked with each employee workg groupoup uh, with the goal to do all we can to retain the same number of annual hours of employment for each employee on our team. impossible to accomplish that goal probably universally, but to set out and go, "All right, if we've got four fewer student learning days, 10 more minutes of student learning each day, you know, how does that work within each employee type within each workg groupoup?" And so, again, something that sounds pretty simple on the surface, hours and hours and hours of work, lots of great conversations. Sometimes it's, you know, yep, we're just going to add 10 minutes of work to the day. In other cases, you might add a few minutes of work and go, you know, we've always run out of time for x amount of professional development. Let's build that in. And so that work is all uh been done. Uh and again, none of that we wouldn't have set out to to do any of that without uh the first piece on this progress checklist, which is the change to the teacher collective bargaining agreement. And the same with this last item, which is before you this evening. uh nobody woke up six months ago and said hey you know what we should do we should just change we should do something with the start and end times let's add 10 minutes here or there now that is in because we we changed the structure uh the calendar of the teacher work year the student learning day and to accommodate 10 more minutes of student learning and add an addition of 10 minutes onto the student day uh we need to add 10 minutes uh onto either 10 minutes earlier start times 10 minutes later start times or five of each I guess would add up to 10 and probably other every other combination from one to nine but we did not you know we haven't looked at dividing it that way and so that is that's what's before you Jim what did I forget >> I I would just add um you know going back to to when this contract was ratified I mean we recognized the number of areas that this would impact within our within our school system we have Monday every other Monday morning, our leadership team meets. That's our directors and and Dale. Um, and and this has been a fairly regular agenda item. Um, and by I say this, I mean, you know, how do we use the instructional minutes? How do we keep our employees whole? How do we work with Palmer on bus routes? You know, how just just each and every one of those pieces. Um, we also have monthly uh what we call systems and structures meetings with our principles. That's where our leadership team and our principles come together to talk about what we consider to be the the complex challenges we're facing or or the opportunities that we have. Um we we had a meeting uh right away where we laid out um and asked our different leaders what they saw as being both opportunities and challenges within this. Again, you know, we we made sure that we had Dale and and Dale there to, you know, to contribute um you know, voice as well. Um we've we've done we've done different surveys. I I think the good thing about surveys is you get a lot of opinions. I think the bad thing about surveys is you get conflicting opinions where you you realize when you look at the results, we're not going to make everybody happy and at some point we just need to to make decisions. And I I feel like from a process perspective, you know, we've spent a lot of time on this. Um I really appreciate it when it came to the busing component. Uh the depth to which Palmer went to to look at, as Dr. Redmond said, could we reduce to two tiers? You know, I ask the questions when I'm out during the day. I I see buses, you know, parked here and there with extra time. Does that mean we could maybe, you know, stay with the same start and end times, and the answer to that, you know, as Dr. Redmond said in a different way was no. There's not enough time for every bus to make it to every site. Um, you know, in a way where we could keep to keep our current start time. So, I feel like we spent a lot of time on this. We we took as much stakeholder feedback as I think that we could. Um, I think that we've made the the best recommendations that we can. Um, and and now we we leave it to you to, you know, to to ask questions and and and uh, you know, give final approval if if appropriate. And I put up proposed uh, changes uh, to school start and end times. You'll notice each of the members in the tiers, and I'm saying this because I'm actually going to blow up the bottom part of this and make it a little bit larger on the screen. We did look a little bit asked the questions because some of our enrollments have changed fairly significantly since our three tier system was set up. We did look at, you know, could you potentially put all five elementaryaries in a tier and that didn't work either. And so you'll notice there's nothing in red. The members of our tiers are exactly the same as they are currently. Uh down below you'll see some things in red I'm going to this part I'm going to make larger on the screen. Uh and this with the exception of some efficiencies at Takata Eagle Creek aligning more closely with Shaki High School um which were just efficiencies within the routing and getting buses from one place to another. Uh the the additional 10 minutes on this proposal is shown at the end of being added on to the end of the school day. And so happy to answer any questions that you might have. So, Takata is losing 15 minutes. >> Takata's I'm not going to say losing. We thought we had a lot of conversations. Um, the structure of their schedule probably wasn't reflected as well with with with the way it was. Um, and what we did, and I'm going to ask Sean to correct me. I think on the way to Takata, we bring everybody to the high school and then we put them on one Takata bus. And then after school, we actually send buses, multiple buses out from Takata, meaning we got to we got to get the buses back to use them again. And the uh change will be to send all the Takata students to the high school and then put them on the buses. But we did talk about the nature of their school day is very different. There's different types of learning, different types of structure. They can accommodate that and it probably makes them probably uh at least as efficient. We don't they're losing learning time within that. Um there's some stuff that well some of it was maybe even dictated by how we were doing the busing to get them to and from there. Um but yeah, there's a change that is shorter >> and is I have a couple more questions. >> Sax okay with the change? >> Um have you had discussions with them? We did actually David Jim and I met with their principal uh to let her know that yep this is what we're doing and we talked about a number of other things and again I think they're in tier one if you're in tier one uh the concern there would be please don't move it earlier >> and are they changing from 171 to 167 >> I don't want to we had a conversation I'm going to look at Jim for kind of I won't look at him did not appear. He can confirm or deny. No. When we had it, the principal thought they would most likely retain 171. They were certainly going to work through that with the leadership and whatever. They currently have it a day or two that don't align with our schedule where they run school. So, they're they align most of the time, but we wanted to give them time to adapt and adjust. So, we did that, I don't know, six, eight weeks ago now. >> Correct. And and I would say that I left the conversation unclear. They they had some decisions to make, but but Dr. Redmond's point is accurate. They already have one or two days where they have school and and we don't. So >> So if they go to if they stay at 171 or 173, whatever they're at, are they going to have busing on those days? >> No. Unless they want to pay for it themselves. >> Now they have had busing on occasion on those days, but >> is it our responsibility to give them blessing on those days? >> It is our responsibility. provide busing on the days where we're in school where >> public school buses >> and and that's the agreement that we have with them >> that is uh following state law providing buses. >> Okay, one last question. If you're asking about sexual >> Yeah. >> Um the last time I talked with them with sex, they're still looking but they they seem to be going with you know I don't want to say I don't know >> but our legal obligation is provide blessing on the days we're in session. >> Got it. So the last question considering I'm half asleep. Um so we have 10 minutes additional. So how is that going to be split up between the class periods? Two minutes here, one minute here. So some periods are going to be a minute longer because I'm pretty sure you're not going to go with 30 seconds. Or maybe you are. I don't know. I'm gonna let Jim answer that. >> I can I can I can answer that. So at the >> different level Yeah, it is different at each level. at at the elementary level K through three, the 10 minutes will all go to the new arts and letters literacy curriculum. Um, in grades four and five, um, they have requested that the time go into, and I want to get the right term here, um, what they call theme time, which would be science and and some of those, science and social studies, uh, win time and foundational skills will remain at 30 minutes. Um, at the middle level, I know you're a math guy, Joe, so I'll be careful to get this right. They're going to add two minutes to each of the seven periods, which does or to six of the seven periods, which involves taking some time off of advisory so that they can Yeah, I knew you were going to I knew you were going to question that part. I I get it. >> Um, but then but but also the fifth period lunch is longer than or the the third lunch is longer than the first two lunches. So, they'll lose a couple of minutes from that lunch period as well. It's it's a lot of math. Um, which I know you're very good at. And then at the at the elementary um >> or excuse me, at the high school, they are they are looking at adding um the same amount of time to each of the different blocks. So, it would be I believe it's two minutes. Um it is two minutes to three of the blocks and then one of the blocks gets four minutes because that's their lunch block. >> So, that's 10. That actually makes sense with the lunch block have the longer time. So, >> so >> I think that's all my question. Thank you. >> I hate it when you put my math on the spot, show I know how David feels for a minute on the spot. >> I mean, that's a really big question because we did have that conversation in negotiations >> and the teachers that are part of negotiations really especially at the elementary level. We're really excited to be able to extend the time with the literacy and the implementation of those new curriculums. Um that was something that I do remember was part of the discussion >> and the elementary principles did survey staff on where they wanted to see the the 10 extra minutes. >> The last question is I promise after school activities especially at the high school level when you're talking about sports you're 10 minutes later So everything gets moved 10 minutes. There's especially when you're traveling to sporting events or anything else like that where it's like, okay, we're done now through 10. Are they going to like how is that? They might just miss more class if they have to go a long distance to a game or anything else. What how's that going to work? I think we already have some exceptional situations where they might dismiss early, but typically everything will just simply start 10 minutes later than it currently does. >> And certainly that's, you know, in different sports, different timing, facility usage, you know, some of that. If you're running a twob block sort of practice time, you might take five minutes off each of those and now you know they've lost five minutes. You might take it off of second block. Second block could be warming up during the end of the first block. So yeah, but certainly that you know the 10 minutes have to go somewhere. I think I we've written again and I'll say it again. We didn't set out like six months ago, hey, let's add 10 minutes or do something with 10 minutes. That's a challenge and there's not a you know there's we're trying to cause the least amount of harm uh and do the you know put it in a place that you know there there's not a great solution. >> Yeah love to contribute to this conversation. Um, so I spent a good amount of time as many of you got emails with teachers that were contacting me. Dale had a conversation with him updated me also with some of the contract negotiations and things that were going on. So the beginning part of this process was figuring out for me how how we're in this situation, what were the teachers and staff, everybody where this was created from. And I knew I suspected that Peterson would would explain that well today and she did. Um my second thought was is there anything else we can do to try to make this situation better? I couldn't I couldn't ignore the outpouring of the teachers we talked about earlier we had principal bell here talk about a culture and climate that he created that we heard from the staff you did too that is awesome is what makes our schools great and our staff came out from Jackson a few of the other schools as well right and And in this one year of being on the school board, I've had uh the opportunity outside of seeing my own kids' classrooms, which my children are in elementary, but but uh superintendent's taken me around to quite a few classrooms. And in that time frame, I'm watching some chaos. I mean, don't get me wrong, controlled chaos in elementary schools and these teachers what they do to maintain order with first graders and second graders and kindergarteners and to some degree second graders, third graders takes a lot of mental power, you know. I mean, I was ex exhausted after watching it and I'm not doing any of the work. So, my thought was just how can we preserve to the best of our ability in the situation that we're in the culture and climate across our schools. We want our our staff to go to work and not feel like irregardless of whose fault it is, I'm in this position, I've got to fly to daycare, I'm going to be late for whatever, soccer, whatever it is, right? That that makes life a little more inconvenient. So, I also had this other thought as I'm going through this is who am I not hearing from in this whole process, right? And and that bound on me late in this last week and Dale graciously names and contacts in the middle schools. So I went to those folks and asked them if we did this the other way, you know, hypothetically if we did we went earlier, how would you guys feel about that? And and guess what I heard? We have our problems with comedians, we have problems with daycare, all the same things that we're hearing right now from the elementary team. Now, I didn't have conversations with those folks. we didn't get quite in depth this far and I'm sure you know there's surveys and things like that that are done but that really was a powerful impact I mean is we're not going to be able to please everybody in the situation and part of a bargaining agreement usually no cliche no one walks away happy right something like that um I know another part of it was um the day is chosen right and and there was some back and forth on which days were chosen I think a lot of the staff in one way or for one reason or another took the words of our contract times would be maintained right in this negotiation and they were probably thinking I'm guessing the union was thinking you're going to work 8 hour days it's going to be maintained and there some folks that whether I don't how much time effort they put into this thought oh my 8 to four is going to be maintained not so much the eight hour I don't know that's part of my thoughts on that so where I kind of ended up with all this was what else can we do, right? And I Dr. Edmond and I had a conversation. What else can we do? I I don't know. So, I I don't know that I've heard or seen on any of the presentations and a lot of material that we've had and just so the public knows we we put a lot of time and effort into this or from Palmer bus that there would be any real reason why we couldn't do a five and five on either side. And just in my simple brain, I'm not genius. I'm terrible at schedule. Probably one of my weaknesses as my wife. Um, but why couldn't we literally just move all the bell times five minutes that way? All the bell times and bus times five minutes the other way. Same as a compromise we talked about earlier. No parties coming away happy. We're inconveniencing both groups minimal or the least or the most, whichever way you want to look at. Depends on which group you're on. I know that some of the folks in the high school were like, "No, we like we prefer earlier." I think it was a little more mixed. I didn't talk to as many people there. But that was my thought for us to at least entertain that idea. Uh show some good fit, show some maybe maintain maintain a little bit more of that culture and climate in our schools with our staff. Um and not to mention I'm not a part of the future bargaining group, but I think that would go on towards transacting future. I do have a I can put that up in a minute. I think the one there was one question in there that I think all the different feedback that was examined by me by the leadership team and again these are slight leans in one direction or the other and you'll even notice you know and and it's also which I shared with you I write every week to the board um you know usually what we're bringing in front of the board I would call an improvement you know it's an initiative hey we're doing just to make things better. You saw a lot of those tonight. The first aid plan in sixth grade and ninth grade. This is an accommodation to something that we work collaboratively on in the CBA that I believe makes things better. That teacher workday. Um it's something that was, you know, you mentioned it was desired by the teachers. I think there's value in that. Uh I watched the negotiations. um it was worked out in terms of moving the the you know having to add 10 minutes onto the bell time. That's not an improvement by itself. It's something we have to do to accommodate the collective bargaining agreement. And the one piece that's a long answer to not answering the question that was raised in all the analysis which and again not a not a not a strong lean or whatever. we would have said, "Hey, we really believe strongly in doing it like this," which we have not done as leadership. We just think it's easier to work from a proposal, beat it up, change it. You've got Robert's rules of order, but moving the start time earlier at the middle level where we have we have a bus pickup. I believe the earliest currently is 6:30. >> Uh, right around there, a little. >> So, you'd be moving that, you know, in your case, five minutes earlier. Um there's a potential for a safety concern there. And again, that's something to weigh in. Not saying, you know, if you were saying, "Hey, let's move it to 5 a.m." I I would have a very strong and loud protest because that would be incredibly unsafe and whatever. But that that was one of the key pieces of information when we were looking at these pieces. I do have I believe what you're suggesting, Nick, and I don't want to put words in your mouth, uh but would be to split this the proposed times and I just added an equal sign which isn't what I wanted to do but uh on this uh which would be right here um where you'd be moving both five minutes earlier and five minutes later. >> So can I ask a question on that and maybe Sean you're probably the one to answer this. >> Yeah. >> Um what does this do to busing? Is it going to force the buses to run late if we did five and five >> compared to what we do now? The first slide would just make our days 10 minutes longer. So we start the same time have the same start. Yeah, the if I did it correctly, which I believe I did, >> it's the same it's the same total bus >> driving time in three tiers. You would start five minutes earlier. You would start Yeah. Your break time would your break time would actually be shortened a little bit. >> Yeah. My my big the times that are important for me are the times in between the drop off of one school. >> Sure. >> The gap that I have, pick up kids and then drop them off the next tier. Those are the things that matter to me which is why the creep shift is in there because there is a super unequal gap in the afternoon. So that solves that problem. Um but in terms of everything else it's >> so the other question that I have in regards to an instructional standpoint. So if teachers are 10 minutes extra time is being used specifically like elementary for literacy or for when whatever it is science um if we went to five and five does that I can see having 10 minutes more at one setting to work with a student more impactful than five minutes. I could be wrong. I'm not a teacher, but maybe it doesn't matter. >> No, it they we want this is part of the process as well. We wanted to give the principles a schedule to work off of because if we' have given them two options, it's hard enough. This still extends the student day by 10 minutes total. So, the additional and again, they would have to, you know, it should just shift back if right now it's, you know, whatever to whatever it would just shift five minutes earlier. >> Yeah. So with within it, it's still going to work the same. The day is still the student day is still 10 minutes long. And just to throw another wrench into the mix, it sound like the middle school maybe preferred to leave the start time and extend specifically for just the four do the five there. >> No. And that was that was when No, he's definitely that was when we said we looked at trying to condense the whole thing by 10 minutes doesn't work. So you would be condensing it and now you now you can't efficiently get from one tier to the next. >> And it was kind of and I didn't mean it to sound snarky at all, you know, because we could do anything, but we would now be running buses regularly late at some point in that. And the time between the time for each of the tiers is really efficient in what it needs to be. And so you couldn't move one part of it because it would impact the others unless you unless you move them in the same direction or directions, right? Move them all later. Move them all earlier. Move them >> half the distance in each later. >> Correct. I can chime in. >> Um, so this is part of the collective bargaining agreement. What exactly was communicated that the membership was just the four the four additional days and then the remaining school days would each be 10 minutes longer. Was that the gist of it or was it more specific than that? >> Um I'm gonna I'm gonna look at you knows here and I think we've shared some of that. Um because I looked at well and I shared it with you in the rap I think few weeks ago. So Dale, please correct me if I have it wrong, but the first part was really there was a slide prior to the vote on the collective bargaining agreement that said the length of the school year is going to remain the same in terms of the same length of time. There'll be four fewer work days or student contact days within that ideally one per quarter. Is it okay? And then also, you know, Dale did some surveying, but again, if you've, you know, people in tier one and people in tier three feel very strongly, um, you know, but the total was kind of 7030ish wanted it earlier, but again, in the middle tier, it really is sort of well, you know, what do I like? Um, but both ends, I'm guessing, supported, you know, the tier three really supported going earlier. tier one, the early starts supported going later. Um, so that and then Dale put a statement in saying that there are a number of things to be worked out. Uh, transportation knowing that we were going to try to work with Palmer and if we could have condensed that 10 minutes, that would have been a great solution. Um, but we couldn't and so kind of basically said that's going to have to be resolved. And I don't know if you envisioned it being resolved exactly like this, but uh you know here we are today. >> Please add something. Yeah. >> Um so I would just say I mean one of the things I talk with teachers about all the time is all of the things we do in negotiation are trademarks, >> right? So you make a change it's going to have consequences. And so the key is I'm asking questions on our survey which is before we actually negotiate. I'm asking them questions about, hey, do you like this concept? If we were to do this concept of this four days, you know, for 10 minutes per day sort of exchange, you know, um, and you had input on where the time could go, where would you like to go, but and and this was clearly stated in every single visit to every building, but in all likelihood, busing will determine where those minutes go. So that was communicated in the negotiations survey process which we do before we actually negotiate and then afterwards on the tenant agreement part again as we presented the tenant agreement we have we laid out the fact that okay it's not exactly what we asked for because it's not the four days you know we didn't cut off a week of school at the end of the school year it's spread throughout and there's reasons why we don't come to compromise on these kinds of things but ultimately uh you know in terms of the the schedule again we're saying hey we don't know 10 minutes. If we have input, we will provide the survey results to the district. But in all likelihood, plus it will determine where these minutes go. So both at the in the preparation part where we were doing the survey and again when we presented the tenth of agreement right it was made clear again people hear what they want to hear but ultimately we did the best that we could to try and make sure that people understood again it's trade-offs right I mean when we're doing one thing it has another consequence and the other thing is is that and this is I just reminded our exec board the other day about this Um to be honest, the teacher probably wouldn't have been as satisfied with 2% 2% on the salary. So this is another way to provide you know if uh if you can't have compensation in terms of additional dollars another way you can address that is okay with less work time for the same money right so my question to people was okay so let's say in a year you want to undo this are you just going to give back the four days for no compensation I mean that was part of why you agreed to this in the original when you voted on this is because there's a compensation factor that's attached to this piece. And of course, nobody's going to just jump up and say, "Oh, yeah. Yeah, let's let's just give that time." So, again, I think the natural thing is anytime people find out about something that is different, there's always going to be this adjustment period where they're going, I really don't like that particular change. >> That's the major. >> So, I just have a follow up and then be done. So I think given that it sounds like it was communicated as much as was knowable at the time and that if we vote no on this presumably that means that we have to reapprove. So then but how would that work then? So then is this only a question of how to make that four days and 10 minutes work? >> The four days is done. That's in the calendar just >> how to make the 10 minutes. >> The student learning day the student day has to be 10 minutes longer. >> And this is what I've tried to make sure I communicated with with teachers through the through the executive board with our last meeting because this obviously we were having a huge discussion about this because we're hearing it. We're not just important from the orient negotiation standpoint, you know, is is to try and say people this is done like this is a contractual agreement that's already been already been ratified by both sides. It's done for 25 27. I mean next year it's happening for next year. So that part's done. You're not undoing that because if if we start undoing that then I mean we're in a whole different kind of can then negotiations is never done. Right. >> Right. So yeah, so the question before you is essentially are you doing the 10 minutes later? Are you doing the five and five? You know, it's it's happening. You just have to determine how it's >> and I appreciate the information that you shared with us that showed some of the slides that addressed this as part of the tenative agreement. >> And I I thought the language was pretty clear in those slides in the information you shared with that back to us about the blessing. Um, that's where I'm I'm frustrated because I don't understand when people say that, well, we we would have known this, we would have voted for it. And I'm like, well, you had the I don't know what was communicated. >> All I have is what you shared with us. And so, I'm kind of like, well, similar of the that we got where teachers saying, "Well, we assumed the day was started earlier." Why would you assume that? >> Well, especially because we were clear about the fact that busing would likely determine that. >> Yeah. >> So, as much as we asked your opinion, and I said this over and over, as much as we asked your opinion on a survey question, busing is likely to determine this. The the district has the right to make this decision about where the town is. Right. That's that's clear. and they're most likely going to rely on the bus company to determine what's manageable here. And so, yes, we asked your opinion, but in the end, this is likely going to be determined by hindsight, and we talked about this on the phone. Hindsight's 2020, but knowing if I would have known the feedback that we would have received, maybe the best solution when we were in negotiations would have been to let's a study to see what is the true impact of doing this like anou and then once we knew what the impact really was going to be and came to a solution then make the decision whether or not it's going to be implemented for the final year that was the only thing that I thought of that if I could take a step back in time I thought we were doing something really good positive for the teachers and like you It had a non-financial impact and it was something that helped us kind of seal the deal because we couldn't do a whole lot more financially. >> So, this was something that we listened. It was brought forward for six years. Three contracts. >> Actually, two. >> Was it only two? We thought it was three. >> No, we introduced it the last. Okay. >> In 2035 was the first time we talked about it. >> I thought it was longer. Maybe negotiations are just so long. It seems like >> well a couple of our last two have been really long. >> So anyway, okay. So it's four years. So correctly, but still um yeah I don't >> What did I mess up? >> Uh no it's 8:15 so that it aligns with the high school. >> Okay. >> Which is more significant change, but it was a more >> but it was a more significant change on this one as well. They went from 8:30 to 8:20 so that it aligns with the high school. I have that right. >> 8:30 would be 10. So 820 is 10 minutes, >> right? >> Yes. But to align with the high school, >> you have to align with the high school. So that's it's a bigger differential. >> If we're take if we're having the high school start five minutes earlier, it's 15. Yeah. I just uh you you touched on earlier just what we talked about the the other options rather than putting 10 minutes at the end of the day. uh Eagle Creek notwithstanding, but uh um versus doing five and five or if we if we go completely the other way, 10 minutes at the beginning of the day, just emphasize the safety issue because now we have 10, you know, I mean, even five minutes extra in the dark and you know, anecdotes aren't evidence, but my wife and I both drive early in the morning sometimes um and like at bus pickup time in the dark in the winter and it the just the the awareness you have to have to be very careful with with children everywhere and and and that just hit on us just just in this past week. Um you know because the kid was in the street and and you know my wife is like you know just have basically just going 5 miles an hour just to be super careful. um having that even five minutes more in the dark is is is a safety issue and that that's that's really compelling to me and and why I'm just really not in favor of putting it on the front end >> any anyone in tier one. >> Yeah, that's partially why I mean it's a valid point. It's always something to consider, but if it were truly that big of a safety concern, unfortunately in Minnesota, we're going to have a chunk of time where kids are going to go and we're extending that on either side of this by a little bit. I if it was truly that big of a safety concern, we wouldn't do it at all. Right. I mean, that's for sure. Um, so I'm not saying it's ideal that it's a factor in this decision, but I don't know that five minutes on that side versus not doing it at all for me. Um I do understand I do understand I think some of the frustration from the teachers is and this isn't this is just a human concept is if you're given a survey and you have some feeling that you have a say what's going on and two or three of the items that they asked for weren't going to be completed by by these actions. So that's probably where some of the frustrations come in. It's like you serve what do you want for dinner? Pizza or tacos? And then you're giving a burger. You know, let's make a taco pizza is what I'm trying to do here. You know what I mean? >> So I mean that that's where I feel like this is the best choice in my opinion of of the options that we have here to accommodate the the contract negotiation. Um my one last like sematical piece is that if we go with this schedule here 3:50 p.m. Is that enough time to keep the contract hours 9 to 8 or 9 to 4 or would they have to I'm sorry 8 to 4 >> and that's a separate issue that that is actually a management decision and it is we delegate that to the buildings. Um, I think it's set where it is right now. And and Jim, please weigh in on this. To me, I I would think it would move, you know, like I'm going to go the I'm going to go with this other proposal first because it's easier to see. If your current teacher work day at say Red Oak um was 8 to 4 and this these were your building hours and now you move it 10 minutes later your new building your your teacher work day might would seem to be 810 to 410. and then to take your proposal saying I'm going to use red oak again. If this is 8 to 4 and now you're moving it 5 minutes later you're probably going to go 8:05 to 405. >> Yeah, that would be my understanding >> because you you have that distance at the end and you'll notice the elementaryaries cut the end a little tighter. Middle school cuts the morning a little tighter because of the they're the early start ones the later dismissal. Yes. >> And really that's tied to to bus dismissal, right? >> Yes. >> You got to have enough time to actually get the kids on the bus. Otherwise, you're forcing teachers to stay an extra 10 minutes or whatever. If you don't slide today, >> essentially you're you're requiring to stay 10 because you got to get the kids on the bus. Right. >> Right. So, if you don't build the schedule around getting kids on the bus, then you're essentially just requiring eight hour and 10 day, >> you know, schedule. >> Yeah. And I'm And I'm trying to make point. It's 15 minutes now from, >> you know, >> the student dismissal time to the end of the teacher work day. It's more than likely going to be, you know, needs to be 15 minutes if you move it because I, you know, that accommodates what Bill's talking about. I started with you. >> I was just checking to see if you're >> I'm not awake. So, it's fine. >> 16 hour days are not fun. >> I'm glad Palmer, you were in here. I appreciate that input because that was some of that last I didn't know how this would work. Logistically, it seems like it should work the same as we're currently doing, just five minutes on either direction. It's good to get that confirmation that is the case. I think it just comes down to like you know you make a change there are going to be people that don't like it and they may be a minority and that stings when that happens to you >> but uh it's coming from someone that's not represented by a union uh I feel like in aggregate you're probably better with the decision to get a union representation. Um perhaps another time, but uh it just you can't sometimes you just can't please everybody and especially when we're talking about there's a finite number of buses, there's a finite number of minutes in the day and days in the year. So it doesn't feel like >> so pick up time with the 10 minute and the five. >> The 10 minute and the five minute. >> I think we had 6:30. >> Yeah, I when when I when David sent them to me, I can dig through my trash. >> I answered this in an email form. >> I had a 630. But >> give me one second here because I got to go through my deleteds. >> It is what are we looking for? Tier one. It's >> 650. So we we leave the barn. >> Is that today or is that the 10 minute? >> That's now and that's public school. >> Yeah. There's a sax time that's much >> that's in Savage and that's the six because I asked for the earliest on each tier. That's why I'm quoting 6:30. Yeah. So 640 in Savage, you know, >> busting sacks and living is a different animal than everything else. >> I Yeah. I I mean, I just think about the safety, too. And I work every single day. And >> in the winter when it's dark and I go to work and I come home in the dark, it's getting out of my neighborhood. I'm always a ton of kids that are on the corners waiting for the bus. You got to be so careful. >> I have a bus stop that's right outside of my house, right outside of my garage. I have to make sure that I get out of the house. >> That would be really bad for school. And just to clarify, so because you have the stat other pressure on those other services >> earlier. Yeah. So they're they're going to have to adapt to something one way or another. And so they go along with it or not, I guess. But it's going to just be simply a time shift or something. >> I guess the question is it is it less invasive just to add the 10 minutes at the end or is it splitting five and five pretty equivalent from your perspective in the grander grander picture of the services provide? >> So I would say that in the afternoons the darkness factor is less of an issue. I think that even a 10 minute later wouldn't be our last public school dropped off the bus that close to >> I've got the times if you want. I found them. So >> So did I. >> Okay. So the the earliest student picked up is Sachs at 6:40 and the 6:30 was if we went 10 minutes earlier. So, I apologize. East east east starts at 650, west starts at 655, high school at 7:26, Eagle Creek at 7:36, and then um the tier three we have Sweeney at 8:19, um Jackson Sun Path at 832, Red Oak at 829. >> That might change next year. change helps. Can I add one? Um the one in my in my this is just my perspective, but the one advantage just from a of doing a five and five is it affects everybody. When you do the 10 minutes later, the primary effect is elements. And so if you're looking at what's the impact on staff, making the adjustment on both sides kind of makes the impact on everybody the same. When you do it late, yes, it kind of impacts everybody the same, but it's really the late schools that are the ones who feel that that lateness. And so to me, there's there is a piece to consider. I'm not saying this is how you have to decide, but there's a piece to consider about kind of spreading the weight of the change on everybody as opposed to putting the weight of the change on kind of school. But that might be a factor to think about piggy back on that real quick. Just one of one of the staff couple of the staff members I talked to that were mostly affected by this. They were phenomenal. They're they said, "You know what? We love our job so much. We love our school. We love our kids so much. We're going to come to work and do our job no matter what you guys decide. But that all that did that conversation made me realize how great some of our staff is and a lot of our staff is. I didn't get to talk to all of them. That made that motivated me more to at least come up with a little bit more of a compromise like you said that affects everybody sort of equally rather than just hitting three or four buildings fairly, you know, and conveniently if it's doable. Right. And that's where I wasn't the bell times and all that. And again, to go to the state student safety thing, I'm all for safety. I'm pro safety guy, but I feel like if it was truly that big of an issue, that's the analogy I'm thinking of is it's like it's okay to speed for two miles, you know, go 85 and a 65, but if you go 2.5 miles, go 75, that that's suddenly we reach the threshold of safetiness. You know, that's the way I'm grasping this. You know, I'm not saying that it's not it's something to completely dismiss, but it's not something for me to not want to go five minutes. And I feel like I mean, we could chart out the sunlight of the day over the course of the year, but ultimately does start at 7:30. I think we can collectively agree 10 minutes earlier not an option. So kind of really seems more equable across all the so I mean I would lean towards That's how it sounds to me as well. I didn't know that was an option until this discussion >> and then you know to we're having a good open conversation and there's just there's a lot of variables to take into consideration there isn't one right answer you know one group including another but I also agree that we're showing good faith and even coming to this decision. So it's not >> no matter what we do a percentage of the teachers and the administrators whatever are not going to be happy. But unfortunately sometimes you have to make decisions that not everybody likes. And if you don't want to make those decisions do not run for any kind of political office. or become superintendent. >> Just crawl into a hole. It works. It's not a bad idea. >> Sleep. Other discussion. The one thing about the the 10-minute time at the end is especially with the high school they they and I know it's only five minutes or 10 minutes is sleep times are just so important for students especially older students especially high schoolers who like three monster drinks at 3:00 in the afternoon somehow can't fall asleep um I don't know do kids do that I work with people who do that so that's I that that's the one reason why I'd like to go 10 minutes later on everything instead of starting earlier just just for sleep times for the students. >> There was that brings up another thought like kind of just kind of casual mention that was it for this meeting obviously can't do that tonight but maybe looking down the road some sort of study that looks at all our start times in general that was one of the things people argue right just the actual what what's best for students as far as learning goes like adolesence might need more sleep versus learn better in the mornings you know at the elementary level and and you know Mike and I just mentioned that conversation I don't know when it would happen but it would be something to consider to look at a completely separate related >> well that would be a very substantive and you know an extended study and I think we had some of the communications we had the was it the academy of pediatrics you know, pointing out that research of secondary students, you know, we'd like to move the start times no earlier than 8:30. Um, but that but that >> Yeah, but that what Yeah. What you're suggesting we, you know, not say we're going to do it in the next two weeks, but that's something that the board, you know, wanted to direct that kind of a thing. um not on not on our radar, but yeah, that's a and we did look at other school districts and they're everywhere. I mean, they really are some mix some kind of mix. Some of it >> um no offense to, you know, the person working at the bus company. Some of it they have mixed tiers because it's more efficient from the transportation where they can't get all of one type of school. We have a little bit of that, you know, with Eagle Creek being in tier two, but you know, you'll you'll see some that are mixed different, you know, elementary, middle, and high school, different tiers. You'll see some that kind of the opposite of us. Yeah. Elementary goes earliest and middle goes latest and high school, middle. We can certainly look at that. That's a Yeah, like you mentioned, I did hear. Yeah, that's for another day, another month, another time. >> So, I still am concerned about the safety piece, but in the spirit of, as I said earlier, compromise, there isn't the perfect solution. Um, I would make a motion that we um approve a five and five schedule for the next two school years. >> Any further Would it be the next two school years? Because it's only negotiated. >> No, we're not. It'd be the next two school years, but I would we would then have to come back and revisit it or change something. I don't know that we're going to change that. To me, it would be a permanent change. It would be easier to come back then and go, "Hey, we don't like this. This isn't working." And open it up rather than rather than doing this again in two years. >> So, I will correct my motion to >> You've already got a motion to second. I'll amend your motion. I propose to amend your motion, >> but I think I can. >> Okay. All right. >> I think we're going to do it >> just for the sake of time. So, the motion then I'm going to uh correct the motion or I suppose I could. Anyway, we're going to the years. So the motion is to do five and five, five minutes before, five minutes at the end. Um, as we discussed, >> we removed that out of the >> exactly with that motion though, how does that work? >> Yeah, I would say as as shown on the All right. So, I'm going to change the motion one more time. >> Um, I am going to make the motion that we go to the five and five schedule. Five minutes before I'm going to let me back up erase. The motion is five minutes. The five and five proposed schedule on the board. >> Any more discussion? I think this is a good compromise. >> All in favor say I. >> I post 11.6 on the action items 701. >> Here we go. This is our vote on this. We've already gone through at least two times. So you should all be familiar. This is the adding budget policy approval guard rails for more robust approval is needed as the expendure goes up. Motion to approve. Second >> a motion by Smith and a second by Ruffy. Any further discussion? >> See, all those in favor say I. >> I motion carries 11.7 minor adjustment to the elementary boundary for >> we talked about this u previous meeting. We're just u making where a line was not straight. We're making it straight to match the property lines. I would recommend approval. >> Second motion by Johnson Elementary. He's the one who discovered this. >> He did. >> All in favor say I. >> I. Motion carries. Item 12 on the agenda will be our committee reports and other information >> uh at the Pearson Early Learning Center program um study group. Is that the appropriate name for it? Um last week uh yeah was that was their second meeting um and with many more to come. But uh it's to make the uh uh PLC um scheduling and programming in line with K through 12 and uh uh it's just just kind of a fly on the wall in there learning. But um just always impressed seeing the the commitment of everybody there to to take this seriously and do a good job of it. So yeah, it's really early stages. So I'll have more to report on that as we go. That's it. No updates for me. >> We have finance and facilities before this and we basically went over everything at that meeting here. >> Um I attended the literacy night at the high school a couple weeks ago. That was a really good time. Um Justin was talking about that kind will be part of that. Um, we had a Southwest Metro board meeting last Tuesday night. spent a lot of time reviewing where we're at with the first year of our new strategic plan. Know that we are a good way into the school year and we're making progress that goal that we set for year one finance as well tonight finished officer training and then I just want to remind everybody that there's a new online learning management system from MSBA. We've got a little keychain called on board you. Um there's a couple of free classes out there currently on board governance. It's a pretty slick tool. Um I would encourage everyone to uh check it out. The um the classes are once you sign up for them the system gets launched, you will have 30 days to complete it. So, let's say you start a class and then you get interrupted and you don't finish it the same day, you will have 30 days to complete the course. Um, and they will be tracking the points um just like they do the phase trainings. Um, and this is not to replace the phase one through five training, but it's an add-on and with the goal of having classes and topics that are pertinent to maybe some topics that are the forefront right now with education. Last thing that I will mention is capital is March 9th. So hopefully you are able to attend that. I thought I said that last thing, but one more thing. Um, good luck to our wrestlers at state wrestling this week. We have our team qualified and 11 of the wrestlers qualify for individual. So that's my one of my events to give awards out to. So I had district advisory council meeting and then I just first the MSBA offices training and the second half next week. I was at literacy then as well and big shout out to all the volunteers and Tiffany and all the help that you guys put together on that. That event turned out great. Lot of lot of great activities for kids there and I went to the Tes and Tiaras dance this last Saturday for my first time. So, and that was a really great event. Great big shout out to community ed for all the work they put in that too. And my kids weren't that embarrassed by how my dance moves, you know, had seen them before, but not in public. Um, those now. >> Yeah, I know. Well, maybe in another half hour, I'll start dancing. >> The finance facilities meeting that we had, like you said, we pretty much went over it all. I'm done MSBA leadership with Tim on there, too, that first half. And so, the second half is next Friday and the DAC. I didn't realize that was in between the last meeting and here, but it's one field a week, couple weeks. >> No, I was just going to bring up the wrestling team, too. And I would just add the 11 wrestler, 11 individual wrestlers is a school record. >> So, I was talking to the coaches today and that's uh the most we've ever sent. So, it'll be a great weekend at the X. >> The grand the grand whatever >> and we had our first girl gymnastics qualifier first. So, that's awesome. We had this been a great year. plays for the first time. >> No, I've added enough for one minute. >> So, um upcoming meetings and important dates. We have those in your board book. Um our next board meeting is on March 9th and that is our board development meeting. So that will be at 5:00 here in the district office. This week there's all kinds of celebrations going on as well. Anything else for >> a motion by a second by Smith. Any further discussion? >> Seeing none, all those in favor say I. I >> some