I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God and justice for all. >> Good evening everyone and thanks for coming to the special school board meeting tonight to listen to presentations from the cabinet members. And Jeremy, I'll turn it over to you. >> Yeah. So, that's really loud, but we we do this every year. We've done it, I don't know, the last handful of years. And um it's just a recap of of our year and our strategic plan as part of policy 223. We don't bring in all of our cabinet members. We try to alternate some of them every other year. So, you'll miss food service facilities, uh community ed tonight, but you'll have others and some have to come every year. Um so, they're really happy about that. But it's it's I think everyone has done this before except for maybe Renee. But so we um we just come in and share the strategic plan and the goals that are tied to that. Um and then kind of the progress that we're making on on those items. And our strategic plan went from 2022 to 2027. So this will be our last year of our strategic plan. And so we'll do some more strategic planning work u sometime probably after January. Um and hopefully have something by the start of next school year for a new strategic plan. and and we'll go through and update it. You'll notice when you see some of the objectives or the goals that are in here. They're not it's not a lot of them aren't just ending goals. They're broader ideas and and topics. And I suppose Aaron and Connie were the only two on the board at the time when we made the strategic plan. Um but we included in that um students. We did focus groups with with different groups like students um from our middle school and high school staff. Uh we did surveys with our community um and for all these groups actually um we had our leadership team um kind of fine-tune and and do some things with the strategic plan that way. The board was on that group. Um I think we had about 30 to 40 people who came in person uh from multiple groups as well. And so we utilize all that input from our stakeholders to to create the strategic plan and that's what we used to to guide us for the last handful of years. So uh I'll give a background a little bit on the strategic plan. uh I believe you all know it. But our mission statement, developing self-directed learners to thrive in a changing global community. Uh and then we've got our belief statements here. Um again, these were created from from that group. I'm not going to read all all of these, but they're they're on our strategic plan. It's on our website. We have it our buildings and things as well. And and obviously we use it for our our goals and and things as we're creating those during the year. uh this vision statement, imagining possibilities, discovering potential, and inspiring the future. We I think we need to do a better job of marketing this slogan. We don't do that as much. It's on the bottom of my email, but we don't use that as much. Um a couple years ago when I did most of my newspaper articles and and things that we did from the school, uh we included the mission statement in there. So, I think that's been out pretty well. I don't know if anyone really has it memorized other than people probably in this room. Um but but people know what what it is I think and and where where we started it from. But this one I think we need to capitalize on more communication on this type of stuff. Uh you also see these focus areas. And so um these were the five focus areas that we came up with through the strategic plan um with student growth and achievement, safety and well-being, staff development and support, family and community engagement, and effective resource management. You'll notice these on the slides today in the top left corner. So you can see what area of the plan that that the goals are are related to or the work that some of the work that we've been doing is related to. And then we took these uh focus areas, created goal statements out of each of them, and then created objectives underneath each of those goal statements, which you'll see here. And again, I'm not going to read all of these, but um you'll see these combined with the slides that are presented today. Um like goal one has objective 1.1. Uh this was this is a required one from the state. It used to be the world's best workforce but now it's college and career readiness or I always call it that case but comprehensive achievement and civic readiness but I call it college and career readiness. That's not really the full part of it. Um, goal two, uh, student growth and achievement, like I said, uh, is on there. Curriculum aligned assessments and and things like that, stuff you heard about before if you were in this at this table at that time or watched our meetings. Um, three, providing the resources necessary and remove barriers to create exceptional learning opportunities for students, safe, supportive, inclusive, and collaborative culture. And then a number of objectives there. And then uh maintaining professional environment and culture that promotes engagement and staff development that allows for both staff and student success. Then the five objectives tied to that. And then family and community engagement, promote and celebrate the opportunities that make Becker School District a foundation of the community. That was a big one actually when we did the focus groups and the um stakeholder feedback and and things. just knowing that the school is the community and the community is the school and I think you guys all believe that as well. And then finally number six uh fiscal responsibility and allocation of resources uh ensuring that we are effective and efficient supporting current and future learning needs. So if we you know it's hard to to do that when you're financially not you know making wise decisions and smart decisions. So sometimes we have to make hard decisions with that. but also then when we do have funds available and different uh resources available, we're using those to create as large of learning opportunity as we can for our students. So, uh again, so some of the groups we're missing are facilities, food service, community ed. Um we've got a number of of groups that are here. We've got Carla from curriculum and instruction. Dale's going to talk about the elementary information. Shane is going to come from back in the Wizard of Oz cave back there and uh talk about technology. Uh Jenny from HR is going to speak and then Chantel is going to talk about the secondary middle school and high school information. I'll provide the early education one from Michelle Anderson who's who's new but she was she already had this planned a long time ago so she's out. Uh and then Dave Nimi from activities will present and then wrap up with with the longest part of the presentation which is Kevin. So, um, yeah, uh, again, this this is also just kind of a real overview snapshot. We're obviously doing lots of different things all over the place and, uh, in each of our departments and and groups. Uh, so that they're going to talk about a lot of high level things and I will as well with the early education. Um, but feel free to ask any questions along the way and um, just know that we're this isn't the only stuff we're doing. It's just a a picture, a snapshot of what what's going on. And our staff have been um doing a great job and we continue to to build and improve and grow. And the other thing I'm going to say, I was going to say it at the end, but I'll say it now so I don't have to talk as much at the end. But uh I think right now the position that we're in with this being our final year of our strategic plan and the position that we're in because of the groups I'll be done in like one minute. uh the position we're in because of the groups that we have. Um we've got some large things that are really out of the way for this year that may come back next year. Uh but it really allows us to focus and I'm telling everyone we're doubling down essentially on all the stuff we're doing. Kind of just taking that whole strategic plan and and just improving on every single kind of area for this coming school year and some of the planning we've already done in June here with with principles and cabinet members and stuff. It's going to be I'm really really excited and I think they are as well with some of the work that we're going to be doing here um and the training that we're going to get mostly in August uh and then throughout the school year. But uh we've got a really good opportunity I think to just take a really solid foundation of our work based on the strategic plan and and just kind of balloon it out is what I'm really hoping on doing. And I'll hand it off to Carla and then you guys can just go as as it goes. >> Sounds good. Uh good evening. Uh I'm here to share uh information on the goals mainly around student growth and achievement and some in safety and well-being. Uh so some of the goals in the uh comprehensive achievement and civic readiness or quaser we call it. Um I will be able to share some of our goals are centered around state assessments. So we won't have those uh results until the fall. So I can share those then. Uh but our uh school readiness goal uh centers around our early education learners, those students that are eligible for kindergarten in the fall. Uh our goal is around uh is to have 80% of those students at the lowrisk level. And currently this spring um our students are at 70% of them are um at that low risk level. our early ed um staff did have science of reading training this year and so we're kind of working on making sure we're aligning curriculum and instruction and making that science of reading um up and running in early ed as it filters into our K12 system. Uh when we get to our K12 students, uh the goal is for all of them to be um reading on grade level, but our goal here has been 70% based on some of our our past scores. Uh last year we were at 63% at this year at this time and this year we are up to 66%. Um so we have moved the needle a little bit. I'll let Dale kind of talk through what what he has done in his building. Um otherwise we are getting uh through most of our elementary teachers have been trained in letters. Um we'll start the secondary folks here next year and they will be trained so then we can really focus on our implementation. Um when we look at our grad rate going strong at 92.4% and finally our the last required goal is on a lifelong learning goal and we chose to focus on our students um social emotional well-being. And so we utilize the savers and my savers assessment for that. And we want 90% or more of our students to be at that low-risk level, we are currently at 87%. When we look at curriculum review, one more there. Uh this year our implementation after last year's curriculum review was around um our elementary literacy program. We're in year two of that implementation. Uh this year we um implemented 612 and so that's been going strong. Um like I said, our secondary teachers are now getting trained uh heavily in the science of reading starting next year. So um we needed curriculum updated so that they could be supported with that. Uh this year our curriculum review uh centered around K12 social studies and K12 SEAL curriculum. Um social studies was pretty old. I think we had some 2003 copyright uh textbooks there to look at. So we are very excited to be uh implementing new curriculum. Uh next year we will be focusing on math. We have new math standards coming in uh 2728 and so we will be looking for um curriculum aligned with those standards and also literacy intervention. I will pass it off to who's next? Any questions for me? >> Good evening. I'll focus on the student growth and achievement goal number two that we will ensure all students receive a guaranteed and viable curriculum with aligned assessments and consistent learning environment that meets the needs of all students. Uh, as Carla shared, we've been working on um getting all staff trained in letters, the science of reading. We started that off in 23 24. Um, we had some teachers that had started the science of reading um letters training prior to that, but as a a building, we were training everybody. We finished up in 25 26 this year. We've hired some new staff this past year and they're already through unit 4. So they'll be finishing up with their letters training um within the next year. With the science reading, we realized that our literacy needed some um changes to be in alignment with the science reading. Not only the staff but also our curriculum. And so in 2425, the kindergarten and first grade teachers implemented UFI, which is a phonics-based instruction program. In this past year, second grade um implemented UFI, which is a phonicsbased program. And um to ensure that um we have a guarantee and viable curriculum, we are doing fidelity checks, making sure that programs being implemented the way it's intended. We started off with having um we have a process of what the steps should be in each lesson, how many minutes should be done in each area. Uh the classroom teachers did a self-fidelity check to make sure that they were following the procedure. Then um the second trimester we had um them go into each other's classroom to do pure um fidelity checks and that was a very positive experience because they could see how other staff were doing it and also being able to give positive feedback to each other. Um our instructional coach also helped with fidelity checks throughout the year and um Brandon the assistant principal and myself we did fidelity checks to ensure things are going and we've seen some positive changes with our phonics instruction. We've seen that is really helping students be um prepared for for the next year of learning. Um with a UFly we do um a day one, a day two, and then another day one and day two. And then on day five, there's a progress monitoring that all classroom teachers are going through so they can see the progress students are making on those skills. And then as far as the whole building, we do fast screening three times a year to see that students are um on pace and on track to where they should be. students that are not, we provide um either classwide interventions or tier two or tier three interventions. Those are all aligned with the science of reading as well. The reading specialist um have been through the science of reading training and they are using EUI for interventions. And then every two weeks we progress monitor students who are showing concerns with FastBridge to make sure they're on track. This past year, um, we implemented arts and letters as our core curriculum for, um, building comprehension, vocabulary, and knowledge through real books. It's been a really exciting year. The teachers have really seen a lot of, um, excitement from the students as they're going through each of the books and each of the modules. Um, the students are going through what they see, what they notice, and what they wonder with these books. And it's really helping them to deepen some of their writing as they're working through it. and the classroom teachers are ensuring that this is being done with fidelity and we have a guaranteed viable curriculum by weekly PLC's. They work together talking through what they need to be doing for each module making sure that um students are getting what they need. Are there any questions? >> I I don't it we haven't noticed that as test burnout because uh it's not it's very quick the progress monitoring is a one minute uh screening so it's not like a 30 minute or hourong assessment like the MCAs would be but it's a quick one minute probe to just see how are they're doing how they're progressing toward those skills and some of the work that they're doing um they're reading every day so if they're reading a passage message. Um, and the teacher is quickly doing that in a minute. They don't seem so overwhelmed. Great question though. Any other questions? Thank you. Hello. Um, in the technology department, we spent most of this year really prepping for the summer. Uh, we have a number of migration pieces that we're working on. Uh, cumulative being the biggest one. That's our Skyward migration from the old Skyward SMS to the cumulative. Um, we've been basically just making sure that teachers have the training they need and that we have the foundational pieces built for the data retention and everything make from one step to the next. Um, we're working on network infrastructure upgrades. Uh, we just uh evaluating how we have our things that make the internet work um set up and try to add some efficiency. We're upgrading the core this summer. um data flow architecture and optimization. Basically, what we're doing there is analyzing um how our data comes from Skyward out to our products and then to the things that teachers see and the and you see and making sure that that flows correctly and well and that we're not spending a lot of time manually doing things that can be automated. Any questions of me? >> It's a Skyward product, but it's moving from a standard database to more of a um SQL database. So, it's moving from a simpler style to a more modern robust style. And so, that takes quite a bit of mapping and making sure our fields can make it that. So, it yeah, it's a heavy lift. And I just to add on the technology. So Shane's fairly new here, but the work that his team and others that are sitting behind have done um because you know Becker changed quite a bit in the 90s and I think we piece meal things together so they worked. But now we have to look at it from a systemwide standpoint and so it's easier to fix problems instead of just fixing one person here, one person here, one person here with different avenues. creating a systemwide approach of this is going to be much easier, much more efficient in the end, but it's a lot of work that and backend work and and things and there's gonna be a lot of hiccups that are going to come starting in two weeks probably. So, um and there have been some hiccups as well. >> Hopefully, as few as possible. >> Yeah. But but I think in the end we're going to find out that having that systemwide approach where we can check a box instead of change this box for every single person and it's a different box for everybody is going to be very very helpful for us. MSM Sky serves as our vendor. Um, yeah, security is a huge piece of everything we do. Um, the central the student information system holds all of our student data. That's the most important one to maintain and watch and that is part of why you modernize it as well to move to a little more robust and we have to make sure things are encrypted and those kind of things. Thank you for the question. Anything else? All right, I'll go back to us. Hello, I'm Jenny Loren and I'm going to be talking about some of the HR um goals that we have made and how far we've come in the last couple years. So, I'm sure we're all aware that these last two years have brought immense changes to the HR landscape um as far as leaves of absences um starting with ESST um and now newly the Minnesota paid leave. So, countless hours have been devoted this year to just learning on my own what this leave means for us and our employees and then trying to navigate that with them while they're learning it as well. um we're going through a third party um administrator who are also again learning it. So my goal this year was just to get a checklist that employees can easily follow um to make sure that I'm can be as helpful as I can being the middleman. Um I've never had something where you don't really have any control over the approval, the time. Um, so really my goal was to sit down face to face with all the employees who are requesting to leave and just make sure that they understand how the process works and that there's just constant communication between me and the employees. Um, another thing was our health insurance change. So we changed health insuranceances last fall which was a big change for all of our employees. We've been with health partners with for many years moved to UHC United Healthcare. So, obviously all transitions like that come with some bumps, road bumps. Um, but I'm going to shout out Michelle Hayes, our HR coordinator. She has taken the the front loading of the employee complaints um that comes along with the these transitions. Um, but again, her goal was just being there for the employees and making sure that she's available and that she's with them along the way until their um issues get solved. So I feel like we have been extremely um supportive and we have created a welcoming environment for all these employees to feel they can come and talk with us with issues um and that we'll help them. Another um big change we made was we moved all of our onboarding to digital to docuine. So that again I'm going to shout out Angel Oswald. She's done amazing getting that transferred to all electronic forms so that before that new employee comes to the district office, all of that paperwork is done and we can focus on that one-on-one relationship and training them in ways that um really are student centered and make them um successful in their roles in the district. We also moved from paper time cards to paperless. Um, which again has been a couple years in the making, but we finally have all employee groups transitioned over to our frontline electronic timekeeping. that has changed our whole payroll department and HR immensely by taking away all those paper time cards. Um the manual counting of hours, all that manual work that creates room for error is now gone. Um all the employees are doing the exact same platform so it can be resources to each other. So that has been a long time in the making and we're finally there and it's very exciting. even our subs are using that um timekeeping portal and it's been great. So, um our onboarding process in general has just been has just become so robust and hands-on that I was actually talking to a new hire just seeing how things were going and I just asked him how was the onboarding experience and he said he's been with two different school districts and ours was hands down the best onboarding experience he's had. So, I just had to give our team a pat on the back. That That's great to hear. Um, next slide. >> Okay. So, objective 3.4 um identify opportunities to strengthen our schools and, um, being a welcoming, safe, and supportive school climate. So, another goal of mine, um, the last two years has been really trying to build foundation relationships with our employees and that's having one-on-one conversations with them through these meet and confer meetings, having them feel comfortable coming to me if they have issues that we can talk about it, you know, employee to employee that that I'm also human and I'm pretty like we can talk about issues and we can solve them without needing to go to through the grievance procedure or um have come formal complaints come through. just building that trust and um again it's all based on relationships and I just feel like as we saw in the last negotiations um through I mean there's been so many positives our retention this year which I will get to in the next slide um just really making our employees feel safe and comfortable and that if they do have a problem just let's talk about it before it escalates and figure it out sooner than Another part part of that is training supervisors on having those hard conversations um before they escalate. You know, being more observant, listening to people. If you if you foresee things are not going well, bring the employee in, ask the hard questions because it's going to avoid a lot of work in the long run and again creates a more positive environment for everybody. Okay, my favorite slide. Um so many positives here. Um again I talked about this stronger onboarding. You know we used to spend when I first came here it was like 20 minutes with the employee and it was a lot of email communication not a lot of direct contact. Now they are spending one to two hours in the district office going through the benefits going through the policies making sure they understand how to clock in and out. Um it's it has changed immensely in the last couple years. making sure that all their required trainings are done before they leave the office so that they can just focus on their role in the district. Another thing we've been working on is contract alignment. So, we did move all contracts to the same negotiating year. Um I had a little hesitation on that but honestly it it has been positive in many ways. I think it has taken out the um competition between contracts. We also aligned it with the bianiums of the funding so that we know what money is coming in. Um and that just really I think helps transparency with us and the different employee groups and um yeah I think it went very well this year. Sorry. Oh yeah. And also the budget helps us budget more accurately. And we also try to keep benefits like contracted benefits aligned across similar employee groups. So really trying to get directors to be similar and employee groups that are of the similar nature so that you know the competition between the two isn't really a thing out there. So we have gone very far in that and I'm um I think we can see the results when we look at our turnover this year. So, we had the least turnover we've ever had, as far back as we could go. Um, we had seven licensed teachers resign, three retirements, one promotion, one move closer to home. Um, one was moving away. And I mean, even Carla said, "What am I supposed to do with the three teachers at our new teacher workshop?" I mean, it's it's amazing. I I just think we are so fortunate. And it's not just with licensed staffs, our paras, our secretaries, food service, transportation, all the lowest we've seen. Um, we went to a job fair actually back in the spring and I go every year at the Husky job fair and our table is always full. Everyone says like what are you bribing them with? But Becker is a soughtafter district and this year I honestly had to say we have two openings and or special ed and science. So, it was it's a good um I guess scenario for us to be in because you talk to other districts and um we're doing much better than most of our surrounding. Also, the um early settlements going backwards a little bit. Um but we were the first district in surrounding districts that had TAS for all of our agreements before January 1st. Um, so I just think that that also helped with the culture. Like people don't, it created stability for our employees. It, you know, obviously with negotiations, it always can cause some negativity, but just having all of those done, you could just sense that it was just a year of focusing on students. And then in addition to that, um, our licensed staff. Um, we currently going into next year, we're only going to have one teacher working under a tier one license. Um, four of them will be under a tier 2 license, but all of those tier 2s are in a program to be moving up to a tier three. So, again, I feel like we're extremely fortunate. Um, no out of field permissions. We have licensed, highly qualified educators. Yeah. Any questions? Um, so we had 18 employees in the last six months successfully get paid through the program. Um, I think the process has been going. It was a little rough the first couple of months. We had people returning to work before they even received the pay first paycheck. So just talking through that with employees and you know really helping them looking at their salary. It's constant salary adjustments but really working with them and like I understand you need to get a paycheck but it puts you in a really uncomfortable situation when you have no um really power to do anything about it. Like I I can't give them a timeline on when they're going to get back. Can't give them a timeline on when they're going to get paid. So, it's it it does create um yeah, a lot of feelings, a lot of hard conversations, but I think now they've caught up and things have been going smoothly for those that have recently been on there. So, yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yes. But uh you know like I'm here I'm the employer so like they're going to come to me. Yes. So I'm going to hear all the complaints and um which I'm fine with. But again it's just like letting them know that I'm here through the whole process with them and I know good contacts to reach out to if they're having issues and just making sure that I'm available. Anything else? Thank you. >> Kevin's not here. It's just me. He's coaching softball today tonight. Okay. So, good evening everyone. Uh Chantel Boyer at the representing secondary. So, right now, uh mine is about staff development and engagement. So, I love engagement. That's always a fun one. Uh really looking at this year middle school and high school staff. um focused on one we started the year looking at proficiency scales. So the year before 2425 we really focused on as a secondary staff looking at our priority standards and and really um becoming more aligned at the secondary level 612 with the priority standards in each content area. This year the goal was really kind of digging more into the proficiency scales but we started working on that but then we had what was called CAPI that was it came to us um and what CAP is is in regards to the read act and really looking at um providing an assessment for students and digging into where they're at on on their reading their reading levels. um the information we received from fastbridge testing that we did, we then took that and assessed students that qualified in a specific area to dig further into how are they doing and what can we do to help them be successful. And that kind of gave us a new avenue to look at on our tier one. What can we do as a building to pro provide our students guidance in re in relationship to the read act. So um we started with priority standards. We're continuing with priority standards. We're looking at proficiency scales. This was just something that was needed and necessary and we kind of took a little turn. Um we also looked at Carla mentioned ELA math and social studies looking at the standards. Math is currently working 612 preparing for the the new standards that are going to be implemented 2728 aligning our um our standards focusing on what we um the language that's going to be provided. um ELA, our English teachers, implemented a new curriculum this year um in the middle school level. It's called common lit. Uh the rigor was pretty pretty high rigor and so it takes a few years. Um for those of you who have gone through curriculum process um new curriculum, it takes a couple years to get used to it. Um they were they did it with fidelity this year and um we saw growth especially in the area of writing. So that was we were super excited about that for what our students provided. and then social studies. Um they chose a curriculum and we are going to start implementing that next year. So a lot of exciting things that are going on at the secondary level. Um the the next part we looked at was the um just really getting ready for um cumulative. And as you know if you've been through this process before um Skyward you cumulative is like kind of like a 2.0 or higher level of it. Uh, so we had our teachers go through some videos preparing, prepping, preparing for next year. I'm assuming a lot of them will have to relook at the videos a little bit to remind themselves on the process of what's needed um for cumulative. And then finally, we dug further into AI, so artificial intelligence and what does that look like at the secondary level. And so really understanding um a language for us to prepare for um students having the common language. So if we talk about um no AI, what does that look like? Pencil and paper, you know, because when we really open up your Google document and stuff, there's already artificial intelligent going on. So what does that look like? And so we came up with a rubric and a scale to help us understand the levels of use. And so that's what we're going to look at implementing next year as we go through this process with the wonderful world of AI. I didn't read any of it, but I think I got everything. tier one strategies. We're looking at continuing to do that. But other than that, do you have any questions for the secondary level? >> How much time do you guys do together? Middle school and high school ever together 612. >> Um, some departments do. So like art will do that at times. FID will do that at times. Music will do that at times. When we look at that's why it was really cool when we started this process last year with the priority standards, that alignment. um we we hadn't done that for many many years and now they're kind of like we want to meet more often. So we have for certain elective areas for the specific contents of ELA, math, social studies, not as much. um we're seeing that that's a need and um we're we'll continue that process as we can but PLC time is such a short amount of time that we have um you know every Wednesday that we have that time really scheduled for our departments at the middle school and high school. >> Any other questions? Thank you. Thank you. >> All right. Early education, uh, focus on family and community engagement, and I think Pete is the one that's on this committee, but, um, they've had some pretty big changes as well. We've got the new community ed director who oversees this programming. Then we've got Michelle Anderson who replaced Sue Hilner, uh, in there as well. Uh, we made or are making a number of changes in this department as well. um adding two sections of all day prek as is a big one. Uh Monday, Wednesday, Friday section and then a Tuesday, Thursday. And then um a new three h uh three-day half day small wonders option and then weekly ECF classes offered during fall, winter, and spring. Uh, and the the good part about the early education piece is we've got Michelle, we've got uh Jen Johnson, and then Dale also continues to help with that. Uh, Jenny, the rents has been helping with it as well because of alignment of contracts and with this schedule changes and things like that to make sure we're getting people uh notified of their time and whatnot. And and so that's all a big piece. And if you look at the 2627 enrollment snapshot, um got 88% filled for prek, 58% for small wonders, and 36% for ECF. And those are um a little higher than they typically are, I think, in most of the cases when I talk to those departments. And uh we do get more people throughout the year. And each of those, particularly ECF, uh grows all the way through. And um and so so those numbers are pretty pretty good. Um the prek we're worried a little bit about that cuz our numbers just don't seem to be continuing at the highest level that they they were at before as far as enrollment and and the number of children that we have just coming into our schools. Even in the kindergarten, we can we've seen that and um we still get a lot of open enrollies, but they're not until the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh grade um typically and then scattered throughout, but those are the highest grades that we get the most open enrollies from. Uh and then family engagement through ECF. So you can see this 25 26 events of dad's measure and build at night, mom's holiday night, gym nights, pizza night, uh grandparents at ECF, and then some of the new ones that they're looking at. Again, some a lot of new ideas with the new staff that are in there. Uh outdoor discovery night, Halloween fun night, a bingo night, and a movie night. And um the open houses have excellent attendance and and things. And I really look, the new early ed building is great and it creates a really strong foundation for our our staff. Um, one of the things that's going to be changing for them is that they're going to have to be licensed. Uh, I think it's a 2728 um, school year. So, that that'll be a change for them. Um, and we've, you know, I think we've really done a nice job with continuing to improve this area more so than we have in the in the past. Um, it's been a a lot of work because it's it's not part of that K12 curriculum and it didn't have the licensed staff necessarily. It didn't have, you know, the uh specific curriculums and and things like that. And I think working on those types of things have really helped out quite a bit. And um, you know, we've had really good kids who have had great experiences through that, but I think we can get a little stronger learning environment and we're working on that as well as you can see through this. Any questions that I can ask Michelle later? >> All right. Activities. >> All right. Good evening. Um, kind of looking at tonight for this what we're when I was looking at what we're going to talk about here mainly is the strategic plan 6.2 which is the managing and monitoring ongoing facility needs and use of space. um go back to that very beginning of that sentence and it says annually because this is an ongoing um I've kind of put an activities related goal into that as a as a kind of a five-year comprehensive because none of this stuff is automatic. You know, when you look at all the different things that we have in our facilities that we use, the space that we cover um the things that happen weather related uh that can impact what's going on in our fields and our spaces outside can certainly impact us on a daily and that that budget piece has to be a part of it. So, you know, I look at this as we can annually look at it, but we also have to kind of have a long-term plan on what really are the biggest priorities and what do we see as being the priorities as we move up move forward. Um, obviously, as we've come along this year, we're on we're on year 12 right now of our performing arts center, our pool, our track, and our and our tennis courts. And our tennis courts, if you've noticed, are just getting four of them are getting redone. So, they'll be brand new. The others are getting a resurface. So, all of them will technically be new. Uh, you know, the hope will be to get the other four done along the way just to make sure that the crack cracks and things like that are taken care of, but they're definitely going to be way better than where they were. Um, but 12 years we've been dealing with those things and they still look great. We get a lot of great comments, but things wear out and and those are the ways that's kind of why I look at this particular goal as being a an an annual but also a long-term. Um some of the other pieces and areas that we're looking at that we don't necessarily see that are out there, things like the baseball and softball fields themselves. Uh drought and when we had our construction a few years ago, we lost all the water to that end of the complex. Um our grass, somebody can say it's as simple as grass, but our grass isn't good. Our infield are getting lips between the infield and the outfield. We've got to work on that kind of thing. So these are projects that people don't necessarily see. They see a baseball field and a softball field and they go, "Well, you know, your fields are great. you're playing out there all the time and they are being used all the time, but we also have to look from a safety measure and that making sure that they're they're maintaining and we're able to continue to use them um appropriately use them and safely use them. So, uh things like that. Um I I'm looking at even things like scoreboard controllers in our fieldhouse. Those fieldhouse scoreboard controllers, we replaced one of them last year. Uh the other ones are original. So, you think how long that that those scoreboards have been in there. um those the controllers themselves I mean we can't do anything with them if they go down they're going down so things like that that again are part of this I think this overall facility piece that we have to maintain and we have to oversee u for that touch pads in the pool set on 12 years those things have been there you know we've done some maintenance pieces but but we haven't replaced our touch pads ever in that in that in and out of the water dry wet dry wet you know that kind of thing so you know those are things again I think this goal and this particular objective um really hit that people they see but they don't see because everything kind of functions and everything has made it kind of move forward with it. Some of the great things we have gotten obviously we've got a beautiful turf field. Um many comments on that field. I mean just I I I can't tell you I mean how many comments we get when people walk out and see that it's been a beautiful space for a multi-use space. Um you know grab having graduation out there is awesome. Uh the fed classes are out there every single day. Not to mention obviously our our athletic and and teams that are there. Um we've upgraded sound systems at our baseball field and softball complex. Uh we've updated sound systems in our gymnastics gym. Um uh the not I'd be remiss to mention the the donations that we've had to upgrade the softball complex this past year. um with the scoreboards being redone and uh the donations that we had for the s or the JV baseball dugouts most recently that we're still finishing up on that our community has put in. So all great things but all things that are going to be ours to take care of from here on out. So that's a piece of it you can say it's awesome for the donation and we appreciative are very appreciative of that but at the same time they're going to become ours now to maintain and monitor and overseas. bill. Um, again, I think one of those things with with the outside piece, you know, looking in, we're doing very, very well. Um, but the budget piece is where we've got to look at it and that's why it's that more 5-year comprehensive versus just the annual piece that we have to certainly look at every year. So, any questions on that on that front of it? I've got one other comment I want to make right before I'm done, but anything on the activities, athletics, facility, space. All right, one other thing I want to mention is we are making an overall change from our school arbiter coming up. You're going to see a change uh an announcement that's going to come out very soon. um our conference the Mississippi conference and probably about threequarters of the state of Minnesota right now is shifting to a program called bound right now when you go on our activities website you look at schedules and you look at you can see a lot of different things on there where people have you know put in their notify me so they get schedule changes and things that's been through our school arbiter um that program has kind of faltered in our opinions at as ads over the last handful of years and a new company came up with this uh from Iowa called bound and and they made a presentation to us back in probably I think it was in November in our conference maybe a little bit earlier than that and uh we decided as a conference to go with this new uh company. It's going to basically going to look brand new but it'll be something that's very similar to your activity scheduleuler that you guys will all see when you look out and you see you know if you're checking on schedules and game times and that kind of thing. Um but it's not going to be through bounds. So wanted to let you guys know firsthand. Um we're piecing it together still now and getting making sure all of our schedules are in it. everything is accurate. Uh we'll easily be through the f or through the winter seasons in those schedules. Um with some growing pains here and there. Um but it's going to be a really good program. We're really confident in it. I think it's going to be something that the public will like as well. So something you can look forward to here coming in early July. So thank you. I don't know. I figured since they're all here, I'll go over to um uh really this is about the effect of resources where we're putting them and really we communicate with everybody we saw, even the ones that aren't here, you know, food service and buildings and grounds. Uh but really it's to maintain the resources of the district so that we're you know operating efficiently. Uh the whats uh and all you were part of this when we were able to negotiate what the state gave us in revenues and we were able to negotiate with those and actually Jenny mentioned January 1st. Uh we were actually done in October. So uh with all the negotiations so it really did go well. Um because of that we are projected to maintain the schoolboard policy of the 8% to that that you guys have set out there. Um it's looking actually might even be a little bit better. So uh those results you get to see in the audit once we get through it this summer and you'll see the presentation in either November or December. Um, on the facility side, as Dave was talking a little bit, we are on our last project for the referendum. Uh, as you walked in, you probably heard them uh, vacuuming the rocks up off the roof. So, that'll be finished here in the end of probably September by the time they get everything all completed. Uh then in the last item just want to mention you know the district did for next year's budget we reduced uh 600,000 and it was you know because of a referendum not passing but again that's all in support of the board making those decisions for the district. So, any questions for you? And I know you kind of have them for me all the time, but if you have any others, all right. >> Yeah. And just just to wrap it up, I guess a little bit, it's, you know, you hear how many references you have to other people that are either in this room or not in this room, but it it really is a joint effort. um and all the collaboration and things that we've been doing and everything that we do impacts each other, you know, from finances to HR to curriculum and instruction and and you guys are on committees too that you see see those types of pieces as well. And um and then you throw it in with the strategic plan and get the community involvement and and things as well. And so, um, yeah, I I I think we've been doing a nice job with our strategic plan. And like I said, this will be a a big year with big expectations where we can take the stuff that we've done the last four years and then just kind of catapult them into that next next level because we we we're aren't going to have to focus on negotiations. We can focus on some of the improving areas of HR or we can um readact is done or not not done but that the training for letters is done. It's yeah, it's just beginning, but we can we can take that training that we've spent a lot of time on and and take us to that next level hopefully. And and those are just two of the examples, but there's there are many more as well. So, any final questions, any comments or >> I would just like to end by saying thank you for all of you and those who aren't here. I really think Fecker's in a really good place right now and that's obviously due to leadership and decisions that are made. So thank you for what you do. Any other questions, comments? Well, this meeting for coming