I am grateful for the opportunity and trust the public has bestowed upon me to bring academic excellence, fiscal responsibility, and parents rights back to Forest Lake Area Schools. I feel this board has made tremendous progress over the past 10 months in achieving those goals. However, due to re relocating outside of the school district boundaries, I will not be able to serve the remainder of my term.

I am grateful for his eye for detail, his courage to ask questions and speak openly on sensitive topics and his willingness to compromise, collaborate as opposed to serving his own interests. I think we've talked about it enough tonight. Thank you. the the the meeting in which you know the end result was the fact that we do have clubs in our high school and eighth graders to have that opportunity and that is because of your willingness to compromise and and Julie as well but this is a vote [laughter] Luke.

I know that everybody that's sitting at this table, all eight of us here, we have a positive intent for the students in our district. We want to do what's best for every single student. We want to do what's best for their academic future and their success. And I know that's true of every member here at the table. And I trust that's true of every individual here in the audience tonight. if if you didn't care about the success of students, you wouldn't be here spending your Thursday night with us.

Well, I did go back and I found [clears throat] um a policy that the school district used to have policy 515. Um it was last the last date on it that I could find was um 2001. So I I realize it's it's um not in effect anymore, but it is uh termed schoolboard vacancies purposes policies determine the process for filling a vacancy that occurs blah blah blah. Um the VA and this is what it said at the time. The vacancy shall be advertised. I'm making this shorter here. The vacancy shall include instructions on application. Each more board member will be provided copies of application materials. Each board member may select one candidate to be interviewed. Up to six applicants may be interviewed. Final selection would mean resolution at a regular board meeting. The school board member elect will be administered the oath of block as well. So I mean I um and not only this but um pre I looked and kind of tried to look up um where this has happened recently um in Robbinsdale. This just happened recently. Resignation of a board member. they did have an application and interview process. ... I just feel really strongly that there should be some process that a community member should be able to apply and there should be some sort of an interview.

My biggest concern about the application process. ... It seems like the most favored option is to go to the um the highest unelected vote getter of the most recent election because you know that that person has community support. you know that that person has been fully vetted by the community. In fact, that is what Spring Lake Park did just two years ago when uh Senator Michael Karun won his resounding uh victory for Senate is they went back and they appointed the next highest vote getter.

I think it's really important that the person gets vetted appropriately by our seven member board and the process is fulfilled and we're agreeing upon together to create that trust. And I want to thank the board chair for removing what was supposed to be an appointment tonight because I think we want to be very transparent in who's selected. We want to get to know them. We want to know what their what their perception of the district is and how we can have shared common goals.

this agreement represents the final agreement within the classified groups. And this agreement is consistent with the other classified agreements with a $100 increase in dependent coverage in the second year of the agreement and wage increases of 3% in each of the year um each of the two years of the agreement. And with that, administration recommends approval.

this is um updated language in our policy series um including um language from the Minnesota School Boards Association. You'll see with the red line in this document. Um so this would be adopting essentially Minnesota School Board Association language on this policy.

the these items are really referencing the board of school administrators, not our local school board. So, I I would recommend that we commit this back to policy to provide that clarification in the policy so that we're really clear that these provisions point to the board of school administrators, not necessarily the local school board.

I would like to actually make a motion that uh um member Corkran um leave whatever committee it was we assigned her to at 7 p.m. and take member Hegeland's place on finance.

I would I'd love to be back on. Yeah, I think that I would like that.