Call to Thursday, April 2nd, regular school board meeting for Forest Lake Area Schools to order. Please join us for the recite of Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Can I have member clerk, please take the roll call of attendance? Sure. Uh Okay. Member Christensen. >> Here. Member Corcoran. Here. Member Castle. Here. Member Tyson. Here. Member Reboline. >> Here. And member Antonson is here. Everybody's here. All right. With that, I approve or I would Um I move to approve the meeting agenda. Second. All right. Yeah, we have a motion and a second. We have any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed? And motion carries. That brings us to scheduled and unscheduled visitors. Uh member Tyson, member Castle. Uh you mean the listening session? Yes, listening session. So, uh there was nobody there to listen to. Mhm. But we did have a visitor who was going to join us I don't have that. for the discussion today. Where did my paper go? >> [laughter] >> And uh he is on the board of Justin McPhee? Yes, Justin McPhee. >> is. And he's on the >> [clears throat] >> Career Launch board. And he's going to retire pretty soon, so he's going to have somebody else from his uh place of work also join. He's going to stay on. So, uh we were very glad to have him there and we all talked about different career stuff and it was um no listening to do, but we had a good time. Very light. Anything to add, member Tyson? I was just going to add that he is a machinist and his daughter graduated his son last year in 2025 and his daughter in 2022 and he just had a lot of accolades for our career and tech program and for Molly and all the work that they do, Molly and Mike. And um just said it's super impressive and as excuse [clears throat] me, as uh machinist himself, he wants to help other students and people grow in their careers, so um he's really a great addition to that board, I'm sure. Glad he came. I've never met him. Mhm. Well, excellent. Thank you both. We will move quickly to student achievement. Um Student report is to be decided. Yeah, we are not uh able to get a student group here tonight, so we'll pass on that. Okay, then we will move to the FLACS principal, I think. Welcome. Thank you. Good evening, um community members, board members and Dr. Massey. I brought two staff members with me this evening. We're going to talk to you a little bit about uh the college in the schools statistics class that Terry teaches through the University of Minnesota. Thank you, Renee. And uh Emily Wood, who is our new counselor um from the tech program last year. Uh she joined the community school this year. We uh switched the position from dean to counselor so that we could better meet meet the needs of the students. Um I'm going to start out by just giving you kind of an overview and you can click Oh, do you want us to click? Oh, okay. Can I do something? >> [clears throat] >> You can just go to the next slide. Um the third slide. So, I'm going to tell you just a little bit an overview of our alternative programs that we offer here in the district. Um as you can see on the slide up there. I'm going to start with the community school. So, our alternative learning program in Forest Lake is intentionally designed to meet the wide-ranging needs of our students by providing flexible pathways, [clears throat] individualized support, and a strong focus on the whole child. We recognize that students learn in different ways and at different paces. So, our programming is built to ensure that every learner has access to meaningful educational opportunities that align with their personal goals, strengths, and challenges. The Forest Lake Community School serves as our district's alternative high school and offers a comprehensive high school experience. Students [snorts] have access to standard-aligned core courses in all subject areas along with a variety of elective options that allow them to explore interests and build real-world skills. In addition to academics, we intentionally focus on developing employability skills. This includes embedding social-emotional learning into daily instruction and utilizing a career pathway framework to help students identify interests, set goals, and build skills necessary for future careers and post-secondary success. Our goal is not only to support students in earning credits, but also prepare them to be confident, capable individuals behind beyond high school. A key component of our program is credit recovery, which is offered after school at the community school. This program provides students with additional time, support, and access to courses facilitated by both high school and community school teachers. Through personalized guidance and flexible scheduling, students are able to recover lost credits and stay on track for graduation. We are proud that our credit recovery program was a pilot for the state of Minnesota and we continue to refine and expand it based on student needs and outcomes. Many students have already benefited from this opportunity, successfully regaining credits and making significant progress toward earning their diplomas. We remain committed to helping every student cross that finish line. Our therapeutic education program is a night another vital part of our alternative education system. This program is designed for students who meet specific entrance criteria and require more intensive support with therapy and an educational imp- component as well. It combines academic instruction with a comprehensive therapeutic approach to address mental health needs that may be impacting learning. The program is staffed by a highly collaborative team that includes a licensed therapist, recreational therapist, a teacher, and a paraprofessional. Together, they provide structured support throughout the day, integrating therapeutic strategies with academic instruction. This approach helps students build coping skills, improve emotional regulation, and re-engage in their education in a safe and supportive environment. For our youngest learners, we offer the WIN Club, an after-school program for students in grades K-8. WIN means What I Need. Club focuses on strengthening foundational literacy and math skills through targeted instruction and engaging activities. It provides additional time and support for students who benefit from extra practice while also building confidence and positive attitudes toward learning. Then we have summer school is available for students in grades K through 12 and is designed to both support skill development and provide opportunities for acceleration. In the elementary programs, grade grades K through 5, students follow a structured schedule that includes dedicated literacy and math instruction along with dai- daily SEL morning meeting to build community and support growth. This summer, we are excited to implement Be Good People curriculum, which will further enhance our focus on character development, relationships, and smo- social-emotional skills. All instructional strategies and interventions used in summer school are aligned with the district's general education framework and are supported by the curriculum and instruction team to ensure consistency and effectiveness. At the middle school level, alternative education funding allows us to provide additional academic support through a guided study hall model. This structured environment gives students the opportunity to receive help with assignments, build orga- organizational skills, and develop strong stud- study habits. All with the support of staff who can provide targeted assistance. During the summer months, we are also excited and offer our extended credit recovery program to high school students, including those from neighboring schools such as Lila and NLA. This expanded access access ensures that more students have the opportunity to stay on track or get back on track for graduation. Overall, we we pride ourselves in offering a comprehensive system of support that prioritizes student success in every form, academic, social, and emotional. By providing multiple pathways, targeted interventions, and a strong net- network of support, our alternative learning program ensures that all students have the opportunity to grow, achieve, and reach their full potential. Now, we're going to dive into um the math course that we offer at the community school. Terry has been working with the University of Minnesota for 12 years? Not quite, no. Probably more like 13 or 14 years. 13 or 14 years? About 10 for the stats. So, we do offer a college in the schools course at the community school taught by Terry and she's going to give us more information about that, but before we start, Terry has been at the alternative education within the system as a math teacher since 2000. She has been a key player in creating a system that helps individual students build confidence as they move forward with more complex math concepts. Terry has been a part of the college in the schools program at the University of Minnesota for the past 14 years. So, with that go ahead, Terry. Well, we often find that many of our students are behind in math when they come to us and and building up their confidence is really the big key to everything. I am a firm believer that every student can do difficult math. They just have to believe in themselves. And so, that's what my colleague Al and I do is we work individually with students and get them to that place where they feel more confident and then we have to have a place to go. So, those college in the schools classes is a step up for them to really dig in and find out that they can do it. And a lot of my students who have taken the class have gone on to college. I have one in the last time I took taught this course, um one of my students is now in an engineering program at the U of M. So. She's doing fantastically. Um earlier this year Dave Sauer asked if I would help him present at the Minnesota math conference, the MCTM conference in Duluth later this month. And to talk about stats. And if you've spent any time looking at the new grad standards, there's a lot of stats in there. That's the big change. Stats and um and a lot of mortgage type things and you know, so the stats is where we're thinking hard about right now. My students agreed to help me create this presentation for um the MCTM conference. And um we decided that they're going to do a film, a video that will be part of the presentation. So, they're really stepping up and doing a great job. What we decided to do is to talk about bias. And so we decided to do something very very simple, just picking a number what most of us would say between 1 and 10, right? And so, they talked about it and they said but does that eliminate 1 and 10 if we say it that way? How can we make sure that we're getting our point across that we want them to choose one number in that range. And so, they decided that they were going to put it on paper and just say circle a number. And they had the digits all listed. And so, they um gave it to 40 students or adults, they just 40 people. And this is the results of their observational study. Okay? So we talked about it and with 10 numbers it should be equally likely. Should be spread out evenly. Why does it look like this? >> [clears throat] >> So, um we Thank you. We decided we use TinkerPlots. TinkerPlots is a software. Who has anyone ever heard of it? Okay. It's it's fun. Kids love it. They learn it quickly and they can do lots of simulations. Um like we ran it once and from there we picked the mean and collected 500 more trials just in seconds. And so, the graph is what what we came up with. So, the average on that first graph was 6.35. And the equally likely should have been 5.48 555. So, what we were able to see, they calculated the P value and it's outside equally likely. So we do have bias when we're picking numbers. The funny thing was that seven was the most common. So, maybe there's still something about lucky sevens. >> [laughter] >> But I'm excited to be able to go to the conference and and [clears throat] to have the kids participate. They're learning a lot in this process. Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you. Next, we're going to hear from Emily and I'll give you a little bit of background. Emily is a licensed clinical counselor with experience working in the clinical mental health, program development and research. Emily is passionate about providing culturally competent collaborative care. Emily holds a bachelor's degree in anthropology from the University of Alaska, Anchorage and a master's degree in counseling counseling psychology from Alaska Pacific University. She's currently enrolled at the University of Minnesota, Moorhead to complete her school counseling certificate. Emily has used utilized her broad skill set to understand how bio-psycho-social factors contribute to student academic success and overall being. Prior to her time at Forest Lake Area Community School, Emily has worked in various adolescent and adult treatment settings providing individual, family and group therapy and clinical program management for programs in Alaska and Minnesota. Emily grew up in Cambridge, Minnesota and is the daughter of public school educators. She lives in the area with her partner, their four kids and three dogs. Take it away, Emily. Yeah, um so I'm I'm really happy to be here. Something that I was just thinking about when Terry was sharing was this idea in kind of mental health and psychology of like we all know what a trigger is or we hear that word a lot, right? Like oh, that triggers me. It's usually something that activates a really uncomfortable feeling for us. I think the opposite of a trigger is called a glimmer. And a glimmer can be one of those like everyday things that just kind of makes your makes gives you a little more pep in your step or a little more like little more smile on your face and as Terry was just discussing her class of college in the schools, I had a little glimmer of my my own because I had a few students come into my office and sheet for me, so I wonder if I'm I'm obviously biased to numbers. But it just it got me excited because I just really appreciate the active learning that can happen at the school and that's one of the ways that you know, when I was approached you know, with this opportunity, I was really excited to explore it more and be a part of the team because of the amazing educators and staff that we have at the community school. So, um yeah, thanks for giving me that glimmer, too. And thanks for engaging I mean, the kids were they were excited about it. It was fun to see and kind of talk about that and getting them excited to learn about stats that I probably could have used you in grad school, too. But so, my I see my role in a couple different areas. One um as we talked about looking at kind of bridging the gap so that our kids our students can be successful in their academics and and also help support them um because we know that students bring bring factors into school that we don't that will impede their learning progress and sometimes it's hard to learn when those factors are happening. So, um my I see my role as both um kind of to support the students, but also to support our staff in helping to understand um our students better and our under student understand our students well um to help them know how we can attune and and create a learning environment for them where everyone is successful. Um we've I've also partnered with um the um Cody Chamberlain, the other school counselor um on a couple um school initiatives. We we piloted the SOS training last week. Um Kelly, myself and Cody piloted. So, it's signs of suicide. It's it's normalizing and and um training students and staff to really talk about [clears throat] and kind of identify signs and what they can do when they see a peer that is experiencing thoughts of suicide which we know is prevalent. Um and and so that was a great um great opportunity to kind of integrate some of the mental health and well-being messages and um skills into the academic setting as well. Um, the other thing that we are doing is implementing Be Good People into some of our behavioral interventions, too, so that we can provide our educators and also the students with um applicable skills and instruction that can be helpful for balancing mental health and well-being as well as um just daily activity um or daily activities and academics. So um it's been fun to be able to kind of weave in my previous training on in an individual and even group level to a school level and um I appreciate the the ability to team with all the teachers and the staff and Kelly to create a better learning community. That's already great. So just I'm happy to be here. Thank you. Then finally to wrap our presentation up, we um every 3 years we get together as a staff and we take a look at our um our mission, our vision, why do we do what we do? And so we did come up with a new mission statement and then our um along with our learning learning goals. So I'm going to give that to you so you can take a look at it. Pass them out. Advertise our school so people come and um experience the great environment that we have. So it's our learning statement on the back and then our mission and vision on the on the front part of the brochure there. So any questions from the board or anyone for us [clears throat] at the community school? Tessa, sure. >> Okay. Um, this therapeutic education program, is that from K through 12, too, or is that 9 through 12? >> 9 through 12. >> Okay, that's what I thought. >> Grades 9 through 12 and we partner with Canvas [clears throat] Health for that program. Okay. Um And there's a cap of seven students in that program. >> How How's the I remember when I first started here you I think that had kind of just started or recently it started and are you able to grow the number that you the capacity you have for number of students in that yet or So right now it's similar to a hospital type program, hospitalization type program, and the cap is seven students. So get better results when it's a smaller number and the meal milieu grows together. Um we've had a total of 13 kids in that program. They've either either graduated from the program or didn't need the program anymore or insurance didn't cover any longer. Um so there's been 13 kids who have been in the program so far. Great. Okay. Yeah, I think that was my only question. >> And that's located at the community school. >> Right. Okay. So so the seven that are in available to be in the program, uh does the program meet every day? The program meets every day. Same school hours as ours. So they're 7:45 to 2:15. So would it be possible if there was another person to have another group? Would be would be able to have two groups? We're hopeful at some point um to open up a middle level program as well. Um but we need to make sure that this one is a well-oiled machine. So it take takes a couple of years um when you establish a program to make sure that all the components are functioning well. Um so we are if I'm answering your question correctly um we're hopeful to have a middle level program as well. So with additional staff we can have We could have two. >> Correct. Tessa. Thank you. So we were really excited when the therapeutic education program kind of started. I mean, it's an exciting thing to know that they're not being put on buses and hauled around for their therapy and then brought back to school. Just eliminating all those transitions that are really difficult. Are you finding that there is that door where they can go back to the regular classroom? It sounds like there is when you say there's 13 but there's seven. So it sounds like some are able to integrate back into their regular classrooms. Absolutely, that's the goal. To get them back into the high school or the community school so that they're functioning well and they're making safe decisions and therapeutically they're not needing that intensive of a program. Right. And >> So absolutely. It's so [clears throat] wonderful and remarkable that they're in our district. They're not having to leave and come back. >> Correct. >> And transition to another program and come back. So We have that here in the district now. So you're correct. They don't have to be transported to wherever another program may be. Which is very beneficial for their education. So another question about the SOS um you talked about debuting that. Will that and Mr. Caldwell's back there. Do we have that at the high school? So we are piloting this program this year. >> Okay, it's just new this year. Yep. >> Okay. And we brought it to Dr. Massey's attention and um got approval for that. So the the difference is is we're teaching kids signs of what to look for and so it's more of an educational component than just a depression screening to find out if someone is at risk. So they're taught what to look for if a friend is in crisis. >> Yeah. We're hopeful that you know that we can start rolling it out in the fall. Oh, so in your in the community school. We will roll it out in the fall and also possibly at the high school. We haven't had conversation yet. We have that's a summer conversation. Yeah, so it's really recent. >> vet the program. So >> Sounds good. And is that through the county and county dollars or how is it? Where does that program come from? >> Building budget. Oh. Okay. Very good. Well, one of my favorite graduations every year, I never miss it, is the community school graduation. And we love to have everyone there. It's the greatest day. Just it is the greatest day. There's so much family and joy and tears and hugs. It's just it's just I just love it. I just get goosebumps and tears and all of that. Thank you for joining us every year. We appreciate that. I'll be there this year. Awesome. You're all welcome to come. I just want to say thank you for the great presentation. I mean I'm just so thankful we have these that we have these opportunities for our students. I mean your school is so critical for our district um that we keep kids in the classroom and graduating. I mean it's it's powerful. But yeah, I'd like to kind of as far as the SOS program, too, I mean that's something that I think is really essential right now in the climate today at the growth the problems with suicide rates rising, especially with the younger students. Um I hope that we can get more information on that as time goes on. Just kind of success stories and and as we roll it out, um I'd love to hear more about that. It's super important and very critical for our schools. And I just think yeah, I just everything you talked about was just so inspiring. So thank you. Thank you very much for your support. And we can share that information with the board as well. >> Okay, that would be great. Thank you. >> Oh, that would be great. Yeah, I'm just it's really important. So thank you. Thank you. >> So along with the identification of people that are at risk, is there also the mitigation so that they are no longer at risk? Of course. I don't So personally, I don't like to call kids at risk. I like to call them kids that have different needs. So but are you referring to the SOS program when we identify? Okay. Um >> So that they no longer have these The parents are The parents are contacted immediately. So do you want to explain a little bit about what you went through with the people that are at risk? >> so I like to kind of SOS is kind of a 30,000 foot level kind of exploration with like how to talk about these kind of symptoms and signs. It's not diving super deep in a classroom. It's just kind of a psychoeducational way of here's what to do, here's how to share, how here's how to respond and then how to get help. Um and then the follow-up is um students were able to identify people um really just natural helpers in their community in the school and we ask that they do a screener at the end that's similar to a um call it a PHQ-9 that is similar um the questions are surveying for um symptoms related to mood. Um and then immediately that day that if they are checking anything that is maybe um above cut off um the staff is alerted. We're speaking to them that day and then um if they're meeting risk for >> [clears throat] >> higher need, we're creating a safety plan. We're contacting parents or guardians and ensuring that they're still feeling supportive throughout that process. Um studies show that talking about suicide does not increase suicide. Um it actually lowers it. And so what I tell my students is anything mentionable is manageable. It's from Audrey's. Um and so when I share with them those, you know, that if they're having these feelings, they're feelings, they're scary. I'm not scared of them as a staff member who's been trained in that. And that often times can just lower some of that pressure. What I consider them at risk maybe in that moment and then we continue to follow up to ensure that there's appropriate um appropriate resources out there um if needed. So, other than the talking about it to lower the anxiety, the the hard help or the help that really will mitigate them from having these thoughts is external to the program. Other than just talking about it and bringing it out in the open. And that is also I mean that is the first line intervention. Um and so I don't as a I wear two hats with my certification, but those kind of like further mental health diagnostic evaluations are not done within the nursing setting. Um we can we can still continue to give individual support within the school ensuring that, you know, it's it's meeting the needs of the academic and their emotional support um and then providing the student and the families with additional resources and additional assistance. Okay. Member Christiansen. Or internal if it's >> [clears throat] >> Number Christiansen. I just want to mention that I think it's really wonderful that you said that you want to give people confidence in math cuz that sure was not me in high school, but I love your enthusiasm and I love that you're finding um something that the kids would be excited to do and to share with adults in their lives and um if it's appropriate, I would love to maybe you could share that video with us with the kids if if it's appropriate, but I I just And both of you all well all three of you, I can hear the passion in your voice and I can just hear and tell that you love what you're doing and that's really wonderful that our students have that. So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Member Christiansen. Thank you. And and really quick here, I wanted to I wanted to keep talking about the math piece too. I was sitting here trying to calculate the standard deviation in my head and figure out how many It looked like about two deviations off of standard on that one. Um so I was really excited to see that you're connecting the students to the data and actually showing them that this is a normal distribution. This is how we deviate from that and I think that's powerful cuz just statistics are so much fun They are. when you understand how they work and and and you can connect it to real life. But you understand why math teachers don't like to teach statistics. I can't. You don't get that. Well, no. No, it yeah it it makes math makes math fuzzy and we don't like fuzzy in math. We like definitive. And she complains it's great. Yeah. And then the other question I had really quick before you guys left it Did you mention this is a new mission statement? Mhm. Would Would I be putting you on the spot if I asked you to read it out loud cuz I think it's really powerful. Yeah, I can do that. It's really good. Yeah, it's it's exceptional and I want you to get credit for this here. It's not me, it's the team. So we met as a school community um for a couple of months. So our mission is to cultivate an environment where challenge meets compassion and high expectations are paired with individualized support. We achieve this by blending structure with flexibility and high quality instruction with emotional support ensuring our students have the necessary tools to thrive. Thank you for that. I think that's a great reminder of why we're all here tonight and and thank you for coming in and the presentation was wonderful. Thank you. >> Thank you very much for your support. Thanks for coming. Here's some extras if you go to waste or anything. Well, I had one more question for Emily. How did So how did you come back to Minnesota from Alaska? That was my question. >> [laughter] >> Oh my god, how did that all happen? I'm glad you're back by the way. COVID happened. I had to It's in Alaska and Alaska is really far away from Minnesota. Okay. With family, so. That was my question. Yep. Thank you. All right, we will move to positive happenings. Does anybody have anything to start off positive happenings? Member Christiansen. I have a few things. Um I went to the Frozen Junior play and it was the middle school play and I have to admit I was like, you know, middle school play. It was not a middle school play. They were so good. They were I mean really and truly it was super exciting and I would just want to give a little shout-out to the director um Amanda Witzman. I'm sorry if I say that wrong and musical director Jennifer Witzman, I assume. Obviously they're related. I don't know how they're related, but it was wonderful and the costumes were great and the scene changes. I mean it really it really was spectacular. And they also did a lot of fundraising out in the lobby and I'll get this wrong, but I feel like they raised like maybe $2,000 or something along that that will go right back to the middle school play in next year and someone can correct me on that, but it it was really um fantastic. Um I went to the Lakes Expo on March 31st. Um Member Corcoran was there, so that was fun. Um I went to the middle school showcase on March 22nd. Um Director um Wilson was there too and uh we we watched some things together, but that was really great and well attended um by the parents. They had some food trucks there. Then I went to the Scandia Art and Academic Fair. Always really a wonderful time on March 27th. That was really fun. Uh also stopped by the Lions and the Boy Scout waffle breakfast, which was good. The talked to some boys scouts. Went to the wrestling banquet um which was really wonderful. They did a really great job. A lot of seniors uh coming off that team this year. And then um just one more thing, the student council is uh having a parents night out April 17th 5:00 to 8:00 p.m. at the high school preschool through fifth grade. So oh Member Tyson has it right there, so. So anyway, I think that's really exciting. Maybe they've done that in the past. I haven't heard about that, but so is there any other I didn't have the flyer. And if you see this, you can sign up on the QR code. And I heard a parent of mine in my neighborhood went I think it is fairly new. Jim would know. But she said her twins didn't want to go home. She's like, "We got to go. It's over now." So it sounds like a lot of fun for the kids that come and just a great event, so. And exposure to our schools for younger kids and families to get inside our schools, so I think that's a great idea. And it's at the field house, which So that's probably part of why they didn't want to go home. Run, run, run. >> That concludes my report, so. Thank you. Anybody else? Oh, Member Antonsen. Yeah, I'll share. I'm Member Castle probably has something to say about this too, but we both attended the FFA banquet the last week. Now I can't even remember times. I I made my oldest son be my my plus one that night and he was reticent at first and then after being there and uh being, you know, a pasta dinner cooked by our own staff, which was delicious and they served Autumnwood milk, which is what I love and um local farmers that have that in Seville, you know, at they sell it at Cub, so. Anyway, they had raffle tickets and my son won a $10 greenhouse card, so I'm super excited to use that at the egg day on the 8th of May. Did I have that right? Yes. You don't have I I'm pretty Yeah. May. Yep, you got it. Yeah, so what else do I want to say about that? Okay, the award ceremony. There were a lot of awards and I can't remember them all, but it's really impressive what these kids the just vast amount of different things they can learn and and win these awards for and at that point I it was getting late and my, you know, my oldest son is a little bit hard to wake up. I'm like, "We should probably go." And he goes, "Let's just wait until this is we'll we'll stay a little longer." And I was like, "Oh, okay." So he really enjoyed it even though, you know, maybe one day he'll join FFA. I don't know. So very impressed with the kids and their friendships, but even more so in that ceremony watching the instructors and the kids give each other their I mean I almost started crying cuz it was so evident how strong those relationships are between the teachers and these kids after they spend all that time together and um so anyway, thank you to Jordan Pollock, Mike Myron, Veronica Ward and and Tazzle and I hope I'm not forgetting any of those teachers cuz they are amazing. Thank you. Member Castle. So there was just a cursory view of the of the lunch room. There was probably about 150 people there. Um they also gave some honorary uh degrees degrees to uh probably a dozen uh folks who have done so much with the program. Um and the the the seniors, you know, relinquished their positions and the juniors uh took their positions and they they had all the it was it was so awesome. Um I recommend for anyone who likes this kind of thing to to go. It was they and like Member Antonsen said, there's such camaraderie in that group all the way between the students and between the staff and between the students and the staff. It's It's awesome. Terrific program. Oh, yeah. Thank you. I was actually very disappointed I couldn't make it. I was traveling for a PhD program I'm pursuing, so I was not able to make it this year, but does anybody else have anything for positive happenings? Member Tyson? I just have one thing. I like to attend the Ranger art show, which is now held out at Hallberg Studio. >> [clears throat] >> And it was Thursday night, the night of our meeting, and that is really a the funnest night to go, and I couldn't make it out there. It starts I think at 5:00. And but anyway, I went the next day and just kind of looked at all of it, but it's just amazing what they can do with mixed media and all the different art, and it's more fun to be there when the students are there and talk to them about their projects, but anyway, I like how Hallberg we have that connection with them to host that. I think the students really enjoy it as well, so that's all I have to add. I got to say one more thing. I'm sorry, but >> [laughter] >> at the middle school showcase that they had last week, so my middle schooler is in band, and he keeps forgetting to bring his instrument home, and the teacher I talked to her, and she said, "Oh, he comes down here and practices several times a week." And I'm like, "Why didn't he tell me that?" Anyway, they, you know, did their little 5-minute show, and it was phenomenal. Like it was a well-trained, well-oiled machine playing music unlike, you know, what I had heard him practicing when he did bring his trombone home in, you know, like September. So, I was super impressed with the progress that they made with these groups in middle school, sixth graders, so kudos to Miss Laqua and Mom, I can't remember his name. Yes, Matheson, yes. Yeah. All right, that's it. Thank you. That's actually a really good reminder. When my kids were in sixth grade, they they practiced maybe once or twice a week because these teachers were traveling, and that was one of the big advantages of moving sixth grade to the middle school was more exposure to those programs. It is amazing to see how fast and how much they progress. Anything else for positive happenings? All right, if not, we'll move to reports. [clears throat] We'll start with workshops and conferences. Does anybody have anything for workshops and conferences? I have a report doesn't really fit in here great, but last October we sent a the board here sent a letter to the state of Minnesota asking the state to comply with the the federal interpretation of Title IX. And uh recently the Department of Justice just filed a lawsuit against the state of Minnesota for non-compliance with Title IX. So, with any luck, we'll have a resolution there at some point. The process of litigation was slow, but uh hopefully we'll see consistency there at some point. We'll move to the City of Forest Lake, uh Member Christiansen, Member Tyson. Can I get one more thing about >> Sure. I mean, I'm just going to throw this in because it'll be really late, but MSBA's um Day at the Capitol was a big success at its new venue, the science the um history museum. The venue was great. You could hear all the legislative panel. It was kind of like a college setting for the seating, so everybody could see and hear. Lots of room when people showed up to talk and visit, get their coffee, and just a lot of um networking going on that day. People do really enjoy having their visits set up for them. Makes it easy. They get bused over. Um so, it was just a really fabulous time to see people. Um I met my friend Laura Palmer from Columbia Heights board that I've known for many years. She introduced me to Zena Stenvig, um the superintendent for Columbia Heights, who went through all of that with the little boy with the blue bunny hat, and just told her how much I admired her strength and tenacity through all of that. So, that was exciting for me to meet her. Um but lots of um good Q&A with the legislative panel. Um I won't go into a lot of detail cuz then I'll talk for a long time, so >> [laughter] >> that concludes my report. Thank Thank you, Member Tyson. That was actually, I think, next on the agenda here, but uh um City of Forest Lake, uh Member Christiansen, Member Tyson. Um I was just able to watch part of the meeting online, um so I don't have a full report, but on March 23rd, um there was a recognition and a a presentation given to Chief Peterson recognizing his 25 years serving Forest Lake. Um and so that was that was uh really good with the family and everything. Later, Karen Housley was able to uh Senator Housley was able to attend and um present him with uh uh a plaque. And uh I thought it was interesting they were talking about it is such a tradition in Forest Lake of chiefs from Forest Lake. I guess I didn't realize that. Um the new chief, Chief Hanegraaf is is from Forest Lake, and the chief before Chief Peterson, and the chief before that chief were all of Forest Lake folks, so I thought that was pretty cool. Um and that's I mean that's about it. They did announce uh the superintendent search focus group, so that was really good. They announced that um and gave the date and time for people to attend, so that was good. That concludes my report. All right, thank you. I just have one thing to add. They had a workshop um with a design presentation for the new public works building, and it was held by Wold Architects and Kraus-Anderson Companies. So, they had a facility's assessment, which we know we've had in the past, and they've come up with 4.3 in deferred maintenance, 4.3 million. So, there's there's a lot to be considered, and I just encourage people from the City of Forest Lake to go, and they can click on the agenda and view all the slides that are on there. And that concludes my report. >> So, on that point, Member Tyson, and I hope I'm not putting you on the spot, have they made a decision on how to move forward with that, or is that still in the planning phases, like Still in the planning phases. Through that assessment, the old shop has been deemed in critical condition, and then the old fire hall, which they're still using, is in poor condition, so just big decisions to make around where they will start going after how they can get that done, so. I got a quick question. Yeah, absolutely. They were mentioning that there's a bill uh at the legis Minnesota legislature, I think it was bill 4352. It was approved unanimously, uh and that is a bill to just move forward the possibility, and I the possibility that Forest Lake could go out for um a vote for a sales tax to help finance um the building. So, that is moving slowly uh through the legislature, and after if it were to be approved going forward, the steps that it had to do, there would have to be a local vote um on the ballot, which I think would be this November. When would it be? Um I think. And uh so, anyway, that's kind of how they're looking at um being able to finance this um new building. And I've just heard that that is like a 3-year process. Did you hear that, Member Christiansen? >> Well, I think it can I think we the city would have to vote that that we would accept or that we would Okay. be for a sales tax, and then it would, you know, work its way through and build, you know, the building. And I mean, it's still a ways off, and they were clear to say this is just really in its initial stages, but that's the way to That's the way they're looking at financing it, and you can't just do that. You have to, you know, the voters have to vote on it, and it has to go through the legislature, through the proper channels. They're I know that's what they're working on. All right, thank you both for that follow-up, and we'll we'll follow Mr. Hickman and his pub his publication to get more details on that as it moves forward. That will bring us to community education. That's uh Member Christiansen, Member Porter. There was not a March meeting due to spring break, so the next meeting is in April. So, no report there. Okay, very simple there. Um Member Tyson, did you have anything additional for MSBA? That was it. Okay. I went out of order, sorry. >> No, that's quite all right. Um we can be flexible, right? Um and that brings us to the superintendent report, Mr. Mason. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm glad I'm not following positive happenings cuz I'm going to give you a testing update. Uh we are entering the testing season across the district. Um MCA reading, grades 3 through 8 and 10. >> [clears throat] >> They will be testing on the new MCA 4, which is testing on the new ELA standards. We won't get those results until spring um as they're setting the the metrics for the test um scoring format, so that will come later, not in the spring, but in the fall, excuse me. Uh to students in grades 3 through 8 and 11 will be testing on the math 4, and then the science MCA, grades 5, 8, and 11. Those are all happening here this spring. We also have AP exams starting um Have we had one yet? No, they're not for a couple weeks. Couple of weeks out, and so our students who have taken AP classes will be testing on the AP exams. I must say that kids taking AP courses deserve a ton of credit. They're taking extraordinarily rigorous courses and preparing for exams, and they just deserve a lot of credit for stepping up and taking challenging courses. Additionally, uh we'll have kids will be taking on Saturdays now through the summer uh the ACT exam. We did have the ACT exam on March 24th at the high school. And then, of course, we'll be doing uh end-of-year FAST testing across um all of our grades as we wrap up the school year. I'd like to point out some up- upcoming spring dates and events. These are in my weekend update, but I want to get those in front of you again and get those out there for the public as well. Uh we have the Bethel concert on April 24th at 7:30 p.m. at Bethel University. Tickets will be forthcoming for the board for that. Um as member Antonson mentioned, the FFA open house May 8th during the school day along with the greenhouse uh flower [clears throat] sale at the same time. Prom, uh May 9th. We'll have the Hall of Fame induction on Tuesday, May 13th. District retirement celebration 4:00 p.m. in the high school media center on May 20th. May 28th, high school Pops concert. June 1st, 7:00 p.m., high school academic awards. And then later that same week on Thursday, high school graduation 7:00 p.m. Weather permitting, we're outside in the stadium. So, a very busy season ahead of us as we enter spring, but a lot of exciting celebratory events taking place. So, please mark your calendar. And I know it will be busy, but your presence at those will be greatly appreciated. That concludes my report. >> Thank you, Dr. Maske. Uh bringing bringing us to the consent agenda, items 7.1 through 7.4. Does any board member have any item they would like to pull from consent? All right. Seeing none, I'd entertain a motion to approve. So moved. Second. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed? Okay, that motion carries. Brings us to action item 8.1, donations, member Kastner. Pardon me. [clears throat] So, we have a long list a long list today. >> [snorts] >> So, >> [clears throat] >> $15,000 from Halberg Family Foundation for the FLA Forest Lake hockey program. >> [clears throat] >> $8,650.48 from Forest Lake Girls Hockey Booster Club to the [clears throat] FLA Girls Hockey '25-'26 booster paid coaches. $6,282.21 uh from the FLDT Booster Club for FLA Dance Team '25-'26 booster paid coaches. $800 from First State Bank of Wyoming employee giving account to the FLA District Families in Need. $500 from Professional Disc Golf Association to the [clears throat] FLASCE Forest Lake Disc Golf Club. $500 from Polaris Foundation for the FLA Ski Ranger [clears throat] Space Camp. $500 from Forest Lake Lions Club to the Ranger Space Camp. >> [clears throat] >> $250 from Emily Bronson for the FLA Outdoor Recreation Project. $250 from Wendy Freericks to the same Outdoor Recreation Project. $120 from Papa John's June Christopherson to the FLA District Family in Need gift cards. $100 from American Hugo Hugo American Legion Post 620 to the FLA FFA Chapter student org account. $50 from Costco to the [clears throat] FLA FLA uh Ranger Space Camp gift card. $30 from Amber Casprows Casprowix uh par- pardon me if I say your name wrong. Uh to the Linwood Lakes Elementary general use. Uh $25 from John and Donna Mathias to the Ranger Space Camp. >> [clears throat] >> A totaling $33,057.69 for these donations. Now, there's even a longer list to donated to the John Lattigar Memorial Fund that uh to support the FLA Ranger Football and Track Stadium. Uh the all the following are to that uh donation. $500 from the Mona girls Judy, Shelly, and Barb. $200 from Chris and Lee Burkholds. $150 from Tom and Kim Kolberg. $100 from Jeff and Susan Yuritz. $100 from Bill and Lydia Falk. $100 from Philip and Kimberly Boufray. Friend. $100 from Ted and Trisha Peterson. $100 from Linda Horopatt Holly. $100 [clears throat] from Paul and Susan Bealfus. $100 from Thomas and Diane Hipkins. $75 from Richard Jacobs. $50 from Richard Moskop. $50 from SJ and KM Berg. $50 from Linda Madson and Tim Klinghammer Klinkhammer. $50 from Ronald and Ann Peterson. $50 from Carrie and Renee Kellerhuis. $50 from JE and KJ Friend. $50 from Shannon Keyser and Laura Keyser. $50 from Harris and Connie Laurent. $30 from Ron and Kim Lang. Lange. $25 from John and Rosie Quayle. $25 from Dorothy, Sunny, and Bill McElrath. $25 from Tom and Paulette Miller. $25 from Charles and Diane Anderson. $25 from Ronald and Cynthia Piersdorf. $25 from Ann S. Astrop Astrope Easter. And Laura Wild. Wildey. Uh $25 from Charles and Valerie Gunderson. And $25 from Roger Cheyenne. Uh to the mor- memorial fund totaling $2,255. And a grand total of $35,000 $312.69. And I I I'd like to accept the donations. Um I accept the move to accept the don- don- donations with gratitude. We have a motion. Second. We have a second. Is there any discussion? Well, that's so generous. I'm [clears throat] so humbled by that. The generosity here and it just keeps going and giving and we are so fortunate and blessed. Um the FLA Forest Lake hockey program, that is extremely generous. The Halberg Foundation is just been supporting our district since I can way back when, forever and ever, and we're just so blessed to have them as well. Yeah, it's humbling month after month after month, isn't it? Yeah, we're so thankful for that. All right. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed? Okay, that motion carries. That brings us to FLA staff retirement notices, member Kastner. All right. Back on the Forest Lake Area >> [clears throat] >> school staff have submitted their intent to retire. Uh Halid Kasovic, custodian at Forest Lake Elementary School, effective 5/30/2026 following 3 years of service. Lisa Bad Voice, AD SIS teacher at Columbia Elementary School, effective 6/5/2026 following 9 years of service. Administration recommends the approval of the staff retirements. I move to approve. Second. We have a motion and a second. Any discussion? [clears throat] All right. Seeing none, all those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed? Motion carries. That brings us to the 2026-2027 budget adjustment and right-sizing, Dr. Maske. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Um the I'm going to walk the board through a several slides that detail our administrative work preparing for the ultimate presentation in May and June approving the '26-'27 school district budget. Part of that process is analyzing the need for adjusting expenditures [snorts] heading into the new school year. We look at enrollment. Uh we look at staffing needs, and our administration begins that work early in January and continue all the way up to earlier this week as we prepared this presentation for you tonight. And through that effort, we identify the need to I think the most appropriate term is right-size the district operations. So, let me explain what that means and and why there's the need for a right-size. And then this is nothing new for our district. We get to this point in the school year and we due to enrollment and other factors need to adjust expenditures as we move into the next school year. Um the context that drives this are really three key areas. >> [clears throat] >> We have a a declining enrollment environment. The good news is we aren't losing enrollment at the rate that we have been in the past. In fact, the last couple years enrollment has been steady. In spite of and in in the midst of declining birth rates, we are actually stabilizing in terms of our enrollment and not seeing the enrollment loss that we have um the previous 10 years. However, we still need to anticipate the loss of 75 students just to be conservative in our budgeting um preparing for the potential that we will lose a handful of students. So, we this budget assumes the loss of 75 students. Uh we know that we have increased expenses from 1 year to the next. Uh you in the previous month approved the teacher settlement agreement and embedded in that are increases approaching and just exceeding 3% each year. Um and then we also look at the increase in our core funding component and that's per pupil funding. The good news is per pupil funding is now tied through the 2023 legislature to the consumer price index. And and through that connection and tied to the CPI index, we we get our per pupil funding increase in February. Previously, we wouldn't get our per pupil funding increase until the legislature adjourned in May or June in a good year. So, having this number early on is good news. Next year's increase on the per pupil funding formula will be 2.69%. That is greater than we have received in other years. So, that's good news. However, it's important to understand that that increase is on 60% of our revenue. So, there's a whole 'nother side of our revenue, special education, federal funding, uh local property taxes that has not seen a 2.69% increase. So, on 60% of our budget, per pupil funding, we will see a 2.69% increase, but we won't see that increase on the other funding components that make up 40% of our budget. With that imbalance and increase across our revenue and expenses exceeding 2.69% across the whole budget, we need to make a right-sizing adjustment and that right-sizing uh figure is at the tune of $1.5 million. So, how do we get there? >> [clears throat] >> Um Pre- uh last year we were awarded the ESSER grant at the level of $1.4 million. That grant has put in um a number of academic support personnel in our elementary schools and allowed us to convert our academic support specialists to be funded under this grant. So, they're working under the services related to this grant. That funding uh work frees up $750,000 of revenue to the district through that grant, increasing services and providing revenues to the uh to our general fund. So, we're going to apply $750,000 from the ESSER ESSER grant to offset the $1.5 million right-sizing adjustment. Special education fund funding formula also provides an additional revenue stream for us next year at the level of $250,000. So, with the ESSER grant and the special education revenues, that we we now make up uh 1 million of the 1 and 1/2 million dollar right-sizing piece and then we add interest earned in interest income from the long-term facility maintenance revenue that we're holding for another year before that gets returned to the state. That generates another 100 uh $100,000. So, we are now at 1.1 million and the remaining 1.5 is met through staffing reductions. And I'll walk you through those staffing reductions in the next action item. Uh we'll approve those staffing reductions, but we are recommending a reduction of six teaching positions to uh get ourselves to that one 1 and 1/2 million dollar right-sizing uh level that we need to be at as we prepare the budget for next year. The good news is the if you recall when we began the work around Reimagined 2025, that was driven by the reality that in a declining enrollment environment, we can't continue to cut our way forward and reduce [snorts] staff. We are going we we really have been at the at a level where there just aren't places to cut without dramatic increases to class sizes. So, through long conversations with the board and administrative team and then the community, the board directed us to look at the elimination or the reduction of one elementary school. So, through Reimagined 2025 as you know, we reduced one elementary school and we moved sixth grade to the middle school freeing up room for boundary readjustments across our elementary schools. The driving factor and driving force or need for the rebudgeting was to create more efficiencies in our elementary schools. I'm happy to share that the rebudgeting work that we did, the painstaking work with community involvement, provided a uh an adjustment of where elementary kids attend elementary school resulting in a much better balance of enrollment across our elementary schools. Better enrollment across our elementary schools then leads to better balance across each grade level in those schools and gives us the opportunity to staff in a more efficient manner. I'm going to now walk you through how we plan to staff the elementary schools, middle school, and high school with this adjustment keeping in mind the boundary changes that we put into effect. And you'll see that we are staffing our elementary schools at roughly the same class size with six less elementary teachers um because of the efficiencies that we gained through boundary adjustments and the closing of an elementary school. So, let's begin with uh the big picture and that's looking at the our current year 25-26. You'll see kindergarten through fifth grade across the district and our average class size from kindergarten through fifth grade. Then we move to the right and you see what we are projecting with current enrollment rolled up into kindergartens kindergartners rolled up to first grade, first grade to second grade, and so on. Uh what class sizes look like based on the staffing that we have allocated to each of those grade levels uh currently. So, you'll notice that kindergarten is looking really low in the enrollment at kindergarten. That's pretty typical this time of year. We will gain kindergarten enrollment between now and frankly the first day of school. We currently have 355 kindergartners. We need 350 55 60 kindergartners next year because that sets grade level enrollment for the next 13 years. And if we're down 100 kids in grade in kindergarten next year, that'll be the equivalent of 1,200 kids over the next 12-13 years. So, we're optimistic that we'll get that. We're not overly alarmed at that low number. That's pretty typical this time of year. So, [clears throat] if you look at excuse me, the class size from one from this year to next year, you can see the relative equivalency between class size this year and class size projected for next year. The far right column will show the the the low average and the high average across the metro and you can see that we are projecting class size enrollment uh well within and even on the lower range of the metro average. So, with that in mind, let's take a look at each of our grade levels, K-5, um across our um different elementary schools. Columbus and I won't I won't go through all of this detailed at each slide, but just to walk you through what's presented here. Columbus currently has 34 registered kindergartners. That number will go up. In fact, it went up one of the schools went up to kindergarteners just today. I think it was Linwood. We're getting we're getting kindergarteners almost every day. That's good news. So, 34 with two teachers results in currently 17 kids on average. Uh Forest View regular, we shouldn't be overly alarmed with kindergarten being lowered Forest View and putting two teachers there. That number will go up. In fact, there are kindergarteners who will be in those classrooms next year that don't even live in our community yet. It's a very mobile it's a much more mobile population. Linwood Lakes, and then we have the immersion Forest View immersion. Linwood Lakes 35 kindergarteners, two sections. Linwood 34, Scandia, and we we know this from our boundary work that Scandia we we rolled a lot quite a bit more enrollment over to Scandia. You can see that with 47 uh kindergarteners. We are watching that number. That's a large number. Yep, and we're watching that. We have elected not to put a teacher there yet. If that if we lose two or three kids, that number works. If we gain another two student or two or three, then we're going to we're going to need a teacher there. So, we're watching that. >> [clears throat] >> Wyoming 57, three teachers, 19. It's on the low end. There's room for that grade to grow as well. Let's jump to first grade. Again, currently rolled up kindergarteners into first grade, you can see the number of students enrolled in first grade projected for next year at 361, 16 teachers for an average class size of 22.56. And uh It's another big number in Scandia first grade, too. Correct, and that's another number we're watching there as well. Yep. It is good to see population in Scandia They're having [clears throat] big numbers. It's kind of refreshing, isn't it? It's exciting. It's exciting. It's not that they they put in a big housing development or moving development from Yeah, that's right. But it's exciting. Yeah, it's it's a viable school now because of the work that we did. Um second grade 329 students enrolled today. That number will adjust up and down between now and the start of next year. 15 teachers, 21 almost 22 students on average. Third grade 388 21 and 1/2 students on average. Fourth grade Our parameter in fourth grade is 32 or less. Our parameter in in one grades one and two one, two, and three are 25 or less. So, we're we're within those parameters that we set for ourselves, although we have a couple of higher ones. Uh for an average in fourth grade of 27.38 fifth grade 431, it's a big class, 18 teachers, 23.94 on average. We will pay attention to these numbers all the way till the end of the year. There'll be attention paid to these class sizes throughout the summer. And we we actually have staffed these classrooms with an additional kindergarten section not yet placed knowing that kindergarten numbers are going to go up. If enrollment continues to go up and a headline in the Forest Lake Times today, if you saw it, was that the upper school at North Lakes Academy is being rolled into their elementary building. And we would expect and we would welcome enrollment from North Lakes Academy. Uh I am super proud of what we can provide for our students in our middle school and high school, and we'll serve those students well if they choose to come over to Forest Lake Area schools where we have robust options from career tech ed, we talked about the ag program tonight, our music program, and the list goes on that we can offer those kids. So, if enrollment grows through families coming back from home school, charter schools, housing developments, it provides more opportunity to address class sizes because of the additional enrollment. Question on the elementaries before I move to the middle school and high school. I I had a question about immersion. How how is that been going as far as like the current students? Are they staying in it? I know they have choices to stay at their home school and not come to the immersion program. I just was wondering how that was panning out. Yeah. Um >> a little low in some areas, so >> Yeah, we just wasn't sure. We have captured about 50% of the Linwood kids into immersion at Forest View. Okay, good. And we've retained most of the kids attending Forest View. Okay. That's consistent with the early survey that we put out to families asking with immersion moving to Forest View, are you likely to move with the program or stay at a different stay at your home school or Linwood Lakes. And that was about 50/50 at that time, and that's playing out here. That's what it is. Okay, so they're going to stay maybe maybe stay at at Linwood Lakes. Yeah. Okay. Correct. Okay. And you can see the enrollment at each of these grade levels with the third line there, 25 in first grade, 27 in uh Forest View. And across the board, we have one teacher in each of those immersion sections with the exception of fifth grade where we have two. And we had two teachers, one at Linwood Lakes, one at Forest View. So, that's some of the elementary attrition attrition is through the immersion program. Uh we it hopefully that's a baseline and a floor, and the program will now grow from there. Transitions are tough. >> [clears throat] >> Other questions on elementary? Okay, not seeing any. So, middle school, I'm sharing here the uh FTE assigned at sixth grade, seventh grade, and eighth grade for the core disciplines of English language arts, math, science, and social studies. Those uh disciplines at each grade level are staffed with three teachers resulting in very consistent consistent class sizes, 28 almost 29 in sixth grade, 30 30 and 1/2 in seventh grade, and 29 across the board in eighth grade. You'll recall the questions we got when we moved sixth grade to the middle school. Will class size balloon when they get to the middle school? And you can see here that our class size in sixth grade and seventh and eighth is consistent with the upper grade levels at at our elementary schools. Quick transition to the high school. Uh what you'll see is along with the on the left are the core disciplines, English language arts, math, science, and social studies, the individual class requests by students. And English nine A, English nine B are two requests. Uh math algebra algebra two A, two B are two requests. So, total requests on the left the FTE assigned ELA is 11. That creates a class size average of 31. Math nine teachers, average class size 30. Science 29, just under 30. 10 FTE in social studies, 31 is the created built-in average class size. Staffing across the high school now, dropping down to the bottom line. We're now including all classes at the high school, not just the core. This includes world languages, career tech ed, music classes, physical education classes, all classes with 1,800 and Jim probably knows the exact number of students registered, 1,800 1,840 something creates 26,540 individual class requests taking seven classes across the entire school year. With 78 FTE, creates an average high school class size of 29.58. You can travel to other high schools in the metro area, and their class size will be 32, 33, 34. Just to add to that, Dr. Massey, that that would include when we have a like a music class that's got 100 students in it. Right. So, that's going to pull that average class size up. So, really the 29.58 is kind of on the high side for what students are going to experience. Yeah, it does not include students in special education courses. We have we'll have run special students in special education courses at four, five kids. We exclude those just to um protect the average from being inflated or adjusted by by those low low class sizes. It just it just seems that staffing is great at high school. It seems like everything's matching as far as the needs and and the different core core classes. I think if Mr. Caldwell was here, he'd say "It's tight in some areas." >> Um and because if the average is 31 in social studies, Rich Elliott might have 35 in a world history. He might also have 25 in another section. It's just the way the schedule works for kids. They want music here, they want AP calc. The only time they can get world history is third hour and it's 35. So, it just it ebbs and flows that way and there's it's a range. I think that's better than it has been in the past. Don't you think? It's fairly consistent, I think. It seems like the class sizes were kind of big Yeah. 5 10 years ago. When my son was in elementary, I remember it being he was like 34 in sixth grade. Yeah, so >> that. They had no room in those rooms. Yeah, I want to point you to the 2018 operating referendum. You will recall that we made a commitment to lower class size average, especially in grades kindergarten, first grade, and second. Good reminder. We have done that and we have held on to that for each of the eight last eight or nine years. And that has a trickle effect into other grades as well. I just wanted to make a point about the middle school. Um I know we're not discussing this specifically right now, but I would really like to see another counselor at the middle school. Um and I think that would be really important. Adding the sixth grade there, if there's a way we can find that um and work through that. I know that uh that our families would really appreciate that with the addition of the sixth grade there and still just having the three counselors. If we could add another one over there, find a way to do that, I think that'd be really important. And member Christensen, one of the final conversations we had on Tuesday when we met was with a little bit of FTE remaining um and some other adjustments, Principal Miller's looking at ways to address student support needs, one of which could be a counselor or some other piece. So, that is um front and center for the staff there as well. Thank you. And I know when we discussed that as well, it was kind of there isn't a gap at the elementary so much, correct? But there is a little bit more needs at the middle school. Is that correct? >> we added a a principal last year, so or an assistant principal. So, we brought a grade level and the decision with counselor input and admin was to the idea was to bring support at the administrative level to provide administrative support for students, behavior needs, other needs that kids have thereby freeing up time for the counselors. The counselors, in all fairness, would say the demand is pretty significant. Five or four plans, attending IEP meetings, meeting the the needs that kids have and family communications, all those things are are are demanding. So, we're looking at ways in which we can address that. So, thank you for that. Yeah. I have one quick question if you could refresh my memory. Backing up to the first page, um what does it mean? Is it And it was it something that was done at the legislature with the special aid funding formula? It said it was the 250,000 revenue enhancement. Yeah, it it really is the the way in which special education is funded. Mhm. That we made a a transition two years ago in qualifying for a hold harmless provision in special education funding formula. And that generated uh the the year we're in now, two years ago uh about half a million dollars of additional special education revenue in addition to the cross subsidy that you might be referring to. >> That's okay. >> That they closed that gap on. Great. Thank you for that clarification. Is that what we discussed in finance? That director Ruppert I I talked about the special ed difference that she's talking about. Yeah, there there's not to get too much down this But that's what that's part of that, right? The state's also unfortunately looking to pull back on special education funding. Uh the the level set by the legislature is to find 250 million dollars across the state in special education expenditures and the governor's supplemental budget bill increased that number to 300 million. So, we're anticipating reductions in special education funding. What they're earmarking currently is to eliminate the access program cuz that is special education revenues um applied to districts who apply, but it's it's grant money through special education funding to defer kids from entering special education. By meeting early needs and deferring them from um qualifying for special education services and having an IEP. So, if they eliminate that program, it seems counterintuitive, but they're trying to right-size their budgets to Okay, it still sounds That's a good reminder to reach out to your elected officials that would be detrimental to our students. Agreed. Certainly would. So, I would administration would recommend uh that the board adopt our right-sizing proposal of these adjustments. Um the revenues are in embedded in the overall budget that we'll present. The reduction of six FTEs is in um what it would be part of your approval tonight and you'll see that in the staffing recommendation. I move to approve the proposal as presented. Second. All right, we have a motion and a second. Is there any discussion? No, I just I was just going to say I I think this is really great information for us to kind of walk through it all to understand the pieces cuz it is a lot of work that went into this to figure out the best way that didn't impact class sizes and to kind of keep what we promised to our students and our staff. So, yeah, thank you for this. This is well done. Thank you. Really well done. Yeah, I'd like to echo those statements and thank staff for um I mean, obviously to be able to maintain class sizes and I mean, that speaks to a lot. There's a lot of work put into that. We look at the the new boundaries, we looked at closing the school and to maintain those class sizes and still be able to uh the cuts of funding out of that at the same time. So, that's going to be huge for the system and the stability and the growth moving forward. So, yeah, thank you for all that work and I'm sure it wasn't easy. Yeah, the administrative team, uh we've got countless hours into the tedious work of analyzing staffing, evaluating staff, making heart-wrenching decisions on staffing. Um it's it's hard work. It's it's all ties to people and it weighs heavy on on staff going through this work. Efficiencies and optimizations are probably the hardest thing that you can do. It's really easy to make classes small by hiring a whole bunch, but that's not sustainable. So, Exactly. Thank you all. Manage manage our budget. Is there any other discussion on this? All right, member clerk, will you please take the roll call? Sure. Okay, uh member Antonsen votes I. Member Castle? I. Member Christensen? I. Member Corcoran? I. Member Tyson? I. Member Reveline? >> I. The eyes have it. All right, that brings us to 8.4, adopt resolution relating to the termination of non-renewal of probationary teachers. Dr. Massey. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would point you to the list in your uh manila folder tonight. Um teachers new to the school district have a probationary period. At the end or during this probationary period, such a teacher is either offered another teaching contract or not renewed for a successor year. Beginning in January each year, the district and building administration begin staffing meetings where they review and discuss anticipated enrollment, staff who will be going on or returning from leaves of absence, retirements, and resignations, the probationary teachers' performance, class sizes, and the overall budget and funding levels for the next school year. Um so, tonight administration is presenting to you a list of probationary teachers and action on those based on administration's recommendation uh for the non-renewal or of their contracts. Some of these probationary teachers are filling a position where a teacher is due to return from a leave of absence. Others are non-renewed for other reasons, including performance or staffing needs and administration would recommend your approval of the non-renewal of the folks on the list in front of you. Move to approve 8.4. Second. All right, we have a motion and a second. Do we have any discussion? All right, seeing none, member clerk, will you please take the roll call? Okay. >> Member Castle? >> I. Member Reveline? I. Member Corcoran? I. Member Tyson? I. Member Antonsen votes I. Member Christensen? I. The eyes have it. All right, that brings us to 8.5, recommendation to approve Spanish Immersion 6 and Spanish Immersion 7. Director Jacobson. Yeah, well, thank you, Chair Peterson uh Chair Reveline and other members of the board. Uh Dr. Massey, uh thank you for having me back here again tonight. Uh during our last meeting, we talked a bit about two new immersion opportunities that we wanted to create at the middle school. Uh our current immersion programming uh includes uh students at the middle school taking in social studies in Spanish in 6th and in 7th grade and then transitioning to an immersion class in 8th grade. I think Chair Rebuline mentioned earlier some great opportunities that we have now realized after having moved in sit moved 6th grade to the middle school. Uh and one of those we've identified an opportunity to really bolster conversational Spanish in 6th and 7th grade. Uh we have seen um a question was asked around some data, which I think was a very fair question. What have we seen in terms of our uh interest in social studies versus traditional immersion Spanish? The uh students registering asking for a conversational uh everyday immersion Spanish has held pretty strong in the last five or six years. Uh our registrations for social studies taught in Spanish have dropped by more than half. And I think students are seeing that they would really like to learn how to speak Spanish out in the real world uh instead of primarily through a subject area. So, this proposal that you would see here tonight would be to create opportunities similar to immersion 8 in the 7th and 6th grade. Uh these would be semester-long elective uh experiences that students would have and then uh students all students going forward would would learn social studies taught in English. And so, uh the middle school administration has worked in close uh closeness with the uh Spanish department at the middle school uh who very much supports this change. Uh it really leans into feedback that we've heard from families around what they're looking for in their immersion secondary immersion experience. And it leans on the fact that our at the secondary we can offer people who are highly proficient in Spanish but are highly trained by going through Spanish education degrees. And so, uh administration would recommend approval of this particular proposal. All right. Thank you, Director Jacobson. Do we have any questions before we move to motion? Well, I think it's a great move. I mean, uh yeah, for sure. And I'm Thank you for the data. Absolutely. So, I would move to approve. Second. Okay, we have a motion and a second. Is there any discussion? Uh I just want to say I think that it was probably something that we've needed for a while. So, I think it's a great addition to if we continue on that path if we're going to give the immersion as part of our school, we want to make sure that we keep those kids moving forward. So, but thank you. I think it's a great addition. Thanks for the work and your team in getting this getting this done. Absolutely. Okay. All right. Go ahead, Member Castle. >> This brings a a more general Spanish talking with each other as opposed to a specific course. Correct. So, I think it's more well-rounded for learning another language to do that. Yeah. And I think in many ways our um our Spanish educators at the secondary level would agree All right. Member Tyson. So, one quick question. Um so, social studies immersion dropped, right? Significantly, you said? >> Yes. So, has the course that's being offered grown in the 6th grade? Have the numbers grown? >> Uh we only currently offer this course um in grade 8. Okay. >> now we would be offering it in 6th and 7th grade. So, the the students who um who have continued in Spanish immersion into the middle school have really held on to wanting to take this course in 8th grade. Okay. Um when up until recently when we had added 6th grade to the middle school, the immersion the immersion class at the middle school was a semester in 7th and then a semester in 8th. And so, that's how we had that immersion experience bridged across both years. When we moved things some things around on the middle school schedule, now it will going forward it'll be a year-long experience in 8th and the the Spanish department and administration is recommending adding a similar experience in grade 6th and 7th. And then so, do we know numbers, I guess I'm asking? Uh I you know, I don't have how many how many would be I'm predicting based on what they have this year in immersion 8, close to 40. Nice. Well, great. Thank you for your work on that. I think Thank you for that additional explanation, too, because it this is one of the the pieces of feedback that we got as a board when we looked at moving the 6th graders to the middle school was what about those students who would have been in 6th grade immersion. I think this shows that the the district can be nimble and we can react quickly and we can find solutions and um we wish we would have had it in in the program for this year, but uh we corrected that quickly. So, Yeah. Well, assuming this gets approved tonight, Yeah, assuming it's Yeah, thank you for putting the work into this. Yeah, and for just for clarity's sake, this would be part of the program going into next year. Yeah. Thank you. All right. Is there any additional discussion? All right. Seeing none, all those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed? Okay, the motion carries. Thank you. Um that brings us to 8.6, uh approve proposal for employee group life and accidental death and dis- Wait. Uh AD&D. Uh one time Death and dismemberment. Thank you. I was trying to remember what the second D was. Insurance and LTD insurance. Thank you. Mr. Chair, during uh the past year, the district employee benefits committee has been reviewing the district's life and long-term disability LTD group insurance. The district's required by law to go out for proposals on group life insurance and LTD insurance at least every 60 months. The district has requested proposals for group life and um accidental death and dismemberment and group life um long-term disability insurance specifically uh specifications, excuse me, were submitted to eight different carriers, four life carriers and four LTD carriers submitted proposals. The request for proposals uh process resulted in recommending remaining remaining with Madison National Life Insurance Company at the current benefits but with reduced rates for group life and accidental death and dismemberment insurance and LTD insurance. And a tabulation of those proposals is included in your packet. So, the recommended motion for you tonight would be to award LTD to Madison National Life Insurance Company. Uh their combined bid with LTD at premium of 0.29% of covered payroll. On the life and accidental death and dismemberment award, we'd recommend awarding that to Madison National Life Insurance as well. Um combined bid life and accidental death and dismemberment at a premium of 0.12 4 and 0.019 of per $1,000. Um There's no plan design change with either of these proposals, so same level of coverage. Um and the group policies would go into effect October 1st, 2026. With that, administration recommends you approve. Thank you, Dr. [clears throat] Massey. I'd entertain a motion to approve. Move to approve 8.6. Second. Okay, we have a motion and a second. Is there any discussion on this one? Uh Member Castle. So, am I hearing this correctly? They're offering the same coverage at actually a reduced cost. That's what it appears to me. Yes. >> For five years. Yeah, that's great. The the miracles never cease. Well, part of that is their assessment of of risk um across the public sector and across public school entities. Um you know, obviously we're fairly predictable employment group in terms of age and history. Um and so, they've got all that those metrics and data and that feeds into their analysis of rates. Yeah. Excellent. All right. Sounds good to me. All right. Is there any additional discussion? Mm-mm. All right. Seeing none, Member Clerk, will you please take the roll call? All right. Member Castle. Aye. Member Christensen. >> Aye. Member Tyson. Aye. Member Corcoran. Aye. Member Rebuline. Aye. And Member Antonson votes aye. You guys have it. All right. Thank you. Bringing us to 8.7, ratify the 2025 to 2027 Forest Lake Principals Agreement, Dr. Massey. I'm pleased to bring to you tonight a tentative agreement with the our principal group. Uh they are um uh a collective bargaining group um and they this this agreement represents the years starting July 1, 2025. We're currently in the first year of this agreement um through June 30th, 2027. There are aside from updating dates and a couple of language things, there's two updates I would point you to. The first would be on page 21. And that is the um addition of 11th year of experience factor at $5,050. So, that would be added to the steps for experience. Um creating an 11th year and above experience at not accumulative. Those are not accumulative numbers. So, that would move a principal in their 11th or 12th and beyond years from $4,000 to a total of 5,050. That would go into effect on January 1st of this of 2026. So, essentially in year one, it would be half of that rate cuz it's half the year. And then the full rate in the second year. And then on page 20, you'll see the corresponding uh salary increases for year one, which would be um 2025-2026 and 2026-2027 across our different principal levels, elementary, middle school, APs, middle school principal, high school principal, community school principal, uh and middle school and high school principals. The Those increases along with the addition of the five principals who qualify for the 11th step are within the parameters that the board provided for administration to work with. And with that, administration would recommend your approval. All right, thank you, Dr. Massey. Do we entertain a motion to approve? So moved. Second. We have a motion and a second. Is there any discussion on this? Just have a quick question on page 20 under five, could you refresh my memory around those stipends that we're looking at? Or did you already mention this? Are you on page 21? >> 21. I think they're on page 20 under five. Oh, I see. You're Okay, you're talking about section five stipends. >> and it talks about all the buildings they're assigned to and Yep, so that that goes back decades. And those rates go back probably 15 years. >> Okay. And that is um in in lieu of principals vouchering for in-district travel. Okay. From Scandia to the district office. Scandia to the Ed Center where we have Ed costs. Okay, so it's travel. >> what it's in-district travel. >> In-district travel, okay. And those rates were indexed at a 3% increase annually. Okay. >> So, those rates over the last 15 years, give or take, have been adjusted at a 3% level. So, I don't know exactly what those levels are. It depends upon when a principal came into those rates. Thank you for that clarification. But under five, it doesn't say travel in there, so. No, it's a general stipend for expenses. Gotcha. Okay. Broadly defined, which would include the in-district travel. So, we we wouldn't accept a mileage voucher for principal traveling within the district. >> Right. And what else would it be then if it isn't for travel? Um I Yeah. Yeah, I would say, you know, if they're if they're purchasing literature, if they're purchasing professional books. >> Okay. Um So, just a general >> General. Yeah. Gotcha. Thank you for refreshing my memory. Member Corcoran. I was just going to say you said that there's five that are over the 11th year in this burgeoning group? >> You're going to ask me to remember which ones are. >> No, no, I was just going to say you mentioned five, right? >> there's five. Mr. Caldwell, four? Four. Okay. Well, that's I was just going to say that's a long time. So, we're very blessed and honored that they're still with our district after that long. It's really the experience and all the energy and all the passion that's gone in all those all those years to stay with our district. That's impressive. So, thank you for that. That's great news. Yeah. If there aren't other comments, I want to make this comment that and you've heard me say this before that great schools require great principals. They do. You're going to have pockets of great things taking place. You have you know, great teachers who will do great work. But you're not going to have a system that drives that level of performance across the system without a highly skilled principal. That's true. These folks are extremely valuable to the learning work taking place in our schools. We work hard to keep our focus on instruction, the academic work. Obviously, managing schools is a big part of the job. But being the instructional leader is is a core function of their work. And being skilled at that work is what drives high-quality instruction across our system. So, we're grateful for the talent. Member Corcoran, thank you for that. Um and I'm just grateful for the team that we have. Yeah, and then I would add to that to say that they're well respected, they're well liked by the students, the staff, everybody. And so, they're they're the boss in the room and they do it in a manner that uh gains respect from the students and the staff. And that's commendable. Yes. Another thing is not always a 9:00 to 5:00 job, as we all know. It is It is rarely a 9:00 to >> It is rarely a 9:00 to 5:00 job. >> education Every day is different. Public work is different than private. At 7:45, we have a principal [laughter] here and I know. He's still here. We really lean for him cuz he's at all the events and activities. And all of our principals are like that. They're >> It's very true. Do we do a roll call, Member Chair? Um we will, yeah. I need 27. Okay. >> We will. I believe we have a motion and a second on the table. I'm not keeping track of things, right? Okay, good. Are we Are we ready? All right. Okay, do we have any other discussion? All right, Member Clerk. Member Castle. Aye. Member Antonson votes aye. Member Tyson. Aye. Member Corcoran. Aye. Member Christensen. Aye. >> Member Rebline. Aye. And the ayes have it. Okay, that brings us to 8.8, request permission to bid long-term facilities maintenance work at maintenance building. Dr. Massey. Thank you. To comply with the bid laws and to obtain the best possible pricing, the district is requesting permission to bid LTFM work at the maintenance building. The engineering firm for this work will be I ISG. And because of the small scope of the project, district personnel will serve as a construction manager for the work. In accordance with district long-term facility maintenance plan, the main areas of work on this project would include roofing, sprinkler system, and heating cooling system upgrades. A bid announcement will be published in the Pioneer Press, and the bid opening will take place in early May should you approve tonight. Administration recommends your approval. Do we approve 8.8? Second. All right, thank you. Any discussion? Have we used ISG before? Yeah, they were the main um construction manager for all the secondary projects in the 2015 bond. They've been partners with us along with Kraus-Anderson on either of them on all of our projects. Wasn't that ISC? Nope, ISG. Okay, great. Thank you. All right, any additional discussions? Member Christensen. I just like to say that I'm a new member of the buildings and grounds committee and we met at the maintenance facility, which I'd never been inside of um I don't know a couple of months ago. And it was really impressive all the work that they're doing out of that older building. [clears throat] And I had no idea that that used to be the hockey rink and the scoreboard is still up there. And Mr. McKinnon was pointing out the hockey pucks still or the holes in the ceiling from the hockey pucks. So, I mean the and and um >> [clears throat] >> couple of the folks that were there giving the tour, you know, they really try to reuse products. And the staff really has uh we have some long-term staff over there um in that department and in other departments, too. But they are really you know, they were talking about like the doorknob, they know which doorknob goes where. I mean, it's it's really impressive. So, I feel really confident that >> [clears throat] >> you know, the money will be used really wisely cuz they are they're really doing a great job over there um with [clears throat] with their maintenance and doing what they can with what they have. So, it was impressive. And you let Mr. McKinnon off the hook for putting some of those holes in the ceiling. >> Well, I think he might have mentioned that. >> [laughter] >> So, it's probably a long time coming. Yeah. This this this work is being done. That's what you're saying. So, Member Christensen, was it pretty visible the work that needed to be done in that building then? Uh I well, I won't I'm not an expert, I guess I wouldn't say. But I do know the work that they were doing on the roof that they were going to be doing. I don't have all the terminology right, but yes, I think uh that they need the work needs to be done. I wonder how old that building is. Well, it said in here, what did it say? 1985 So, last remodel was 1985. I remember being there when it was an ice arena. Seems like it's only years ago. And look at the cost the city's looking at spending on their maintenance building. And this is a small price to maintain some really valuable space to us. Yeah. Very good. Memories. All right, any additional discussion? All right, seeing none. Member Clerk. Okay, Member Christensen. Aye. Member Corcoran. Aye. Member Antonson votes aye. Member Tyson. Aye. Member Raveline. >> Aye. Member Castle. Aye. And the ayes have it. All right. Motion carries bringing us to item 9.1, the school board self-evaluation. Member Christiansen. Or member Corcoran, I'm sorry. Close close enough. Um but I yes, I heard back from Gail Gilman from MSBA and I asked her if we could separate the self-evaluation from the rest of the workshop and she got back to me this morning and she said that we certainly can take the um self school board self-evaluation now and participate in the workshop at a later date. One thing I she just wants to talk to me a little bit more about it. Um that we she would do the one-page report. This means I would share the one-page overview report with the board and the full report would be shared during the facilitated workshop. So we can we can break it apart. So we just have to find a timeline that works for us and um after you know, we have important work to do the next few weeks. So but after that um I'm so I'm going to set up a time and I'll talk to her about that. Thank thank you, member Corcoran. Member Antonen. And so like at the later date when she does the workshop with us, we will get the full Okay. >> Yes. >> Yes. Yep, it'd be like a one-page report. I'm not sure that's what I have to talk. Yeah, we get the over full report when we meet as a group as a workshop. So do we just sign an agreement on like we did with this Yeah, I think that's what she's saying is she needs to um I need to talk to we need to talk about that a little bit more. But this just came today. So I haven't had a chance to discuss it with her. Thank you, member Corcoran. Member Tyson. And then member Corcoran, can you read fresh our memories on the costs involved for both of those? We've looked them up a couple of times. I know we have. We did. Oh, here it is. Um I actually have the email. Um let's see. It wasn't that much. Uh the full uh in Okay, it's 1395, I believe. Um for the whole the whole report with her attending in person and facilitating and everything. Yes. Yeah, 1395. Perfect. Thank you for that. >> Mhm. All right. I don't know that official action is required here tonight. I would just ask member Corcoran to to stay in touch with MSBA and bring us a proposal at our next board meeting. Yes. Yep. And we'll just kind of go from there and hopefully get something scheduled shortly. Maybe you can set up a some proposed dates with MSBA as well. I know she said it takes a while. Like we probably get that a self-evaluation a self-evaluation report pretty quickly as far as cuz it's just a questionnaire. But the meeting she said it takes 5 to 6 weeks to like set it up cuz her calendar is very full. So. Yeah, so maybe with the anticipation of a new superintendent we do that part in July or early August. >> Yep. And then we do the self-evaluation as soon as we possibly can. I think it'll help us in the superintendent work that we're doing here. >> Okay. Sounds good. I'll talk to Gail. Yeah. Thank you so much, member Corcoran. I know that's a lot of a lot of work outside the board room. It's okay. It's all right. >> [clears throat] >> All right. If nobody else has any other comments on that topic, we can move to 9.2. Mhm. All right. 9.2 uh school board vacancy. Um I spoke with member Corcoran about this and trying to come up with uh what is our next plan of action. I think uh member Corcoran and I agreed that we'd like to propose to the board that we go out for applications again. Um we give it approximately a month and we would uh re-address the applications at our board meeting on May 7th. So I would propose that uh we ask administration to open the application process um as early as tomorrow or whatever their schedule would allow and have that application run until May 6th and we'll have that discussion on May 7th. Um very open discussion on this. Ideas love to get that work done. Mhm. Open it up for discussion or ideas. I don't know. All right. I I see no additional discussion or proposals. So unless there's an objection, uh do we want to move forward with that? Yep. Yep. I'm good with it. Yep, me too. All right. We will adopt that by unanimous consent. Do you have what you need, Joy? Can I Can I post it in the Pioneer Press again? Um we'll leave that to administration's discretion. If that satisfies the board, of course. Sure. Okay. Yeah, that's that's to your discretion, Joy. Yep. All right. Thank you very much. That actually brings us to um item 10, uh the superintendent search. Um we can move right to that or we can recess for a few minutes. Yeah. Let's Yeah. Okay. Let's let's recess for 5 to 10 minutes and we'll come back when we're we're ready to reconvene. Okay. Okay. With that we are in recess. >> I now call the regular school board meeting for Forest Lake Area Schools Thursday, April 2nd back order member clerk please Stick with the roll call of attendance. >> Sure, member Ann Thompson is here. Member Castle? >> Here. Member Revland? Here. Member Tyson? Here. Member Christensen? Here. And member Corcoran? >> Here. Everybody's here. All right, I would like to immediately move here to item 10.1, superintendent search stakeholder survey results. Welcome Dr. Pittman. Thank you so much, Mr. Chair, Madam Vice Chair, members of the board. Thank you again for coming back. We have so much to celebrate, some of which the board already knows. So this is as much for you as it is for the community. I continue to be impressed with the level of engagement from students, staff, and community members. You knew from a previous communication that this school district has had more engagement than almost any search that we have done in a similar size district. We had over 687 survey results. We had seven different work sessions. Wow. We reached out specifically to a database from all 50 states. And I'll share some of that information with you tonight. So that the information throughout all of those sessions was very clear. There was not a lot of disaggregation or dis- disalignment rather of the feedback. And so I don't think any of you or the community will be surprised at what I share tonight. I also want to commend this particular board for their commitment to transparency and conversation. This board, as much as any board that I've ever seen, has really leaned into not only the community feedback piece and the staff feedback, but also in making sure that people have the information. It's all on the website. You've seen the comments. You've seen everything straightforward. And so I commend you for engaging your community like that and continue to share the story along the way. So that you have a number of things in your packet that I'll just point out and then we'll start going through some of them. Some of them are for this particular section and then some of them will be for our discussion around candidates for consideration. The very first thing that you should see in your packet is a list of the criteria that was used based on the feedback that all of your stakeholders >> Pardon me, did I get one? Oh, it's in the folder, Gail. >> Oh, it's right right next to >> No, this is the folder Joyce provided. Is it the folder between you and member Castle? No, it's not. Let me get you another one. That's fine. Sorry, sorry to interrupt, but I'm like No, I'm glad that you have that. Yeah, no I Yeah, thank you for bringing that Oh, she needed it. Yes, we all we all need it. >> Yes, thank you for that, Gail. Appreciate it. >> Thank you. So the first thing you see is a document that really has the criteria. You've seen this before. It's on your website. But this is as much for you as it is for the public. These are the things that all stakeholders have said have raised to the top in terms of characteristics and what a the new superintendent should have to lead the Forest Lake Area Schools. So again, this information goes to the survey information, the work sessions, the listening sessions, etc. And so again, just want to point out that that's the information that we've used to screen different applicants to bring you a number of candidates tonight for consideration. And so our our team goes through those with an eye to this. These are different in every district and so this really drives the work that we're doing, which comes from the community, which comes from all stakeholders. So appreciate that. The next thing you have in your packet is a document that talks about recruitment data. And what that what that says, and again as much for you as for our community and our internal folks, that there were 1,851 superintendent candidates who were contacted about the Forest Lake Area Schools. About this position. In addition to that when we talked to those 851, when we got feedback from them informally, they really indicated that it was one of the things that stood out about Forest Lake was the district location and the size. They recognized some of the feedback we got from stakeholders in saying it's it's like a little town, but yet we have so many amazing opportunities not only here in the district, but in community. I provided a geographic breakdown and you'll see how many candidates were specifically talked to or communicated with about this particular session. And so you'll see that they cover all 50 states and you'll also see the number of applicants from each state that was moved forward. In addition to that, on the backside where you see 4 through 11 out of out of the 1,851 contacts, 24 of them ended up going through the process and completed the full application, which you have seen and have. The top candidates were screened based on the criteria that we have. And then what happened was through a thorough investigation of each candidate we did that associates through the firm did that. They had one-on-one conversations with every candidate. In addition to that, they reached out to references as well as a significant number of people that were not listed on their references. So you see in there things like state officials, other school administrators that are aware of their work or they possibly have worked at before, people who really knew the strengths, the things that they would be asking more about and their capabilities. And so again, just a really thorough process before we get to the point tonight when we bring you some candidates. We always want to make sure that that's the case. And in addition to that, just know that as part of this process, as I communicated previously, prior to bringing names to you tonight, I was able to connect with all the candidates to say, are you fully committed to Forest Lake? Because our firm and I would never want to bring folks forward and then have them back out later. And unfortunately, we did have one person who stepped away from that and I provided that information earlier to you. That remains private because that person isn't going to be part of this process, is not going to be approved. But I wanted to make sure that you were aware of that. At this time I would love to take any questions or thoughts or feedback about this. And then when complete we can move on to the section where we talk more about the candidates and I give you an opportunity to share and have some conversation. Dr. Pittman, I have one request here. We have this this first sheet recommended consider. This is an aggregation of all the the feedback you received. Would you mind summarizing this and reading out loud? I don't see it published in our board documentation. Are you talking specifically about this >> Speaking specifically about just for those who are watching at home so they can understand what criteria we're looking at based on the feedback we received. >> I'd be happy to do that. And And for those in the that are watching from home, uh this is also available on the website, so folks have access to that along the way. Um the first quality based on the feedback really were characteristics that related to the person absolutely needing excellent interpersonal skills. And so really that broke down to positive image of the district, listening to to input from stakeholders and being able to use all that feedback to ultimately make a decision that is best for Forest Lake Area Schools. The second criteria that was selected was a person who possesses the leadership skills, knowledge, and sensitivity required to respond to opportunities and challenges presented by a diverse student body and community. So it speaks to multiple perspective, multiple um multiple feelings of support or opposition. Someone who's able to do that enough where they want to listen, they take the information, but at the end of the day when they have all that information, the recommendations that they bring forward to the board are what they believe is best. The third person or the third characteristic, I apologize, is the ability to really work with legislators, particularly around certain topics um related to things specific to the district. So things like funding or budget or programming, etc. Really having a person who stays well connected to the legislature, builds those relationships, and is able to advocate for Forest Lake Area Schools. The fourth criteria that was selected was a strong moral compass. And it is important for me to note these were not in uh order of importance or how they came up. These were the These were the characteristics. Um so the fourth one, as I said, someone who has a strong moral compass rooted in justice and equality with the ability to develop and communicate a vision for the future to the board, to the staff, and the community. And so recognizing all of those different things, but at the end of the day they do what is right and that you can count on them to do that. The The second or the next one it refers to just being a really strong communicator, not only in speaking, but in listening and in writing. The themes kept coming up over and over, the need to really engage people, to be provide clarity, to make sure that they're um representing our district well and are able to communicate as situations come up and what needs to happen in the future. And someone who's going to be forward-thinking. The next one that came up was really a commitment to being community-focused and visibility. Someone who's actively engaged. This is one if I were to put them in order would definitely be toward the top. People were really strong to say we really need someone who's going to be present and they're going to be spending lots of time in the district and they're going to be This isn't going to be a a small stop for them or a short stop. We want someone who's going to have deep roots and fully committed to being in the Forest Lake community. Another one that came up was just being strongly committed to being student-centered. So making sure that as they're making decisions, as the they're making recommendations to the board, that students remain the priority in those decision-making. And again, that was consistent with all of the stakeholder feedback. The next one, there's three more, the next one really related to really having a positive and an inclusive uh environment, a safe learning environment, a healthy learning environment, really making sure that continue not only focusing on the academic pieces, but making sure that kids and staff feel safe and that the organization is healthy. The second to last one was really possessing an ability to enhance student performance. So this goes right to academics and also uh in every type of opportunity that's provided. It could be through various clubs, it could be through sports or extra curriculars, just really making sure that we are performing at high levels and what we're doing re is a return of investment that people can see that what we're doing is working and we're making progress toward our goals. Uh the last one and they really talked about promoting a positive and professional environments that really is based on mutual trust and respect. And this was for uh faculty, for staff, for administrators, for the board, for everybody. Um there were feelings throughout that there were certain groups that felt divisive or not trusting or things like that. And so the the All of the stakeholders were really All the stakeholders, excuse me, were really focused on making sure whatever we're doing, we're creating relationships that are built on trust. Um and so that was something. You You will see at the bottom um they did not make the top 10, but there were two that folks felt uh strongly about that just didn't make it in terms of the number of folks supporting, but I thought that we would make sure that we thought about those and we did consider them as ancillary type topics in the criteria. Um one, folks that are committed to both the academic and the extracurricular programs. So not focusing necessarily on one or the other, recognizing that the student experience people want to have in Forest Lake is is more than one of those items. And then the second one that was worthy of noting in terms of the number of people is they the a number of people talked about the importance of having some level of school or classroom type experience. Um so there wasn't a lot of support for folks who didn't have something to do with instruction or had some experience with making what it's like to work in a school and to represent a community in that uh way. All right, thank [clears throat] you for that, Dr. Brittman. I think it's so important that we keep that um in the forefront of our mind as we work through this this evening. Um Member Tyson, did I see you had a a question or comment or Well, I was going to ask one, thank you. So, can you refresh our memories? I'm into that word tonight. We cannot name the applicants, so we go by the number. Absolutely. >> Correct. >> Yep, absolutely. Are we ready to move on to the candidate? Um Yeah, I I believe so. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Thank you, Dr. Brittman. Go ahead. Okay. Um so tonight, as we talk about candidates, there's a few things that are really important to recognize in terms of statute and law so that we remain within that. All of the candidate information that you have, um and and for the public's sake, board members have the information on all candidates who applied and they've had access to that. So they're coming to this meeting very well prepared and and being able to talk about the various candidates. It would be against the law for any board member to name the candidate by name or to provide any specific information that a reasonable person, statute uses the word word reasonable, a reasonable person might be able to identify who they are by talking about it. Oh. That will become public later in the meeting as you identify four to six people to uh move forward. So once the board approves those four to six candidates for the next round, then it is public. And I've had the opportunity to talk with every candidate to make sure they understand that. And so whatever the board decides tonight, they know that that will be public and I will make sure that I provide a draft of a a press release for you to look at and or modify that you can use on your website and send out to to families who want to do that. So as part of the decision, someone will make a motion to accept the the certain candidates without naming them. They'll say candidate one, candidate three, candidate six. Uh a second person will second that. You then will approve that as a board. And then, Mr. Chair, you would be responsible to say, "Here's been the process based on the feedback, based on our discussion, that we have now approved the following four to six candidates to bring forward." Okay. And And just for clarity to the board, Dr. Brittman did provide me with a draft resolution for that. >> Perfect. So I'll make that motion when the time is appropriate uh based on the language that you provided to me. Okay. So in terms of this process, before we get into the actual people, I want to just for sake of clarity and transparency and preparation, would like to just have a little bit conversation so that we're all coming at this with the same uh idea. So after doing many, many searches across the country like this, we've learned a few things uh as we've come into our our board meetings. One of the things that sometimes can get in the way is board members can sometimes have their minds set because they've spent so much time on reading about the candidates, learning about the candidates, reading references, looking at the Spark videos, doing all these things. That's not what tonight is about. Tonight is about identifying four to six candidates that you would like to learn more about. It's not about selecting your superintendent tonight. You will have an opportunity to do that after you go through semifinalist interviews and get to know them a little bit, after you go through finalist interviews. So it'd be similar to saying we wouldn't want it you to make a decision based on the application materials alone. We provide lots of feedback. We would then would want you to consider the letters of reference. Then we You want to look at all the stakeholder stakeholder feedback. Then we want you to look at the spark videos. Then you want to have conversation as a board. Then you want them to go through a semi-finals interview cuz you're going to hear things that sound great or not so great. And then you're going to identify folks for the finalists. So at the really the only time that you're focused on I want that person >> [snorts] >> is after the finalist interviews and you've had all the information going up to that point. And so it's it's really my my continued conversation with all boards that I work with is again just to refocus on be open-minded. You're thinking about which of the candidates best fit the criteria that all the feedback says is really really important. And so I'm happy to do that. I'll also say just for clarity with the board that and I've shared this before and not surprising to this board. All we've done an extensive job of feedback. You've done a great job of seeking that. Stakeholders have an absolute concern that this board will not be able to select a candidate. They're very worried about that and that has come up in a lot of different comments in every session and in every survey. Comments such as I don't think the board will be interested in doing this or I think some members of the board have it already picked out in their mind of how it's going to be. They are urging you every single stakeholder overwhelmingly is saying we need the board to find us a candidate. This is what they're hired to do. We need them to do it and we want to use this to unite the board. Overwhelmingly they were very clear and articulate to say they do not want an they do not want a interim position coming in here. And they're worried again that certain board members may want to do that and aren't coming into this ready to to let the process go. That has not been my experience. You have been amazing to work with. You've had lots of great questions. You've looked at the feedback and in every session and with every stakeholder I've been able to say that's not my experience. They are really doing a great job. They've been amazing to work with. They're looking at all the information. I would be shocked if they weren't able to come together and do this and the board is committed to doing this well and right. So I just want you to know that I have shared that but overwhelmingly stakeholders want you to know that. And so I want you to just go into that with just a clear mind again just being open to that and again I make no judgement. This is just providing clarity to say your community's really saying they really want you to make this make this happen. Any questions or comments so far on the criteria or the process or anything that you're thinking about before we start talking about candidates? No, I just want to say that by having all that information receive the interviews that really did I loved all the different ways to see the candidate. Like even physically see them. I mean it helps me process. So thank you for the many areas of information that we got. I think it was really well done and comprehensive. So I do appreciate that. Yeah, I think it's been extremely valuable and in fact I can I appreciate the the warning you heated us earlier about hey don't don't try to pick your superintendent based on what you know [laughter] but um I think I can speak for a lot of us saying I feel like I know a lot about them so I'm really prepared in going into the selection process this evening and really look forward to getting to know them. Yep, I agree. Yeah, I remember Tyson. Yeah, and I concur that the summaries provided by Raani Associates were so helpful and beneficial but I just want to say one thing before we start that um I'm proud and I'm just humbled that this many high quality um educators would want to come and work in our district. Um the videos and all the information on the candidates was outstanding. So thank you for that and I think that it shows that Forest Lake Area Schools is a good place to work and we're doing good things in our district and we need a leader to keep us going in that direction. So just appreciate how high level all these candidates were. Thank you appreciate it. I too was really excited to see the candidates. They just have a breadth of experience and knowledge. I haven't seen that deep of a bench or that many really solid candidates come forward with such a passion for the district and we spend a lot of time behind the scenes talking about are you sure you're ready? Are you sure you're going to be able to make Are you sure you're going to deliver because this is as much about us that is as about them, right? We want to make sure that whoever you decide is someone who's going to stick around for a while and be fully vested in this in this process. And I told you from the very beginning uh and it wasn't lip service. We have so many amazing things happening in Forest Lake. Whether you talk about the staff, whether you talk about the various offerings and programs, whether you talk about the community support, that doesn't happen with every community and and district that we support. And so it has been humbling and overwhelming to be part of that and thank you for trusting in me and our firm to make sure that we can deliver and provide information for you. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you Dr. Pittman. Let's uh Okay. Let's move on. Okay. So I'm going to give a since since candi- since each of the board members have spent countless hours reviewing information, all the information that they've had, I'll give a quick summary about the candidates. You have a bio in front of you. I listed the names obviously for you just for ease. Once I give a brief summary about them what we will do is I'll go into the rubric and each of you have a document in your packet that has a rubric. Let me You should. On the back. It should look like this. Oh yeah. Yep. Okay. And so don't let this be overwhelming to you. I will help you and get through this. Okay. Yeah, it is. Yeah. So at the end of the day what will happen is each of you will rank every candidate against every candidate. And then you will give me your pages. And then I will tally them up on an electronic sheet and I will say based on your ratings here are the top four to six candidates. And then we will have conversation as a board of what that looks like. And you're going to explain I am. Yep, it's overwhelming so I will be able to help you. In a sense what that process is is what you will be doing essentially is having to make a choice about every candidate. So you'll be saying for example okay candidate one candidate two which of those two do I prefer? Circle that one. Okay. How about candidate one and candidate three? How about candidate one and candidate four? How about candidate one five? How about two and three? Two and four? Two and five? It it appears to be overwhelming. I guarantee you it is not. So it it is not a factor. What that allows you as a group to do and in almost every single situation that we do this with it allows you to see where there's interest at a high level because essentially people are going to have a number to them. So a candidate might have 47 points and be the top rank order and somebody might have four. So we're not going to spend a lot of time on the person with four because you have other candidates that are significantly higher. And so it allows us a starting point as a board to say okay based on this feedback here's what we're thinking of as a board. Um and it allows for some discussion in that regard and that ultimately the board will decide as a team which four to six, how many they want to go forward, etc. And again as I said before then we'll announce the names once the board approves that. And just for clarity Dr. Pittman the aggregated scores that each of us placed for each of the candidate numbers not candidate names but candidate numbers that's public information. That's a good question. It's really not. So it's it's it's a good question so I appreciate it. We we own that from a proprietary standpoint. Okay. So folks won't be able to see that but what I will be able to do is show you without names to say candidate one has this many points, candidate two has this many points. So here are the candidates who are the top four to six based on points. Here are the candidates that don't come close to that four or six. So I'll be able to share that part. What I won't be able to share are names or anything like that. What's also not public is which one of you voted how. Okay so [laughter] so that that's actually very very helpful. So we can we can put down our honest feelings without any any concern for any type of retribution for that. And so it really won't be a it's a good question so thank you for asking. On this particular document I did I put initials of board members so that I know whose turn theirs is in. I see. But for the public they don't have access to that and they don't know that. And so it's not at all about narrative. It's not about concerns or strengths or it's anything. We just know that you've now done all of this this work to say based on all this work you're assigning ranks and numbers and then I'm doing that for the whole board. So you have a starting point to say okay as a board we believe these are the top four to six candidates. And then again as I said just as a reminder this isn't the night to decide like this is the person we want as our superintendent. It really is about we have two more phases before we get there but based on these 10 candidates here's the four we feel strongest about as a board or here's the six we feel strongest about as a board. Okay. All right, thank you. I'll remember Castle. Uh so, you will transpose eight, nine, and 10 to seven, eight, and nine. I will not. The reason I didn't do >> Well, then there's only there's no 10 on this. Yeah. Yes, I will. I understand your question now. Yes. And I'll clarify that when we start to go. One to nine, and then seven is Yeah. You are correct. In your In your bios, we crossed off the number seven in terms of the information in the number itself. We'll We'll go through that and we'll make sure that that's So, when we fill out the rubric, the individual labeled eight is really seven. Yes. >> The individual >> And so, I'll go Yeah. So, I'll go through that as we go. Okay. Great call out there, member Castle. So, once we get into that, we'll make sure everyone has the same numbers and candidates before we start going into the actual exercise. Okay. Okay. Any other questions before I start doing a quick review of the candidates? Looks good. Okay. Here we go. The first candidate, you'll see a number of categories there. This individual has had significant leadership in large systems and longevity. These are things again that tie directly to the criteria. Uh they have proven instructional depth and academic focus. And again, this is something that came through the experience. Not only in a large system, but experience with all things teaching and learning. This particular person has had significant experience working with large groups of staff in both training, facilitating, and orchestrating that work. This person also has state-level influence and advocacy. So, they have experience and are currently involved in state and national-type initiatives on behalf of school districts and superintendents. This person, one of the things that came strongly from all of the folks that we talked with, is this person is a relationship person. This is a people-first person. And as you probably saw from the recordings or the videos, you can you can tell each of the candidates has a very unique style, and I believe that you've been able to see that. In addition to that, uh the work has leaned that they are very student-centered in terms of their decision-making. So, again, as a conclusion, they're they really have large system experience, instructional leadership, and proven relationships that really make them aligned to the criteria. Candidate two. This person also has large system leadership and has a lot of expertise in navigating large systems and fiscal stewardship. So, this particular person, their one of their expertise, for example, is really related to budget and financing. So, if that's something that is really really important, you'll definitely want to learn more about that candidate. Uh they also have some instructional experiences, and they have in-the-trenches experience. So, they've been through a variety of different roles where they've served, and that brings them to their readiness as a superintendent. They also were recommended in references shared how they are a relationship-focused person, and that they really can work hard and navigate ideas around trust. They also have local ties to our community. And they also have experience at the state level, particularly around advocacy, specifically around funding needs. So, this is a person that really has a unique combination both of local as well as budget and operational experiencing in districts similar to our school district here for us Forest Lake Area Schools. The third candidate, you'll see, also has experience in very large systems and proven expertise. Forward-thinking, strong instructional background were things that stood out. And this particular person received extremely high marks from who districts and state officials go to and recognize as experts in the superintendency. So, this is definitely someone that, again, like the other candidates, has a unique talent and experience. This particular person also has very deep local local roots. And so, this individual can't candidate actually graduated from Forest Lake Area Schools and has a home and lives in the Forest Lake Area system. So, again, they're they have an exceptional background, they're relationship-focused, and they're described by many as as being somebody who is forward-thinking and able to move people forward. Candidate four. This particular individual also has extreme longevity in their district, showing commitment and loyalty. They also have had significant experience as a person who has navigated directly a lot of situations that often takes often times take many years for superintendents to experience because of the largeness and size of their district. So, they I I would say there's probably a not a lot of things from a a tragedy or a difficult situation that they haven't been involved with navigating. People talked about this person's tenacity and the ability to get things done. They also talked about the ability to navigate complex change in systems, requiring all of the things that were pointed out by stakeholders in terms of hearing multiple perspectives and making sure they could bring people together and make sure that they could make decisions when they have all that information. And again, they were endorsed by some extremely well-respected educational leaders, including a past national superintendent of the year. That we talked to out of state. Um Candidate five. Candidate five also has a very strong connection to this community. You will see information that they have family within our community. They're extremely focused on relationships and trust-building. This particular individual works with teams, school boards, and districts across the country around innovation, around effective teams, around building systems and structures and teams that are high-functioning and able to move work forward. This is a person who has definite skills around being a strategic planner. Um and is considered to be someone who has been extremely progressive. This person also has experience as a superintendent, but as you will note in that, has not been a superintendent for a certain number of years. And so, they've been in the superintendency, they've spent the last amount of time really guiding superintendents, guiding systems, guiding boards, and and creating healthy, trusted teams. Candidate six. This individual also has longevity in their position. So, they've demonstrated commitment to their school district. They served as a principal in multiple schools at multiple levels. They're a person who's been described as being very visible and community-minded, and someone who relies on relationships to move the work forward. They also have a strong commitment and track record around instruction, wanting to make sure that kids receive the instruction they need to move the work forward academically as well as making sure that folks have the support in terms of staff to be able to do that work well in supporting our students. They are also considered by by references and others to be someone who is collaborative and wants to bring a number of different voices to the table as they work through decisions. Um The next candidate, candidate seven, is a person that who dropped out that we talked about, so we will not spend any time on that particular candidate, and we'll move on to on this sheet what is called candidate eight. Candidate eight is a person that has experience as a superintendent. They've been recognized uh for their excellence in their leadership by the state of Minnesota. They're known for building trust and moving a district from uh having some difficult experiences to bringing folks together and having a more productive and healthy organization. They also have success in larger, complex system and have served as a principal in more than one area uh or level. Um They also have significant data behind them that talks about their ability to improve student achievement and academic results, and that is something again that has come forward in uh from stakeholders as being important. They're also someone who's known for their transparency uh and not being someone who sits at a desk, someone who's out and about in schools and active in the work that's happening. Candidate nine. Candidate nine has proven superintendent experience as well. They have a number of years as a superintendent. Um this particular person also has uh experience in the military and they also have a strong business management background. They've been able to navigate financial difficulties in districts and to bring them to a more sustainable, healthier budget. They're also extreme They're an extreme champion of the trades and career and tech. And there's a number of experience that board members have seen that have um in developing those programs, creating partnerships with the community around those programs, and uh having experienced themselves in being involved in those types of programs. Um, they are also considered to be a transparent leader. Um, and have known have demonstrated success in terms of academic gains uh as they move forward. They're considered by some uh the the references as being really a servant leader. So, someone who really relies on people and is there to support and serve as needed for the good of the organization. And finally, candidate 10. This individual also brings significant experience in the superintendent role. They have experience in two different states as a superintendent and in three different um districts with varying size, various complexity, various uh focus areas. They've also served in a number of roles including teacher, coach, principal, et cetera. And they were described like another candidate we talked about as just having experience in the trenches, knowing what it's like at each level, being able to do that. They have a strong focus on finance and they've navigated significant financial districts that they inherited when they became superintendents in districts and have been able to get them to a healthier place. That required obviously significant amount of community engagement, collaboration with the board, uh ability to make some hard decisions, and to navigate change well for the betterment of the particular school district. They're also considered to be uh a people-first approach. And you'll also see that there were there were significant academic gains in a number of areas in districts that this particular individual has led. When we talked to this person about what interested them in this particular opening, they led with uh the fact that as a family, the community of Forest Lake, not only the school district, appealed to them. They believe that this is a community that they would want to be part of and something that they um were excited to move move into. This is also a person um talked about the importance of servant leadership um and wanted to make sure that they that always remained at their core. And so, that candidate as well, between the experience, the navigation of complex and difficult issues, the desire and connection of why they wanted to serve in Forest Lake, were all reasons amongst the many others that they were selected for that particular position. So, with the board with that in mind, [clears throat] I'm always happy to take questions, but what I would recommend with the information and the work that you've done before, that we now go into the rubric before we have conversations about these applicants and then to have conversation as a board about those particular candidates. With that being said, this is your search. And so, be happy to take any questions or any guidance on how you would like the next part to go. But before we move into the rubric here, I would just like to ask the board if uh we had 24 applicants. We have 10 finalists here, nine that we're considering this evening. Were there any of the remaining 14 that we want to bring forward for discussion or are we happy with with getting started with this list? I just want to make sure we're being thorough and we're not overlooking any individual. I'm happy with the list. >> I'm happy with the list and we have all the additional information. Yeah. Yeah, it was a it was a lot to digest and I I just want to make sure that we're not overlooking anyone. Mhm. Okay. All right. With with that, Dr. Bittner, how would you like to move forward? Okay. So, we're going to do some uh reorganizing because of the candidate who left. So, candidates one through six on the bio and on your candidate matrix will remain exactly the same. The candidate on this particular matrix who is listed as number eight will now become seven. Candidate that's listed on that same sheet as nine will now be candidate eight. Candidate 10 on that sheet will now be candidate nine. Does everyone have that or or do you Are you interested in me going over that again? That is critical because you're ranking people. It is. So, I'll go through that last part one more time. Candidates one through six on that matrix stay exactly the same. The candidate who is listed as candidate eight last name starting with S is now seven. Candidate that was previously number nine, last name also starting with S is now number eight. And the final candidate candidate uh is now that was 10, the only one remaining, is now nine. Are there any questions on that before we go on to our next That appears to be clear. Thank you for that cuz it is critical. It is indeed. So, you have two things in front of you. You have the bios that we went through. And you also have on the other side of this matrix a name for each of those numbers. So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to walk you through the first couple so that until everybody feels comfortable and then I'm going to give you the time to finish them. When you individually are finished with them, you're going to bring your completed sheet to me and I'm going to start entering it into our database. And so, that will then do the math for us and then I'll be able to share with you where the candidates land for more conversation. So, we're not going to select our ice cream? Not yet. >> [laughter] >> I think this is an advanced group, so we may not have to go through the ice cream example. Okay. >> [laughter] >> Okay. So, you've identified who candidate one is. So, just take a look at who that candidate is. Okay. You have a question? So, you're going to fill out this and we're going to do this. >> Correct. So, great clarification. All you're doing is circling a number for each of these. So, don't worry about the back. That's for me and also if you want a cheat sheet to remember who's who the candidates are with what number they are. So, on this side of the sheet where you have the numbers, you are going to look at the row the very first row where it has a one and a two. You have to make a choice. You don't get to opt out. Okay. Even if you don't like either candidate or even if you like one of the candidate, you have to make a choice. You are either going to circle that you prefer candidate one or candidate two. So, you're comparing those two candidates only. And you're going to circle that. So, I'll give you a second to do that. >> [clears throat] >> And just keep going or wait? I see some people looking. So, when everybody's But we're not doing the row, we're doing the first one. >> you all you're doing is you're picking candidate one or two. Got you. And I'll just look for your eyes when you're finished with that and then I'll just go on to the next one. I'll walk you through a couple and then we'll go I'll let you go. Okay. The last one. Okay. So, everybody should have one circle on their page and the circle should be either number one or number two. The next thing you are going to do is go to the numbers right next to that. You're now choosing between candidate one and candidate three. The next column. Yep, so the very next column. So, you're going to be going through candidate one compared to every one of the other candidates. And at the end, I'm going to be able to put a number like how many times was candidate one chosen? How many times was candidate two chosen? So, the next column you are choosing either candidate one or candidate three. And I'll just look for you when to make sure that everybody has one. >> [snorts] >> You're choosing either candidate one or candidate three. Wow, it's challenging. It is. It's Well, it is because you have like a favorite but then you don't. Yeah, absolutely. >> of like This is much harder than it it sounds. More involved than it sounds. >> Yes. It's really difficult if people haven't done their homework, right? Right. >> And so I'm just grateful that's why you've had that been through that and It is an important exercise. Okay, does everyone have two circles on their page? Yeah, I I think most of us have Oh, I did all of once. Okay. I'm not well, I'm not quite done with all of them yet but Oh, no, no. Okay. So, does anyone have questions for me about how they move forward? >> Nope. Just keep going. Okay. Go to town. When you're finished, please bring your information up and I'll enter it into the system. >> [clears throat] >> I'm just first one done. >> [snorts] >> Kind of challenging. It's a good It's a good tool. It is. It's amazing. You don't have a copyright or anything on this. >> [clears throat] >> If you want to work, I doing it for each of these categories. >> [laughter] >> Excuse me. It's something [clears throat] to think of. It's all that would expand the comparison. >> Mhm. Cuz you might a person might be surprised in where they actually stand when you look at them compared to each other's system. >> Yes. I mean, topics. All right. Dr. Bitman, very efficient. >> Thank you so much. You'll be glad to know that everyone followed directions and the math worked perfectly. So, we don't have to go over don't have to go over anybody's sheet. >> Good. Wonderful. Uh so, what I will do is I will provide information about the ranking and how many points they had. Okay. There's a the maximum uh number of points for each of them is 36. Okay. No, excuse me. Uh the total number of points altogether for each sheet is 36. So, the highest person in this particular situation will have 38. Oh. And that is uh according to this group, the number one ranked candidate is candidate seven. Okay. So, I'll let you put that together. Candidate seven has 38 points. Okay. The second highest had 33 points, and that is candidate three. How many points? I'm sorry. 33? 33. Thank you. The third ranked candidate has one less point, so 32. And that is candidate two. The fourth ranked candidate had 30, and that is candidate six. Okay. The next rank, so candidate seven Uh no, excuse me. >> Wait. Six, right? One, two, three. You just You just ended on six. Yeah, we just do the first five. We have four. We have four. Okay. Yep. We have four. So, candidate five. So, candidate the the the candidate who came in fourth place, essentially, with the second highest or the fourth highest amount of points was candidate number six with 30 Yeah. 30? Yeah, yeah, we got that right. The last one. Correct. We have that one. So, the next one is >> [snorts] >> candidate nine with 25. I didn't The next candidate, candidate six, or excuse me, with a ranking of six is I just want to make sure I've seen her. Candidate four with 21 points. Could you repeat that, please? >> Yeah, sure. Candidate four I or sorry, I mean the whole Yeah. Should we wait till he's done? Okay. >> could could I propose we just start with how many points each candidate has starting with the highest Oh, yeah. Sure. That would be easier for me to track. Candidate one has 16. Candidate two has 32. Candidate three has 33. Candidate four has 21. Candidate five has 14. Candidate six has 30. Candidate seven has 38. Candidate eight has seven. And candidate nine has 25. So what I would recommend Does everyone have it? Yep. Okay. So, if you were to take those numbers that means that candidate seven is number I'll just go down from Excuse me, I'll go start down from the very first one, candidate one and just give me the rankings. Yep, yep, yep. Candidate one is ranked seven. Candidate two is ranked third. Candidate three is ranked second. Candidate four is ranked six. Candidate five is ranked nine. Candidate six is ranked four. Candidate seven is ranked one. Candidate eight is ranked eight. And candidate nine is ranked five. >> [clears throat] >> Interesting. So, typically at this stage of the game, I'll open it up for conversation in a second, but typically, as we said at the beginning, we really typically want to identify four to six if we believe they're somewhat close. So, the first four I would recommend the board based on the will of the board, I would say the first four we move forward to the semi-finalist interviews. Then, I would suggest that we look at the rankings for the folks with number five, which is candidate nine and candidate four, which is ranked six. So, those were 25 [cough] points and 21 points respectively. Yeah. Okay. So let's start with the first four candidates before getting into any conversation. The data says that we should select those four for semi-finalist interviews. Is there any conversation about that in terms of do we support as a board moving those first four to the next round? The top four, yeah. Yeah, top four. Candidate three candidate two and candidate six. What was the last one? I'm sorry. Six. Correct. So, I have and in order of candidate, I have candidate two, three, six and seven. So moved. Correct. Okay, so No, we're not we're not voting yet. I think we're just we're deciding is there Correct. Well, help me understand this We're deciding is this appropriate these these four? We definitely want to keep them and move forward. But what six and five have been close? Yes, so I I'm just checking for understanding that I'm doing this hearing the right thing. So, I'm not hearing anyone on here that can't support moving the four the top four forward to the next round. Correct. Okay, so that would support the data. That's what every board member has said in terms of the ranking. The next question is there is a gap in terms of numbers going from 30 points to 21 points. So, we talked at the beginning about selecting four to six. And so, the conversation really that I'm looking for now is are we satisfied with the four or are we interested in talking about either five or six? If we were to go to five the next person on there would be candidate four. And if we went to candidate six for the process that candidate would have Or excuse me, candidate nine and candidate four. Nine and four. Yeah, and there's a quite a big gap. There's a quite a gap between candidate nine and candidate four as well. Yep, there's four points between those. And there is nine points between candidate four and candidate five. I feel really strong about nine. I would like to or I think we should keep it the top four. I agree. I agree. I'm satisfied with that. Their points are all close within each other. We almost pretty much agree a lot cuz the numbers are high. Yeah, you know. It's pretty pretty evident that we kind of are on the same page with these four. Yeah, so that's good. They're all kind of similar. No, I'd I'd like to go with five at least. I was thinking in six, but I think five would I think five would be good. To bring in candidate number nine so we have five candidates. Yeah, since we're cutting the pool in half. I can go with But do you want to say why? Can you explain? Well, I would have originally wanted to go with the six so we have a bigger pool to have you know have questions cuz you know when Is it based on what you've read then about the candidates? I'm asking. It's just based on the number. So, based on having having more candidates to look at for when we have interviews. I would just my opinion, I would prefer to have four really strong candidates that are all close in numbers than six where the numbers kind of drop off. I mean this this I mean this is a very important job and we're all taking it very seriously, but we're all this is taking up time as well. I'm not really interested necessarily in adding some folks to be interviewed knowing that there's four that are very strong. I don't need I guess I don't need more candidates which would take you know, time more time and more you know, I mean if there's kind of a a a trail off here, that would be my opinion. In my opinion, number Castle's point is that the four are all very similar in numbers. So, that's going to be a tough decision, right? They're all very close. So I don't unders In my mind I just don't need to um go into more candidates to not so much add more work, but just to tip the balance. I just think they're all strong in the numbers. The four. But I think we all are really in agreement and that's that's impressive that we all are on the same page with the strength of these four candidates. Yeah, there's very strong alignment with the top four. And and I could go either way on it. When I when I look at the when I look at the community feedback, I I honestly think we'd be remiss if we didn't include candidate nine based on what the community is asking for and the experience that the the individual bring to the table. And I don't know that it's that much extra work to do an extra interview. And I I I really think we'd sell ourselves short um So, something about that. I'm not sure now on selling ourselves short though. Could you explain that a little farther? Um I just don't want to limit limit the pool too early. Okay, so what about If I could, that that we did hear to your point, we did hear the importance of two things that came forward. Um one being somebody who has some level of experience. And this person has as much if not more experience than the other, so that might be a reason the board would consider doing that. Um the second piece that people were interested really was a commitment to um the community and really wanting to be invested and wanting to be here. They did share that. So, that too if the board were to decide to go to five, those would be the two reasons primarily that align with that. That's what I was thinking as well. Could I say something to that? Um in other discussions about the candidates, I mean we we are not able to ask ask the person to move to this community. Correct. And so, I don't I think that someone can say on the paper that they would like to move to the community and they're willing to move to the community, but I don't we can't require that and I I read that that the person is interested or you know, whatever word they use. So, I I don't know if it's a if it's a um a level playing field to say we should and I'm not saying we shouldn't choose this person. I'm just saying I don't think a reason is that person is willing to move here because we can't require that. And maybe some other folks are willing to move here too. They just didn't put it in their application materials. So for me that's not a that's not a a reason I I would agree with Director Christensen Yeah. >> regard. The person's making no commitment. There's nothing that forces them to do that. Um the difference being when we talk to candidates about the criteria and the importance the community places on having a community presence. This is someone who did that even before uh we even talked to them about it. Where some of the others may be looking for a job or looking for a superintendency and have experience. This is a person who just called that out. So I'm not pushing for a fifth candidate. If there was a fifth candidate from the board that those would be the reasons you might consider having a fifth candidate. The top four are very are very solid. And to that same point we can't require them to stay in that district who have just happened to be here already. We can't mandate mandate that earlier or either. Well there's the same spread between the top candidate and the next one of the four and the bottom of the four to the fifth one. It's [clears throat] a difference of five in both cases. Yeah. There would Perhaps because this this particular candidate does have I believe if I'm remembering right cuz there's a lot of information the longest history of actual superintendencies um being a superintendent and so we had this candidate particularly would have all the experiences multiple cycles of finance and negotiations and I mean all the things that go with it and has done coming into new communities. I believe and so I don't think he was from you know what I'm saying? Like he went into new communities. I would add just what I would say to all boards who are going through this. If there's any interest in that particular candidate, there's no harm in bringing them forward to another interview. Because ultimately you're going to have to narrow that down to two or three. So if there's any interest among the board, you can't go wrong with spending an hour with the candidate. Um again your your top four are very united. And so it could go either way. But again we wouldn't want from a from a our our firm, we wouldn't want there to be a time where people go "Ooh, I really wish we would have done this particular" It's always easier to include them than it is to not include them. But again it's up to you. It is. And I just want to add one thing that stuck with me with this applicant is that some of the experiences listed are in different states. So I feel like there's a some movement there and we're used to kind of our home area kind of home grown um superintendents in that area. So that is was another thing that just gave me a little bit of pause there. So But yes, 12 years of experience is a lot but it's across different states. I do think it's important to have those Dr. Bitman mentioned we are not picking our superintendent today. We're we're just picking a pool. Who the people And I do think that every step that you do again I'm not trying to persuade. I just want to make sure that if there's any interest that you as a board have an opportunity to talk about that. But I would say um at that particular level it's one more step where you're going to see someone and interact with someone that might tell you something different than the video or than the application and then the So again every interaction you have with any of these by the time you're at the very end of picking your candidate, you will have you've really given yourself every opportunity to try to get to know who these people are personally and professionally. Would it be correct in saying here that an additional interaction might help us uh maybe spread another individual away from the pack? Just just have more experience, more discussions. It would really help us with the deciding. And I would say the same for the videos, right? There were probably some of you who looked at the applications and were really excited or not excited. And then you went through the references and some of them were like "Ooh, I'm a little more interested in that person. I'm a little less interested in this person." And then you see them live on a video answering questions that they have no idea what they're going to be asked. And it's like "Ooh, I kind of like their I like their demeanor. I like how they showed up. I like how I want to know more about that candidate." This would just be one more opportunity to say "Okay, now I didn't have to see him on a screen. Now they're sitting next to me or with me and I don't care for them. I don't care for their style." Or I really want to know more about them. Now I'm really excited about their style. So you can't go wrong with either way but it does allow whatever you decide the candidates that you see, you're going to immediately have a reaction. Even though up to now you may be saying "Ooh, I really like these two candidates." Those two candidates likely may or may not be the ones that you want to move forward to final assembly that experience. Well I'd be for adding another one. I mean that this candidate every Did we do that already or the debate number No, we we have not We haven't really decided which that to go with the top five we're talking about Yeah. the last one. Yeah, to to add that candidate into the For clarity am I hearing that there's there we're not interested at this point in bringing forward the sixth ranked candidate? Yeah, I got That's what my original thought would but um five is compromise. >> [snorts] >> Okay. Yeah. And if I'm correct you're talking about nine. We've been talking about nine. Yeah, including candidate nine as well. Okay. Yeah. in fifth best. Does that Does that seem palatable to the group? Feel good now? It can't hurt. >> Yeah, I think based on what Dr. Bitman said that you know just maybe that other connection will solidify some more. Or maybe it will yeah. Yeah, one way or the other. >> One way or the other. Correct. Correct. Yeah. I think it's a that person is a strong candidate and yeah, I think it's better to Yeah, let's have the additional discussion. We're Yeah, we're committed to hiring a superintendent. We'll do the work. So what I think I'm hearing the board say Mr. Chair is that we would bring five candidates forward. The first four are unanimous agreement. The fifth candidate would be brought forward as well and that would be candidate nine. Okay. And I want to make sure I have this clear before I make the motion here. We are discussing and then please look at your sheets. We're discussing moving forward candidate two, candidate three, candidate six, candidate seven, and candidate nine. Did I get that Did I capture that? Yes. Okay. Seeing no disagreement on that, I will make a motion to move that the school board approve candidates two three six seven and nine to advance as semi-finalists for first round superintendent interviews to be held on April 8th and 9th, 2026 and authorize our consultant Dr. Bitman to notify selected candidates and coordinate interview logistics. Uh do I have a second? Second. Okay, we have a motion and a second. Is there any discussion on that? Member Christensen Um I'm just wondering maybe a a process question but so um if the two folks or whoever go first on the 8th, I mean are is are they expected the same things on the 9th? Like is it sort of unfair like if you get to go first then you get it's all public so you could be at home like watching. How does that work? Is it the same? >> I can address that. We we covered this by a resolution a couple of weeks ago where we decided that we were not going to stream the candidate interviews. So what we've asked administration to do is to record the interview on the 8th and then to record the interview on the 9th and then release those recorded interviews to the public. So those will be Sorry, I didn't Yep. Yep. Yeah, that's a very important clarification that uh and we'll leave it up to uh Dr. Bitman and his team to figure out logistics around the interviews. So we will have no control over who interviews first, second, third. Yes. Just that it's Wednesday and Thursday next week. And So typically what we would do is we'd interview three candidates on the first night. Two candidates on the second night and that will then provide time for the board to go through a series to say who are the two or three that we want to move forward to the next round. Similar to what we've done right now. It'll happen quicker cuz there's only five candidates. But then we'll have the same conversation. Typically in most situations there's a clear like there was tonight. There's there's a few of those that are just going to really stand out and those are the ones we would then bring forward based on approval from the full board for the finalist round. So you said three on Tuesday and two on Thank you. It's Wednesday Wednesday and Thursday. The 8th and the 9th. The 8th and the 9th. The the communication of the feedback I got from the board earlier would be a 5:30 start. So the first night might be a little longer, about an hour 15 minutes or so if you if you include a little break in between each interview. And then we won't debrief about those candidates that first night because we want you to see all five candidates. And then after the five candidates, we'll have the information there. Okay. >> [clears throat] >> All right. Is there any other discussion on the motion or logistics? Remember I said I just have a question for Dr. Betman. Do you tell them Do you just say they've been selected as a finalist or do Yes, we don't give any information about rankings or anything like that. They don't know if we refer to them as a number. Yeah. We're just saying the board has decided on five candidates. You're one of those five candidates. Congratulations. We talk through about next steps and then we arrange we schedule the times specifically for the candidates. And then we go from there. And when do we get the questions or how do the questions work? Yep, so I submitted questions to both Julie and Kurt together and based on the criterion thing. So typically what would happen is the two of them would then provide feedback, edit, etc. and then after that I would bring those to the board that night and we would have so I would we'd come a few minutes early. I'd just explain the legalities of questions and things like that very quickly and then typically what boards do is they just take a number and they rotate. So you might Joe say the first question and you might say the second and you might say the third and the board just kind of rotate so you get a chance to interact with that candidate a little bit. And you have to ask a specific question. You cannot ask follow-ups. It's all you have to treat each candidate exactly the same. Correct. The difference being is you can ask a clarifying question. So you could say did I hear you say this like this is what I think I heard you say is that accurate? But you can't say well that that makes me think of another question. Okay. And also say that again, we're not live streaming it but people can be here. They can. So what if you know what if So from a best friend of someone who's Yeah. They can't work interviewing on the second night. I mean I think I think it's an advantage I mean and again scheduling it is what it is but I feel like it would be an to your advantage to interview on the first evening. But there's nothing we can do about that. From a search firm our recommendation would always be don't live stream them but legally it has to be it's a meeting. So they could do that. I'm not to be clear I'm not saying any of our candidates would do that. I'm just talking out loud like I just think to go the second night you know. Yeah, I don't think they'd do that and I agree. Yeah, and in all of my time with searches we haven't had candidates do that. And so This What's that? I don't think they would want to get No, I mean to be that that was a bad example. To be clear I'm not I was talking out loud. To be clear I I'm not suggesting any candidate would do that. I'm just thinking in my head remember chair said it's not live streamed like that that would solve the problem like in my head that that would solve the problem and then I was thinking well actually it doesn't cuz people could be here and and and no certainly none of the none of these candidates no one would do that. I'm just I was just more thinking out loud. I'm just processing it. It's a good try. It's getting late. Okay, so what about questions that we want to ask? You can't. No, we can't and and that seems something wrong with that. >> As Dr. Betman stated he did send myself a question but why can't I ask the same question to all five? Dr. Betman did provide myself and member Corcoran the the questions. I Yeah, I was going to say I suspect member Corcoran like me has been focused on this evening. Mr. Chair can provide a little background Please do because I want I want to make sure that everybody on the board has an opportunity to provide feedback. The questions that I suggested for consideration to both of you as chair and vice chair were directly related to the feedback and the criterion. Thank you. In addition to that I did provide you with a bank of other questions that could be could be considered. So when the two of you have an opportunity to really weigh in on that you could say we don't like any of these questions. We want to talk to the board and we want them to come up with the question. You want to do that. That hasn't been done before but it's certainly again from a strategic standpoint if there are things that you want to talk with the board members about you can certainly do that but our firm always wants to give you questions that are specific to these to start with. Because it's typically easier for you to look at the like Cuz everybody has their own But I think too when you use the information that's been gathered over the course of the time that's what's important to our community and those are the questions and answers they want to hear most likely. So just going off on our own might not serve as good of a purpose to our community. Those questions I think are going to help us make a decision cuz like Dr. Betman mentioned they're they're based on the feedback so I think myself and member Corcoran we we talk a lot these days so we'll we'll connect again tomorrow and then we'll connect with all the board members to make sure that you guys are comfortable before we move forward next week. I don't want anybody to feel like they did not have input and I know member Corcoran shares the same opinion. So then we will get the questions before Wednesday. Yes. Yeah, myself and member Corcoran I'll share what the proposals are and I'll share like uh our discussion vetted out. I have to look back. Typically it's Yeah, usually it's around 10. One caution for the board is that you are not allowed to conduct business outside of a public meeting. Correct. So you just want to be really thoughtful even even talking about the particular questions. You could send me the feedback. And I could make adjustments. Correct. But you wouldn't want to be able to say oh each of us worked with the vice chair and here now we have these final options. So just want to be thoughtful. That's why I suggested my myself and member Corcoran will work together and we'll we'll put a proposal to the board >> [cough] >> and we'll have them send your your feedback directly. Yeah, yeah. We're very familiar with the open meeting law and how to uh I prefer to make sure that's the case but I will sleep better tonight. Yes, [laughter] I do appreciate the reminder. Okay, we do have a motion on the table to approve candidates two, three, six, seven and nine. And it's been it's been seconded, yeah? Yeah, that's been seconded. Do we have any additional discussion on that? Okay, in that case I'd ask member Corcoran to please take the roll call now. It's sealed. Put this paper in this other Manila folder. Okay. Thanks. All right. So I'll start with member Christiansen. Aye. Member Reveline? Aye. Member Tyson? Aye. Member Corcoran? Aye. Member Castle? Aye. Member Antonson votes aye. The ayes have it. Okay, the motion carries. Now before we get too excited to leave we got a couple of things we have to clarify. So for that the following candidates have been selected. [snorts] These are their names. I'm going to go in a random order and just uh just for clarity Mr. Jim Wagner Mrs. Rebecca Brodeur Mr. John Paul Jacobson Mr. Timothy Schossow Meyer and Mr. Joshua Anderson. The next steps is the selected candidates will be notified and scheduled for interviews. Interview procedures that we just discussed and confidentiality expectations will be reviewed [cough] prior to the interviews. Interview information will be posted on the website in the next 24 hours. A member of the members of the public are invited and encouraged to attend. Mr. Betman already stated that he will share with us a press release that we our communications [snorts] department can work on over the next few days. With that we'll review upcoming calendar dates. As we discussed April 8th and 9th are candidate interviews. April 16th is our next board meeting. And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that today is Holy Thursday. Tomorrow's Good Friday. Easter Sunday is obviously Sunday. And during the Easter season I for one will be praying for unity for the board to be successful in this superintendent search. I know I join all of you in doing that with me. And with that I would move to adjourn. So moved. Second. Motion seconded. Any discussion? All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed? We are adjourned.