Stillwater Area Public Schools — Transcript
9 Topics in This Document
Student Activities and Programs Update
Superintendent's Operational and Legislative Update
Long-Term Facility Maintenance (LTFM) Projects for Summer 2025
FastBridge Winter Assessment Results
Preliminary Budget Guidelines and Assumptions
Fiscal Forecast and Budget Challenges
Policy 505: Distribution of Non-School Sponsored Materials (Second Read)
Policy 54.5: Personal Electronic Communication Devices (Second Read)
Closed Session for Legal Advice
▸Full Extraction
“This is the last um bid projects we'll bring to you here for approval this is kind of the catchall so we had some of the bigger projects that we did individually there's six um buildings here that have individual projects here a lot of this is just maintenance and and things that need to be repaired like for like.”
“What we use fast Bridge most for are the benchmark scores it provides us these are test specific cut scores that indicate a student's risk of Performing below a future performance Target so put differently the student may be at risk of not performing at grade level by Year's End.”
“We added Letterland to third grade and fourth and fifth have just not received anything so I've been here for three years we haven't made any strategic changes there our goal was kind of start from the bottom and move up... teachers are doing the best that they can with what they have to make it as rigorous as possible but they are individually filling holes that they see and so we don't have as consistent as a pro of a program.”
“Districts are utilizing fast and map and and other assessments that we can get periodic checks to to see if we are what our instruction is aligning to the St standards is our curriculum aligning to the standards and as as you could see from a number of the slides tonight we are able to see and and Elsa talked about it you didn't see it but we can see to the classroom level what's happening with our students and and our and whether or not our systems are aligned.”
“I for the first time really do see some good system I mean like when you see everyone kind of tracking in the right direction in a few areas and I just do want to recognize the hard work that's going on behind the scenes because it's a process and it's going to take time but I think we need to celebrate those successes and I know there's a lot of people in this room watching home that are a part of that.”
“Our use of fund balance um we are very mindful that uh we will not plan on using any unassigned fund balance... that is a onetime only fix so I would not recommend that to the board ever to to utilize dollars um for fund balance.”
“We have no idea what level of funding we'll be receiving from the state and until we have a better sight picture on what we're going to receive from funding I would find it very difficult to give a realistic projection to the board on uh on that.”
“If we can align parties on what a responsible Direction looks like then we can all look at you know is it 1% this year and we're trying to add 1% next year is it you know we're going to just survive as far as we can and then we're going to address this in two years... then we can provide guidance in the assumptions that saying we need to to increase this by x% In This budget period.”
“The overarching um Financial um areas that we're um considering here is number one and this is kind of a theme the last couple years is the unfunded State mandates... inflation and Rising costs... our district uh projected enrollment levels.”
“We've gone from a District at the highest point of being 99.9% back in 20145 um to 1.1% which is just shy of 1.7 million.”
“We're still about $4.8 million of a shortfall that this is where we're taking ourselves into priority based budgeting and we've had um multiple meetings um now discussing opportunity to bring that down and and we've made a lot of progress um but there's a lot more to go.”
“The difference is many of our peer districts have fund balances they're going to be dipping into yes exactly which will'll eventually catch up to them too but it makes our the work of staff to find these efficiencies um I I can't appreciate it enough your efforts and your meetings at a director level to find these efficiencies and hopefully we can find better ways of doing things um to kind of come up with some of this but it's a it's a bleak picture when with all the unfunded mandates and all the um funding we've received from the state right.”
“Under the guidelines in section four part B um it indicates those areas in which which uh material non-school distributed material um these are the areas that the material is always prohibited um and we look at that and it certainly um is in alignment with the identity harm protocol you know which really focuses on a person targeting another person or group based on an aspect of their identity.”
“Kind of where we landed in addition to the wording in the actual policy itself um if this does become an issue in real life like right now it's kind of a hypothetical um so we're trying not to create policies for every potential situation but if it actually does happen in our district then we'd be certainly um open to pursuing a second policy that would just be for staff.”
“Personal electronic communication device means any personal device capable of connecting wirelessly to a cell phone, the internet, a cellular or Wi-Fi Network are directly connects to another similar device... that would be included in that personal electronic communication device.”
“All students preK-12 are prohibited from using personal electronic communication devices on school premises from Bell to Bell which includes but is not limited to instructional time, lunch periods, recess, School sponsored programs, events or activities or any other time during the designated school day.”
“Give the administrative the administration the Lee a way to figure this out and but you guys decide whatever you want to do is there any strong feelings on the board on that language just my initial think thinking through this um is the language in number two broad enough so even like with pouches the designated area could be the pouch p so I mean is it Z is the school then it would be the pouch if we were doing pouches but I mean is is the language in this policy broad enough to I mean that's the big question I would have is if we leave it in there is it broad enough or is it going to trip up the procedural piece.”
“The devil is in the details here in the implementation of this and the enforcement and the consistent enforcement so it's probably not going to go into policy but I just want to acknowledge that that is an issue and I think good luck to you administrators on uh on seeing this through but I think the policy part that's the easy part right now is the bill.”