[0:53] joan roll call here

[1:06] let's stand for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the

[1:13] United States of America and to the republic for which it stands one nation

[1:19] under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all

[1:26] i'll go ahead and make a motion to approve tonight's agenda can I get a second i'll second great director

[1:32] Theelinder with a second all those in favor of approving tonight's agenda raise your hand and say I i I opposed

[1:40] motion passes next item is our consent agenda we have just have one item

[1:47] tonight payment of invoices i will make a motion to approve our the payment of invoices can I get a

[1:54] second second great director Kelzenberg with the second all those in favor raise

[1:59] your hand and say I i i opposed motion passes our first item

[2:07] tonight is an an a report an annual report for QC comp and with that we're gonna welcome Deb Van Cly and Stephen

[2:15] Gordy and there's the two microphones i don't

[2:21] know if you want to just pull one over you can sit you

[2:26] can sit either side

[2:45] thank you all right we're

[2:50] settled thank you good evening um board chair Sherman directors and uh Superintendent Funk um thank you for the

[2:58] opportunity uh to be here this evening to share about QC comp and then we are

[3:03] also going to talk about the new evaluation rubrics that will um go into

[3:09] place next school year so with that I'll let Deb take it away great sounds good

[3:15] um Stillwater I need to press some Oh there we go sorry uh Stillwater has had QC comp since 2015 and just wanted to

[3:22] give a brief overview for some of our newer board members that might not be very familiar with it um it's also

[3:28] called the alternative teacher professional pay system and here are is what it's designed to improve student

[3:34] learning through these pieces here i'm not going to read through every single thing just wanted to highlight a few things um in regards to comp

[3:45] qcop has four components and the four components are around the teacher leader or career ladder opportunities job

[3:50] embedded PD the teacher development evaluation plan and performance pay each

[3:56] school district is given some um discretion as how they build and how they use the funds for their QC comp

[4:02] program on the right side of the table here what you're going to see is that's how we use the funding in our school

[4:08] district um we continually uh responsibly adapt our

[4:13] program through an annual survey every year that we bring to an advisory board that consists of district leadership and

[4:20] also um educators

[4:26] our focus this year was really you know around two pretty big things is really really strengthening our data inquiry

[4:32] process through our collaborative action teams but also developing and getting off the ground our centralized coaching

[4:38] model uh we use our coaches to um implement the UCOM statutory requirements and we do that through

[4:45] coaching cycles and our learning lab where we work with educators one-on-one we had 428 educators participate in that

[4:53] piece of the program this year and they develop professional goals and instructional coaches work alongside

[4:59] them to uh refine practice learn new strategies implement those strategies in

[5:04] the classroom and um really work on that connection between teacher growth and

[5:10] student growth so when we think about next year there's

[5:17] a couple of areas uh where we're really going to focus um it's the continuation

[5:22] of the work that the coaches have started with the formal coaching cycles and the learning labs uh we also are

[5:28] going to expand that we will do some support of administrator with building goals uh and providing job embedded

[5:35] professional development at that level i'm really excited that one of the tools

[5:41] um that will be offered next year is a instructional playbook um it's taken a

[5:48] lot of time uh and effort on the coach's part to put this together the principles are really excited to have access to it

[5:55] uh and I think it'll be a nice addition um to the work that we're doing we're also looking at uh empowering our

[6:02] educators to take on the role of learners and as part of that process

[6:08] we're going to be introducing a three-year professional growth plan or model um we've started talking about it

[6:15] this year we'll continue that next year with more of a full implementation uh continuation of the mentor program uh

[6:22] and then we'll talk about the new evaluation rubrics um shortly as I mentioned earlier um we get

[6:30] feedback from all of the educators based on how is the process working for them

[6:35] what you can see here is uh some of the impact this is feedback narratives from different staff members and just really

[6:42] want to give a shout out to um our coaches Katie Mary Alicia Farmer Angie

[6:48] Hulipinsky Darla Simonette Britney Perry and Doug Long you know when they came in for this centralized coaching model it

[6:54] was a real shift in our program and they dug in and really developed some really meaningful relationships with staff um

[7:01] to really move that learning culture of learning forward so just extremely grateful for their work um their

[7:08] collaboration the divergent perspectives that we bring to the table to develop really strong instructional models um is

[7:15] really the best part of of what I get to do so um you can see from the what the

[7:20] staff is saying and uh the work they're doing is really really impactful

[7:27] so to transition to talking about um the evaluation rubrics I I think the thread

[7:32] that I want to use to bring this all together is as we think about the use of

[7:38] the instructional coaches we have an opportunity to not only support our

[7:44] educators at the building level um and provide professional learning um and job

[7:50] embedded PD throughout the system we also have an opportunity for those uh

[7:55] coaches to work on systems changes and and that is um something that I'll

[8:02] highlight as we talk about the new evaluation rubric because this is systems changes uh changing uh and it

[8:10] will have a big impact on the direction that we're moving so just to give you a a quick brief overview uh the Minnesota

[8:17] statute in 2023 required all districts um to revise their uh instructional or

[8:26] evaluation rubrics ours was last done when we adopted the 5D plus rubric um 11

[8:34] years ago so it's over time um for us to do this work so uh we were excited with

[8:41] the opportunity to bring um the TEP group that uh was a working group that

[8:46] was uh doing this uh in previous years back together uh and we started meeting

[8:52] in November we'll talk about that in one of the next slides i do want to add it's

[8:58] easy for us to say dog on it this is another thing that the state is making us do and I just want to highlight the

[9:06] fact that this is the right work um again 11 years is just too long for an

[9:12] evaluation rubric um to not be tweaked or or revised or changed it also gives

[9:19] us the unique opportunity to do some real serious alignment and finally this

[9:25] is really what we know is best for kids as we as we redo this and create a a

[9:30] tool that's based on growth and can align uh to the professional development

[9:36] and other work we're doing so some of the changes just very

[9:42] quickly there are going to be five competencies uh with the 5D plus rubric

[9:49] you had six uh they actually had five and then they added one and so they called it the 5D plus which I thought

[9:56] was good um there were 30 indicators under the 5D plus for ours we're going

[10:05] to go to two rubrics so there will be a classroom educator rubric and then there

[10:12] will be a service and program classroom rubric so we're going from eight rubrics

[10:19] to two in both of those rubrics these five competencies are very similar uh

[10:26] the one difference is it talks about instructional design and delivery under classroom educator it'll be systems

[10:33] design and delivery for the service and program provider so there's some subtle

[10:39] differences there uh for the classroom educator there are 17

[10:44] indicators that are part of those five competencies so in each competency

[10:51] there's four or five indicators that that really identify the observable

[10:57] measures that that principles uh and evaluators will be using uh to measure

[11:03] teacher growth and then for the service and program providers there are 14

[11:11] indicators and again you compare that with the 30 that were part of the 5D

[11:16] plus i don't think I talked to any of our current educators who have gone

[11:23] through the full 30 indicators in a three-year cycle they might have as as

[11:29] they might have had aspects of the different parts of the 5D rubric but to

[11:34] cover every indicator every three years it was just too broad to do that the intent now is that we will cover every

[11:42] indicator every three years which is really what your rubric should be if you want to be

[11:48] effective just wanted to just share with you a little bit what went into the process of developing the two new

[11:54] evaluation rubrics um I'm extremely grateful to have worked alongside uh Stephen through this work to be able to

[12:01] take this committee through a process that was very collaborative really dug into hearing all voices that were around

[12:07] that table we had about 25 members that were part of that we began in November and this is just a little road map for

[12:13] you to see this is the work we did on the first time we met the second time we met we met starting in November all the

[12:20] way through May so we started with you know the uh standards of effective

[12:26] practice some guiding documents that MDE provided us to really guide our work and really incorporate different pieces into the

[12:33] rubric that were aligned to the statute and um I think you know what what I

[12:39] appreciated most about the work was that at the end of the day in May the group

[12:45] that sat around that table they they owned the rubric because they could see

[12:50] themselves and their work reflected in the rubric and then also the other process we met to take it through other

[12:56] groups it was a very collaborative process um a lot of voices were brought into that space and just grateful for

[13:02] Steven's leadership on on developing that piece

[13:08] would like to thank the committee members here's a list of members that were part of of the work you know to be

[13:13] out of your classroom a full day seven months in a row that's a pretty big ask and the work we did was difficult we had

[13:20] probably over 40 different revisions in the rubric um just those conversations

[13:25] and really hard conversations but um with the groundwork that was established uh just really really grateful and

[13:32] thankful for um the work that the committee did together as part of

[13:37] this and then this is just to highlight kind of what we had talked about already in those

[13:44] spaces i think one of the pieces you know and Deb highlighted the

[13:50] collaborative nature of the work um I think one of the pieces that I feel

[13:57] really good about is at the end the committee really wanted a tool that

[14:03] could be used by evaluators to promote growth of all our educators and I think

[14:09] it's acknowledging that we have really good and great teachers in the district

[14:15] but there is always room for growth this tool is designed to identify that growth

[14:22] and help the evaluator and the educator improve it's really moving away from that old traditional paradigm where you

[14:30] know it was more evaluative in nature and you're trying to find the deficiencies and then address this again

[14:37] this tool is really identifying where the educator has room for growth and what that looks like um between again

[14:46] the evaluator the educator and then the coaches and and the other professional development that we'll have

[14:53] i think the next slide is questions

[14:58] great thank you for this um update it seems like you guys have been busy revamping so appreciate the efforts uh

[15:05] questions on Q comp yeah one the evaluation committee

[15:12] members are those people that came up with the evaluation or do they do the

[15:19] evaluations uh I might have missed that yeah it's a good question so they're

[15:24] representatives from all different parts of of the district so this would be for

[15:31] our licensed groups and so we really worked hard to to get members from um

[15:39] the OT's the the speech the psychologists the social workers the

[15:44] counselors the classroom teachers special ed and then there were also

[15:50] administrators in this space as well it looks like quite a variety out there i mean yep yep because they're all you

[15:58] know they're all going to be represented in these two rubrics so it was important that we had representation for as many

[16:05] different groups as we could it is the administrators the licensed administrators who will do the

[16:11] evaluation work this will be the principles and APS okay yep

[16:19] any other yes yeah thank you both uh for the helpful information the work to you and the committee um could you just uh

[16:25] maybe shed some more light you kind of talked about um you know the professional growth plan and and really educators taking on the role of learners

[16:32] like what does that look like and you know obviously that's a great great mindset to have

[16:37] just to to share um a little bit about how we've done some alignment work so at

[16:44] the same time we were revising um the evaluation rubrics we were working

[16:50] through a process with the department of education the group was the MN MTSS tier

[16:56] one cohort and we identified uh areas of

[17:02] focus in a three-year professional learning plan that we will be

[17:07] implementing starting this year the focus of the three-year professional

[17:13] learning plan will be uh competency A

[17:18] instructional design and delivery competency B assessment and data

[17:23] informed decisionmaking and competency C uh inclusive and culturally responsive

[17:30] environments i also want to then share that and we don't have the slide um I'm

[17:37] really proud of it it's really cool work and I wish we had it now but it shows the alignment between our three-year

[17:44] professional learning plan and the strategic direction so we'll make sure at some point you get to see it um our

[17:52] communications team has done a nice job of of revamping these and organizing them for us so so how it how it works is

[17:59] at the beginning of the school year teachers look at the rubric they do a self assessment on it and establish some

[18:05] places where they want to do with growth and then depending where they are in their evaluation cycle they work with

[18:10] either an instructional coach or the instructional leader they're building the principal or assistant principal to

[18:16] really develop where is this going to look what am I going to do here's the professional learning I'm going to do we're working hard as Stephen mentioned

[18:22] the alignment piece how do our professional development days help support the teacher growth as part of

[18:28] their plan um so it's a really collaborative process again all focused

[18:33] on learning and growing because we know when teachers grow our students grow so

[18:40] yeah thanks um thank you for this presentation and for all the work on the evaluation um it's really exciting to

[18:47] see how this is all coming together um my question is actually about QC comp and the instruct um instructional

[18:54] coaches model um I know that we had transitioned from a embedded in the schools model um not this year the year

[19:01] before um to a more centralized model with just those six coaches serving the whole district could you speak a little

[19:08] bit about how well those coaches were utilized were were they able to get to meet all the needs in all the buildings

[19:13] were there any um challenges that were that kind of arose in that model um and are we going forward with the

[19:19] centralized model again next year yeah it's a good question so I'll I'll take that last part first yes we will

[19:27] continue with that same model um when we look at um

[19:33] participation um we had 428 staff members out of five 580ish 580ish that

[19:42] participated in a coaching experience which included either a formal coaching

[19:48] cycle or what we called a learning lab which also involved peer support um

[19:55] which is part of a component of the state statute we also tried to embed some of those learning labs into the

[20:03] work that was already do um being done at a curriculum level for instance we

[20:08] worked with the secondary science teachers on some of the work that the curriculum work that they were doing to

[20:14] just embed their learning along with you know the curriculum work that was

[20:21] already part of um their regular calendar work or regular scheduled curriculum work so what it then felt

[20:28] like for the teacher was we're not piling on all of this work right and and

[20:33] so it should be the n you know should be a natural outcome of some of that work especially around curriculum to do

[20:39] learning and we just wanted to emphasize that so the coaches were there to be able to do that so I think you know

[20:44] being the first year of developing the system in the spaces you know was really trying to like well this is what we

[20:50] think might work we learn we've learned a lot on how we might make some changes next year to again strengthen systems

[20:56] and strengthen that alignment um and know because of how our evaluation

[21:01] process is set up our coaches worked with all probationary staff and any continuing contract teacher in the first

[21:08] two years of their summit evaluation they did not work with any teachers in the the final three that's why you're

[21:15] only seeing 428 instead of 580 it's because of wasn't they chose that it's

[21:21] that's how our our evaluation model works so um I think there are areas of

[21:26] growth always you know so we'll continue it would be nice to have the same model for two years in a row and then just

[21:32] strengthen the systems that we put in place i think the hard part is when we

[21:37] established the learning labs there were some schools that we were able to get to

[21:43] um in October there were some schools that we weren't able to get to until January February that's just the nature

[21:51] of having six people trying to serve you know five 500 and some educators right

[21:57] and and so this next year we're looking at trying to organize the calendar um a

[22:04] bit better to more efficiently impact teachers so it's not like well I'm here

[22:10] three weeks in October and then you never see me again so we're going to do some things strategically with the

[22:16] calendar to try to balance that out a little bit just an example of one of the improvements we're going to try to make

[22:22] okay yeah thank you thanks for going through the all this is

[22:27] really helpful and educational for me um and thanks for talking about the coaching experience whoever's question that was i appreciate that as well i

[22:32] actually had a question on the the TEP can you walk through what that portion was and is that like a certain number of

[22:38] hours of training that they have to do um and then I have a follow-up question is our way that we have this sort of

[22:45] structured where it's sort of 10% for performance and 90% for doing the

[22:50] training is that sort of the standard operating procedure for how to structure the the pay portion of it

[22:57] um well statute does dictate some of the things that we do so statute shares that as a probationary teacher all of those

[23:04] evaluations are done by the instructional leader of the building so either principal assistant principal and

[23:09] they do that three times a year we also believe that as a probationary teachers we want to provide um one of our goals

[23:16] is to have teacher retention so we do provide some coaching support alongside that to complement the model and you

[23:23] know that's one piece we do um the continuing contract teachers which we

[23:28] our tenure one and year two those are the ones that are working primarily with our coaches not a lot of contacts with

[23:34] the building administrator and year three is strictly the building administrator um and the you know the growth model and

[23:42] those pieces is just really focused on what do you want to grow on they have individual student achievement goals

[23:47] that they set that are based on standardized tests and they work to help the teachers with skills to students to

[23:54] meet those goals as well regarding the 1090 that's not uncommon

[23:59] that's what it uh um I've seen that in other places thank you

[24:08] um do either of you know and I've been following like legislatively and I heard that Governor Walls you know in his

[24:13] initial budget proposal was to get rid of Q comp have you heard because you were kind of the coordinator in

[24:19] networking and other in the Q comp space i haven't heard much about it since that initial proposal have you heard

[24:26] anything about it not from the House or the Senate side i don't know what feedback you may I I have received an

[24:32] update from this morning okay um and QC comp was not discussed in the update so

[24:39] I'm assuming that it's going to continue okay that's what we're hearing okay uh you know

[24:44] again until they come back and they approve things but right now I'm hearing

[24:49] Q comp will be back okay and it was going to be back next year anyhow it would have been for 27 and beyond is

[24:55] what they were looking at but I've heard no action on Q comp at this point okay um I always love hearing because I think

[25:02] when we first started we realized that a lot of our systems and were not aligned and so I love when I can hear that we're

[25:09] going back to that pony plan and we're going back to the strategic plan and we're really kind of building all everything we do around that so I

[25:16] appreciate your efforts to streamline that and focus it um one thing I had is

[25:21] um I noticed kind of the qualitative data that you have from people who are going through the coaching i know this

[25:26] year we have one data person on staff I believe is there any plan to maybe or do

[25:32] you get any kind of data driven results from Q comp or from the coaching cycles

[25:37] beyond the subjective go ahead um so we talked about you know

[25:42] the 428 people that um worked with QC comp with the coaches um we're still in

[25:48] the process of gathering some of that survey data around the teacher growth and the student growth we're also

[25:53] collecting the data like how many of our staff met their individual student achievement goals so that's all data that we collect as well and I do think

[26:00] that's an area of growth that we can have with um our coaching model is to what kind of data do we want to collect

[26:06] um we lean real heavy into Jim Knight's work and what are the success factors of a coaching program and they identify

[26:12] some pieces um it's just some work I think that to continue to do in those spaces great and and I think you know

[26:20] just to add on to that we're talking about achievement data all the time in

[26:27] in all of those you know different conversations whether it's with the coaches with its coaches and educators

[26:34] and and really looking at what moves that needle most efficiently and and

[26:40] again when you get down to thinking about having access to six coaches um we may not be able to get to

[26:47] everybody um where I feel like they're making some inroads this year has really been doing some of that that systems

[26:54] work especially where we need to align things so that it works you know where

[26:59] it works for our educators and that's why I'm excited about you know the opportunity to move into using this new

[27:05] evaluation rubric and then having a playbook you know an instructional

[27:11] playbook that educators can access with the support of a coach or principal um

[27:17] that again will support the teachers moving through that that evaluation rubric those are tools that we haven't

[27:24] had in the past so those will be nice supports absolutely mhm 428 teachers are

[27:32] undergoing this but we have a lot more teachers than that who's not doing the Q comp

[27:39] um so it's not that they're not doing Q comp they're just in that that T3 that third year of their summit of evaluation

[27:46] okay which in our model we've established only building administrators are working with that

[27:52] other 50 60 teachers across the district all right thanks just looks different

[27:58] yeah so they'd have then they would be working directly with their evaluator or principal

[28:07] questions great well thank you for this update and all the work that you're doing to you're

[28:13] keeping busy thank you okay our next report update is the

[28:22] comprehensive comprehensive achievement and civic readiness update and Caitlyn will come to do this formerly known as

[28:28] World's Best Workforce formerly known as yes

[28:35] all right good evening uh thank you for inviting me to give you this update

[28:42] uh Director Sherman set me up to say this used to be called World's Best

[28:47] Workforce so some of you may remember this work from uh World's Best Workforce

[28:52] and if you think back to November we had a presentation on comprehensive

[28:58] achievement and civi civic readiness that was in combination with our achievement and integration plan there

[29:03] is some uh certainly some nexus points that exist but they follow different uh

[29:09] goal setting timelines and we'll have an opportunity this time next year or a little earlier than this hopefully next

[29:15] year to uh align those a little uh more than they're currently aligned so with

[29:22] regard to our comprehensive achievement and civic readiness these are the five goal areas these are set by the state so

[29:29] we don't get to choose these five goal areas what we do is we look at these five goal areas and then we evaluate

[29:35] kind of what our baseline data says about what our needs are and where we need to set our goals we do this work in

[29:43] conjunction with our district curriculum advisory committee to get some community

[29:48] and teacher feedback as well so the way this will work I'll kind of

[29:53] take you through what was in our last year's plan and where where we lie with regard to our last year's plan and what

[30:00] we're proposing for next year so previously for the all students are

[30:06] ready for school we were looking at preschool students in the core advantage which is an assessment that they use

[30:12] around literacy and numeracy skills for kindergarten um we have consistently met

[30:18] that goal i believe we certainly met it last year far exceeded it uh we are

[30:24] after meeting we had a really good meeting go back a slide go back a slide what's the goal

[30:31] that students are ready for Yeah what's the percentage 85% that's what they demonstrated it

[30:38] which was a decrease from last year so do we know what the goal is right the the goal is 80% okay that's that is that

[30:45] what you're the goal is 80% so we've consistently exceeded 80% we did go down

[30:50] okay um we're proposing to to change how we measure that what we're proposing is

[30:57] to look at our incoming kindergarteners that are meeting those age appropriate literacy and num numeracy benchmarks in

[31:04] that fall fast bridge screening so right here what you see is the 68% in in

[31:09] reading to 72% in reading and from 84% in math to 85% in math math they're

[31:15] coming in pretty pretty great in math already um and then what the other what the committee also talked about is it's

[31:21] also nice to include what are some action steps what are things that we're already doing to help us meet this target um or things we could or should

[31:29] be doing so we would look at kind of tracking our

[31:34] incoming kindergarten students with that initial fall screening to see how well is our our preschool programs some of

[31:41] which we have control over because there are programs and some of which we don't because they're other people you know their choice programs by parents or

[31:47] they're in home or whatever um the next area is the closing

[31:53] the racial and economic achievement gaps for as long as I've been here I feel like we've delivered these presentations

[31:59] and said not on track not met um if you remember in the fall we had a discussion

[32:05] at this table around um why why we call out certain races and

[32:11] not others and so we looked at a proposal of reducing the achievement gap

[32:18] in reading and math between non-white students and white students and just kind of looking at instead of

[32:23] disagregating when you start disagregating by race in certain places you're talking about one two three kids

[32:29] in certain spots when we look at it more holistically um it gives us a little better of a picture of where we need to

[32:36] work um and then free and reduced lunch and non-free and reduced lunch so we're

[32:41] looking at trying to decrease by at least decrease that gap by 5% for five

[32:46] consecutive years using a winter fastbridge screening measure

[32:52] so if we if we do this we should be pretty close to closed in here we'll go this way i think

[32:59] we called it out right if we do this you can see our gaps here in blue with our baseline data depending on if we're

[33:07] successful we could close some of these gaps you know in five years four to five

[33:13] years so these are proficiency numbers okay

[33:20] y so that's that specific area and looking at it that way i will say that

[33:25] next year like I said next year when we're looking at achieve our achievement and integration plan we're going to want

[33:31] to try and align some of these the specifically the racial and economic achievement gaps with some of the work

[33:37] we're doing in achievement and integration and what goals we've set what goals we will set in that plan and

[33:42] make sure that these two things are talking to each other and we're aligning that work can I ask something on the

[33:48] free and reduced lunch is that a reliable measure yes still it is okay we're able to identify

[33:56] that okay next area is all students are career and college ready um this was our

[34:02] 232 24 result we don't have our 2425 result yet um what we're proposing to

[34:09] change is to increase student credits earned in advanced coursework concurrent

[34:14] enrollment workbased learning and internships by 3% per year for five consecutive years

[34:21] it's pretty different from what this goal is um but it feels more

[34:27] comprehensive and feels like we can capture more of the students um and

[34:32] really understand better what our students are taking and how uh kind of

[34:37] what trajectory that they're on and so I think when we move this direction we'll

[34:43] have to spend a lot of time really u defining what some of this is what constitutes advanced coursework is that

[34:49] project lead the way is it is it just AP and college in the schools like what is that so we would that would be some of

[34:56] our next steps is to really establish what is that advanced coursework this is

[35:01] aligning a lot of the work with pathways and with what we're doing with our uh

[35:07] college and the schools and AP work yep and concurrent enrollment

[35:13] yep um and then all students graduate so this was a previous previous goal we

[35:18] lumped you know the ALC together with the high school which they're very different programs designed to do very

[35:26] different things for students so we talked about in the fall kind of pulling those apart and setting some different

[35:32] targets for each of those areas um and what we're proposing is to

[35:37] maintain the four-year graduation rate at Ster Area High School it's currently just over 95% I think and then to

[35:44] increase the fiveyear so previously we were always looking at the four-year graduation rate for the ALC and we don't

[35:51] feel like that's very appropriate thing to be measuring within an alternative learning center so looking at that

[35:56] five-year graduation rate and that seven-year graduation rate and Dr you stated this in the past

[36:02] what's the average like uh duration for ALC students is it five or seven is it

[36:09] like a percentage for each i'd say it's closer to five but we have we have as

[36:15] you can see by the numbers um some who stay as long as seven so and and again

[36:22] just the fact that our kids are seeking an alternative program because the

[36:28] traditional high school is not working for them um and then to just have the

[36:33] unrealistic expectation that okay well now you're in a new environment now you're going to graduate in four years

[36:39] um they've got a lot of other stressors in their life and so this is just recognizing that and and acknowledging

[36:44] it unfortunately the federal government doesn't acknowledge this and so we we are put on

[36:50] I think every every large school district in the state is kind of put on the need to improve list by the federal

[36:56] government because their ALC's are not graduating enough kids in four years um so it's they need to catch up does an

[37:04] ALC student need to do the same things to graduate as a person at the high school same requirement well they need

[37:10] to get all the credits all the required credits yes but they do it in a much different way okay so they they do a lot

[37:18] of bundling a lot it's a lot of project based learning so they're it's much more interdisciplinary right like you're

[37:24] working on a social studies credit and an English credit at the same time by doing one okay but yes they still have

[37:31] the the Carnegie Carnegie credits that they have thanks

[37:37] and then this was the new the new fun one that I spoke to this fall that I think one of you asked me well how are

[37:44] we going to measure this and I believe my answer at the time because it was this was a new goal area what does it

[37:49] look like for all students to be prepared to be lifelong learners i actually went back and watched the November to see how did I answer that

[37:56] because I remember thinking the same thing like I don't know quite how we're going to measure this and what I answered at the time was well if we can

[38:03] do all of the previous goal areas well and we can start meeting these targets we're going to create students who are

[38:08] prepared to be lifelong learners and so I was like oh well let's take that and capture that into a goal so there's a

[38:15] lot of words in this but it's really just a summary of all the previous goal areas and so what we're saying is over

[38:22] the next really four years five four to five years if we can consistently be

[38:28] meeting in these goal areas that that progress is an indicator that we are developing lifelong

[38:36] learners and so our next step is these goals are submitted to MDE next week um

[38:44] by Sunday i'll do it on Friday and then a lot of this is alignment i'm

[38:50] really excited where the the direction that some of these goals have shifted towards because it does feel more

[38:55] aligned to the work that we're already doing and some of the um some of the

[39:00] actions we're taking and and subsequently measuring um so that feels really good i think the opportunity for

[39:07] improvement next year is to really align the achievement and integration plan and the comprehensive achievement and civic

[39:15] readiness plans yes Dr funk so you'll notice that this

[39:21] is the initial presentation on these goals and they have due by the 15th of

[39:27] June and you're not meeting again as a board to approve these goals until June 17th so what we are going to do is

[39:33] because there's a statutory deadline that we have to have it submitted we are going to submit and then between now and

[39:40] the 17th if the board says okay we want you to look at this or tweak this goal

[39:45] um we can we can approve the goals on the 17th however you see fit and we can

[39:52] just send send an addendum to MDE saying here's our updated goal so that's kind

[39:57] of the process well we we will get um we have a number of new team members in

[40:02] teaching and learning so we'll make sure that we do this in May next year so that we can meet their their midmon deadline

[40:10] i own that that's me this snuck up on me all good

[40:16] so that is kind of the comprehensive achievement civic readiness plan in a nutshell what questions do you have that

[40:24] we didn't address along the way yeah thank you appreciate it um good uh good information appreciate

[40:31] the continued work it definitely seems to be much more clear uh and more measurable than what we've had in the past um one thing I did have a question

[40:38] on was the uh you know all students career and college ready um I know you talked about having you know work-based

[40:43] learning and internships how do we define like success within students going into

[40:49] trades so they don't have any type of required admission test like how do we measure that early on in high school

[40:55] yeah I honestly that was our intention of including work-based learning and internships in this because we have many

[41:01] students through the pathways or through other connections that they have in the community that are engaging in kind of

[41:07] apprenticeships and internships and so how to answer your question how we would

[41:13] measure success in that that's a that's a really valuable question those internships are tied to credit and

[41:20] grades so we could look at at the most kind of superficial level are they meeting the minimum requirement to pass

[41:27] the course um we certainly could work with our pathways teachers to identify

[41:34] what are some specific targets that we want to see throughout the course of a semester as a student is participating

[41:40] in a um internship or apprenticeship and then our career tech education so some

[41:48] of the courses that students take at 916 career teched they have a lot of um

[41:53] testing curriculum based measures built within their courses or even um you know

[42:00] like a welding certificates or forklift certificates so you could look at how

[42:05] are they what are they using as their kind of endmarker if you get through this career tech education course are

[42:11] you coming out with a some form of a certification or a certification readiness type component so thank you

[42:18] act also has something called work keys which is an assessment really of it's

[42:23] more focused on career and and career and tech as opposed to the the college

[42:29] college program so it can be focused in different areas of the of the technical um workforce and so um that's another

[42:38] area I don't think we've done much with with work keys here but that is something um and then and the students

[42:43] who pass that then get a certification from that so that that is another area we could really take a look at

[42:50] thank you um thank you could we advance just to the next slide my question's on

[42:56] the next slide there it is excellent um the goal status on this says not on track but it looks like we at least

[43:03] increase could you talk a little bit more about why that was flagged as a not on track goal for so originally the the

[43:09] goal that was set was 96% of students will graduate in four

[43:15] years okay so when and and because a we didn't meet that 90 even when you

[43:21] disagregate ALC in the high school we're sitting at about 95%

[43:27] um which we feel is a is good right but then that's brought down to that 93 or

[43:33] the 92 depending on which year you're looking at um because we were lumping those

[43:40] together the ALC numbers and the so it was one measure of ALC programs and the

[43:47] high school programs and the goal was 96% total total okay so when we resubmit

[43:54] our what we are going to resubmit is to look at a maintenance goal to maintain

[44:00] that four-year graduation rate at sore high school and then much more attainable goals for a five and

[44:07] sevenyear graduation rate at ALC okay thank you for clarifying

[44:13] so you're going to submit this to the state do they actually at that time evaluate do they validate it somehow and

[44:21] say good that that works for us and then I guess on the back end of that process

[44:26] do they come back and say do they give feedback i mean like like unresolved really um they tell you

[44:34] that they've received our submission and that we met the deadline they certainly give feedback if they flag a component

[44:40] of it as being out of compliance and then they will leave you sometimes detailed information sometimes cryptic

[44:47] information and then you call and say "Help me understand what's out of compliance here." And you work with them

[44:52] on it um but to my knowledge and this is again year oneish I've I submitted it

[45:01] last year and then this year i didn't get any feedback last year when we sub resubmitted it

[45:07] where you'll get the feedback is what used to be the world's best workforce they would give you feedback after that

[45:14] is submitted they would say "Okay we've reviewed it here's what we think." But on the initial goals I've never seen

[45:21] seen feedback and our committee so world's best workforce and our district curriculum

[45:27] advisory committee which we kind of merged our curriculum committee and our world's best workforce committee into

[45:32] one because there was so much overlap between the work that they were doing and frankly the members of those committees um they did a lot of this

[45:39] feedback on the front end and I'd like to keep that process for next year was

[45:44] uh I got a lot of positive feedback from the committee members on just the level of engagement and being able to really

[45:50] dig into understanding what um comprehensive achievement civic readiness is and kind

[45:57] of ga gathering what their input was based on previous years

[46:03] information so hopefully that will keep us have allow us to have tighter tighter

[46:09] goals that are more aligned to the work we're doing and what our committee and public thinks are important things to

[46:14] target can I ask um this I know the legislature

[46:21] puts forth those major goals that then I mean we're kind of stuck with those how

[46:26] often do those get evaluated they do it through this they do it through the world's best workforce or this process

[46:33] annually sometime in the fall oh you mean those goals themselves the five the five that's a legislative that's a

[46:39] legislative decision okay do you remember a time when they've been different uh well they added one this

[46:45] year and they removed one so they used to it would all students read well by third grade right that's now moved on to

[46:52] the local literacy plan and it's not by third grade it's all students read at grade level they took the last

[46:59] legislative session I think two two years ago remove removed that one and

[47:04] put it onto the local literacy plan and then added all students are prepared to be lifelong learners

[47:13] i know that um when you came into this group it was a little bit of a kind of it wasn't exactly aligned and

[47:20] coordinated and so I can see the progress from where it was to where it is i know you're not like a 100% happy

[47:27] with it but I just want to acknowledge the work you and the committee have done because it it's starting to take shape

[47:34] um from my point of view just from one year to the next and I appreciate the really defined action steps like even

[47:41] knowing that we are going to be you know we're working with preschools and in home providers that's such a great

[47:47] action step to capture um because we all know how important that is to come into school really ready to learn so just

[47:54] those action steps give me a good idea of where you're going to so I appreciate that thank you the the committee gets

[48:00] that that was the committee's feedback put put action steps with that's that's incredible that's very helpful it

[48:07] is any other comments or questions okay thank you thank you

[48:17] okay under strategic direction C utilize systems and align resources in efficient

[48:23] manner to support learning we're going to have a preliminary budget update with

[48:37] Marie good evening board members superintendent members of the community

[48:44] so this evening's updates going to be pretty brief um not a lot has changed um

[48:51] in the past couple weeks since I gave the last presentation

[48:57] um I'm just going to highlight a couple things on these slide and then really

[49:02] focus in on the last slide um with all of the funds um again we're still

[49:10] monitoring um what's happening at the legislature i think that's the big

[49:16] highlight on this slide uh right here is um just making sure that we're getting

[49:23] um those legislative changes in um as we know them um and if not we will be

[49:30] coming to you with a budget revision um during the year um if those changes are

[49:36] after um the budget adoption so we will do our best in getting that in and

[49:43] keeping you aware of what we find out or what we calculate before the 17th

[49:50] um again just to highlight the uh fund balance history um what it's projected

[49:56] to be um as of June 30th I believe was 1.2% and that's on that slide that we'll

[50:04] review in a minute uh our framework here um as that budget document comes forward

[50:11] to you um in less than a week um that uh

[50:16] our budget summary book And then um just to highlight this um

[50:22] the preliminary um revenue is just about

[50:27] shy of $6,500 $6,600 change so there wasn't much

[50:35] change since you last saw this and the same with the expenditures um some of the categories

[50:43] and the revenue did change um as we tweak some of the coding

[50:48] um sometimes we code some of the state aids or the other differently um we

[50:55] wanted to get them into the right you codes um for the audit so just making

[51:01] sure we had those in the right categories um but again you'll see that

[51:07] uh not a lot has changed since the last time and then um on the general fund

[51:13] expenditures again uh we had one change in the uh second column um we had an

[51:21] addition just a little over couple hundred thousand we added um we have

[51:28] what currently is the school readiness program budget uh we added in they're

[51:36] shifting it to the voluntary prek budget we added that in um as an adjustment and

[51:44] then we had some other adjustments uh with our compensatory um as far as the

[51:50] benefit lines so you'll see some adjustments in there but overall um that difference again was the

[51:59] 6,600 as far as the revenue and expense so we were just moving some of the lines

[52:04] around with salaries and benefits overall nothing was added or uh taken

[52:11] away we just have to adjust within the uh EURS it's the accounting structure so

[52:18] um you shouldn't see anything bottom line other than

[52:24] 6,600 and then this is the one I wanted to just kind of highlight more because it's it's showing the big picture of all

[52:31] our funds and just kind of walk through going across um what you see and then

[52:39] we'll have the budget summary book which will kind of tell the narrative of of

[52:45] all funds and what's happening at the district and that will be shared um with

[52:50] the board uh early next week so what you see on the the top line for the general

[52:57] funds so the projected fund balance um for July 1 that is what was shared with

[53:03] you in April when we were doing our budget revision and what that picture um

[53:09] as of April was um of our expenditures and what we were projecting we would end

[53:15] the year this year at and so that's that bottom box that you see of all of our

[53:22] fund balance categories so the non-spendable fund balance is our

[53:28] inventory or prepaid items inventory would be if we had um inventory such as

[53:36] like um facilities items um or prepaid items

[53:42] if we're prepaying for equipment or materials into the future fiscal year so

[53:48] currently we have prepaid um about 78,000 Then our restricted category

[53:55] that's the one that we are planning to spend and you'll see that

[54:01] million70 in that uh fourth column over that's the operating capital um that's

[54:08] planned for the literacy curriculum so that is where we are planning on

[54:14] utilizing of that 4,235,000 way down in that bottom box we

[54:21] are planning to draw on our operating capital fund balance um just a little

[54:27] over a million dollars um and that was planned and then um our assigned f fund

[54:34] balance um we are projecting about 2.7 million and um that's for items such as

[54:41] severance um our facility use improvements q comp has a little balance

[54:48] we do assign or uh that um we also have

[54:53] grants and donations those are things at the school level that we do assign and

[54:59] carry over yeartoear and then of course last but not least is the unassigned fund balance

[55:05] that we are projecting at 1.2% so that's how we start out our

[55:10] first column and and we do that for all the different funds um what we're

[55:16] projecting um this current year uh we're ending starting July 1 and so we walk

[55:23] you across our projected revenue um that uh for next year and we just finished um

[55:32] walking through the revenue for the general fund and the expenditures for the general fund um that use of fund

[55:40] balance for the curriculum and then projecting our ending fund balance for

[55:45] all the way a year out from now um what that what we would land um that

[55:50] projected fund balance for all of the different fund balance categories uh we

[55:56] are not planning on drawing from our unassigned at all so at this moment we

[56:02] are projecting that level um 1.2% 2% um it could grow um but we

[56:10] don't plan on dropping it any um my plan is to grow that um that is the goal so

[56:19] the other uh funds that you see up here are food service um that is uh pretty

[56:26] level for next year uh the projected revenue and expenditures um because of

[56:32] the reimbursements from the state uh community service fund again has a a

[56:39] very healthy uh projection with um revenue um and then expenditures being

[56:46] projected um under under so they will have a projected gain in their fund

[56:52] balance next year and then building construction just want to highlight that

[56:57] one um we do have a projected fund balance and and that's due to the the

[57:04] school building bonds uh for the projects and as you know projects it's

[57:10] all about timing so we are carrying over uh a pretty large sum of our our project

[57:16] funds or those bond funds due to the timing this is ongoing with our our

[57:22] projects with the bond levy and then we do plan on issuing the remaining uh

[57:29] balance of that bond levy um during our winter months and um along with some

[57:36] LTFM bonds that we will be coming forward to you um probably during the

[57:41] winter uh months January somewhere in there uh to do that second round and

[57:49] then you'll see the projected expenditures and the building construction and that is all timed um

[57:55] that is all planned based on what we had discussed over a year ago um with all of

[58:02] the the school projects so you'll see that overall net change and fund balance

[58:07] was all timed um that plan spend of those projects uh leaving us next year a

[58:15] projected fund balance of about 31 a.5 million because those projects run over

[58:21] the summer um before the schools open uh that following fall so there's there's

[58:28] timing of projects and expenditures and we're on a cash flow schedule so um that

[58:34] is all mindfully planned uh with uh our construction and then debt service that

[58:41] is how we pay back the bonds and um we plan that through the levy so um again

[58:48] that fund balance and the revenue and expenditures going out are all timed with the levy and how that uh change in

[58:57] fund balances and then last but not least is the custodial fund that again is a flow

[59:03] through of scholarship funds and um again that is timed and appropriately

[59:11] accounted for did you Dr funk we explained to the board why we can't move

[59:17] the 2.7 million and assigned to unassigned and increase our fund balance

[59:22] that again is all dedicated dollars um and again we've we've had uh those

[59:29] dollars some are for donations for uh for example um a big part of that is

[59:37] like the partnership plan um they're dedicated dollars for a specific purpose

[59:43] others are grants um for purposes grants that came from the state um for specific

[59:51] reasons that have carryover others are like your um other donations or

[59:58] activities and then uh we do also have um again we assign carryover for Q comp

[1:00:06] funds in there um so they have strings attached to them there exactly they're

[1:00:11] all different categories um that we as a district set

[1:00:18] aside and then the restricted are um funds again that are by law statute have

[1:00:27] to be set aside there are specific statutes for those

[1:00:36] dollars so that concludes um the presentation this

[1:00:42] evening this was the the main slide I wanted to get before you this evening

[1:00:48] um so next Monday um early next week we'll be uh sending a uh budget book

[1:00:57] summary um and then we'll also be uh posting that online just so that um it

[1:01:04] is available for transparency um just of all the information we've

[1:01:10] been putting together over the past um gez nine months or so of data on the

[1:01:17] budget um with all of this that's come together so a caveat to that if in the

[1:01:25] unlikelyhood the legislature or potential the legislature gets their act together and

[1:01:33] settles this week then we might need a day or two

[1:01:38] more to update the board the book you're going to be getting with the budget for

[1:01:44] next year if they don't what I'm going to suggest is that you will get the

[1:01:51] budget that we will ask you to approve on se the 17th so we'll get it to you over a week ahead of time and then we

[1:01:59] will come in August or July excuse me and we will come forward right out of the gate with a revised budget to match

[1:02:06] what um you know whatever the legislaturator's given us so that's kind

[1:02:12] of how I'm framing it in my mind because we can't ask Marie if they don't settle

[1:02:17] till next Tuesday or Wednesday and suddenly okay Marie we need you to go

[1:02:22] back in and crank all the new information based upon what we just received um you won't have current

[1:02:28] information she'll be working into the late hours of the night so our plan at this point is unless you know in the

[1:02:36] next next couple days the legislature comes forward with here's what really what you're getting and we're approving

[1:02:41] it um then we will be making the assumption that you know currently what

[1:02:49] uh you see in front of you is going to be um within that book and that book by the way will have details by line item

[1:02:56] of okay how we're spending this and and so it'll be much more detailed than what you're seeing on the screen and so have

[1:03:04] feel free to reach out to Marie or myself um once you receive that next

[1:03:09] week so So July would be an update if I'm assuming we're not going to get that information it doesn't look like we're

[1:03:15] going to legislatively i mean I'd be shocked if we did i would at this point too um you know I think the

[1:03:22] the I'm seeing that the education working group has come to some sort of

[1:03:28] an agreement but I am not comfortable putting forth a budget based upon an

[1:03:35] agreement that has not been approved by the legislature yet so I think we're safer to just take the known at this

[1:03:43] point and come back for our meeting in July and Okay um have you amend the budget right out

[1:03:49] of the gate okay agreed thank you

[1:03:56] any questions for Marie thank you very much thank you

[1:04:06] all right our next item is a long-term facility maintenance item the 10-year

[1:04:12] plan welcome Mark good evening Chair Sherman members of the board um tonight's our annual uh

[1:04:19] look at our 10-year long-term facility and maintenance plan um we'll look at um FY so fiscal year 27 so we're looking at

[1:04:26] projects that'll happen next summer not starting tomorrow but happening next summer and then the nine summers um

[1:04:32] after that so as we put together this 10-year plan we really start out to be mindful of taxpayer dollars and then the

[1:04:39] needs of our facilities so at any point the district can raise lower increase decrease the number of projects we want

[1:04:45] to do but we're really trying to find a balance between keeping our buildings keeping our facilities in good shape as

[1:04:51] well as the impact on the levy and the tax dollars within our community and so really trying to find that that sweet

[1:04:57] spot so this is a fluid document that changes from year to year so really we're just looking at this 10-year plan

[1:05:03] and when we um meet in the the end of June we'll be approving the 10-year plan but the reality is we're looking at just

[1:05:09] the FY27 is the one we're approving for next summer and then we'll bring the revised 10-year plan next year with the

[1:05:16] the um 10 years after that so in your packet you have a list of next year

[1:05:21] projects those projects um is a list that's developed with a lot of meetings so um our facility staff met with the

[1:05:28] principles with the head engineers with our architect team with our construction manager team to put a list of things

[1:05:34] together as you look at the list and even up on the screen you're going to see um a lot of orange over the next few

[1:05:41] years and what orange is mechanical so there's a lot of mechanical things within our buildings that go unnoticed

[1:05:47] but things that need to be updated and replaced so um when we look at these projects we also have a lot of

[1:05:53] conversation with our finance department and saying "Okay how much do we want to um spend on projects this year what

[1:05:59] impact does that have on the overall levy?" And so our total for this year is

[1:06:05] $9,366 or $366,435 and these are our next summer

[1:06:11] projects you're going to notice on the list in front of you all the buildings have some sort of project except for

[1:06:16] Lake Elmo and except for Anderson because these are next year projects next year those students will be

[1:06:22] transitioning to a new school so that's why there's no projects um at those dedicated sites so um I'll answer

[1:06:28] questions kind of overall in the 10-year plan here in a second and any individual questions that you have but just kind of just to highlight some of the the things

[1:06:35] just kind of the bigger ticket items um looking at Lily Lake is um kind of twofold one is the four classroom um

[1:06:42] renovation um just looking at starting around the building of replacing casework ceiling flooring lights etc and

[1:06:49] kind of working our way around Lily Lake similar to what we've done Stonebridge the last few summers also at Lily Lake

[1:06:54] is replacing the steam boiler and two of their rooftop units so that's kind of our big ticket items at Lily Lake at

[1:07:01] Oakland um it's kind of a mix of LTFM dollars and bond dollars um so kind of

[1:07:06] the bigger ticket items with the bond we're getting um city sewer and water bringing to the building so now the LTFM

[1:07:13] dollars are abandoning abandoning the septic system and then sealing the well so it's kind of the after effect of once

[1:07:19] you bring the city sewer and water in you know what are you doing with your existing um septic and well that you

[1:07:25] have there at the high school it's cooling towers um kind of by the loading dock area was replacing our cooling

[1:07:31] towers at Stillwater Middle it's um replacing sprinkler pipes um and if you remember a few years ago we had an issue

[1:07:37] with a water leak um with our fire sprinkler and so now it's replacing all the piping there around that area um to

[1:07:44] kind of finishing out that that issue and then there's a lot of kind of parking lot mill and overlay of redoing

[1:07:49] our parking lots at Rutherford the bus garage and then you'll al also notice Oakland's um parking lots mill and

[1:07:55] overlay so once the construction's done there's going to be a lot of truck traffic and those sorts of things just the wear and tear on those lots then

[1:08:02] once it's all done we'll come in and mill overlay those parking lots to have that refreshed once construction's done

[1:08:07] so I didn't touch on all of them but I'll kind of stop here and pause if you have any questions about specific items

[1:08:12] or the the 10-year plan up on the screen great dr funk do you want to explain to

[1:08:18] the board the long-term facilities maintenance process so we're going to be

[1:08:26] asking them at the next meeting to approve this plan and how this ties in

[1:08:32] to the general levy that we approve in for local taxpayers in December of every

[1:08:39] year so h how this component what does it mean to be what are long-term

[1:08:44] facilities dollars where do we get them from uh how does it tie into the to the

[1:08:50] levy so there there's two separate funding sources that we have one is um off our our levy the second one is we

[1:08:56] sell bonds so there's a portion of bonds that we sell for our construction projects with our new elementarymentaries and our renovations

[1:09:02] that we're doing we'll also have a portion of LTFM bonds and then other portion of that is what they call payo

[1:09:09] or part of our levy that we have that we certify every year and so that's why this dollar amount change and and

[1:09:14] fluctuates and we have a conversation with finance is because for our taxpayer we want to keep that dollar value level

[1:09:21] from a tax base every year after year and so that's why we have a talk of okay do we do more projects this year less

[1:09:26] project last year and if you were to sit down and analyze the 10-year plan last year and this year there are some

[1:09:31] differences between what FY27 was last year and what FY27 is this year looking

[1:09:36] at that overall plan and how long-term facility maintenance fits into the bigger larger picture of our budget and

[1:09:43] of our overall levy long-term facility maintenance dollars are really replacing like for like so we can't really add

[1:09:49] anything but it's replacing here boilers parking lots um casework it's anything um if you were to take the building turn

[1:09:56] it upside down and shake it anything that doesn't fall out is long-term facility maintenance so it's not desks

[1:10:01] it's not chairs it's not cafeteria tables anything there but anything that's to a wall or attached those are

[1:10:06] things that can be replaced long-term facility maintenance um wise from a dollar standpoint

[1:10:13] yes uh so to that point and Mark thanks for the great information on this uh we'll see the Bayport School Lake Elmo

[1:10:20] future uh LTA FM plans will include those types of ongoing maintenance costs

[1:10:25] in the future once we're once we're in new buildings correct okay and is that usually a one or two year out type of

[1:10:31] planning that we start seeing that so are you are you saying the current lake bay port or the new ones they'll be

[1:10:38] you're not going to see much of them on there for a while okay should be good okay this is the first kind of year brookview is open in 17 this is kind of

[1:10:45] the first time Brookview started to emerge in this 8 to 10 year windows

[1:10:50] before we can expect anything okay good and it's real minor at Brookview i mean so it's kind of you're not going to see

[1:10:55] anything in year two or three hopefully otherwise it's warrantied i'm sure there's a lot of stuff there hopefully

[1:11:01] there there's other needs across the district that that bubble up and that's the other thing is you're weighing you know every district or every building

[1:11:06] has things that they want to see and you know you listen to all those needs and then you say "Okay let's prioritize what do we really need to do next year what's

[1:11:11] the year after?" And those sorts of things so I'm guessing the new lake Bayport may not be high on the next few

[1:11:16] years perfect thank you okay any other questions yes sorry to waste

[1:11:24] everybody's time on this but can you help me settle a bet are we resurfacing the track this year at the high school

[1:11:30] yes um no we're replacing it so we're replacing the track at the high school this year yes that's more than

[1:11:36] resurfacing that's correct digging it up yes it's there the the adhesive that

[1:11:41] sticks and we actually are digging up the cement under the track probably more details than you care um but there's cracking in the cement underneath the

[1:11:48] track and which is causing it not to to stick anymore and there's some spots in there that we kind of had to get through

[1:11:53] the track season now this summer we're redoing the the asphalt underneath and replacing the track thanks starting next

[1:12:01] week can you win the bed or not it's on camera so you guys know now

[1:12:09] great question um Mark in terms of the philosophy of um LTFM are we looking at

[1:12:15] things like waiting till they break and then planning or are we trying to really anticipate what maintenance things are

[1:12:23] maybe close to breaking we try to be as proactive as possible yeah now something happens in a roof or a boiler breaks

[1:12:28] down that'll come to the head of the list but we try to look out and say "Okay we're at 20 years on this roof the boiler is about five years left we're

[1:12:34] trying to replace it before it gets to that point because once it gets to that point you know our dollars are spent somewhere else when you look in terms of

[1:12:41] replacement so we really want to get ahead of that so we have dedicated dollars and that's why you kind of see the intentional plan here with all the

[1:12:47] orange is because we need to have a really strong focus the next few years on our mechanical systems to make sure

[1:12:52] that things run smoothly in future years so what happens when things break um there are if you look at the back of the

[1:12:59] there are like miscellaneous dollars in there so we do set aside a few district-wide dollars so as things come up which they always do that we have

[1:13:06] some dollars to um kind of anticipate or kind of put towards issues that come up

[1:13:13] but the bigger ticket items we try to um plan for moving forward so we'll patchwork things to get through the year

[1:13:19] and then if we need to we'd move something up the list in a hurry if we had to great thanks

[1:13:25] any other questions thank you very

[1:13:30] much all right we're going to have you stick around though for transportation

[1:13:42] update so just want to take a few moments here and kind of answer questions around transportation as we

[1:13:48] look into next school year so I know the last couple years we've had a little um slow start and so we're being very

[1:13:54] intentional this year about um making sure we're ready to hit the ground running at the beginning of the school year so first off just kind of the

[1:14:00] purpose is who we serve and just kind of just to get a sense of the the students and the areas that we serve in

[1:14:06] transportation take a high overview look of our annual transportation costs over the last four years really talk and kind

[1:14:13] of dig into some of the challenges we've had and some of the systems improvement we've been trying to work on here the last eight months in anticipation to

[1:14:19] next year and then lastly kind of what is our commitment to students staff and families as we move forward as a

[1:14:24] transportation department so looking at um who we serve currently we serve um

[1:14:31] 8,337 students now you're going to look if you if you look at the enrollment say wait a second that's more kids than we have how can you transport that many um

[1:14:38] so we transport all of our schools so all of our elementary schools kids all the middle school kids the high school

[1:14:44] kids um the students at the early childhood family center the students here at Oak Park the bridge and ALC also

[1:14:51] we have um four charter schools or nonpubliclix with Salem Lutheran New Heights St croy Catholic and St croy

[1:14:57] Prep um next year we are dropping Salem with a different start time salem um has declined our transportation and they're

[1:15:03] they're going to change their start times to go somewhere else well there'll only be three um charter schools and non-prep or uh non-publiclix for next

[1:15:09] year so within our transportation we run 75 regular ed routes and what regular uh

[1:15:15] the seven what one route constitutes is a morning and a PM so we run a three- tier system so kind of one route is kind

[1:15:22] of one two three in the morning tiers one two three in the afternoon um so we have some that run three all three some

[1:15:28] that run two tiers um those sorts of things with with their regular ed routes

[1:15:33] our special ed routes um there's 51 of them now our special ed is a little

[1:15:39] different with those routes because they transport to all the schools we just discussed they also transport to 22

[1:15:45] additional locations each and every day that are separate um special education

[1:15:51] um buildings or schools as well as care and treatment facilities so based on

[1:15:56] student needs written into IEPs or um students placed in care and treatment facilities we will transport those

[1:16:02] students to those facilities or those schools based on needs um within their individual education plan looking at our

[1:16:10] uh district as a whole we have over 150 square miles and the unique challenge for us is we're very long and narrow you

[1:16:16] know from top to bottom we're looking about 30 miles and so there's different terrain um you know there's rural

[1:16:22] there's um urban areas and so we cover a lot of uh square footage and trying to

[1:16:27] transport kids to and from school we also run a three- tier system to try to maximize the buses that we have and

[1:16:34] minimize the cost that we that we incur so um each bus is considered a route and

[1:16:41] the buses are um paid for kind of it's a 4-hour kind of minimum two hours in the

[1:16:47] morning two hours in the afternoon and so we have 75 is kind of our base we have 75 routes with our um secondary

[1:16:54] students then we use those same buses for the tier 2 elementary and then we use the same buses for tier three

[1:17:01] charters and non-publiclix versus having more routes we try to condense the number that's why we do three tiers to condense the number of buses we have on

[1:17:08] the road at any given time to try to minimize the cost that we have um for our transportation

[1:17:14] system now looking at our transportation cost over the last four years our costs are broken down into three areas so the

[1:17:21] 75 general ed routes you can kind of see what the cost per route is there our special education which I talked about

[1:17:27] um you can see the cost per route there for the last four years and then our midday our special education um students

[1:17:34] a lot of them have some midday routes as well what middays are is could be from

[1:17:39] um uh high school or here at Oak Park to a job site where they may go to Culver's or Walgreens or whatever for a job site

[1:17:46] we have a lot of students that are on modified or shortened days where they may have half days where they're picked

[1:17:52] up at school let's say after fourth hour or they show up to school after third hour so those middays are in between and

[1:17:58] then a midday route is also for and all of these routes um there may be the cost

[1:18:03] of the bus but there also to be um bus aids or bus monitors um with our special education students as well within that

[1:18:09] so as we look at the total costs or total expenditures that we have that's not just the routes that's all our

[1:18:15] transportation costs together it's our routes it's the bus aids the bus monitors it's the transportation staff

[1:18:22] it's our own district vehicles our district gasoline all those sorts of things it's not just route cost there on

[1:18:27] the bottom it's our total expenditures that we paid in our transportation department um each of those four years

[1:18:34] yes Dr f okay i'm going to talk briefly about this slide because I think you could take a look at the just look at

[1:18:41] any anything above the total expenditures there and you can see the well anywhere in the slide from left to

[1:18:48] right is significantly more expensive the further right you get on that slide um without going into too much detail I

[1:18:55] want to share this with the board and the public okay in

[1:19:01] 2122 the district chose to switch vendors okay so we decided to go a

[1:19:07] different route with a new vendor at the end of that school year in April of 22 I

[1:19:12] think it was um sometime in the spring of 22 the district um went out for an

[1:19:21] RFP and we received nobody to bid okay

[1:19:26] as a result of that um through relationships within the state uh we

[1:19:32] found a vendor who said they would be willing to come in and uh transport our kids and do a first class job of that

[1:19:38] and they have and that's Schmidies and they've come in and they've done a really great job um as you can see the if you're

[1:19:46] looking at the cost difference just looking at general ed between 21 per route and 22 you can see it was at a

[1:19:53] significant premium and that that contract is tied to the consumer price

[1:19:59] index so there's a there's a piece in there that uh um as the consumer price

[1:20:04] index goes up so does our cost okay so that that is a factor that is involved

[1:20:10] there we have a sixyear contract with uh the Schmidian

[1:20:17] Sons Bus Company okay and we are now finishing year three all right and again they've done a first class job for us um

[1:20:25] since uh uh since they started um so you

[1:20:30] could see that uh um it's expensive um but there's a there's a reason behind

[1:20:36] that on on why we are paying what we are um and that's because you know we we decided to switch for uh for whatever

[1:20:44] reason um so when we're looking at the bottom line

[1:20:49] and we have Marie coming up here you know uh presentation after presentation

[1:20:55] showing us that we have a 1% fund balance um you can see that our

[1:21:01] transportation expenditures in 2021 and 21-22 now those were both impacted

[1:21:06] somewhat by COVID okay um but you know we're paying

[1:21:12] approximately almost $5 million more um now than we were four years ago

[1:21:19] and when we have a tight budget um $5

[1:21:25] million we're paying to transport our students um is painful for me as your

[1:21:32] superintendent u when we could be utilizing that elsewhere to support the needs of our

[1:21:38] staff and our you of our students so when people are out

[1:21:43] asking why don't you have any money where's your fund balance um why why are

[1:21:48] you you know so so tight financially this is a significant component of it

[1:21:55] and you know Mark's going to talk here a little bit more but before he does I guess I'll just stop and say before we

[1:22:01] move on to the other part of this presentation are there anything questions or anything from the board that uh I don't we might be able to I

[1:22:08] just went back and looked um because I remember when we were doing the operating levy renewal in the tech in

[1:22:15] the capital projects tech levy Um we had talked about 2.8 million was going to be

[1:22:20] freed up by passing that capital projects that tech levy um 2.8 million

[1:22:26] was going to um be available and go back into the uh general fund and then we had

[1:22:31] the inflationary increase I think it was on the operating levy um that was above

[1:22:36] and beyond the renewal that was going to generate another 2.7 million when I went

[1:22:41] back and looked so when you look at what Dr funk said with 5 million the revenue generated from that capital projects and

[1:22:48] the operating levy renewal was 5.5 annually so and I remember when we were

[1:22:54] looking at it we said this didn't this didn't you know factor in what the unknown of transportation and I don't

[1:23:00] think anyone really quite understood how significant that transport the transportation was going to be so when

[1:23:07] people look at well you generated you you renewed that operating levy you did the tech levy that was 5.5 and and this

[1:23:13] is five so you can kind of see the challenges and then on that operating levy was already um and Chrisa can

[1:23:20] probably correct me if I'm wrong but was already $7 million in cuts that that um operating levy was operating on already

[1:23:29] so was we were already kind of operating under $7 million of cuts before so just an ongoing challenge

[1:23:36] for transportation so I appreciate I know we can't get into specifics regarding this um to a great extent but

[1:23:41] I appreciate it can I ask a question about um how do we get funding for

[1:23:47] transportation is there a specific amount of money that the state gives us um and then how does that factor in when

[1:23:54] we've got our um charters and nonpubliclix as well do we get additional funding for them or is it

[1:23:59] just a how does that all work so and do we get enough um a couple things so no

[1:24:05] we don't get enough so based it's based on enrollment so you get a dollar amount i'm blanking on what it is i want to say

[1:24:10] it's around $170 or so per student plus the sparity aid and so sparity aid is

[1:24:15] for us because our district is so many square miles we get additional dollars to transport because we're bigger than

[1:24:21] you know a different district so there's a percentage that we get in sparity aid so when you look at the legislative platform the last few years we talked

[1:24:27] about increasing sparsity aid that would help with our transportation costs the second part of your question talked

[1:24:33] about you know the charter schools and nonpubliclix and how that um those dollars how much we're paying for that

[1:24:38] versus our students um that's hard to do a total and here's why because we try to be as efficient as we can st croy Prep

[1:24:45] is the biggest one if I go back to you just look at the total number of students so St cry Prep being 890

[1:24:51] students is on a tier of itself the other three that are being a little bit smaller numbers that we transport we

[1:24:57] actually embed those transportation students within our elementary runs so we'll pick up our elementary students

[1:25:03] and our Salem New Heights and St cry Catholics all together and then we'll drop them off at the elementary schools

[1:25:08] and then we'll run um bus shuttles from elementary schools to those charter schools so they're actually within our

[1:25:15] elementary student um route tier so it's hard to break out those numbers because

[1:25:21] we try to embed because we can to embed those with them and not incur those additional costs in a separate tier

[1:25:26] three and then the tier three is the St cry Prep so that would be kind of above and beyond what we would do with our

[1:25:32] students but to give an overall total it's difficult because we embed those three charter schools and nonpubliclix

[1:25:39] in our own transportation costs quick followup so do we um when we're going or putting in forward the aid for

[1:25:46] transportation do we use the 8700 correct yes it's total number yes it's a total number we transport our enrollment

[1:25:52] correct it's everybody that we are correct transporting thank you for that explanation

[1:25:59] so transportation is automatic for elementary and middle school and opt in

[1:26:05] or opt out for the high school um great leading question so once we get to now

[1:26:11] as as we looked at our systems how about you pin that and I'll come back to it when we're done if I don't answer your question answer in about five minutes

[1:26:17] okay that was leading to another question so maybe that'll be answered as well right okay

[1:26:23] anything else just on the cost aspect

[1:26:29] all right so looking at some of the challenges that we have um we're heading into kind of the fourth year of different management or different

[1:26:35] leaderships and staffing within transportation and so really trying to build a solid team um to help grow and

[1:26:41] and build some of the efficiencies within our staffing within our routing process here but we've had some um hiccups along the way the last couple

[1:26:47] years um also last year especially because we went to a new routing software we had inaccurate student data

[1:26:54] and our student information system and our routing software data was not accurate which led to delayed routes and

[1:27:00] and parents finalizing the routes once we sent them out um parents were routed to where they lived a few years ago not

[1:27:06] necessarily where they live today so we had to kind of reroute different things because the information that we had um was inaccurate and it just created a um

[1:27:15] an environment that's not something that we want to have as the start of the school year for our Stillwater schools and all of our charters and nonpubliclix

[1:27:20] as well so moving forward we recognize that we own that and say "Okay it

[1:27:26] happened let's make sure we don't have it again." and and I really want to acknowledge um our bus garage and our

[1:27:32] drivers they were really critical at the beginning of the year of listening to families listening to parents talking

[1:27:38] through um things with them and then also bringing information back to us about um information that we needed for

[1:27:45] our routing so there's really good communication with the garage at the beginning of the year and also for um

[1:27:50] these meetings as well so once the school year kind of got up and running kind of around meish and things settled

[1:27:56] down a little bit we had monthly meetings and sometimes they were you know bi-weekly um more than monthly with

[1:28:02] our tech team with our transportation team with the bus garage around our information and data flow looking at our

[1:28:08] student information of P school what information is there is it accurate is it correct and how does that um flow

[1:28:14] into Traversa which is our routing software to make sure the data is flowing correctly we're getting the

[1:28:19] correct information back and forth um around addresses around um coding a students whether the student is a

[1:28:26] general education student or a special education student or they're going to care and treatment um program and then

[1:28:33] um we started to with next year changing start times is we had we started to

[1:28:40] build a test site and so we couldn't um build and practice new routes within our

[1:28:45] current routing system because the beauty of our routing system is it's live and the one thing we ran into is

[1:28:53] when parents would call at the beginning of the year we'd make changes as let's say 2:00 family called we make the

[1:28:59] change instantly well as soon as we hit save on our routing software it went directly to the tablets and the bus and

[1:29:06] so it would automatically change the driver's route thinking the student that we just routed is now on that stop and

[1:29:13] so we learned that we can't make changes during our drive time because it it's it's live and it's and it's up and

[1:29:19] running moving forward and as we planned for next year we couldn't make changes within our site because any changes you

[1:29:24] make is running live so we had to rebuild the system where now our elementary is the first tier our

[1:29:29] secondary is the second tier and then our charters and non-publiclix are a third tier so we created a sandbox

[1:29:35] something totally separate and took our current students this year and kind of superimposed them to next year because

[1:29:41] we couldn't take our students this year and and move them up a grade because that would affect our system and then

[1:29:46] I'll created a separate sandbox site where we tried to reroute our students for next year and try to be more

[1:29:53] efficient as we could which I'll get into here in a second also um we're still in the process but we're

[1:29:59] developing processes to verify busing and enrollment information with um our

[1:30:04] families as soon as they enroll we're clarifying um address changes and alternate addresses that changes a lot

[1:30:11] so a lot of times when they enroll they'll tell what their house address but when it comes to transportation they

[1:30:16] may go to a daycare before after school or they may go to um a separate parent or if grandma or grandpa live within

[1:30:23] that that boundary they can go to their house so they may have alternate addresses for where they can get dropped off in the afternoon or where they can

[1:30:30] get picked up in the morning so making sure each kid has the appropriate information of where pickup is where

[1:30:35] drop off is also working with special education around because that is fluid and ever evolving around students with

[1:30:42] IEPs and their transportation needs um and accommodations and um different

[1:30:48] levels of service that they have between all of our sites and then just really establishing our rout our routing and

[1:30:54] communication flows not only with us in the district but also with our staff and our families um in a timely manner we

[1:31:01] really try to shoot for that 3 to 5 days so anytime there's a routing change whether it's an address change whether

[1:31:06] you haven't um rode all year and now you want to we really shoot for that 3 to 5 days from the time that you enroll or

[1:31:12] say you need a change to then you're on the bus there um in a very timely manner so it's really working on our systems um

[1:31:19] within our our our school district now to Pete's question is this year so in

[1:31:24] the past we had all we routed all elementary kids all middle school kids and all ninth grade kids we had an

[1:31:31] opt-in for sophomores juniors and seniors basically because they could drive what we tried to do be more

[1:31:37] efficient this year is we had an opt-in process for everybody so we sent communication they had a month-long span

[1:31:42] to um enroll in the transportation we send weekly emails um not only to our

[1:31:48] students in the school at Stillwater School District but we had the similar process with our charter schools and nonpubliclix and had weekly meetings

[1:31:54] with them and giving them the list of hey here's week one here's the kids that have already enrolled all right here's

[1:31:59] week two here's the kids enrolled so they can follow up make those phone calls to make sure that they have the accurate information back sent to us so

[1:32:07] with the the start time change we actually um are able to be more

[1:32:12] efficient with our 75 routes next year than we were this year and so what I mean by that is um it really helps with

[1:32:20] the start time change actually because if you look at the first tier right now is secondary there's we use all 75 buses

[1:32:27] the second tier we use 68 or 69 buses so there's six or seven buses that don't have a tier 2 route so they run a tier

[1:32:35] one and then they jump to tier three and so next year by moving the 75 instead of

[1:32:40] one and moving that to tier two we can shorten some of that ride time for our for um our drivers and the time we're

[1:32:47] build for so there's running routes two and three not one and three so we're able to create some efficiencies by

[1:32:53] having a little tighter um routing span for uh tier two and tier three um bus

[1:32:58] drivers also we've had it added some additional staff to work um within our

[1:33:03] transportation department to make it uh more efficient and we've really had a great collaboration with Schmides which

[1:33:09] we have talked about I know Dr funk talked about as well lastly um in the

[1:33:14] spring our transportation team and the the representatives from the garage we went to every building and every site

[1:33:20] here in our district to talk about two things one is transportation this year

[1:33:26] at the beginning of the year how was it for you what were some things we need to work on how's transportation going on

[1:33:31] now what are things that we need to think about moving forward to help us make it a more smooth transition for you and your site the second question was

[1:33:38] next year now with start times changing and you may move tiers what issues are you int anticipating what questions do

[1:33:44] you have for us and have an open dialogue with all of our buildings and programs around transportation next year

[1:33:50] and we use that information to help tweak um our routes for next year to make sure we can be um as proactive as

[1:33:57] possible and it was really good honest conversations and feedback with all of our buildings and I appreciate our principles taking the time to to really

[1:34:03] talk about things that that went well and and some challenges they had within their sites and within their

[1:34:10] buildings lastly here um earlier family outreach I'll own it part of our problem

[1:34:16] is yes we had inaccurate data um part of it was we finished our routing on a Friday and we thought you know what this

[1:34:21] would be great let's get the routing out Friday afternoon families can think about it they can look over when it comes back Monday we can hit the ground

[1:34:27] running with changes in hindsight it gave we were we showed up

[1:34:33] Monday morning three days behind the eightball because families would call Friday night Saturday or Sunday you show

[1:34:39] up Monday you already have three days of phone calls that you just show up and you're already behind so looking forward

[1:34:44] is we need to when we send out the routes do it at the beginning of the week so when when families and parents call we can be responsive there that day

[1:34:51] start to get ahead of the curve and don't always just end up as far back as you can the another component of that is

[1:34:58] sending it out earlier within the the calendar leading up to workshop week we want to send it a week or two earlier

[1:35:04] than we did this year so we can be more proactive in some of the issues than and and changes because there's always going

[1:35:11] to be changes it just happens when you transport 8,700 kids there's bound to be changes somewhere along the line that's

[1:35:17] common we know it is going to happen but to have those phone calls make those changes get those things done before

[1:35:22] workshop week so when families sit down at the elementary with with ready set go conferences they have all that

[1:35:28] information we start with secondary ready to rock and roll at the beginning of the school year so we're going to be mindful about getting it out earlier and

[1:35:34] getting it out earlier in the week so we can be more responsive to families as as they call and make changes and then the

[1:35:41] last thing is we're we're piloting a a new help desk ticket system with our tech department so the other part that

[1:35:47] we came into and run into last year is because we had so many issues families and rightfully so because I'd probably

[1:35:53] do the same thing is they'd call the district and and leave a message then they'd do an email then they'd call the

[1:35:58] bus garage and then so you had people working on the same issue with multiple people because it was a centralized

[1:36:05] system now as calls come in to coming into a ticketing system and kind of have one spot a centralized spot to say

[1:36:11] here's the the list and then we can start to to delegate and move okay this person works on this this person works

[1:36:16] on that to really maximize our time to really target the the questions and and

[1:36:22] um changes that parents are looking for so I know that's a lot of information but I just want to end on um

[1:36:29] we are committed that all year long from the first day of school to the last day of school all students will have a safe

[1:36:35] reliable transportation each and every day second of all we're going to continuously improve our processes based

[1:36:41] on family and staff feedback and if there's things you hear we are more than receptive to to continually improve our

[1:36:47] process and we want to operate effectively and as efficiently as we can each and every year and build year to

[1:36:53] year to year to make transportation better as we move forward so with that I'll open it up to any questions or

[1:36:59] comments that you may have thank you yes Dr funk couple of other things

[1:37:04] so go back to the one of your routes or the cost slide either one of them um go go go to the

[1:37:13] There you go all right you can see we've got 51 special education routes and we

[1:37:20] also um go forward a slide and you and you

[1:37:25] can see we've got special education routes and we got midday routes which are also special education okay smaller

[1:37:32] vans maybe um one of the things that we have to take a look at

[1:37:38] is what is our process to determine who gets special education

[1:37:46] transportation and what's our process to determine a midday route but here's just

[1:37:52] an example okay and I had a conversation with somebody in in one of our programs

[1:37:58] um sometime in the last two or three weeks we have students who because

[1:38:05] of there's some decision that was made somewhere that okay we want them coming

[1:38:11] in at 9:00 in the morning and school starts at 8:00 in the

[1:38:18] morning and so to best meet the needs of the student we are going to send a

[1:38:24] separate vehicle to pick that student up at 9:00

[1:38:30] and um so the question that I asked is well what would happen if we picked the

[1:38:35] student up at 8:00 well they they don't want to come at 8:00

[1:38:42] um so we are we're making decisions i think in

[1:38:48] some cases we're meeting the needs of our students but okay are there are

[1:38:53] there opportunities to meet the needs of our students knowing we are in a

[1:39:00] fiscal constraint constrained environment that we're operating in and so I think working with um our

[1:39:09] administrators this is something that we can really start to take a look at and I know Paul is already within special

[1:39:16] services taking a look Okay how do we make IEP decisions and why do why do kids um you know have separate uh

[1:39:24] separate needs and there are some are there some ways to tighten some things up the other uh thing I would like to mention to the

[1:39:31] board is um we've hired somebody and we Tom we'll probably have him come and

[1:39:37] introduce you to you um probably in before school starts this but Tom Rizley

[1:39:42] he's a 30-year Navy veteran he was a router

[1:39:47] for St cloud Schools for a number of years um he most recently ran the entire

[1:39:54] transportation system for the Becker school system um since about I think

[1:39:59] 2015 or 17 and so he knows routing he knows bus garage activities he knows the

[1:40:07] ins and outs of bus systems more so than anybody we've had since we've hired here

[1:40:13] since we've been here and Tom has already come in and saying "Okay here's some ideas that you can have to run

[1:40:19] things more efficient." So as a part of that I think we're already going to see some um potential savings that we're not

[1:40:27] going to see as much of an increase in transportation next year as perhaps we we could have so um I I just want

[1:40:36] to re uh affirm to the board that in my opinion we have to get these costs under

[1:40:44] control um and we this is a a point of discussion within the um

[1:40:52] central services and um you know and and that's my commitment to you and and I

[1:40:57] think Markx's as well um but in addition to that and part of the reason we had

[1:41:03] the presentation tonight is the start of the last two school years have been an absolute fiasco um and so I'm

[1:41:11] appreciative to Mark and his his team within the transportation and and to

[1:41:16] Carissa who's really kind of been taking a lead role in this as well uh

[1:41:22] for really starting to look at our processes and our systems um you know

[1:41:27] there's just something just simple tonight we talk about okay we're going to validate addresses we're going to

[1:41:32] devalidate addresses well one thing we found out last fall is we parents didn't know what their address was in the

[1:41:39] system and we wouldn't let them in to see it okay but that was just a simple okay

[1:41:45] somebody turned the switch on um so I feel much better about it i told Mark

[1:41:51] and I told Tom I said "My goal for the first day of school is 100% of the kids are picked up on time and they're

[1:41:57] dropped off and they get back home on time." That's the goal for the first day of school and that's quite the stretch

[1:42:03] goal considering how we've we've been the last couple years but I I think what you've seen from Mark tonight is a real

[1:42:10] proactive attempt to to get this done so thank you

[1:42:16] so getting more efficient you know working on systems obviously technology can help that's all great

[1:42:27] um but is it too early to be looking at different providers or I mean to be looking at or or you know looking at

[1:42:36] renegotiating moving forward i mean obviously they know more about us now than they did when they when we signed

[1:42:42] this contract so may maybe we're we we it's a great question um I've never seen a six-year contract in my life okay as

[1:42:50] till this one uh but I think for Schmidies you know they knew

[1:42:56] that we had a struggle with uh you know whatever was happening with our previous provider and they wanted we're going to

[1:43:02] come in here and we're going to commit we want a long-term guarantee so I think there potentially are some

[1:43:10] opportunities within the contract to look at okay are there some ways we can

[1:43:16] um look at some cost saving moving forward and again I mean we've got an outstanding relationship with them right

[1:43:23] now and I think they will want to stay here long term um as well so I mean as

[1:43:28] there's some things that they can do to to help us uh you know keep the commitment long

[1:43:35] term term but we we still have probably at least another year before we can

[1:43:41] really start to look into um some savings contractually i think

[1:43:47] great question though uh following up on that I was surprised to hear that players like First Student

[1:43:54] or National Express or STA weren't uh responding to the RFP is there something

[1:44:00] structural in the way that we have our system set up or is there something that we could do to make ourselves more attractive to receive more RFPs in the

[1:44:07] future i think it was just circumstances upon about this specific situation and I

[1:44:12] can talk to you more offline about that later but I think it was just the specific situation we were in thank you

[1:44:23] you know if you were to hang out at any of the schools when those buses are unloading one might see 20 people or

[1:44:30] less getting off of a bus so when I mentioned the optin I know even when my kids went to school you would opt in

[1:44:37] even if you didn't intend to use it because you might need it on that day that your car is broken down or something like that so if you need the

[1:44:43] ride you're going to say "I want the ride." But if you don't need it anymore you just let it be

[1:44:49] and uh is there a way that you could continually rejigger routes to uh

[1:44:58] make it more efficient and fill the buses so some of that will happen at secondary schools and so a lot of when

[1:45:04] we do ridership because we'll do ridership a couple times a year to see who's riding buses or not but we're really intentional to do our load counts

[1:45:11] on the times in between activity seasons so a kids you know in the middle of

[1:45:16] soccer they may not need the bus because they're playing soccer but before soccer season and after soccer season they're going to need a bus okay and so we kind

[1:45:22] of do right now that's the way we've did now in terms of the opt-ins opt outs we that's why we did this process to see

[1:45:29] who's actually riding who wants it who needs it the bus and then now as we route for next year we can be

[1:45:34] intentional about who signed up who needs it um and not just grades I'm sorry and all grades correct yep

[1:45:45] yep um kind of piggybacking off that if families miss the boat on signing their

[1:45:52] kids up I'm assuming they can still do it at some point it's not like you're cut off yep nope they're not they're not

[1:45:58] cut off at at some point here in the summer you know we're exclude as many as you can but as we get close to the

[1:46:03] beginning of the year you know they may not have it for day one um as we get in as we get closer but they can still do

[1:46:10] it right now and I know our communications team will be sending out another message to families is kind of hey here's the last chance i know we've

[1:46:15] talked about this before but if you need it right now um here's kind of one last shot before we we start our routing and

[1:46:21] so we have to wait to do our routing until the the rollover happens by rollover I mean starting at the first

[1:46:26] week of July is rolling all our kids up a grade our kindergartens become first grade first become second and so forth once that happens from a district level

[1:46:34] now we can start to route because we have accurate information if we were to do it now when the rollover comes that information goes away so we have a busy

[1:46:41] July ahead of us yes you do can I just make one quick comment i just really appreciate how much learning has come

[1:46:47] out of the beginning of this year's kind of challenges um I just remember it being a very difficult first couple

[1:46:53] weeks um of school for staff and for families so it sounds like you guys have really looked at the whole system and

[1:47:00] dug in and have done a lot of um planning and problem solving so I'm

[1:47:07] really hopeful that this year goes really well um and really appreciate all the work that's going into it it will

[1:47:15] regard Oh I'm sorry go ahead Sarah so so regarding special ed and I think even some regular ed um you know we got 150

[1:47:22] square miles but we transport well beyond that in some cases right uh uh

[1:47:29] how far do we transport some of these kids and so special education they're they're little separate so special

[1:47:35] education is IEP driven so special education is not a decision transportation makes that's a division a

[1:47:40] decision IEP team makes at the school level that information comes to us and now that's a legal document so we have

[1:47:46] to look and say you know we have a student that goes to farable every day for a school that's you know for them

[1:47:51] they're traveling all over the metro to different special education or care and treatment facilities um that we have we

[1:47:59] also do have u Mckin Vento students that live outside of our district that we bring into our school district because

[1:48:05] they fall under the Mckin Vento act as well so there are special there's unique circumstances around but the the the

[1:48:11] general is we do for special education we do go to multiple sites every single day and outside our district okay the

[1:48:18] the same transportation formula we get a certain dollar amount per kid so but if

[1:48:23] we have to transport them to Cambridge or to Farabal Yep and we do we do Cambridge as well yeah okay yeah i'm

[1:48:29] sure you probably had some of those routes but yes we do transport kids all places that they need the services for

[1:48:38] and it also look isn't the legislature this year cutting 5% one

[1:48:43] year 10% the next year for sped reimbursement we're reimbured two years after the after the cost so currently

[1:48:50] the reimbursement is 100% so one of their cuts is in 27 it's going to be 95%

[1:48:57] reimbursement and in 28 it's going to be 90% reimbursement and so these costs are

[1:49:02] going to continue to but even as you do the math if it's 100% reimbursed and you're two years out if you can see

[1:49:08] every year the cost increase your reimbursement for that year is not going to Yeah you never catch up okay but to

[1:49:16] be cutting further I think it just underscores and why I really appreciate Paul looking at the student services and

[1:49:22] just improving the communication flow with how decisions that get made impact

[1:49:27] the financial well-being of the district so I appreciate that did Sarah did you have a question yes yeah just um uh

[1:49:33] thanks for the really useful and helpful information um is there any data or any

[1:49:40] like known success stories about use of like AI for

[1:49:45] increasing busing and transportation efficiencies um in

[1:49:50] terms Yeah so when we have a a routing soft that's with the part of our routing software okay so the majority of kids

[1:49:57] special educations look different but a majority of them is is kind of there's a route framework and the the there's a

[1:50:03] button it's called assigned student stops and runs so it's like as you do scheduling the mass of it you can get 80% of the kids you know kind of the

[1:50:09] efficiencies and now you have to think we have a lot of unique one-off situations too which add to it you know

[1:50:14] we have a student that lives on Highway 36 well within the boundary of the school there's an elementary age kid and

[1:50:20] a middle-aged kid you can't stop a bus legally on Highway 36 so you have to take a van to pick up that student in

[1:50:26] their driveway turn around safely and come out you know so you're adding a cost there just because of where our

[1:50:31] district is you know there are students that live on Manning or other places where they may be living on a hill or

[1:50:37] you know those sorts of things where again you can't stop a bus because of what road it's on that you have to do

[1:50:42] and it falls under our general education but yet based on where we are there's private roads um in the northern part of

[1:50:49] southern that is one lane only you know that's a mile long they live at the end of that again you can't get a bus

[1:50:55] through and turn around so there are unique situations that do add to our cost because of just the geography of

[1:51:02] our district having said that how many of you on the

[1:51:07] board have seen a buzz just sitting on the side of the road

[1:51:14] so AI would be very useful okay because what what's happening the bus driver is

[1:51:21] okay i'm getting too f too far into my route too fast so now I have to wait so

[1:51:27] that I'm not too early to the next stop and so we're paying for that bus driver to wait because we have some

[1:51:34] inefficiencies in how the times that we're so you know I think that's where

[1:51:40] it could be very beneficial in the future is okay what's your load capacity

[1:51:45] you know what's what's the I don't know is it called load time I mean what's the

[1:51:51] best best load time per student so that um you know how long is a stop how long

[1:51:56] is each kid and there's there's a formula that comes in to say you know when you stop is it is it 30 seconds is it 15 seconds how long does it take each

[1:52:02] kid you know and you we play with those load times to say okay if we run it at this what do our results look like we run it at this what does it look like

[1:52:08] and you can play diff use different scenarios that's kind of what we're doing in July is saying okay what makes sense got it and the efficiency of that

[1:52:16] is okay if we are able to shave enough time off okay then guess what maybe we

[1:52:22] can go pick up more kids um and less routes so that's one of the things that

[1:52:29] I've talked with Tom about um is taking a look at that um as a potential

[1:52:34] operational efficiency for us but yeah I think utilizing AI in that capacity would be very uh very helpful

[1:52:43] yeah yeah thank you again Mark and um Dr frunk thanks for the really helpful historical context around the the his

[1:52:50] you know transportation costs and um you know I think that provides some really good context um and Mark and and thanks

[1:52:58] for your accountability uh and transparency around some past you know uh challenges we've had the last couple

[1:53:03] years and the opportunities for improvements um one question I did have is I know something that the board we

[1:53:09] saw a lot of emails last fall start of school year of you know I've called a

[1:53:14] voicemail and I um sent an email and you kind of touched upon this new ticketing system is that going to merge these

[1:53:20] different sources together so someone calls in and emails it it's going to come as the same household so you're not again duplicating efforts

[1:53:27] yeah streamline that process well that'd be great yes that's could be fantastic so yeah kudos very good

[1:53:37] a few years ago there was actually a split vote on the board to approve these card readers on the bus and I imagine

[1:53:43] there could be an AI followup to this is is that in play at all that the kids

[1:53:48] will wave in nope we have that capability but we don't currently have that in operation

[1:53:55] right now is there no desire to use that and the reason I think is the followup in that is if you know then there'd be a lot of data that would be gathered from

[1:54:01] that kids are riding they're not riding and then you make adjustments problem is you're relying on the kid to have the

[1:54:07] card okay and what whoops forgot it oops you

[1:54:13] know it it's so we have not done that the other thing is they thought well we

[1:54:18] use these same cards to go through the lunch line okay well if you talk to the people in the

[1:54:24] kitchens and they're going to have kids use cards to go through they're like you're going to create chaos we will

[1:54:29] have lines back out the door just give them give them a number to punch in and go um so this is an example of okay the

[1:54:36] technology is there to we could potentially do it but it I think it just never got off the

[1:54:44] ground and this this decision I think was made before I even before I arrived on the scene

[1:54:50] so I think we piloted it a couple years ago maybe in one building um but no

[1:54:57] there's no um there's no um long-term commitment to

[1:55:03] doing that okay we just need to chip all the kids and we'll be good

[1:55:10] eyeballs i'm kidding it's probably coming

[1:55:15] anything else did you have a question Parker i do uh

[1:55:22] it may be best to answer offline because it may have some specific numbers in it

[1:55:27] but I'm just curious about the you know it looks like from the contracts it's up

[1:55:33] 25ish% for general ed and 15ish% for special ed and 21 to 23 or 22 to 23 but

[1:55:42] in that same year there's a 70% increase in our transportation expenditures which

[1:55:48] that didn't align to me i would have expected to have a 20 to 30% jump or 15

[1:55:53] to 25% jump year to year i I think what that is and Mark you can tell me if I'm

[1:55:59] wrong I wasn't here but I think those both 21 and 22 they are COVID related so

[1:56:05] we we reduced the number of routes considerably based upon COVID and so we

[1:56:11] went back to a full schedule in 2223 and I think that's why you saw I don't know if that's accurate or not we we can

[1:56:17] discuss more thanks a lot is that possible just for like I know we

[1:56:23] track the cross subsidy for special ed and for EL services can we ever quantify

[1:56:32] what we like the just the difference that cross subsidy and our transportation for legislators or for

[1:56:38] Yeah we can do that okay i know that we're almost done with this funding cycle but it would be helpful for me as

[1:56:43] a board member to be able to talk about that cross versus what we get yes yeah and I think that would be helpful to see

[1:56:50] in future legislative platforms and I know we've asked a lot of questions is there anything that families can be

[1:56:55] doing now or and I'm sure this is being covered in communications but to help

[1:57:01] with the district's goal of kind of having that great start the only thing is if they haven't registered do so okay

[1:57:07] and the email is is uh schoolbus.org so still

[1:57:14] schoolbustowwarterschools.org is the the email okay so sign up correct if they move let us know yeah or if you have an

[1:57:19] address change or a daycare change where you went to daycare last year you know if an elementary student that went to a

[1:57:25] daycare lit last year or that this year in the morning because then start times change and now you can get picked up at

[1:57:30] home where that morning daycare gets taken away let us know because that impacts us so if there's any changes to

[1:57:35] your um address or pickup or drop off locations that'd be much appreciated before July great and does that go out

[1:57:43] in communication to families at some point just a reminder in last week's um school newsletters and we will be

[1:57:49] sending out a community again in a couple of weeks and I just wanted to end this and I

[1:57:55] think um director the Andrew did a good job just kind of saying this i personally appreciate you um owning kind

[1:58:02] of the and taking accountability for the pain that has been in the community with families um that just means a lot I

[1:58:09] think to hear that and um and just seeing the work that your team has been doing this year i mean just anecdotally

[1:58:16] I'm we're all around and you guys have worked really hard this year so I'm excited to see the the benefits and um

[1:58:23] and I just appreciate that for your whole team we don't want that again either yeah absolutely thank you so much

[1:58:29] appreciate your update okay okay so we have one action item

[1:58:36] this evening and this is a resolution approving Northeast Metro 916 long-term

[1:58:42] facility maintenance and you're going to stick around and walk us through that i'm here for one more um so similar to

[1:58:48] my first presentation around the long-term facility maintenance we partner with 916 so 916 has the

[1:58:53] opportunity to do a long-term facility and maintenance plan as well um you can see in the packet they have their 10-year plan um laid out of what their

[1:59:00] expenditures are um for both next uh fiscal year and the the ones following it their total for next year is

[1:59:09] $597,600 so of the member groups that's kind of proportionally distributed across that um member groups we pay

[1:59:16] 10.2% of that so our portion is

[1:59:23] $60,754.54 and so you can see the resolution here up on the screen when that if that gets approved this dollar

[1:59:29] amount then will go on top of the 10-year plan that we discussed here a little bit ago so next um meeting when

[1:59:35] it comes to the official documents there's four official documents that have to go to MDE we'll have our LTFM

[1:59:41] dollars our health and safety and then the 916 portion here would be a part of that as well so all of our member the

[1:59:48] member groups of 916 have to approve it in order to move forward um we're just approving not the total but just our

[1:59:54] 60,000 portion here for 916 so I know we talked about LTFM before so I'll kind of

[2:00:00] leave it at that but if anybody has questions or comments let me know yeah so I'm going to go ahead and make a motion to approve this is there a second

[2:00:07] second great director Theelinder with the second so we'll um have time here for questions or comments and then we'll

[2:00:13] do a roll call vote on the resolution um I know Andrew serves as um kind of the

[2:00:18] board member on 916 so I wanted to start with you if you had anything or to comment on this or any discussion that

[2:00:24] would be relevant from the meetings that you have but yeah no absolutely thank you Chair Sherman and you know uh

[2:00:30] Director Hawk's done such a great job um serving in that role previously i know uh the board thinks very highly of her

[2:00:36] at uh and the staff at 916 and it's been an honor to be able to serve with them as well and see some of the work that's

[2:00:42] being done in partnership with our school district i know uh Paul and his team does a lot of work with them and uh

[2:00:48] some are you know our districts and and our district members more vulnerable students so um I've been able to learn

[2:00:54] more probably than most of you in terms of what those uh LTFM types of projects

[2:00:59] look like and I think it's going to be well served to best uh take care of uh you know our students and our member

[2:01:05] district students as well so I would be in support of it great yes the facility

[2:01:11] we're talking about is really the White Bear Lake South campus right the uh that building or is it something else no they

[2:01:16] have they have multiple facilities so there's campus they have um a Corora building that has East View there as

[2:01:21] well they have Panco they have Carner Blue the Aora yeah I know there's a few I'm missing there but there's six seven

[2:01:28] different buildings if my memory serves me right so yes it's that but there's also more as well okay i didn't realize

[2:01:35] any other comments or questions uh two questions can someone just give me the three bullets on what 916 is uh that'd

[2:01:42] be helpful and then second is uh I was just curious this is $60,000

[2:01:49] why is that a board vote versus just being approved without the board

[2:01:55] because it's a we're a partner district and it's it's a resolution that our district will

[2:02:03] contribute to the overall pool it's long-term facilities maintenance dollars that

[2:02:09] we're expending regardless of the number so the 916 board can't approve dollars from our district you know they can't

[2:02:15] say we're going to take this we're going to take that so they set the parameters what they would like and then they send that out to the member district to say

[2:02:20] do you approve for us to have it increase this is LTFM we're asking the board to approve it as opposed to you're

[2:02:25] right you know something under $175,000 um but 916 I know it it's a

[2:02:31] consortium of school districts in the northeast metro and we have um special

[2:02:37] education services that uh they provide to us um you know I know Paul if you you

[2:02:42] wanna just come on up and give your two cents on what they do uh I think there's

[2:02:49] multiple components of 916 but the majority of what we use them for is what we call our federal 74 program so we

[2:02:55] have some students with uh very high needs that we need to have very structured and supportive uh

[2:03:02] environments for um those students can't be served within our within our buildings our school buildings so they

[2:03:07] have very specific programs for those kids um and we have I don't want to give

[2:03:13] a whole number right now but somewhere in the range of well for our elementary kids you know

[2:03:19] about 40 kids that you know a lot more autism that's a really big component of our programming there they also provide

[2:03:26] um low incident teachers that well teachers that serve low incident disabilities and areas so we contract

[2:03:33] with them they provide it services for us um like uh like DHH teachers dear

[2:03:41] hearing teachers um staff that we you know might just need six of this very

[2:03:46] specialized staff and so that we contract with 916 for that staff so

[2:03:52] that's the majority and they serve kids from you know kindergarten all the way up through transition

[2:03:58] programs that we we don't have the facilities to that co-op all the

[2:04:04] districts around have that same level high need and we have our students they

[2:04:10] also have a career in tech program for they build a house every year and so we've some of our students go and are

[2:04:16] part of that um they have um we don't utilize it but they have an ALC that

[2:04:22] they have for for people in the the northeast metro um so there are a

[2:04:28] variety of different programs primarily you know our our primary relationship

[2:04:34] really is twofold i think it's through special education and there's a the career and tech component of it is um

[2:04:41] significant as well thank you so and that yeah very well uh stated and I would just add you know

[2:04:48] just provides you know just some economies of scale you know where these districts member districts can access

[2:04:53] some of these resources thankfully Still Water does a lot of great things um and has the resources and the uh systems in

[2:05:00] place but there's some other districts that don't have an ALC um and things like that so like for Steel Water our

[2:05:06] our site is at the early childhood family center which is the auditorial program um whereas in every district has

[2:05:14] not all of them but a lot of them have some type of site um in their district boundaries um but it's just a great way

[2:05:21] of serving students and I know talk about the career in tech that's I think they have a dental program dental assistance only program in the state

[2:05:28] which is which is pretty neat and it's over at Sentry so yeah

[2:05:36] when we vote I'm going to abstain from the vote because I might have a conflict of interest uh on that one so I'm just I

[2:05:43] think we'll be fine without my votes right is there a procedure what's the right I'll just ask for Yeah

[2:05:50] thank you very much right any other questions or comments okay Joan roll call dr yes dr

[2:06:00] hawker yes abstain yes dr parker yes

[2:06:07] yes yes great thank you very much and uh with

[2:06:13] that we're adjourned happy last day of school everyone