Welcome everyone tonight to our meeting uh 22 of 2026. Um we call the meeting order. A pledge of allegiance and I'll look to approve today's agenda. So >> is there a second?
>> Second. Is there any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor signify by saying I. >> I oppose the same sign. All right. Number four, study session. Mr. Durban. All right. Thank you, Chair Clott,
school board superintendent Hy. Um so this evening we have um an enrollment update uh for this school year. Um and so we're going to take a look uh this evening and and there's a lot of information here. So hopefully it generates some good conversation amongst the board. Um and uh so we're going to
look at it from kind of three lenses and chunk it out into three parts. So we'll look back um historical data. Um we'll review demographics. Um I think we did this last year during the enrollment update as well. Um not a lot of change
there with demographics. Um so kind of the historical look at current and then we'll look at some projections how they change as our enrollment uh current enrollment evolves. So, we'll hit those three components as we dig into the data. So, to start this evening, we have some definitions. The um a couple that I
just really want to hit on. Um the average daily membership um when we talk about enrollment, uh this is the portion of a school year that a student is enrolled in your district. And so, the sum of their average daily membership or the me
membership days divided by instructional days provides the ADM that we receive. So, it's not necessarily uh belly buttons or current enrollment. We're not talking necessarily about total people, but you might get a fraction of a individual if they're here for part of
the year. So, an ADM is is what drives a APU adjusted pupil units, and that's what the bulk of our funding is based off of. And then, um another term you might hear me speak of this evening is our MARS, which is your Minnesota automated reporting student system. And
our district has a MARS coordinator, uh, Danny Bryant. She's excellent at what she does. So, I've provided some supplemental charts this evening. Uh, you each should have a copy of those. Those are coming directly from Danny, um, who's handling all of our district enrollment. Uh, so just want to make
sure we give her um, you know, recognition for the work she puts in for some of the data we'll see tonight. Um, and so where we pull a lot of our enrollment data is from Mars. Um, and one of those numbers that we really use for projections, and that's why we can really get to talking about enrollment
in February is in January, MDE provides us with our October one count, which is our first official Mars number for the year. And we can use those um that benchmark to try and develop some um projections. So, when we get to the third part of our presentation this
evening, that's a lot of it based off of uh the October one Mars number. And then migration when we use that term um this is the movement of students into and out of schools. So uh this could be open enrollment in open enrollment out. It
could be um students that are leaving for non-public or if they're tuitioned out. Um a lot of times in the most of the time it is due to family moves in and out or in and out from another state. Um we do also consider, you know, kindergarten enrollment as migration in
and seniors that graduate from our district as um migration out. And so that'll be a big topic to discuss this evening as you've seen uh the data in a few of the slides. And then another one is simply just dropouts. Um a 15-day drop is is something that occurs and and
that will have an impact on our enrollment. Um so migration um any way that students are coming and going to our district u we try to get a handle on what that means. Okay. So I I mentioned the three parts. So we'll start with some historical
data. This chart comes to us from the Department of Education um just looking back at our um average daily membership. Uh and and I think we had a similar chart last year. we we uh added in the 2425 actuals and and as we talked last
school year, we had a slight um uptick with our enrollment um last year. However, it's not really changing our our projections there. So, as we see this ADM uh kind of a roller coaster graph here, we can kind of see um how I
mean we've gone up and down, right? Um, starting back in about 2009, we saw a nice little uptick of enrollment and we had a steady increase for a number of years. And what's important about this is when you're gaining students, you're often adding staff, right? Or your
budget might be easier to maintain as your revenue may be increasing. So, we saw a steady increase for a long time there up until about 2020. And now we've sent seen a pretty steep decline uh starting to fall off. and we'll take a look at why why that might be or what we're seeing for what's happening. Why
are we losing students so rapidly there? So this next chart here is your historic enrollment in a bar graph. Um this comes from our uh financial advis advisors at Ellers. Um one thing I want to point out is that they use uh for middle school
grades six through eight and we're a six seven middle school. So, this is just more of a standard elementary model, middle school model, uh, secondary. Um, and for future reference, I could ask them if they're able to modify just this chart for us, but it gives you good context to what's happening in a K5
elementary setting, which does help us uh to understand what's happening. And then you also can look at our 912 student population here and see that it's been fairly stable over the last 10 years. So the bulk of our impacts are occurring in the elementary ages and and maybe
we'll see some of what's happening there as we start talking about migration. So if we isolate just the elementary K5 that's this chart here and it's just simply stating and these are ADMs. So to clarify when we're looking at these
charts from Ellers this is in an ADM. So this is your average daily membership on each year. And so these are final numbers uh for each year for ADM. So this isn't um necessarily students in seats, but this would be your average daily membership combined. And so they've they've rounded these totals in
the in the bar chart. So we have four elementary schools. And if you take 2025 for example, 1,3uh 42 uh or let's go back 24 since I have this number calculated from last year yet. So
we had 1,354 and 24 and if we divide that by four, we'd have 338.5 ADM, right? So if we are in the middle of a task force, a community task force looking at our our facility capacities, if we had really great boundaries and we
were evenly distributing those students amongst our four elementary schools, we would be under capacity at those sites. And it's something for us to really think about as we move forward. Some schools currently are down to under 300 students. We'll look at our our uh
student count later in the presentation and how many sections of each grade level that we're offering or how many sections in each building that we're staffing it with. But what happens when you get down to two sections in a in a grade level is that you run into staffing challenges. You might get really inefficient class sizes and
that's what we're currently experiencing. So, we identified in the past the need to start looking at this and I think our task force that we began with the community was a good uh start and we'll we'll start to hear some recommendations come from that task force here as the year continues.
This is one of my favorite charts updated from last year. It's the one similar. And what I like to see is each year that the outliers are in the same area because it's probably telling us that we were right to pinpoint those as discussion points in the past. So what
this shows is a five-year migration, five-year average migration. Again, migration could be students coming or going, how many were adding or subtracting. And so if we look at this chart on the left where it says K-1, that would be kindergarten to first
grade. So what that's meaning is over five years we've lost about 3.77 ADM from kindergarten to first grade. So we're losing students somewhere from kindergarten to first grade on average about 3.77.
In contrast, if you look at third grade, second grade to third grade, the 2-3, we're seeing an increase of 1.37 ADM from year to year. So, it's hard to to determine um you know what might be considered um
material as we look at this, but there are three points that are are pretty consistent from last year to this year. Um if you look at the five to six, we're seeing a 9.21 increase from fifth grade to sixth grade.
If you look at uh 10 to 11th from sophomore year to 11th grade, we see a big drop of a minus 11.63%. And then another large increase for the 11th to 12th grade. So I look at those and there's other outliers that we could really deepen our
discussion on. I think those are three that we can look for some themes and talk about maybe some strategies as we move forward for those um you know either to embrace what's happening in maybe the sixth grade and 12th grade or how can we remedy what might be
happening in other grade levels >> yes >> so what would be a correlation what would be a possible theme drop off 10 sophomore junior are they leaving and coming back >> I've got a slide for you so let's look at all three of those main ones the
fifth, sixth, first. So, what I did here is I as I was sitting down with our Mars coordinator to talk about this. Can we look at what's happening at these three to start this conversation? Um, really we've kind of identified them in the past, but have we done anything with this data? Right. So, from sixth grade
incoming students here and we've blocked out any confidential information. This is literally the students remaining if we eliminate any students that didn't roll from fifth to sixth. So, for example, if they were enrolled in fifth grade and still enrolled in sixth grade, we dropped them from the data set. And
now we've got a pretty small sample that we can really look at pretty intimately on who the people are and think about what's happening. And if you look at the enter codes on the very right of this chart, you can see we sorted it by entry code. So, the 01's were students that
are coming to us from a non-public school. The others are from another state or another district or another country. So you can see a pretty large portion of sixth graders coming to us are entering from a non-public and that's good
information to know. So the other two and so uh chair clot to your question here about maybe what's happening in 11th grade that was a disappointing stat to see on that migration slide. The majority of drops in 2425 were due to 15-day drops. So
what happens in 11th grade? How old are the students? 16, 17 years old. When you're 17 years old, you could now potentially drop out of school, right? So, um there's truency implications for parents if they don't sign off on a
dropout. There might be some other recourses there. So, what's happening, I think, is families are are allowing that dropout or we're seeing more students drop out uh due to their circumstances. So, I think that's the biggest indicator there. if we're seeing a lot more of the
15-day drops. Um, that's what's happening in 11th grade. So, 12th grade, we see a big migration back in. And this is where I think we need some more work now as a district of let's put these two together. Are some of those students coming back, right?
And so, starting to look through that data a little closer, too. A majority of students coming back in 12th grade that are enrolling in are enrolling to the ALC or online academy which tells us it's likely a push to work towards that graduation and get those graduation requirements met
the question there that you had about the 11th grade. >> Okay. >> All right. So um this slide I do have some projections on here which are kind of sneaking ahead to another thought but thinking about what we're with historical data on the left side we've
got about seven years of data um again this is generated by ellers but I put it into a chart that was a little easier for us to um look at here so we talked about uh the migration and different ways to look at migration and one to think about is that exiting seniors how
many students are we losing in the spring and then what's the next incoming kinder kindergarten class coming in to replace them. So when a senior class ages out, we replace that with a kindergarten class the next fall. So we're not quite on projections yet,
but if we look at historical, you see some pretty significant losses year-over-year the last what was that seven years 377 ADM. That's significant for a district of our size. And it shows that that trend with our declining enrollment, this is a
large part of that. So just a quick note on the projection. When we put these uh numbers into our projections, which we'll see later, we also get the this upcoming a projected annual loss of 7576 students.
The other thing to think about when we look at natural migration and I'll go to another slide that depicts this another way. when we look at natural migration. Um, so here you've got your graduating seniors in the right. We should maybe put those on the left here, but then the
incoming kindergarten students on the left. And so you're seeing that gap get a little bit bigger the last few years. But one thing to consider is that your um your seniors are a 1.2 APU. So
remember those definitions, the adjusted pupil unit, they generate more revenue than a kindergartener. So it's it's um kind of compounded a little bit. We see a heavier impact with this natural migration is probably the largest factor that we need to be
concerned about as we lose seniors and bring in less kindergarteners. Um it's it's weighted right with a 1.2 APU. Okay. And just a disclaimer, we're we're not trying to ignore the other factors that we'll see tonight. um there are
some good discussion points for us. So um there's some factors that maybe we have some levers to pull and um Dr. Ho and I have had some good conversations as of late and through the task force um we we hope to have some good solutions here to discuss tonight too as well. So um but this is a a one that we can't
ignore. Um and I think we need to make sure that we're acknowledging this that this is a large part of it. All right. So this next slide here, we talked about October one data. So that's our Mars October one number versus your
endofear final. So when we report our ADMs and Ellers has pulled this data for us and put a nice little line chart over the last 10 years, we've seen a consistent drop from that October one number to our end of year. So when we transition to projections, most of those
projections are based off of these patterns. When we have our fall number that we get in January, we can now get a nice correlation to what happens in our district year-over-year to try and pinpoint maybe a good guess at what our end ofear enrollment will be.
We have a couple other tools to predict end of year enrollment. Uh but this is probably the main one of where we would just use this correlation. It's pretty consistent. Okay, any questions historical before we move on to our current demographics
or projections as we move forward? Okay, so um taking a look here now at our current students. So this is a snapshot and this this slide can be very overwhelming just a big chart of numbers. Um so what um Dr. Hiles referenced this in the past that we get a weekly uh update from our enrollment
coordinator, our MARS coordinator on how many students are currently enrolled right now. So what you can see is every week in the column on the left there's a date. We get this report sent to us and it shows how many students in each grade level and we can kind of track that migration as the year goes on. Um, so
for example, um, this goes up through I pulled it on, uh, after the January 26th um, report, but if you look there in first grade, we gained a student from the 19th to the 26th. So over that week, we gained a student. Um, and as you go
each grade level, you can determine kind of what's happened. And on the far right, you've got your totals in the yellow. So right now, as of January 26, we had 2,940 students in seats in our school district. K12 that doesn't include preK
and then you can also track on the year what's happening and you see a student loss right so here from uh the start in August to today we're down about 134 students in seats doesn't necessarily mean ADM because they might exit at different times we might get students
coming in at different times but this also kind of reinforces that projection of student loss from October one to end of year >> is that increased ADM start is it >> seventh grade good question so if you didn't hear the question it was when
when does the uh adjusted pupil unit increase that weighted APU it starts in seventh grade okay and this is another way that we can project uh end of year ADM it's very consistent with what Ellers was doing um ours is simply just taking six years of
averaged October one data um extrapolating that over this year's October one number, what happens for student loss? Um, this predction projection would be about a 3,56 end of year ADM for K12 and I think Ellers's had like a
3086 potentially there with their model. So very similar. We're seeing a loss of 80 ADM uh annually um through those averages too. So this is another way of projecting that. All right. So, now we'll get into
another focus in the conversation. And I think we probably got a lot of deep conversation to have about this. Um, and I believe in former uh past board meetings and through the task force, we're hearing a lot of questions about like what's happening with open enrollment and can we get to the bottom of what's happening with open
enrollment. So, we'll do our best today with the information we have um kind of as a starting point, a response to those questions um and then um kind of see what conversation develops. So, here's a snapshot of 10 years of student
enrollment for K12. This is students that are resident students. So, these are a number of ADM that were our resident or that were not our resident students um that res that are in open enrolling in. Okay. So these reside in another school district and
they're choosing Albert Lee schools. They're open enrolling to us. Pretty consistent. You see a little bit of spike there. 1920. Our best guesses is that across the state we see more open enrollment beginning around then due to online
learning opportunities. >> All those online learning opportunities are tied to >> in a lot of cases. Yeah, most cases. But I do think it's just the the I think technology and the ability to do so was was growing too. I think co really
pushed it. I I would not have a definitive answer what's driving the data here for us in 1920 but um we can speculate. Okay. And then this next chart take a minute to process. This is students that reside in Albertly
district boundaries and are open and rolling out. And don't shoot the messenger, but it's pretty I think um this is something that's really important that we reflect on as a school district.
>> Yeah, ballpark. I don't have the average in front of me. Yeah, but it seems to be from these charts I'd say about 130 140 here and then I'm out probably 340 350 now with those last two years being larger.
Maybe you can also see the breakdown by elementary, middle, high school. I think that's valuable. the last years slow. >> Yeah. >> And and a lot of that trend may may be
with online. And so we've got some other data points we can look at to help us process this information. And I want to make sure we go through these slow um because I did put a um another packet in front of you with the next few charts. And so let's make sure that we have some time to discuss if there's questions
that come up. Um and and certainly at any time we can go back and and look at anything that maybe uh comes to mind this evening. So um we used green on these next few charts as open enroll in. So students that are coming to us and it's my personal belief that there's a
lot we can learn about both open enroll in and out. Why are students choosing Albert Lee and why are choose students choosing elsewhere? Right? So we'll we'll take a a look at both of these. So these are going to go kind of in sets of two. So this slide here, open enrolled
in for 2526. You see we received 20 open enrollments in for this year from Glenville Emmens. Now I want to be clear this 41 does not correlate to if you look at a bar like this 410 or
for excuse me 140. What this number is is the ones that have enrolled this year. The bar charts here, these could have enrolled into our district at any point in their time. So, one of these numbers, like if you said this 2025 data, there was 142 students that opened
enrolled into our district for 2025. They could have enrolled in 2020 and they're still with us. The only data that we could really capture is yearbyear of who when they enroll, what do they say their reasons are? And so we only have so much historical data to go
back on. So what you're seeing here on this first slide, this is where the students this year that enrolled with us are coming from. So we'll look a couple years back, but we don't have a whole lot of historical data to go off of.
>> We've obviously had somebody from Chicago, >> not this year. This is this year everywhere they've enrolled to us. one period. >> Excuse me. I can confirm this may be from instate. There may be some that are out of state or out of country.
>> Yeah. >> Yeah. Do do you remember those enroll codes? So open enrollment would be if they're a residing resident in another school district in Minnesota and they choose us. Otherwise it would be an out of state or out of country enrollment that we would record.
any when it comes to people in those out why. >> Yes. So the next slide we've got 41 reasons why. So >> all right so if we take a look at the second slide there. So we had uh and I just want to maybe pull on some themes.
We see the area schools that are close to us in proximity. Um St. Paul maybe it's an online or maybe there's a family situation there. We're not sure right without um you know getting into the weeds but you got Glenville Emmens USC are two two most prominent open and roll in this year and the reasons so that
next page um the other one so these 41 and 41 should correlate right so what's the main reason that they chose to open and roll in and so this is where um Danny is doing a great job of of compiling this data we can now track this where as said we maybe um she doesn't have access to maybe all the
historical reasons and we got to do um some deeper dive if we want to go back a few years. So in this case um most are saying family work connection. Maybe a parent works in the district or works nearby. Um maybe they um moved out Albert Lee but they were attending prior
is another reason, right? Makes total sense. They want to finish school out in the school that they started in. Um location and transportation is a reason. Uh another big one just p personal preference. They prefer Albertly schools. And then sometimes families just don't want to give us their reasons
and we got to respect that. Um but they might not indicate a reason on their enrollment. >> Yes. >> Most of the students come in work. on the city provided opportunity. >> Yeah,
>> I'm not certain. >> I think this is good conversation. Um, we could probably look at it through two lenses. Is it meaning we're not getting those that there's potential to tap into, right? Or is it is it simply the main reason that people will come here is because there's a a family connection
or some sort of um ease of access, right? So I think a good discussion and and that's where I think we can elaborate a little deeper um later in the conversation when Superintendent Hy elaborates a little bit more. So we got two years of data for each in and out.
So this would be going back one year. You notice that Glennville was one of the the large ones uh this year. Um we notice uh also um we had 56 students enroll in um during last school year but on our chart going back to this bar
chart we had 142 total open enrollins. So there's that point of this isn't how many total this is just how many enrolled during that year. So if there's 142 last year and we're looking at 56 there was some many that had enrolled prior for other reasons that we don't
have here in this data set. So, it's important to remember that's what we're looking at. So, 56 of those students um last year enrolled here coming from various schools. So, I'm seeing some locations that may be indicating there's some online opportunity there. Uh but USC and
Glendville Emmens the two most common there that we're seeing. And then we look at those reasons again. So, 56 reasons here. Family work connection. maybe they're already attending. Location and transportation was a
reason. Um educational opportunities. >> Yeah. And I think that's something that and to your point um Gary and Dave, I think, u maybe if we celebrate those, would we see more? So there's some some discussion on that. Um and so again,
some that are just opted not to provide a reason when they enroll. Okay. And so in summary, um this I I I don't want to put um Danny on the spot, but I kind of had her summarize what she found through these processes. And so here's kind of a little summary. Um you
know, we had um basically enrollment in is being driven by continuity, relationships, and not necessarily academics yet, right? And I think that's where our focus should be as we look at these two. And then just a summary of the reasons.
There was nobody that said smaller class sizes over the years. Um and online option, no one specifically said that's why we're joining or coming to Albertly, but um I we could speculate. So, the class size piece, you know, um I
think there's a good point at the bottom of this slide that um you know, students that reside outside of our district probably have opportunities to access smaller class sizes at their resident district. So, that's not going to be a strong reason for our schools um
currently. Okay. So, now these red slides would represent open and roll out. So, um, I want to point out that this school year, um, going back to our in so far for 2526, this school year so far, we've had
41 in and then so far this year 52 out. So, it's not as big of a landslide currently, right, that we've seen that big ratio, maybe 350 to 140. Um, this year so far, it's been 52 out and we've
had 41 in. Here's some schools where they're leaving for Blooming Prairie is a big one there. You see some online opportunities. Minnesota Virtual Academy is N MNVA. Um Princeton's in online. Worthington's
in online. I believe Fergus Falls is online. Owana's online. And so then here's some reasons for leaving. Notice that the homeschool online option
is the biggest one. We just group those together. I don't know if we're able to separate that, but we saw a lot of home or a lot of online op options and or schools in that prior slide. Okay. Okay. So then going back to
2425 during last school year again only 52 open enroll. So that total ADM that was open and roll out most of them had open enrolled prior to last year. So here again you see Blooming Prairie a
number of online options. Any questions on those that school list from last year? I would note that it looks like we are gainers rather than losers to a majority of our area schools.
When we look at Glenville, USC, I don't see Alden on this list from last year either. And then here would be your your reasons. Again, online school seems to be a pretty large option. Um, it is less
common to get a reason for the exit codes. Um, if you have people that are leaving, they say, "See you later." Not worried about it anymore, right? So, um, that's something that we could probably do a better job chasing down and hopefully have some good discussion on
that later. we see a lot in the home possible situation. >> Yeah, I think that's going to be a deeper conversation when we talk online. Our district, we've currently been at capacity in the in recent at least
recent semesters. So, um it is much harder to get students in there that maybe have a need for it and it is something that we've been talking about and it will be part of our staffing discussions this um this spring. We need to beef up that online option for students.
>> When you're asking for this list to choose from >> I don't want to speak because I don't it's on the form. So these are some generic pieces that are on the form. So then they just check it and that's what
goes to the superintendent's office >> when they enroll at their new school. >> Yeah. When they enroll or when they enroll with us it's on the form that they give us. >> Yeah. So that's why the reasons are the same for in and out is that it's pretty standard collection. >> No. So I think we will talk about maybe
some more factf finding and more research we'll do later. Uh hopefully it's something that we can um get a little bit more out of too maybe more specifics. So >> so Paul just one statement um this is interesting to me because I thought that Alden Conger would be higher. So in the
last two years two students have transferred out to Alden >> during the last two school years. Yes. Now, we do have a number of students that are enrolled in Alden, but they maybe they maybe got enrolled earlier. Um, I don't know how close they are to
capacity. There's other factors. Um, I do know they did a big push, a campaign to get students to Alden a few years ago. So, um, you know, that that may have worked earlier and caused some of that uptick we saw in our charts earlier years. So, it's time for us to really
look internally and think about what we can do to serve the students that are residents in our district, too. So, I think um some hopefully um good data here for us to process and it's a good good uh thing to point out there. I see
the same. >> Hear that. >> So, I'll just comment back in 2020 uh when CO was coming on. That's one of the big things we worked on a lot was getting our online school going because they said there's an opportunity like we can see Blooming Prairie is seen here if
they're they're not just pulling in from us. You know what? What a great and and I said all along and then all of a sudden what two three years ago then we dropped out of the online game because we didn't have a lot of people. Maybe that's the marketing area to start if we're going to play marketing that we
focus on because of the educational opportunities that could also fall under that category. So I said definitely make that part of it. I have no opposition to bringing it back. I was disappointed when we dropped it to start with our online school, but I know there's an
expense to it and I missed your expense. So, >> yeah. >> But again, >> so we currently do offer on just to clarify, we we do we do offer online academy now. Um it's not as u I think as fruitful as we'd like it to be. And
again, we're at CAP and so we we really have trouble adding students and we do know there are students that are eager to go online and um looking for that opportunity. So, I think it's something for us to take to our staffing adjustments for next year is try and build in additional staff there and beef up that programming. So,
>> we're not >> No, it's currently sixth grade and up. Seventh, seventh grade and up. >> Yeah. Yeah. And that's something we could really look into. Mary Joe, that's a good point. I think when we go to look at this data, when we see those exit
codes for online, are we losing them before that seventh grade opportunity? And so if that's the case, we really got to look at what we're offering as well. So good point. Um and so there was some findings here. Open enrolled. This again comes from Danny and our uh enrollment office. Enrolled out is being driven by
flexibility and alternative learning options. So we see that online learning opportunity, homeschool opportunity. Um and then um open and roll out is primarily driven seeking flex families seeking flexibility uh in those learning
options. And um I mentioned earlier that it's just we're in an environment with school choice now where families really do look for um what their needs are and try to get there. And so I think if we can highlight our um excellent educational opportunities and
programming and what we offer, it will help um with the open enrollment game a little bit here. So um >> one one just another comment about the Blooming Prairie number. I'm wondering if some of that is in Hollandale
Christian School um proximity of where they live. Blooming Prairie could be closer to them for transportation purposes. >> Yes. So, they would be um in a non-public category, which we're going to see here in a moment. But what you may see is when they get to secondary level, yes.
>> So, they might be transitioning from blooming or to blooming from there. So, that's a good point as well. So, here's a table. Um these were um also in an Eller's projection or an Ellers's uh document that we had. These are tuitioned out students. So students that require services that we can't provide
locally and they maybe go to another school and we pay them for those services. What happens there is we still generate the ADM and revenue for those students but then we will then pay for the tuition at the other site. So, these might be students that go to like Smack, the Southern Minnesota Education
Consortium, uh or another district that that has the um resources to serve an IEP that we can't, something to that order. Um non-public numbers, these would be students that are attending a private school. Uh so, to your point, a Hollandale
Christian School or a St. Theos. Um, and then also students that are attending a charter school, and a bulk of those would be potentially an online charter school since there's no real local charter option here in our community. Okay. And so, um, just a couple other
little graphs here. So, just where are they, uh, students withdrawals to non-public and 2526. Um, so there's three to Penn Foster online. It's a private school. through tuition paid by the students
family. So that's one there. We have uh 17 homeschool and we have Hollandale and St. Theos. This again um 2526 withdrawals. So these were this school year those that left our district to go
to nonpublic Okay. So, ch changing uh course here. Again, we're still talking about our current student population. What what are we seeing? So, this is a chart I had last year and it was um a chart with from MDE uh to replicate um I'm using
the same chart we used last year to compare just so we kind of got a good baseline um to see where our district is going. So, when we look at race and ethnicity from 2014, you see a 2.37. I'll just highlight the ones where we're going to see a lot of change. The Asian population was a
2.37%. Hispanic Latino population was 19.64% and our white population was 73.51%. So, this was just from your education, our department of education report card. Um, and they had some spreadsheets to pull for this data. And then this is the
current report card. So we see a 12.2 Asian percent Asian population, 24.7% Hispanic Latino population, and a 54.9% white population. This was the 25 data.
So some takeaways, our Asian student population has increased about 9% over those 11 years. Hispanic Latino student population has increased about 5% over the last 11 years. And then our percentage of white student population has decreased by about 18.6%
over the last 11 years. Very similar trends that we saw last year when we looked at the same data. The other easy grab from MDE's department of education uh report card here. This is uh free reduced English
learner um special education population and um homeless. Now what I would say uh these would be um mutually inclusive where the prior data sets were mutually exclusive
meaning they would be for example the families would have to select one of these when they enroll right where in these they could be in multiple categories so somebody could be English learner special education free reduced
and homeless right so there's a um number of categories it could need multiple students in each category or over each category. So if we looked at 2014, English learner population was about 7.92, special education about 20% of our
student population, free reduced lunch meal uh plans were 50.86%. Uh and our homeless population was 0.12%. So um if you remember homeless population was a point of emphasis last year uh in our discussion. Um there was
some uncertainty about why we went from maybe four I think it was 26 or 29 last year and now we're up to 38 student count with homeless population. So I got to note about that here in a second. Um but also note our EL populations
continue to increase. So, um, we see an increase in that EL population from about 8 to 13 and our special education is fairly consistent, a little bit up. Um, and then free reduced meals up at about 58%. Which is about where we've
been in the last few years, but um, definitely way a much different looking district in terms of economic uh, population from maybe 11 12 years ago. So, our homeless population. So, we uh last year it was kind of a sticking
point. What's happening? Why is that? And our hunch was that maybe we had a different way of identifying these students. And that's correct. So, um in the past we hadn't been issuing a housing questionnaire. Um last year they did the survey for the first time I
believe after our um board meeting and then again this year. And that is a um recommendation from MDE that every district do this and we hadn't been doing it. So what it does is it helps you to identify who in your district maybe qualifies for um McKini Vento or
homeless um categorization and um you know these families obviously slip through the crack if we don't do that. And so um this allows us to better serve them and provide um you know and meet federal requirements for families that are experiencing homelessness. Um, one
point I'll make is that a lot of those um, costs are reimbursed um, when they qualify for McKenna Vento such as like transportation. >> And I think the other thing that's changed in 2014, the original data is when you talk about it expanded, it
expanded. If a social worker found out that this family is living at grandma's house, that's considered homeless. And so the numbers necessarily didn't change from 2014 to 2024 of who qualifies for homeless. The definitions drastically
change it and social workers were responsible for reporting that. So there's been changes that way as well. >> I appreciate that clarification. So um in in this survey has helped um maybe our social workers don't just have to find it via word of mouth now too. they
they have a data set to know who may qualify and who should be reached out to. Um so that's good context. Um and I have a little summary here. I think we just see a continued increase of students who are considered homeless. Um we have our student population that receive free reduced lunch is still
increasing. Uh and then our English learner student population is higher and continues to increase um over time. And so anything from that last section about our current demographics that we want to discuss before we go into projections.
>> Wondering Sheila, this maybe for you. >> For a district our size, what would you the 20 20% in special education? Is that a number that you would you would expect to see in a district our size? Okay. So we're we're serving
>> between that 20 to 22% for many years. >> Okay. Very good. Thanks. Do you know have we lost any students to um family self-deporting or ICE? Anything like that? >> I don't have any data to speak on for
that. Um Dr. H, I know we've had some conversations with admin about it. Do you have anything that you want to report? >> It's not official data, but if you look, we've dropped some students just in the last few weeks. And so, um, not just saying it's just that reason, but, um,
we've had some students leave the district, but okay. So, I've just thought of something as we talk about special services population. I do want to acknowledge that this is not student count. Um, so
our actual student count and and um, executive director Ree, can you I think it was 811 last year and 801 or 800 this year is what we're looking at for student count for for special services population. So >> almost a third. Yeah. Yeah. But if we
look at the exact percentage, I think it's a little little light, but we're getting there, right? >> We're getting there. Um so, um as we move into the third section, we talk about forecast and projections here. Um let me try and find my right spot.
So, a couple things I want to look at kindergarten projections um since that has a big impact on that um natural migration and um check in uh you know, class sizes and sections in elementaryaries. I think that's going to be an important conversation too. So um
first piece of data here, this wasn't in the data set. This is in your packet that I provided. This has um shows where preschool where students are current kindergarteners for 2526 where they reported they uh attended u
preschool. So you can see there's a number of options for families to choose for preschool or pre kindergarten. the Children's Center, Brookside program here with Albertly Schools, Head Start,
United Preschool, another Minnesota public school, out of state if they were um at home uh or they didn't attend or they didn't list where they enrolled for preschool. So, you see the biggest and most
overwhelming data set there is a Brookside program. And it's of my opinion that the more students we can get into our prek opportunities in Brookside or as soon as we can get them into our programs, the more likely they will be to continue with us with
Albertly Schools. So, yep. >> No, go ahead. >> Um, I don't know how this survey I mean I believe it's probably just one is what I think Danny actually compiled this. Our Mars coordinator, Danny Bryant. Yeah,
>> I'm sure. Um I could ask her and follow up, but there are a lot of families that maybe did do multiple. >> It's a good point >> because I'll tell you there's more than four that are coming from the children's center, but there are some that go to United. There's some that come to Brookside, but they go back to the children's center.
>> I'm wondering if she just opted to put Brookside if they were one of ours. >> Yeah. >> Well, and just if they had the option to just pick one. >> Yeah. >> Well, and just reading the notation below. So this isn't so when you come and register for kindergarten because we
started this about 10 years ago. We asked where did you go to preschool and will you sign that we can get the data from the preschool you're coming from >> and so this is everybody who's come in now to register for kindergarten. So there's 67 kindergarteners that have registered. So is there another session
coming up Tanya for registration >> February 23rd. So then February 23rd, the next group of families that come in, then they'll tell us where where did you where's your preschool experience and so it's just part of the we added to the kindergarten enrollment form quite a
while ago and they tell us where they went and then we would follow up with them to get kind of educational records. And I believe on top of that, I believe um Danny Bryant has a list of all eligible kindergarten students in our community. And we know where some of
them are being serviced for preschool currently. And so um to that point, we do reach out to each of these um partners, community partners, and provide kindergarten registration information so that they can enroll um when they're ready. Now, this so this next slide, so jumping from here, this
195 correlates to this year's current kindergarteners right now, right? So, I would assume if we add those up and they're 195, then we're not getting the double entry. We're probably just putting the Brookside on there. Um, now on the next slide here with the 67, um,
one, um, the the main point here is that this is as of this week. Um, there's 103 potential kindergarteners who attended our preschool and they haven't registered yet. So, um, we will be doing some more, um, you know, parent outreach
there to try and help families get signed up. And then there's 89 potential kindergarters currently attending our preschool that have, um, that have not registered. So, currently attending our preschool that have not registered. So, we will uh get some
flyers in the backpacks and that sort of um approach as well too as we um try to get information out. Um, and typically we see these registrations kind of come in spurts. So I think to the point we'll have registration evening and families will come in and register. We'll host
another um and continue that process. Um we >> yes >> um we'll have an influx in our February registration. Our January registration was not partnered with conferences but our February one is. So when
preschoolers are coming in for their preschool conferences, we'll have registration tables set up and ready to go. So we'll see a bigger influx of registrations in >> All right. So good point. And so um one thing I just want to try and bridge that
gap, but a lot of the preschoolers that attend our kindergarten were enrolled in Brookside. And so the more exposure we can get to our preschool programming here at Brookside or early learning programming, um even if it's in partnership with one of the other community providers for preschool,
um the more familiar we get them with our school systems at an earlier age, the better. So um try and get as many registrations as we can. >> Okay. So looking to projections then um so >> just ask one more question around. So,
are we equipped if let's say every student that went to kindergarten, could they go to preschool here? >> Dr. Hy, you want to answer that? >> Not right now.
>> But we're we're expanding. You'll see when we get to the end of this about what we do. One of the things that we do know is if they come to us for preschool and daycare, almost always they graduate from us.
So, we need to really be welcoming with our youngests, with our little littles. Um, and actually, I worked with Danny the other day and we rewrote the letter like, "Welcome to kindergarten." Not just here's how you register, but no,
welcome. We're glad you're here. We're glad you're going to be in our hallways. So, and it's my name at the bottom of it now because I think that's important. Like I always tell everybody, best some of the best times of a superintendent's life, first day of school, you get to go
high five preschoolers and kindergarteners and then shake the hands of the seniors when they graduate. How cool is that? All in one year. But those parents, they got to feel that excitement, too. >> So, I want to um just acknowledge one
other comment, too. So we've we've had uh you have a limited number of seats for VPK um voluntary preschool from MDE and actually through the department of child family >> youth I forget the acronym. >> Okay. So you get a limited number of
seats for voluntary preschool and the last couple years we've been giving seats back. We've had I think 30 additional seats or 27. I don't don't quote me on the exact number, but we've given them back and the the the rationale was we don't have space. And so Dr. Hy and I have been discussing
that's not a real reason. We have space in our district. And so as we move forward in the future, we're going to try and retain those seats and welcome as many families into VPK as we can. If we need to move some programming to get more students in here, we will. Um in this building alone, we could be more
efficient. um we are in the middle of this task force study and the whole premise of that study is that we have space right so um I think it's our responsibility to welcome as many families into our programming as we can um so we'll we'll work through that
dilemma with the VPK seats and um if families are ready to to join us here um as we move forward so um moving on to our Ellers's projections so these are enrollment projections this is what uh you may have seen last year a Little disclaimer, we update projections
multiple times a year. So, we've got our our fall number, our end of year number. I may have some other times in the year where we update these. And what happens is you can see this little red box at the bottom. All those ADMs are going to update as we update our current enrollment. Right? So, this this is a
snapshot in time. It changes what maybe that projection will be based on our current numbers. Right? So, projections, just a little disclaimer, are just that. This is last year's model. you know, we we finished last year a little bit on a a surprise kick with enrollment. And
then as we update this projection model here, um this year's fall numbers, we're seeing a little disappointment in enrollment. So now we swing back, right, with our enrollment. So this is the most recent projection model that we've used with Ellers. And what's good about this
model is it shows us about um six years forward. So you see that our our ADM number there's uh K12 about 3086 3087 under 2526 our early learning through
12th grade 3190 3,190 and what I want to point out is what happened when we updated this year's enrollment current enrollment from the fall if you look at 203031 on last year's chart so in the bottom right corner of last year's chart 313.5
5. And if we update just one year's data, this year's fall information, our fall Mars number, and we look at this enrollment, it drops that 203031 down to 2836. So it's a significant drop in students
year-over-year now with this projection. And so I think one, there are times when we see a surprise increase. There's times when you see disappointing decrease, but projections are just projections. However, our responsibility
is to be ready kind of for the worst case scenario. And obviously, we can't ignore that our current enrollment is disappointing this year, that our enrollment is down. If we go way back and excuse me for a second,
okay, we're seeing already on the year we're down 134 students, 2,940 seat students in seats. Our ADM is not going to meet our projections with our current enrollment the way it is. So, as we project forward, this data is
entered. Our fall number from Mars is entered. And now this gives us a new projection that we see from Ellers here today. So um obviously there's some financial impacts there. Um but I think today
let's focus on the the numbers for student count and then as we go to future meetings and we talk about task force and we talk about financial projections and we talk about revised budget, we talk about what this enrollment change will do to a budget
that we're planning forward. Okay. So, um, one thing I want to point out is we start thinking about what our buildings will look like in a couple of years, this chart does a really good job breaking down by grade level. So, we can start thinking about how many students will be in a a particular building
potentially based on this. Now, when we have multiple elementary schools, you may have to split up those numbers a little bit, but this gives you a good idea of student count in in buildings. And again, ADM, not students. So, typically you'll have
a little bit less for students, but um it's an ADM. All right. So, this chart here, um I like the visual. It shows the trend that we've seen over the last four years. 2526 currently right in the middle. That's obviously not a a final. That's
kind of our our projected end of year for 2526. And then we can see what's happening as we move this projection forward. So, one thing I'll note is that um yes, the elementary class sizes are getting smaller there. Um but what you we
mentioned earlier in our um historical chart similar to this was that the high school numbers the 912 were pretty consistent year-over-year just over a thousand. In about 2930, we're going to start seeing this hit 9 through 12. we're going to start seeing more decline
in the secondary because those those small kindergarten classes are finally getting through to our secondary level. Right? So, it's important to think forward what a high school might look like in a few years. Um, and then um I want to thank u
director Dorman uh for pointing out a I had the wrong years in my x axis on the top graph here for county births this morning when I or last week when we shared this. So, um this should have been 2015 to 2021 in the top and those
are correlating um you know 5 years later to a kindergarten class. And you can see those trends correlate pretty good. Um if they're offset at all, it's because um the top chart was probably your January start for that
calendar year, right? where a 2015 would be uh in the middle of the 1415 school year and then 16 would be 151 16 school year and so on. So there we have um those I believe would now correlate to the chart from the next page here um
kindergarten enrollment that we have here. So everything in this dark blue at the top, those are actual county births. And we'll go back to that other uh line graph we just had there in a moment. But the dark blue up here gives us our
county births. This data uh Ellers had pulled. I don't know what county source they have, but I'm assuming all births in Freeborn County. Um and then the red shows a kindergarten ADM
years later. And then over to the right in the gray is the projected kindergarten ADM former Ellers's projections. So the purpose of this slide is to kind of show where maybe they got the um
their projections from. Now if you just took this percentage times the birth rate 5 years or six years earlier, it doesn't equal this exactly. It's a weighted projection. So 2/3 of that maybe 2020 and then one/ird of the other
three months. So it would be the 20 uh 19. And then they add those together to get your ADM. This probably way into the weeds, but I wanted people to understand where Ellers is. They're they're thinking more about a school year, not a calendar year when they make their projections. So
last year we used the model this model to project that our kindergarten class this year would be 217. Current seat counts at 194 and our projected endofear enrollment ADM is 195.1. So again that disappointing enrollment
so far this school year. And then just to go back this this chart is connecting those years are different. And it's connecting those enrollment or the birth years to the enrollment. And we see that big dip there from 17 to 18. You see that here on the historical
kindergarten enrollment chart as well. Okay. And then again um just kind of looking at actual historical versus projected just specifically at kindergarten because we we talk about those uh graduating classes being larger. you see that um and I want to
make a note when when um I started in the assistant finance role we were pretty confident that you'd always see about 230 to 240 kindergarten classes and within the first two years um when I started in the assistant role um we
already started to see that those numbers are going to be long gone because we're seeing the birth rates we're seeing the projections um we're seeing the actuals now the last three years much less Um, so we we need to start planning that way. We're seeing actual classes come in
lower. Um, at first it was just projected kindergarten classes and we weren't sure um if we were going to continue to see that, but we see now these projections are showing based on birth rates it's going to continue. So really hammering home that idea.
Um, and then this chart here specifically helps us see that natural migration moving forward. So on the right, the orange bar is your exiting senior classes and then the the blue bar is showing those incoming kindergarten classes the next fall. And it's not
getting better. When we looked at the historical chart, it wasn't as significant as it is when we look at the projections. not the only factor as we mentioned earlier of driving enrollment, but it is one that we maybe don't have as many
levers to pull uh in terms of people having babies. But, um, you know, if our community gets a spurt in growth, more housing, more moveins, if we can control some of the open enrollment pieces, those are the items that we do have some leverage to pull. Um but in terms of
this, we do need to plan as a school district on declining enrollment. Um because this one isn't going away. All right. And then this chart, um just going back to our K5 enrollment, we kind of highlighted the um elementary
historical chart at the beginning. This is another way just looking forward at those elementary projections. Um so currently we're at about 1300 students in K5. um we're most likely going to see a decline.
Um so when we talked last year, we identified we need to start coming up with a plan. When Dr. Hy began here immediately, even before he started, we were talking task force getting that going. I think it's the right direction. Um how do we pivot as a school district and hopefully we see some good
recommendations coming forward. Um but um what we're seeing is some very inefficient class sizes. um that are starting to emerge and um just a reminder that our our boundaries for transportation um you might have worked one year when
we established them but as they evolve or as our our community grows es and flows they might not be as good as they once were right in keeping those efficiencies. So, um, and it's hard to change boundaries. We know that when we do that, there's always some sort of,
uh, you know, um, any disruption causes a lot of discussion, right? And so, um, we don't want to just go to that as our number one option and change school locations for families every other year to try and remedy the the efficiencies. So as we look at this um one thing I
just wanted to note at this last chart if we look at um 2627 next year's projected kinderg or K5 enrollment if we went to three buildings instead of four for elementary it's going to be part of the task force discussion about what's happening in the community. Um you know
that would put us at about 419 students per building. And if we think about the capacities of our buildings that's something that is not out of the question. And so I think our task force will be having some serious discussion about their recommendations moving forward and Dr. Hy may have some
comments about that. But it is something that um as we look at this K5 enrollment moving forward, it's certainly not out of the question uh for a district of our size. Here is a snapshot from I think this was
from the January 26th uh building count. Um that spreadsheet I share. There's another page that shows how many students in each building. So at Halverson Elementary, current students, these are not ADMs, these are students in seats. Uh 292 students, Hawthorne,
331, Lake View, 374, and Sibi 260. In a district where we had often had schools with over 400 students in them, we're not seeing that now. Um Lake View, our largest building, there's three sections per grade. That's 18
sections. Um, and then Hawthorne, our next largest. There's 15 sections. There's two or three per grade level. Halverson, our next largest, 292, so under 300 students, two sections per
grade. Uh, I think there's one class, one grade, is it third grade? There's three sections, but the rest are two sections per grade. So, there's 13 sections at Halverson. And then at Sibi, there's 260 students and two sections per grade, 12 sections total. Now what's
happening, what we don't see here is there might be say an example might be um one building has two sections of a a grade level and there's only 37 students in that grade. We can't go down to one section, right? That's too many students. Let's
say for first grade, you can't have 37 students in a first grade classroom. So you have to have two sections and you might have um 18 students in a class where across the district you might have that grade level stacked up due to boundaries being a little um inefficient and you might see 25 26 students in a
class. So now we see this discrepancy. It's a little unfair. Some students in the community getting a really nice small class size and others getting a really large class size and we're putting strain on one teacher where another teacher might have a better class size. We get that that happens, but we're starting to see it more and
more because we're down to two sections for CL for our grades and we're we're running out of room. We can't go down to one. We're we're running out of options to reduce there. Now, as enrollment declines, our response traditionally, the responsible response is to reduce
expenditures as enrollment declines to keep up with the loss of revenue, which in our district and in most districts is staffing. So, how do we keep reducing teachers when we're getting down to two sections in each building is presenting a lot of challenges to us as a school district. So, I think we've painted that
picture pretty clear with the student sections. Um, just making sure that at the heart of all of this discussion, um, the number of students in a class, the the impacts that we're having as our enrollment evolves. Um, I think we got to be smart about how we respond to
this. Um and hopefully that provides some good discussion as we move forward too. >> The other piece that's a little if you go back to those numbers >> that's a little bit is Halverson and Sibli have the level three classrooms. >> Thank you for that. >> So they're so that's why those numbers
are slightly below two. So you could have more sections but those students have to go somewhere right and it's a smaller smaller ratio of teacher to student than any of the other ones. So you got to remember whatever we do those
we have to account for those classrooms too. >> Yeah, that's a good point and I I think it's important as we do evolve, we keep all of our student needs and our priorities in mind when we are trying to best serve them. Um, with that said, I think what's happened is part of the
reason that those two sites are are good spots for our setting three and why they've landed there is is ultimately we've got the space too, right? when you've got empty classrooms, it's easy to modify a space to provide that programming there. So, um we've kind of tried to evolve as the enrollment
declines, and that's current reality. We've we've got a little bit smaller student population here. Um basically due to those setting three programs at those two sites, >> transportation, like you mentioned too, would be a a bigger factor than what we
even discussed in the task force because we start you know, shipping kids around building now it's going to be easy. It's been easier right now to say a certain distance from a certain building is what
we're going to go ahead and bust the kids and now all of a sudden let's say you shut down one of the buildings on one of the edges of town. Now all of a sudden you got to bust those kids somewhere. So it's almost not the closest. Well, you're going to have to figure out probably a different formula
to make it work. So it's a fair transportation system >> and a lot of that's driven by statute where we can't go beyond it. Right. So I think yes, transportation is going to be and and that's where our task force is going to have to come up with some recommendations and then our administrative team and our our partners
are going to have to like in this case the transportation provider Albertly Bus Company will have to come up with some options and see whether it's a worthy recommendation or not. um because it could be cost um averse if we have to pay for more transportation just to change a format, right? So, we got to
put all the numbers to that. So, um without getting too far ahead of us, I just want to maybe turn this over for some conversation. I know Dr. Hile's got some talking points here. So, in summary, I think one thing that I want to just point out is that we're seeing slow decline in enrollment starting to pick up a little bit, mostly tied to
that declining birth rates and the natural uh migration that we talked about. we're going to face uh challenges making reductions in the same manner year after year. Um we acknowledged that last year. We started our task force this year. So I think we're on the right track trying to come up with some more creative solutions there and just being
fiscally responsible as a district. Um and we need to identify strategies to better understand that migration and more importantly open enrollment. Um and so hopefully Dr. Hy can uh articulate some thoughts there u tonight. And then um how we use restricted funds. So, one
thing we talked about as a district uh or earlier to this evening was that our say for example, our EL population is increasing. Well, that may generate more revenue in an EL um funding source um and we need to make sure we're using
that um strategically or we may uh have access to other funds. Um maybe we qualify for different federal funds, other sources that are restricted. We have to use those to best serve our our populations and best uh staff our buildings. And so that's going to be part of our our work moving forward when
we start talking about staffing for future years. Um and just planning for the future, continue to focus on um maintaining and how we do it as we got to make some tough decisions as our district. Um and and we're evolving, right? And not every I mean every district's kind of facing, excuse me,
every district is facing similar uh challenges. There's very few that are in a state where they have increasing birth rates, right? Um, I think it's it's a common theme that most most schools are are trying to wrestle with and as your your student population changes, our
buildings and our staffing may have to change with it. So, we'll continue to pivot and reflect and see where where things go. >> Dr. Hy. So, kind of uh thoughts moving forward. So, how do we how do we how do we move
forward? The one piece that um in talking with Paul is we were trying to understand the data a little bit better and we came to the realization that as you're enrolling open enroll either in or out you're just
checking some boxes or circling on a sheet. So um my easy one is just a personal phone call. We know these families are we can we can give them a phone call and in five minutes I think we can find a lot of information out with a couple of questions. Um, and not
just from anybody in the district. It's going to come from myself or or somebody else within the leadership team that needs to make those phone calls. Um, we also need to um I'm going to work with the high school a little bit to
kind of create some ads and then we can direct those on social media. So, I've been in contact with a couple of the superintendents I know that have done some of this work in their um job and you can you can play stuff out on social media out there that run um the
different algorithms and kind of target a little bit. Um not that that's the whole answer, but it gets the district's story out there. We have the we are tigers that uh we just adopted the strategic plan and as we roll that out officially through the rest of this year
that'll help guide a lot of our work. Um when I'm talking about website and social media ads and um if you go on our website, it's real hard to find, but you can find there is a there is a couple little uh ads out there that um that the
district has um and they're okay. But I think we really need to highlight our literacy and mathematics. So we have a great literacy initiative. Uh we have a mathematics following up um as we go through the rest of this year and into next year. Um we do need to highlight
what our elementary schools do and all the wonderful uh teaching and what the kids do in the elementary along with our high school and middle school athletics and activities. Um, when I talked a little bit earlier about preschool and daycare,
we don't really advertise how good of a system we have for that. Um, and we don't get that out to the right parents. And again, that's where a little bit of that social media or a little bit of that advertising can help. Um, but a lot of districts have focused on the
preschool and the daycare of how do we expand it? Um, you can see under readiness and systems, expand the daycare and the preschool. I've already had those conversations with John and so we're in the process of starting to outline what those rooms will look like, what we need to do it. Um, but we have
the space so I don't we need to expand it. And then we also need to talk about our CTE programming that we have at the high school and our college and the schools programming and not just have kids realize um
um that they think it's all PSO, right? They need to realize all that's offered within the school because when you talk to our graduates um and I've been lucky enough that at some of the games and stuff that I'll get introduced, oh this is so and so graduate, so and so graduate. They will tell you a lot of
them, oh yeah, I'm I'm going to uh school over here and and I have over half a year done when I came in. I was so glad I took those classes in the school. So, um, you're not going to eliminate all the PSCO students, but you are going to be able
to show students that our CTE programming that we have in the school leads directly into pro programming in our colleges and that our college in the schools takes off a lot of the programming no matter where you go. Um,
so I think it's just a matter of of how we package it and how we help our families understand that. Um, and again, I I think there's a lot helping our our littles, our families who are looking to
come into, you know, daycare and preschool, kindergarten, and helping them see how our system runs prek12 and celebrating that. We don't do enough celebrating of that. Yeah, I could piggyback on that one
definitely. Um, we need to advertise. Uh, and you're right. Our our our programs in the high school, I think, are pretty much Well, I'm not going to say they're unparalleled, but they're pretty tough to beat. Uh, and you mentioned the departments. It would have
been nice if, and I've gone to our website, and eventually if you, you know, you work at it long enough, you can find the courses that we offer. It would be nice if the public could see exactly what curriculum is available uh without, you know, a lot of difficulty
navigating the website because there's some pretty significant opportunities out there for students uh and math and and and English department I know very well obviously but but uh the other other
departments too and the staff we have are excellent. uh that needs to be advertised. Um you you didn't mention uh vocational technical opportunities that students have uh apprentice programs that they can be involved in. They don't have to go to a four-year college. They
they go to this high school, they can they can have a pretty good line and a really really good job immediately. uh and uh and uh you know I I think we can compete very well with all of those schools uh into which our students are
open enrolling and it it's seems like a bad choice. Um the u preschool program we have and the daycare again that's excellent. It needs to be it needs to be advertised. Wonderful opportunities
there for our community. um the challenges in the uh K5 uh and it's it's a you know an problem in arithmetic when you have uh uh not quite enough uh students for two classes
but way too many for one class. Um there are some things that we have talked about in the task force uh that could be possible uh solutions to that problem and and that they can be worked out. >> I think um just and I appreciate the
pulling all this data together. I think we've demonstrated that we're fairly well skilled at projections, but I also will kind of piggyback what Neil said. Can we do something to reverse the trend? I mean, that that's pretty
significant. Those trends are there and I think they're a given, but what can we do to reverse? And what I'm seeing from the data is that, you know, a robust online learning model. We I've been here four years as a board member and I don't
think we've had a consistent online platform for our students. We we have switched a bit. I don't I don't think that's a strength necessarily. Um it's clear too that economic development is a driver of enrollment. uh and you know
anything we can do to work in a collaborative way with the port authority and the city of Albert Lee I think we are good partners and we're a selling point for the work that they do on the quality that we offer here at district 241. I'd like to add too Paul
to the preschool daycare and this has come up in the task force I think just informally but you know the afterchool care that may be that parents need that could be a selling point also to help
retain some kids in school. Uh and I'm I'm hoping that you know we have staff already there. I don't know if I don't know how the parah thing works all that well, but you might we have paras that we that we could retain or enhance their
job to do after school till x 5:00 or whatever might be just to add some value to the kids experience to help the parents. >> There's a couple of things that we've done. Um, John and I have looked kind of into
licensing and and it's a it's a different daycare license for afterchool care than it is uh for the daycare that runs here. Um, I've jumped through all those hoops before. So, we can do that. The other the other spot that we're actually really uh and we've already had
two meetings um is working with the Y to try to have the Y kind of bring in some programming um and and really reinstitute what used to be here um with the Y and and getting that daycare because they they can do that wraparound
care under their license already. So, and then it's just a matter of do they need adults? Yes, we have paras that could work for them. we have EAS that could work for them. And the probably the bigger part is that we can have a lot of students then that can come in
and work those after hours because it's generally from after school till about most of them about 5:45 most kids are gone. uh occasionally have some at six, but um it's just those little jobs. And we found I found out in other districts that generally then you can offer the
CDA and those students that really like the child care as they're going through school can become licensed child care teachers and then feed them into our overall child care system or feed them over to the Y for permanent jobs there for with their system. So or they run
their own family day or home daycare. So, um, so you can kind of start that, but it you kind of have to start somewhere. And so, the Y is very, very interested. And so, we're just trying to work out, we're kind of going slow because they're working with us through a task force, too. And so, we're trying
to we're trying to just build that partnership to a really strong partnership. >> I I would just piggyback that a lot of these opportunities may come naturally if we have some structural change. There would be an opportunity for other supports to be added. Um, so, um, I
think that's probably on the horizon. >> Well, in the Y did used to do wraparound care, so that something we did for years and years, but then as enrollment dropped for them and they started losing money and didn't have the funds to keep it going, that's when we started busing the kids after school.
>> So, all the four elementaryaries, five elementaryaries would bust to the Y. So, >> any other couple questions? Sorry. It's >> quite a bit after you had talked about the topics, but I was trying to find the right window to bring it all up here. Um, so first question I had was
>> you had that um the numbers for the elementary students and the set number of sections for each one. Yep, that one there. Does that include the kids that are in level three classrooms? >> I believe this include them does. >> It does. >> I believe this count does. >> Okay. It
>> does. >> Okay. Okay. The only reason I'm asking is you're going to have, you know, maybe a student who is in third grade and maybe assigned a third grade teacher, but depending on that student might never make it to that third grade classroom. So, I'm just wondering if those numbers cross or they don't cross. That's why I'm asking.
>> So, when we look at it internally, so in this context, if you tried to get like an average class size, yes. Um, that would be a dilemma. When we're looking at our sections and our um student teacher ratio, we pull the ones that are in a restricted environment out of that calculation too to get an idea of how
many students may be in the current classroom. Sure. >> But um and I I want to use the most appropriate term, but we also are striving for the least restrictive environment and so we include students in the classroom when when we are able to for them to serve them as well. So want them to be part of every
opportunity there with their grade peers, right? So it's a yes and no to that question. We look at both. >> I get you. Um the level three classrooms are those seeing open enrollment out numbers going up to different schools. I wonder how
many of those are due to what we have available here in the district. Um, I know from experience from just, you know, but some of the level three classrooms might not have enough room or some of the kids are going up to level four and we don't have level four and so they're open and rolling out and I'm
just wondering how many if we have the right capabilities to have all that and make sure that the numbers stay filled there. That could be another reason. I'm just throwing that out there. >> Yeah. Can I just I don't have all the information to answer that question, but we do have the Austin Albert Ely co-op that we send students for level four
services to. um they are at CAP and we're having trouble getting all of our students that maybe have a level four need um there. So, a lot of those students are housed in a a setting three program here even though their needs may exceed that. And so, we are having some
conversations just locally right now about how do we respond to that to get students in the appropriate setting uh and to meet their needs. Um it's a definite challenge and we I think to your point um we could look into um specifics about how many of those are
tuitioned out or open and rolled out to other districts for that that reason too. Something to look at. Last one I wanted to bring up, again, this was brought up a while back yet, but um online academy you said was capped and there's a waiting list for it, which I note my kids on that waiting list, but
um what how many students what's the max there for online academy? Like how many can we allow to enroll in that? >> I believe it's 40 or 45 per teacher for each hour. >> How many teachers are there? >> I think we have a point8 and then a 0.2 for special services. Does that sound
correct? The team here. So 1.0 O staff basically one full day of teachers for that. >> Um and then what we've got um is mostly I think ALC teachers that are taking one hour of their day to teach that content area to online academy. So, um, as we
look at staffing adjustments moving forward, we're already starting to think about where could we build off of that and is that the correct model to try and splice that day or is there some other method we should be looking at with staffing? >> I definitely see that as a reason for um an open enroll. You know, if if there is
a cap on there and it's if it's a waiting list and they can get into an online academy and another place that that's why I was asking how many different teachers you had for there and what the cap for students was there. >> Yeah. So, so the old model was to try to keep it all internal to the ALC and I've
had conversations with the high school um administration and Paul and myself about we have staff that could teach a section here or there for the year. So, we need to use our
staff appropriately and have more staff in the online environment and we could very easily increase the amount of seats. Um, it's it's what our population is telling us we need to do.
So, either we respond either we let them enroll out or we respond and keep them. And so, I think the answer is we respond and keep them. what we're currently >> we have the seats available I guess is
what we're saying in the resource we don't have the staff >> one other point on um online academy too is a lot of students may pursue PSO options as well um something we didn't talk about this evening uh a lot of PSO
classes are being offered online and um that may be the reason for going to PSO as they have an online opportunity more flexibility in their day um that sort of thing. So if we can expand um online academy there is potential that maybe we
would save some um on some expenditures as well for not having to pay for those PSO credits too. So all right good talking points. I appreciate it. Um, so last thing I have here is just to update on our calendar this year. We're hoping to um or we will
present a revised budget for the February 17th meeting. Um, I encourage um the week leading up to this. Um, I hope to have all of the resources ready to get to the board uh for that revised budget reminder. Um, this is just something we do annually as a check-in
before the end of the year. Last year when we saw the revised budget, we were hopeful to get it in sooner. So, we bumped it up a year or excuse me, a month sooner this year. Um the real big push for moving that up a month sooner is that will help us get to our our um reduction target sooner, start the
discussions about how we're going to respond to that. So, when we talk about our reduction target, we're talking for the next school year. What do we need to reduce to match that declining enrollment and the impacts on our budget? So, we'll get a good look at that with our revised budget. We're currently in the thick of it. It's been
consuming most of my day and our controller Kaylee Gryom's day. We've been really or days um really grinding on that revised budget as the last few days um and trying to get this, you know, with our updated enrollment. We can start revising our revenue projections and our and look at our
expenditures for the year two. So, we'll get an update for the board. Um with that, um we'll have also a financial projection that will include at least three years of projections forward on what we see for revenues. Um and then a that reduction target. Um and I think uh
Dr. Hyle, if you want to speak at all about what that process will look like this year, we kind of had some uh discussions about maybe presenting some information to the board to process what reductions we'd like to see the district moving forward. Do you want to elaborate on that at all? Um, so Darcy sent out an
email um to everybody. We're going to we're going to start with uh meetings with pairs just to kind of go over to get all the ideas. Then as we start to get ideas, Paul and I will start to put the dollars to that. And again, we're looking district-wide on this. Um, and
then as we have uh board meetings and we have ideas, we'll start a running list so that we can talk openly in in the public so that they know um the areas that we're looking at and and what those dollar amounts would be.
Um and then just a reminder that then in June we'll have a final and adopted budget presentation there. So the final budget will be um wrapped up in in June. So, we'll have time after revise to make any adjustments for this year. I will note that when we see our revenues or our our enrollments decline, normally
your revenues will also have an impact. And I hinted at this earlier, we're going to see probably an increase to some restricted funds and a decrease to our general fund. Right? So, we're going to have to really kind of at revised time make some decisions about how we can best use those utilize those changes. And I'll I'll try to have that
all, you know, put together for you at the 17th meeting. So, All right. And right before we're done, there's been some learning going on by board members. So Gary, our vice chair has earning 100
points from MSBA sponsored session for to improve individual performance. And our chair clot, he has um completed the Minnesota School Boards Association phase 1, two, three, and four training.
So congratulations Right. Uh thank you Mr. Durban for all the information. Sometimes it seems like a lot but it's so nice to have information that we haven't seen before. So thank you a lot of uh things going forward as
we uh look not only toward the task force but also into the some of the reductions that are going to be need to be made. So, um, it looks like that pretty much gets us to the end of the agenda. So, uh, I'll just announce that
on the 17th, Tuesday, we'll have a regular meeting and, uh, they'll have some revised budget in there and then also next the two Mondays after that on March 2nd, we'll have a study session here. Um, look for a motion to adjourn
the meeting. >> So, moved. Is there a second? >> A second. >> And a second. Any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor signify by saying I. I oppose the same sign.
Thank you for everyone for