Look schools board of education meeting. It's Wednesday, 03/12/2025. Can I get a roll call? Everybody is present. Perfect. Let's stand for the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay. Looking over the agenda we got a couple added items under action items. We've got 12B fiscal year twenty six food service contract and C fiscal year twenty six preliminary budget reductions.
Can I get a motion to approve the agenda as written? So moved. And a second? Second. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Okay moving on to claims and accounts. All looks good. I'll make a motion. Can I get a second? Second. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Okay. Anyone signed up for district patron time? No. Thanks. Is anybody here to address the board? Okay. Moving on to school board committees. Dave, any reports? We had a meeting for curriculum and they're on schedule for getting, their tasks done for the reading. Excellent. Mark? They've covered it.
Perfect. Josh? HVAD that sent out just got the hot I just recently, today, received their newsletter, which I sent out to the board. Progress on that Winona Mall is continuing. So Excellent. And I have nothing to add tonight. Student Senate, ladies. So it's March. So we just started our March Madness activity, which is where we, send out a link to all the students in the school, and they get to fill out a bracket for, March Madness. And, whoever's is the most accurate by the end of the tournament, they get, like, first, second, and third prizes.
Which are prom tickets with upperclassmen. And then if you're an underclassmen, see activities pass for this next coming year. Nice. And then, like, a pack of bubblers or a goody basket. Pretty good. Okay. Alright. Thank you. Alright. For the elementary report, as Dave mentioned, just a brief update. We're, all of our staff are through module six out of nine, which is we're over halfway through. So that's that's good. And some of them are already moving well into module eight with only nine left. So, it's kinda nice to get through that.
It's a it's a roughly they say it's forty four hours, but I know some of our teams are gonna be working more hours than that on that that task. But, once we're done with that, then we're gonna have to take a look because our reading standards are gonna be, updating next year. But I'm feeling really comfortable with that because our staff have already been, reviewing those and implementing a lot of that work already. One exciting thing that I wanted to talk about is last week, we, I guess, you could say we returned to Potter Auditorium for our, fourth through sixth grade concert.
And, in the last year, there's been some some work with the Center for the Arts on finding a way to get us down there. So we did our afternoon matinee and then the evening performance. And I just I had a lot of just unsolicited compliments with how it's just a much nicer venue than in the gym where we ask everybody to help put the chairs away at the end. So that was very it was a very good experience and, trying to figure out how we're gonna make that work in the winter next year
for our little kids' Christmas concert. So thank you to the Center for the Arts. They did a nice job of, making sure that we had things in place. And and I would like to give a shout out to our kids. They did a great job. And Mrs. McLeod, under her leadership, they they performed very well up on stage. We have a behavior program, where we have our golden tickets. And once we fill the tower, it's just a little tower outside the office. Every time we fill that, we try to do something as a reward for our kids. So, Monday,
we had the RadZoo come and, work with our kindergarten through third grade students. This week and today, we did a little bingo. It's math week. And missus Meyer, one of our fourth grade teachers, she spearheads this, event for us. And throughout the week, there's a number of different things going on. They had to find little pieces of pie yesterday for, you know, pie day, which is this week. I did ask a number of them. They didn't know that it was three point one four, but we'll we'll get there. Then MCA prep is in in the works right now. And then I just listed out our,
kind of, our projected numbers within our our grade levels. Kindergarten, of course, we have, kindergarten roundup, in a few weeks. And we're trying to get parents to turn in their registrations so we have a better handle on how many kids are coming and how many to prepare for for our kindergarten roundup because we put packets together and information and name tags, and it helps for us to be prepared for them. So, that's that's basically it. I just mentioned at the end, I kinda mentioned MCAs,
but as the weather gets warmer, we have field trips and mud holes and everything else at the elementary school. So it's it's pretty exciting, though. So thank you. We actually don't have much mud on the high school campus. It's it's we're doing we're doing alright. And, you know, this week, we started spring sports, and that's a good thing. It's supposed to be pretty windy through this week, which will help dry out fields, and, get us out there. It's, you know, mother nature so far in March has been very kind to us other than you
know, we went from in eight days having a school cancellation to having 70 something degrees and and, so the weather is always a little unpredictable. But fingers crossed, we'll be off, to a good start and we'll have kids out on fields and and be able to be outside as opposed to doing playing baseball and softball indoors. We also started our trimester earliest week. We had to move back the start of the trimester one day because of that weather cancellation during just before final exams. So, that made the most sense for us to to push back for a day. But I wanna celebrate this time of the year,
some of the kids that are really doing amazing stuff. This is kind of award season for us at at the high school, I think most schools. And, one of our recipients of a great award is, Jaylen LaPlante. She was selected by the women's, varsity coaches as our Athena award winner. That's a award that recognizes the top female athlete from all the member schools of the Saint Paul area Athena award. Jaylen's an exceptional athlete in both track and volleyball and holds a number of
school records in addition to taking both of those teams helping both, the the track relays and the volleyball team to state competition in the last couple of years. So, she's truly an exceptional athlete and we're very proud of the work that she's done in her time here. She's gonna be going to Mankato next year, to compete and to go to school. We also have, I'm sure you're all aware, our wrestlers did extremely well, in the last couple of weeks. They were at the state meet, as a guys team, and then nine individual competitors. And then we had, one of our women wrestlers make it,
Alessandra Aikoff, was qualified for the state meet. And, just so much success. And and, you know, we've we've been really, really fortunate to have, you know, football go to state and try and, volleyball this year and wrestling go this year. And and it's just unlike unlike anything else as far as school spirit is having those kids being able to excel and and, it's just so much fun. We also have our knowledgeable team going to state. That'll be up in Brainerd, in April. They took second place at the section meet and,
so they'll be able to represent the Gophers up at, at that particular meet. Just so much fun stuff that's going on and and so many kids that are at at a completely different level than than, some schools are able to be able to do. We're we're very fortunate and I don't I never take it for granted. Sometimes I think the kids forget how how lucky we are that we have that kind of community support, great parents, great athletes, great programs. And, that's all of those things are needed in order to have the kind of success
that we're having. Also, Matt Malseth, was again named section one a coach of the year and was the state, coach of the year for wrestling. And Matt's kind of piling up lots of recognitions for the incredible work that he does with our our athletes. And and, so we should always celebrate, when we have coaches that are are working so well with our kids. The last thing I wanna talk a little bit about is kinda preview that we're gonna be doing some restructuring of our student leadership, programs. Right now we have class officers. We have a student senate,
we have a delta group, and then we have so many different opportunities for student leadership in other programs. So we certainly have no, lack of opportunities. And I think one of the things that happens when you have so many, is that you can have too few kids, trying to get into too many opportunities and then it gets thinned out a little bit. We also have a situation where the class officers and the student senate sometimes are stepping on each other's toes as far as who's in charge of what. And, we're gonna be streamlining some things to make sure that that's a little bit better
option for our students. I've been working with the advisors for those two different groups and I think that we'll be better positioned for kind of the next era of our student leadership group. And and, I'll probably be giving you more information about that as we finalize some of those plans. But, I think it's gonna be good for the kids to be able to have them have more clarity about what their responsibilities are as student leaders and to know who's picking up the ball on different tasks and projects and things like that. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Hey,
couple of things. Also a follow-up on just so many good things being done by so many kids and coaches and advisors from K to 12. It's just been a really fun year and expect more to come this spring. I also want to recognize in your agenda you'll notice that there's a resignation by Terry Dudek. She is going to be finishing out her time with us and, my office and the high school office and and the guidance and the counselor's office you know there are some things that kind of, happened in between all of them and I want to echo what Eric said earlier.
Terry is tremendous and has done a wonderful job. However, she says that she may be willing to come back and spend some time with us because she's not sure if she can be fully retired. So we'll see what happens. We may not have seen the last of Terry, but I want to congratulate her and thank her for the time. She's tremendous. Thanks Dave and Mark for attending the District Curriculum Advisory Committee. On the screen you'll see just some topics that we covered. I want to commend Eric and Shane and their staff and their teacher leaders.
They are really working hard and well to cover the bases this year that they set out to cover and, improve improve their craft and, you know, by extension, you know, help our kids do as best that they can. So thank you for them. Facility update, we didn't quite get to this in our prior meeting, but if you recall, we had some really horrendous rains and storms last summer. And this is the shot of the driveway from across the road near Subway going up towards the NPR. Okay? Underneath there is a drainway going from right to left,
and you can it's kinda hard to see, but there's a red, area drawn in on the right side of the road. I'm kinda color blind, so it's hard for me to see that. But, anyway, that has kinda been a a sore spot for drainage for a while, but that storm really made it a sore spot and basically burrowed a great big cavern underneath, the the ground level there to the point where we had to pour a bunch of gravel and riprap in there to make sure it didn't wash out any further. Anyway, long story short, there's an opportunity by emergency management people from Olmsted County and Fillmore County and the city to potentially get some help to rebuild that from,
emergency, grant, created, I think, from FEMA. Anyway, we applied and I want to thank, G3, in particular, Chris Priebe, helped, kinda head the application and the development of the project and the specifics required for it. It's I wanna say the project amount is right around 40,000 to fix it properly, to pull that up, you know, put put proper drain waste through it, and and, make it so that it can handle that kind of pressure going forward. The grant, I believe will would cover 75% of it if we get it.
So that's something we need to do. It's something I'm waiting on. I'll keep you posted. But, if you drive by, you wanna see an interesting see see the power of water? There you go. That's not something that the city would be responsible for? No. It's along 52 and where it sits in the right of way. There was discussion, regarding that, and I think, it it comes down to us and the city applying for it basically together. I'm sorry. The city is kind of in in line applying for this with us. With the grant. Yeah. Okay. Can we use the operating capital
fund for that? Good. Yeah. Yeah. You certainly could. There's a bunch of other of other, exhibits in here that that you have in my report that you were able to see earlier. And this is, this is what Chris put together a while back if you wanna page through that. This is the just the overview, the the technicalities of what they're gonna try to accomplish. Putting aprons in on both sides and and a storm sewer beneath 24 inch storm sewer beneath the driveway, and then putting it all back together. Okay. Let's see. I was wrong. 48,
almost 50. Okay. Going on, I don't have much else. There's first reading and district policies. This batch, there's nothing other than statutory reference updates. There was, a second reading of student parking lots, which was an update for mister Nelson last month, which is up for approval. And I can speak to the other items that are action when we get there. Thank you. Moving on to consent items. Can I get a motion to approve consent as written? So moved. And a second? A second. Yeah. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Okay. Moving on to first readings. Those are just for your review.
Go over this next month. Second reading of district policies five to seven student use and parking of motor vehicles patrols inspections and searches. Can I get a motion to approve? I so move. A second? Second. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Okay. We have nothing under discussion items this evening. Move on to action items. We have A, Achievement and Integration Fiscal Year '26 budget application. This is an annual application, and I think I can probably defer a little bit to Eric and or Dan to give you just a brief summary of what it is and about how it affects what we do. Yes.
I'll talk a little bit about plumbing fees. So because we are a district that essentially borders Rochester, we call them to a situation where we can get some achievement integration dollars, to be able to use within the district. So we generate about $35,000 annually for this. We have to put together a the three year plan, and then each year, we submit a budget update essentially to get MD, get approval for that, moving forward. So, right now,
or in the past, we were we were maximizing out the initial revenue that you were given, then there's also a piece of seven set of revenues, which was not being accessed. So we are going to access access this that piece this year, which is another $9,000. So, if Indeed does approve that, that's not a consistent piece to be controlled. You submitted it. We have not heard back yet. It typically takes a while. What are we using money for? So with the it's been between 25,000
and 35,000 over the last three or four years and, that money is used basically to take care of salaries. The point of achievement integration money is to try to, reduce some gaps in achievement among learners. And so, this a portion of Marsha Schindler's salary, she does our tier two, interventions at the high school. We have some reading interventions. Portions of Robin Lambert's salary is paid for out of that. And then, one of our goals is providing staff development related to trauma informed instruction and,
trauma education topics. And, part of the basically, you take everybody that's in that training and their salary for that day is covered under under those dollars. And so, really, it's it's specifically targeted toward how we're helping kids with reducing gaps and it's appropriate use of the money and I think is well spent. Can I get a motion to approve? So moved. Second? Second. Any discussions from the Board? All in favor? I'm sorry.
Aye. Aye. All right. Moving on to fiscal year twenty twenty six food service contract. Okay. First of all, I want to thank, we have representatives here from Tarr tonight, Sharon and Brett and our new food service director, Ray. And I wanna thank them for the treats, and and the drinks. So, this is an annual renewal and, I just put up some preliminary information there about the increases and whatnot. And I'm going to make a couple of comments about where we're at and where we're going and then I'll let Brett and Ray and Sharon, if you wanna add anything or speak or Ray maybe introduce yourself,
you know, to the board. We've we've had a pretty good year despite transition. We've been in transition now for months, I think since the fall. And I wanna specifically, again, thank Sharon Thompson. She came in after Jim Sawyer left, which would have been back in October. And that that was kind of an an abrupt change, and she has done a really, really good job of of, observing what's happening, how it's happening, and paving the way for the next food director to come in and and have a transition that is that is that is, smooth and productive.
So, thank you for everything that you've done, Sharon. So she'll be working herself out of here, and then probably Brett will be excited to deploy her elsewhere is my guess. And I wanna welcome Ray. Ray came in and met with with myself and Brett, on a day, when he was interviewing and they were checking checking out the opportunity. I was I was very, very, very happy and pleased to meet Ray, and I think I think he's hit the ground running the way it looks, and I think he's a good fit. And he has some coaching background,
so I think he kind of understands kids, gets kids, understands what teamwork is all about, and work and has you know work outside of food service that relates to kids and that's and they care coaches care about kids and so I think that kind of background is a bonus. Anyway, so we're headed to normalcy hopefully. I think from a budgetary standpoint we're in very good shape. We are moving along with a quite healthy fund balance. In fact, we probably will need to spend some of that down. We might buy some cafeteria tables.
Thanks, Sharon. The, the renewal for the contract is very reasonable. In fact, in FY '24, the rate at that point for for management services was, point $4.05, you know, 45¢ per meal. That rate was held steady for this current year just because of trying to help us out with our needs and them knowing that they had transitions that they are working through. And so they're presenting a fairly reasonable FY '26, point $4.06 or 46 and a half cents, you know, per meal for management fee,
which rounds out to be about 3% or thereabouts or a little less. So anyway, my recommendation is to continue with all her. They've been they've been worked really hard to try to get get to a track that we we are good with. There's a lot of learning left to do and, for what's being presented, you know, and how it looks, tastes to the kids is is key. And I think, you know, keeping sight of that metric, going forward is is gonna be important. So anyway, Brett, Ray, or Sharon, you can make some comments.
Go for it. I'll go ahead and start. Thank you. Ed. First of all, I wanna thank you, Ed, for partnering with me to find the right person for Chatfield. It's been quite a few months, like you mentioned, but I think we definitely found the right one. Sharon has done fantastic since I planned her here for the last few months and really stabilizing the program and also correcting some issues that we have to redo against more. So we're continuing to move forward. Ray, originally a Florida guy, but he's been in Minnesota for quite a few years now.
His experience, his last stint was at Mayo Clinic for the last couple years. Before that, he was about ten years in Downtown Rochester working for caring businesses and hotels, etcetera, and then did a stand for roughly three years at healthcare services, as well, and some other many different things, which I'll let Ed or Ray cover. But at the end of the day, you know, we're continuing to adjust. We've made adjustments this year, earlier this year on the elementary menu from the feedbacks that we got from parents, from teachers, from students.
We're continuing to adjust that. We just got our surveys back from this fall. We're still looking through it, diving into that, and we're gonna be making some adjustments. Most of those surveys are more toward the high school kids, so we'll be looking at that and seeing where we need to tweak and adjust our menus to make sure we keep with the trends with the kids and what they're wanting. While on the call outside, I noticed when I was looking through before I came there, favorite foods pizza, but they're also getting tired of pizza. So, we'll take that for yourself. But there's some other things that we can try and maybe we give pizza a
break every once in a while. But we've we're definitely bringing different items all the time with our limited time offers every month, that we do. And the nine tastes of America, which is something new this year that we've brought in, chicken wings or chicken drummy, excuse me, that were offered earlier last month. And then We didn't do the drummy because somebody's gonna do the drum. And then, we'll be doing those again to offer the kids since then They have to be ordered for September. Oh, yeah. There you go. So with that being said, I won't take any more time.
Ray, you can Okay. Hello, everyone. Thank you for inviting me here tonight. I've enjoyed my week and a half that I've been here, so I thought Sharon's really, showing me the ropes. And and thank you, Ed, for, all of your help in getting to know the kids, getting to know my place here. I really do enjoy my time, in hospitality and health care and, school systems and being around kids. I coached for nine years for all basketball and baseball, age five to 13, and those were great years, and I really enjoyed it. I'm now,
I have I have seven grandchildren and my my son and my daughter are both getting them involved in sports too. And, it's, you know, it's a way of life, you know, and and just, enjoy them as they grow up and and become adults. And that's what we're seeing here. You know, you're seeing every aspect of. But I'm looking forward to, again, working with you all and and and helping, bring the level of service up here and quality of the food and just everything that we can do to make sure the kids are enjoying their time here. And then I have a,
again, I have a huge background in in the food service, and, that would just help me to make this that much better for you. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Alright. I got a motion. Oh, go ahead. I'll just have any questions or comments? Yeah. Or you can obviously That's fine. Can I get motion? Motion. Second? Second. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Okay. Fiscal year twenty twenty six preliminary budget reductions. Okay. Thank you. This is part of my report and is also what we spend a fair amount of time talking about in our committee meeting. This was put out to you last
week as well for you to observe. Just a quick review, this is something we've talked about openly for a couple years now that we're we are in a multi year process of downsizingright sizing our budget based on how our enrollment is going to track. And we've essentially started in fiscal twenty four. So the twenty three-twenty four school year, when we as a board and administration agreed that we were going to try to reduce budgets, spend some reserves in such a way that over several years,
we would have a reasonable, handle on the downsizing of our budget without creating too much or or unnecessary, hardships. So far that is tracking, the way we have hoped based on our most recent projection today and that it looks like our stability or controlled descent of, of funds and, budget reductions will do its job and give us at least out to fiscal year '20 '8 or '29, in reasonable fiscal shape without having to ask for an operating levy.
However, the current operating levy is going to expire in '28. Dan, if I recall? Twenty nine. Twenty '9. Excuse me. So, that is a date that we're gonna have to keep track of and make sure that we address our operating levy needs in time to not get gapped. And what I mean by gapped is if the operating levy expires and you can't have it, extended or improved, without and if you don't do it right and you miss a year, all of a sudden you're gonna be short, you know, $400,000 of revenue in a single year and that's kinda disastrous. So anyway,
we're tracking towards that end and I think we're in good shape. So what you see up here is, the proposed FY twenty six budget reductions of a little over 200,000 that we've talked about, from a variety of things. A lot of this has been opportunistic nonreplacements, and we started that back in, '23, '20 '4, office staff nonreplacement for 45 k. For this particular year, we cut a total of about 200,000. Now that does include also some some additional revenues that we have found or generated. So a total budget correction of 200,000
be more accurate. So fiscal twenty six, we're doing, about 210. Most of these are pretty much all, reductions. That's kind of kind of how the chips fell this year. And then, we're projecting to at least start planning for fiscal twenty seven another 200,000. After that, we're we're got a couple years away from 2829 and we'll see what happens. So, this makes a couple assumptions, that this includes formula if revenue increases from the state based on current state law, which means
it'll be indexed to inflation which some will be somewhere between 23% and it also makes the assumption that we're going to have relatively modest labor contract settlements going forward based on our situation. So I I feel pretty good about the situation. We have control of it, and we we are, tracking in a way that that we've intended, and, time is is on our side to a certain degree. So I would ask that the board, approve this first draft of budget reductions. Now, it is March. There are still things that may come up between now and the end of the
year, the impact next year, and so there might be some modulations of this, between now and the next couple of months. So but this is kind of where we're going to start. I'll move it. Okay. There's a first. Second. Any discussion, guys? Question, when does the final budget have to be set when we do that? Coming back again to finalize the approval? Well, we're going to approve the preliminary budget in June. Okay. And then September, Dan? When or no December? December. Yeah. I just Well, it depends when you want to,
but December maybe. Right. Well, we will operate from the June preliminary budget going into next year. Okay. And then depending on how the year goes, we will adjust everything Yeah. With the revision. Yeah. K. Any further discussion? No. K. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? We're good. I get a motion to adjourn. Policy six sixty. Policy. So it would be the second, and then we can discuss it. You'd wanna you'd wanna propose it to be put on for a first reading? No. It would be take it back immediately. It's a three word addition. And, you could bring up.
Well, I have to have a second. Yeah. Okay. Before we do anything else. Second. This is all just second. Okay. Okay. Policy six sixty deals with the library materials, and, parents are allowed to, object to materials. Students are allowed to object. Faculty is allowed to object. School board members aren't unless they have kids in the school. So if you can bring a policy three sixty. Six six six five. Six 60. I'm sorry. Three sixty section five. And, section five. Only family, parents, guardians,
school board members, are the are the three words I would like to add. School board members. So my motion is to add the words school board members after parents and guardians in policy six sixty section five subsection one a. Just for clarity, I mean, if the board chooses, you could you could make this decision tonight. You don't have to have a first and second reading. That's just kind of our practice to make sure we have good measures. So just just so just so you're aware. The school board is 100% responsible and accountable for all materials.
So if the school board can't object to something there because they don't have kids currently in school, that kinda defeats the practice. And that's why I'm suggesting those three words be added. As a school board, can we take action to and we have right now, if I'm a school board member and I object to a book, I don't have kids in school, so I'm not allowed to object to it. Okay. But if that objection somebody makes an objection, do they come to the school board for out there? There there there's there's a whole process for it in a Okay. Yep. So is the school board involved at that point?
No. But they're involved in the curriculum. Is that how you see that too, Ed? Or as a school board that has kind of that authority over all of that, does that not need to be included? Because we would still have the authority to raise that despite policy. I think that's the intent that the school board has authority over everything that that is either operational or or facility or or ownership by the district, ultimately. Just because it's not spoken to specifically in policy doesn't mean you don't have the authority.
Now my my thought here is that's a pretty this is a very boilerplate policy, and my guess is the intent was when they say faculty, they're talking about, they may have left out school board, but the intent was probably implied. So just because it doesn't say school board does not mean that you don't have the authority, in my opinion, because you you can bring up pretty much anything. Now I I would say that if you do, that you follow established processes like anybody else. But, you know, I I I understand Dave's question, but, I'm guessing it's probably just an oversight,
most likely by whoever wrote the policy initially. This would this would correct the old person. Yeah. Right. But we are considered faculty. Right? I mean Not not not technically. Or No. No. I mean I guess I I mean, should should you have the ability to say, you know what? I don't know that this book is good for a library. I I think the answer to that is yes. As as a school board, you you need to have that ability. It's just the policy doesn't speak to it, you know, that specifically. So do we know when last time as a board this was reviewed? And I wanna say twenty twenty twenty twenty two.
Not a while. Yeah. It says About three years almost three years ago to the day basically. Right. Is it out against you? That's Most likely. Most likely in the relative near future. That goes up on average of three or four year cycle. And I think you already answered this, but we think this is the MSBA. Oh, it is. Oh, it is. Yeah. This is this is their standard policy for for, school library selection. May I understand Dave's concern? I guess I just like to know if if that's an MSPA question or Sir, without that,
do we still have jurisdiction there? Words in there and take care of it. Yeah. No. You Well, right. But I don't know about changing MSBA recommended policy if it's not needed. Okay. No language. That's my point. Yeah. And no offense, Josh. But if the only thing that we go by is their suggested boilerplate, we got no business even reviewing it because we're just gonna say, yeah. Yep. Okay. Go on. Go move. Well, these these policy boilerplate these boilerplate policies are intended to be a foundation for boards to work from.
Most of them we choose to adopt because they're pretty well done. They're researched. They're vetted by by MSBA, their legal counsel, and whatnot. There are some that we craft to our our own specific needs and that's the ability of the board, you know. So just be you you don't have to live and die by this print. You you can amend it in any way you want. You can throw it out and make a new one if you like. That's all your prerogative. What works for Mammoth's VA would say, what do you want it to do, and does the policy do what you want it to do for your board preferences?
As long as it's legal, of course. You know? But Oh, we just approved the modification to a parking point. 527. Yeah. We just approved a modification for that. Right. Based on local conditions. Yeah. So, yeah, this isn't anything new. It's just, you know, a new a different policy question. Any further discussion? I'm sorry? Any further discussion? I mean, right now, you wouldn't I think I think the question is, if you wanna challenge something, is this policy going to give you that opportunity?
And I think as a a school, we're saying, sure, we would listen to that. I think where it would matter is if some for example, if a board member brought up if there's no difference in the policy compared to how it's written and a board member brought a choice forward, it's like I don't like this. Opposition to that board members, actions could say your policy does not say the board members could do this. You're in violation of your own policy and now now you've now you've got that detail, you know, that's at the issue and not you know what I mean? So that would be where this would matter.
To me, it makes common sense and just to have it in there, but I guess I'd prefer to go through the process of where we're okay. This is something you just presented to us now. We're in our approval. Let's just have a reading and Do you just wanna make a text on? You certainly can. That's what I Okay. Just purely because that's the process we've got. So and maybe check with, the state or the state board just so you know. I don't think the state cares. They they don't care. And that's No. It But I've been at the boiler plate or The the it's it's up for us to decide this Okay.
Kind of thing. Either way, it's fine. Yeah. I don't have a problem with knowing it's next month just so everybody reads it again and looks at it because I I had to look it up myself just to make sure. That you what, please? I had to look it up myself just because it wasn't on our radar. I don't see anymore. It hurts, but No. At the same time, it's just thrown without being able to really think about it much. And That's right. I thought there's a whole lot of things about it, but I agree with, maybe. First, we didn't give some thought. Unless I mean, is there something you're Dave, that you noticed that you wanna act on? Yes. That's why you want, Yes.
Have you raised that concern with Ed or anybody at this point? School board members can't bring it up because faculty, parents, and guardians, and students are the only ones allowed to You can you could still bring up the concern to your superintendent, which I think if you're just keeping stuff a secret that you're not happy with, I think you're not sharing concerns. It's I will when I can by policy. That's otherwise, I would have brought it up. But I've read the policy, and it very plainly states that I don't have kids in school,
so I'm not allowed to bring it up. Does it say you can't bring it up or does it say you can't officially take You can't. Request action? Well Well, it doesn't say you can't. It just says this subset of people. It's not official. The the process isn't available to you if you don't if if you go by the letter of this, yeah, the process for deselection is not available to you if you're not named in a policy, technically. Fundamentally, I I and practically, I think that's probably not true. But if you get called on the technicality, you look back and say, well, you know I should've brought it up. Maybe we we could've thought of that.
I guess I'm kinda thinking with Tom. I'm not against your proposal, but I think it might be good just to put on agenda for next month and maybe check with them. Would we consider this up first and then next month we choose to approve? I would say if we're gonna make the change and we have the information, we can make the change next month. That would just be my take if we're gonna or vote on it. You'd always bring it to one of the parents that's on the board too if you have a concern. What's that? You could bring it to one of the parents if you're worried about that because
there's I definitely understand. Four of us. But I, as a board member, can't act on a policy that I want to work within. So I I mean, the board the board will make its decision. But to add specifically that a board member can do this and have to wait a month to say that a board member can work within the policy that they're responsible for, just to me seems like a unnecessary an unnecessary delay. But I'll I'll go by with whatever the board says. Well, that's a question I would have for the MSP, and not necessarily the language,
but are things like this something that we still have some control over? Because I'm guessing there's other policies probably that maybe identify who can do something and doesn't include the school board. Yeah. You you saying we could go through and read a bunch of policies, and if we're not in there, if we have, you know, add us You you you could school board in there. You could know what? You can you can amend these policies to whatever you wish as a as a school board. I get that. But I'm just wondering without that, I'm wondering what legal counsel to the MSBA would say that we have jurisdiction over
whether that says that or not. Yes. We Because we create policy. You you have all all of You have all the You have all the control over how this reads. We can strike out the entire This is simply this is simply recommended MSBA Yeah. Boilerplate language. So here here's a policy for this particular thing that we've worked out, that you can adopt if you like or amend if you like or develop on your own if if you like or start over. Yeah. Because they don't have a policy for everything, and you can't have a policy for everything. No. You know? They make policies based on things that have come up in the past.
Back to yeah. Part five. I mean Okay. Alright. There you go. Yeah. I just don't know if there's more to that under Abe. Do we have any idea what MSBA have like, are they gonna look at this policy with them? No. No. They don't care. They literally just give you the paper and say this is what we made up. The only way Which would essentially stay within, like, actual statute state statute, but it's usually the minor things like that shouldn't be As I However however, the changes to policy pretty much are driven by legislative updates.
Something may come up in a bill that impacts this and then then it'll be amended and then we'll see if we and and if it's an amendment that that, you know, forces our alignment to state statute than it does. Because there are some things in policy based on statute that we don't have the ability to bend from or whatever. But in this kind of thing, that's not the case. I guess I'm not sure what a first reading even does. You know? Fair enough. My mind. I I'm okay with the changes. I just I'm just more thinking ahead and other stuff. Like, to me,
it just doesn't seem like it has to be in policy for school board to be able to address concerns that affect affect our students or school or staff or things, and we should be to still take some sort of action on that despite that policy. Now I would agree with you. If it said any, any person within, chapter of the school district twenty seven can challenge. But to me, this reading specifically prohibits anybody other than those three categories of people.
And I think that was by design because the the intent here is for those folks that have a stake and and inherent connectivity to what the school deemed as appropriate holdings, They're the ones that need to have that ability. Somebody that has zero connection to the the school district, you know, that may not be that all that important. Otherwise, you might have just a running list of challenges coming out of the community that does nothing but keep you, you know, full time busy in those things. So, kinda like, you know, choosing curriculum.
You know, the people that do that are the people that use it and are involved in it. You don't you don't put curriculum up for a community vote, you know, or aspects of it necessarily. You try to reflect the community's, values and and what they want, you know, but, it's by design that this isn't wide open to everyone. I'll go along with you, Dave. Thank you. I I don't think it's in it. Like, I think it's fine. Like, if we wanna edit, I don't think it harms anyone here or at home. Yeah. I'm sorry. I just thought should've probably brought up earlier as part of our discussion. But whatever is fine.
We can do it right now. So can I get a motion? Do you have a second? We have a first and second. The second. Okay. First we did have a first and second. Yep. Okay. It's a proper motion. Okay. All in favor of revising six sixty to add the words school board members as people available to challenge. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Aye. Alright. I'll wait to adjourn. Yeah. Can I get a motion to adjourn? To adjourn. I so move. Second? Second? Oh, I think you're second. I can't second myself. I can't second myself. I can't second myself. All in favor?
Aye. Aye. Nobody else is in favor? Oh, aye. I said aye. Okay. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.