Republics. One nation under God, indivisible, liberty and justice for all. Yeah, I've been away since it starts the meeting. All right. 3.0 is roll call of all school board members and we're all present
today. We all blew in. 4.0 is to approve the agenda. I'll do a motion to approve. Need a second. Second. Any questions or discussion on the agenda? The only comment I wanted to make is if and we can talk about it more when we get there
on 6.4 4 was added midday today. It's the update on the um I'm going to say it the electronic subscriptions. Um and again, we can talk about it when we get there. Um or it's approved or whatever here. Okay.
Any other questions or discussion items? All those in favor of approving the agenda say I. Oh, I I was just going to say are there any question the I was just adding that that was added. I wanted to make sure. the uh curriculum pieces, the electronic subscriptions for
the most part are very similar. There's a few things that have come off, you know, minor things come off, minor additions. It's right in budget with what we have had the last few years and um like I say, I'm I'm recommending it move on so that they can start renewing them. Some are right now, some might be
September 1st, October yet, you know, right in that ballpark. But um it just So if there are questions, we can that's in the consent agenda. So, if you wanted to take a look quick um everybody to the technology subscriptions. I think we talked briefly about it last time a
little bit. Yep. Yep. And we've paired things a little bit and shied and and Yeah. Anybody else? You you do? No. Okay. All right. All those in favor of approving the agenda say I I Any oppose? Okay. Agenda is
approved. 5.0 0 communication reports start with an enrollment update. Okay, if you look at the enrollment update, um unfortunately we are down six kids from last month. Um uh there's there's four at the high school, two seniors, a junior and a sophomore. Um three of them
are 15 day out and we don't know where they're at. Um you know, fortunately or unfortunately, it's never good to lose a kid, but you know, it's not the first week of school, so we've had them um they're working on it. One did transfer to California, so that is a complete move. We've lost two in third grade, up
one in second, and one in kindergarten. We're down. So, total is six. Um, like I say, that's um it's where we're at. Questions on enrollment, finance update. Um, Carla's not here. If you look, I don't know if you want to
look at the board report. for the most part things. I mean, it's it's don't take it the wrong way. It's almost a broken record. We're ahead of where we've been, which is a good thing. Um, like I say, we're getting to that point where certain things are getting close to, you know, being maxed out. A few
things need to be shifted around, but I don't have much to highlight for you really, anything of major concern that hasn't been, you know, the last couple months kind of highlighted. Um, food service seems to be coming around a
little bit, you know, and again, until final numbers are final final, um, I think it looks a little better than it did probably two two months, 3 months ago. Um, and they'll start working on, well, they probably are working on cleaning the freezer and not, you know, ordering certain things, but trying to
get things down. Um, and we do have some food service in the summer with with ESY and um, stuff like that. So, I don't have much unless there's questions. questions finance. Go into administration and department head reports and we'll start with you
Mr. Grover. Okay. So, um I did print um their nice larger copies. Um a draft my the plan is to have it the first meeting in June. Um there were admin went another run through it. It's going to be available for the admin or the uh district leadership team to look at.
It's not nice. It's actually built that size. I'm not the most tech person or whatever. When we tried blowing it up, it didn't work real great. So, you know, to shrink it and send it in a nice size, it just doesn't work very well. That's why I printed it. Um, we did, they did
have some good recommendations as far as getting some things like in chronological. So, like in each category, if something's right now or something's ongoing, we put them in kind of in that order. Um obviously when this gets printed and displayed in places it'll be like a two-pager you know in
those framed pieces and we can work on we need a smaller version you know um we'll get it in that but please look at it if there's anything grammatical again um I was working on it Friday and again this weekend. So again I'm still open to looking at it. We've had a lot of great
recommendations, but please look it over. If there are, I'm just going to be honest, it would be nice, you know, getting it a few days ahead of time so we can work on the formatting and make it look, you know, as as good as possible. But that's the plan. So, that's that. Um, we're looking to
approve this in the June meeting June if unless there's a reason not to. You know, like I say, it's it's a living document and if there's stuff you want changed, whatever, we just want to keep moving, you know. Um just a a few reminders. Um bus driver
negotiation which is Lynn, Amanda, and Josh. May 27th is at 11:00 is when we're scheduled for that first round. Um they're going to bring you know some ideas. I'm going through and you know working on some stuff, but we'll work through that process. Um staffing for
the most I mean we're getting closer. We're still short a preschool person um which is the main key right now. Um teacher preschool teacher. Yeah. Yeah. Preschool teacher. Yeah. Per we're not even in the ball game yet of you know knowing what we're short or or whatever.
They'll start working on that. Um without the updates just so everyone's you you've probably seen the social study opening. The reason for that is we didn't get a tech person and so we have a teacher that's going to go into that role and we're in the process of filling
then social studies. Um, and again, whether AVID, whether that person takes the two sections of AVID or, you know, some combination, it'll be a full full-time position. Um, Mr. Lure left you a sheet on graduation, and I apologize a little
bit. Not I'd asked, you know, you only need two people. And I kind of went back a couple times going, why isn't the whole board where I came from, the whole board, I've been to several graduations and the whole board. Well, the whole board is involved. It's just two presents. So everyone else, I'm going to say sits on stage and looks pretty
handsome, whatever. Um, if you can't be, you know, things come up, you might have a relatives, just let us know so we don't have extra chairs sitting, but otherwise, so at the civic center 645, that's what that is. Yeah. Hey, don't spoil it. Come on.
So anyway, challenge. Um, do you have a seating chart or we'll figure it out when we get there? All right, perfect. Other than that, I don't have anything right now. I'm trying to keep it short and sweet. All right. You are
up. Let's just join. Okay. Sure. It was every time. Okay. Every time. All right. So, good
evening. It is time for our American Indian Education Aid application to be turned into the state and it was approved by our parent committee and that means that it then comes to the school board for a signature and uh to the superintendent and then we submit it
to the state for their approval. Um to get approval we have to make six goals and tell how we are going to achieve those goals. Our first goal is that 100% of American Indian students will be prepared for postsecary success. We are
going to continue our graduate portfolio monitoring system, college visits, uh mentorship with UND. We um help with FAFSA and scholarship application support and um cultural integration with
counseling services. Our second goal is 100% of teachers and staff will be trained in Native American best practices. This will happen through ongoing professional development, co-eing, mentoring, and modeling with me,
partnerships with American Indian consultants, and integration of all indigenous um materials into all classrooms across the district. Not all of the stuff will be that, but we will have them in all
classrooms. Um 100% of teachers will utilize the cultural resources in their instruction. So, they will get them through me. This will make sure that the standards are all met. Um, our monthly meetings, we talk about this with the
parents, making sure that we're um getting all of the curriculum that we need to to meet the standards. Our fourth goal is we want to increase our family participation. It was at about 42% this year and we want to see that go up to 46%.
Um we do a monthly um cultural event including our beading and our star quilting and our ribbon skirts. We have powows including the all school powow that we had. Um let's see we also um we teach about the seven grandfathers that helps
with our teachings. Goal five, 100% of American Indian students and families will learn cultural teachings including our Ajiway and Dakota um language skills. So we have like I
said these are the uh the sampling of the activities that we do every month. We have something every month and our um American Indian families get access to Ojiway learning um exercises for their
language skills. Goal six, we are going to enhance, not replace the state and federal funding with this grant. That's important as well. So, our parent committee approved it is it looks really similar to what we did this year. We
were really happy with how all the events went and we just want to help that grow and continue. Can you repeat what you said about the funding? The funding. So, this grant we are going to enhance what the school does, what we already get. We're not
replacing any other title funding. Correct. Is that how you would No, this is how I'd say it. I So the American Indian Education Aid is strictly for American Indian programming and this is state aid that we that we get in addition for each student is how it
works. So that's how we utilize these funds to build on. The district does put in money on top of that is I think what you meant, right? Yes. Yes. And then we do also get federal dollars in title
five six in title six. So we are not allowed to use these funds for anything besides what has been approved by the parent committee. We say what you know they tell us what we want or what they want us to do. We make it happen and we use the funds for that. Okay. Thank you.
Yeah. And the other piece is you know others than Native Americans can participate. you know, it's it's based around their culture, but like we do schoolwide pow that's everyone, you know, so and that just helps with the educational piece and the standards that are and you do go into the classrooms as
well. Yeah. How many times you go into or how many times you try to get into every classroom in a year, I'd say. Well, depending on how difficult the time of year is, like May. Yep. Um, every few months at least. Yep. But it was probably every other month. And then
we enhanced that with repeat as well. Yep. did all those cultural teachings as well in the school district. Yep. I got to see one of those lessons. It was pretty cool. But like I said, our um families, we do something at least once a month.
The school I was at in school, so all the kids get to come see it. Okay. Y and part of the how American Indian education has changed in the last couple years for sure, Pat, is that now we it is for all. It's not just like going to
hire a tutor for the American Indian students anymore. It is education for all. Okay. Build that culture. Sure. Yeah. The incool powow is really really neat. And the drum group, they have some really really cool ideas for next year that we're working on. So to make it
even bigger and better and so it's really really cool. We're proud of it. Any questions? Any questions? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. All right. This is usually the the
principal meeting where we get the principal updates, but we're going to save those for June because not much has changed between April and May. So then in June we'll get the end of the year updates. Uh any committee reports? Not uh I mean we have some stuff coming up and yeah.
All right. 6.0 to approve the consent agenda. I'll move to approve the consent agenda as attached. I'll second. Any questions or discussion or want anything pulled from the consent? I have
a question on the technology subscription. So, I did a little research um and their uh FastBridge does offer the behavioral assessments and tracking like Panorama does. So, I was wondering if that was ever looked into as combining them so that we can maybe
get rid of one and just having FastBridge do all of it. But FastBridge and Panorama Panorama is really a I'm going to call it a warehouse, which Fastbridge is not like we can't put our attendance data, our behavior data into
Fastbridge. The it has a thing I screenshotted it earlier, but it has almost all the same as Panorama. It just has it's more educational focused than it is there was literally a graph. I mean I would love to not spend the 20
plus thousand but I'm not aware and Sura can speak more to it that the two can do the same. I mean there are pieces like there might be a mental health assessment that both have or something like that. So the there is that's another subscription fee other than what
we're paying currently and I don't I don't know Amanda that we're going to spend or save a lot of money by using their educ issues with that as well getting the data in to their warehouse and um
working with the Northwest Service Co-op as we have been. Another thing that they said is um the Panorama survey that we have is really it's it's the best that's out there. So she said I wouldn't switch to that survey. They're not getting the data out
that they want. Schools and Synergy is another one we're looking at. We have Synergy as our our data, you know, our our student man. They have we're exploring that because Panorama has increased a fair number, but just because it has a good survey, right? I I don't know what it says because my kids
have never t And there's survey there's survey things in there too, Amanda. We're not using. There's family surveys we could be utilizing in there that are really good that would give us some really good information. There's also survey that we use the student surveys, but there's also staff surveys that help
us know if what we're doing is effective with staff as well and where we want to see growth. So, it's it's been a good tool and we're starting to see usage. I just met with them and they, you know, they're pulling our usage. So, I I could report back to you on that as well, but
we have seen an increase in usage. And the one thing we're not doing is we're not doing a three-year contract with Panorama. Not that that's it's going to be a one-year. It's what 22,000. I forget what it is. It's not cheap, but It's not cheap, but because we are looking at
other things and you never know. I mean, um, you know, yeah, it's almost $26,000. one year and if we're only having that for surveys and because it tracks behaviors or something else that's you'd have to module it houses everything
right abs all of that every note that every teacher has access to that and and then you draw and some of that I mean the survey is yes that helps but it helps
gather all the data. We don't all our interventions in the panorama and so it's we're able to see everything on every kid if it's utilized. What's that? Well, because the usage you said isn't
us increasing. So that necessarily being utilized to its potential. So the MTSS teams use them all the time. They use that data all the time. So as a MTSS team sits down or if a teacher's coming in all their data on their student is in there. So we can look at their
behavioral, their academic, their um absences, any discipline, all of it's there, the whole record. So it's encompassing all of that information. That's why it's called a warehouse because it and then it puts it into graphs and charts with us. And we're using how to use it still. I mean the
other piece of it is is for SEAL components. It has a whole curriculum that they they can put in whatever. Let's say my classroom um cultural awareness. Let's pretend that was one thing that came up as a shortage or um
or self-awareness came up as a shortage. It'll give them a bunch of activities that they can use right in their classrooms. They don't have to hunt and pack and try and find. So, we've really t tried to push that this year as well. And I think it's been really nice for the MTSS teams because they can look at
that and there's actually interventions and things that they can pull right from there that it suggests and it has an AI component that's coming where they can uh you can type in I would like um interventions for so and so for Sura
Driscoll and in reading and now it's giving us like a it would give us a half page on what that looks like. Now, there might be an additional fee, but Jill and I are looking into it because we feel that that's something that should just come with the subscription because AI is
everywhere. So, so they are ramping things up in there as well. Thank you. I mean, I think it's a good question and to be fiscally responsible to look at different softwares like that. I think we're a little bit I mean, we're at the finish line here, right? So
maybe for next year we could have different Oh, and we were looking earlier like said synergy was considered and you know there's we have been looking for sure. Okay. Any other questions or discussion on anything in the consent agenda?
Okay. All those in favor of approving the consent agenda say I. I. Any opposed? Motion carries. 7.0 citizens speak. Did you have any Yep. Uh 8.0. Moving on to district business. 8.1 is to approve the K12
science curriculum purchase for what's by it's FY. Sorry. School year. Sorry. Fiscal year 26. Um, good catch of $172,487.19 with ongoing costs for another five years totaling
$293,3.39 as presented and attached in board vote. I'll make a move to approve. Second. Any questions or discussion on this item? So, a couple things just so you're aware. Um these curriculums came from the the committees, you know, elementary
through there's some stuff that's been paired down. I had mentioned to you we were, you know, over we were 370 or something like that total. Um some of the things that have come out, there have been a few things pulled. Um there's no hard copies. And when I say hard copies, whether they're no paper
copies, you know, a lot of them, several of the classes wanted classroom sets. And I'm not saying it's a bad deal. I mean, if the board feels differently, we could surely go back and it's probably about 30,000. They're they're about $40 a piece for the paper copy, but that was one place um we were more I'm going to
say the admin team more interested in and a lot of it's coming from me to try and get the number down. I'm just being honest of looking keeping the manipulatives, some of those other things instead of having the digital and paper copy. Um it's um they're good that the the
staff has stepped up instead of just ordering the refill kits to save some money. We're gonna, you know, purchase separately, take a little more time and effort, see exactly what's being used cuz I'll be honest, even with when I bought mass stuff, sometimes you used half of it and so let's make sure. So
that's where that number's come down. There have been a few things reduced, pulled down. There's only one group and it was in the high school. Um, if you look, there's one class that has a a paper or hard copy because it's a class
of like 25 kids or whatever, and it was 2,000 a year for the digital copy. It was more economical just to buy the hard copy or whatever the, you know, and have it. Um, but the rest are all online. Are you done, Kevin? Yeah. Yep. Um, so
Amanda and I had some discussions uh just shortly prior to this meeting. Um, and I called Kevin to talk about it briefly and uh we as board members I guess um I think we both feel like we would like a chance to review the
curriculum. Um I understand we have a committee that and and and I it's not that we don't it's not that we don't have trust in the committee. It's just we feel like it's it's our job as a board member to to review some of these things. Um we talked about potentially
tableabling this or asking to table it to uh just have a chance to review it. Um I I'm speaking for myself. I can't speak for Amanda. Um I don't feel like this is the right time to insert myself into this discussion. Um, I would like
to I would like to have a conversation about moving forward um having board representation on these committees to to choose curriculums. Yeah. And I'm to go along with that. I mean no disrespect for everyone who worked and put all their time and effort
into it, but I always have learned trust but verify. I like to do my due diligence. I like to research it. I like to be a see what it entails, what it doesn't entail. And when I went and to look at all this, there's like hundreds of pages to look through and I can see where all the hard work came from. But
to be able to do it over one weekend is not adequate. And to be a board member and say, "Yes, this is what, you know, and have confidence to be able to look at myself in the mirror, it's hard to be able to do that when you don't have the opportunity to learn or to research or do anything." It's no disrespect. I
mean, it's just trust but verify. And it's kind of and I just want to throw it out so that M Matt and I's conversation a little bit. Um you know um the the piece I struggle and again I respect the group as I mentioned to Matt. I did not go through and participate in every review cycle. You know they did have
multiple copies of different you know things and made choices but I go back to you know there's there's governance and then there's management. And that's where I struggle with I mean the board can have the board has a final say on everything so to speak but where where
do you draw that line you know I mean everything you know you could want to be involved in technically and I guess that's where I go I think the English department should be picking the English out the science should be picking the science and like I say it's not to say I mean there's people that have a lot of
knowledge up here you know and expertise in different things but where do you you know where do you draw that line then you know if we're going to meet and and talk about the you know like I say you are the overseers and you have to approve here so you have the right to
say no yay nay whatever but it's tough to and it's not trying to micromanage it's just trying to know what I'm voting for and what I'm not voting I I understand that but like I the next some science some people on the committee just present their process why this was
I think that's probably an appropriate way to go in the future because like when we like added OG, they came and gave us a big, you know, spiel. Yeah. On on OG. And maybe that's like, hey, this is the curriculum we're going to, you
know, that we're bringing forth. Here it is. Here's and wise. Yeah. And and that could be it could definitely be arranged. I don't want I'm not going to go to a science curriculum committee and have any work in Yeah.
because I am not a science teacher and I don't want to be and I don't think it's you know what no seriously but I just I think if you get the lowdown of what they're picking and why I think the why behind it is the major and it's not the participation I don't think in the
committee it's the learning and listening like for the leadership committee I don't really participate I listen and I learn that is I don't really participate and I think the same thing with the curriculum just to listen and learn and to see the process and to understand so that it's a better informed decision by the board. But you
would get that from them presenting to you here's the curriculum we want and why. Okay. Yeah. And and that's how I feel too. I don't want anything to do with choosing the curriculum. It's just a matter of I think the people if I had to pull the people that wanted me on the school board. I think they would tell me
we want you to know what's in the curriculum that we're choosing. Um, and however, you know, if I I hate to just read it after the long process of it of it being chosen and then say here it is and then what if I find something there to say I don't like what's in there, but
there's probably going to be something just to be fair in every curriculum. I understand that there. Yep. And um and the other piece that becomes challenges like on early outs they might meet. Yeah. You know, I mean four different buildings of you know are different times that it's not where that whole
committee came together. Yeah. and sat in this room, you know, each time. Yeah. Yeah. But it's almost Yeah, that's you know, well, I'm just saying if you're going to try and be actually on a committee, it's not just a single, you know, each building had their group. You would have a chance though to at least listen and learn. But you have a chance
to go to any of that any time. You can when we know what they are. Yeah. Or when they Yeah. Um Yeah. I mean if it's something where if I don't know how the committee would feel about coming to resent what they are proposing. I think it can be a
expectation if that's what we want going forward that moving I don't know I think right now is the wrong time to insert say again yeah I agree I think right now is the wrong time to insert the board into the science curriculum right because they got it's already yeah it's
here and well and yes they got to order it but I think moving forward yeah yeah no it definitely can be arranged okay and then we should do that and then and then moving forward if if we are given enough time to actually put some due diligence into, you know, if I wanted to
go and review the curriculum myself. Um, instead of maybe instead of, you know, instead of instead of having to vote on it, then the board the meeting that they presented was present and we could vote the next time. Yeah. Like have time instead of
getting it on a Thursday and then vote for it on a Monday or, you know, just preparation time. I guess here's my comment. I said, "Do you see us as a board ever not approving
that curriculum after it's been already vetted?" Um, we have enough people that we've hired in these positions that I trust and I trust to do their job. And so, if they're going to come here and present the curriculum, which if if
that's the way we want to go, that's the way we want to go. But they've spent hours on this thing. Absolutely hours on that thing. And why should six of us decide that that's not good enough for our kids? And I guess that was my point. Like if I go to one of those meetings,
correct? And what's the purpose of that having come to the board for approval then if we're not going to understand? We trust the people that we have in place to make those decisions for I don't think it has to do with trust. I mean, I trust my husband, but I don't sit there and I don't know. I just trusting your husband is not trusting
the administration. Teachers it it's irrelevant. The trust is irrelevant. I still want to do my own due diligence and I disagree with that stuff. You have to you have to have trust in the people the hundreds of people who are running this. That's not what I'm saying. I'm not saying I don't trust them. Then why why are we going to have them come in
front of us on something? I want to have all the information about the I think it's nice to learn a little bit more about it just so that we do have an understanding. But I think that's all I'm saying. Yeah. I think that's nice to have aition to hear about it and things like that. But again, putting these
committees in place to make these decisions and to have them and use their expertise and their knowledge and their experience to bring forth what they think is going to be best. And if we're if I'm honest, I'm not going to spend hours reading over each one of these.
going forward we'll plan to have a presentation say in April yet you know whether it's first second meeting and then sometime in May you know approve it and that's very doable where you go from there I think we can see down the road y
all right so we have a motion and a second so we're going to vote on approving the science curriculum purchase for fiscal fiscal year 26 uh all those in favor say Okay. I I Any oppose? Yeah. No. Yeah. I don't know how it goes.
Motion carries 5 to one. Okay. Payment of claims and accounts. I make the motion to approve the payment of K12 bills 129393 through129463 and electronic fund transfers in the amount of
$1,194,814.66. 66 cents. I'll second. Any questions or discussion? All those in favor say I. I. I. I. Any opposed? Motion carries. All right. We're going to take a get them in and uh
get our facility assessment proposal presentation people. Say that 10 times fast. In here. Oh. Yes. In person. not interested. Not wanting to. So, I'm gonna
that ST. Hi, good. How are you? Matt, thanks. Nice to meet you, Jason. Can I change one thing? Okay. I just wanted to mention and remind you all that our um American
Indian graduation ceremony is this Saturday at the middle school from 1 to 3 p.m. So middle school. You said middle school. Yeah. Middle school. Yeah. Yep. So, come eat, celebrate. It's always a great time. It's really a Sorry, what was that? I was going to say there's food.
Um, our graduation ceremony pow-wow is this Saturday from 1 to 3. I just wanted to remind you again. It's at the middle school. It's wonderful. Everyone's It's very casual. You don't have to come and sit. No one's going to notice if you have to run out fast. So, if you can make sure you come, it's really a good
time. Thank you. Yeah, cuz uh wasn't Yeah. Y you let me know when you're ready and then we'll just do a Just give him just a second here to this So, it's all
I know. exact newspaper or anything. be like this. I'm waiting tillmorial. I'm waiting until Memorial. I was gonna park this weekend and I was like, you know what? Forget it. I wait. I haven't even washed my house yet
because the wind does not stop. Do you see the check for checkmate check? For what reason? Wind excessive heat and air quality. Air quality. It's probably more so because this valley they've been getting out.
Yeah, they've been getting and tomorrow and all week. Yeah, they don't have AC. that if you look over there, the air quality is terrible. There's a track me right now happening. It's in Rosal. It's not good for farmers.
It's coming. any other time in the middle in the beginning this weekend for like come on because it's coming up this there's no there's no
coming down from the north at the same time and there's no moisture dry usually pulls it up from the Gulf and it wasn't it didn't get that far my other guy too Ros. Yeah, it's probably just Is it
working, Jason? Or Yeah. Okay. Yeah. No, no, no. I'm No, I'm with you. Yeah. I mean, it's either it's going to be more likely It's always windy and rainy. Oh, can you imagine if it was 90 degrees
on graduation day what that would be like in there? Lyn, do you want me to start to Okay. It's always rainy and perfect. Well, board um thanks for the quick
pause. Uh in front of us, we we have ICS, um which is a company that has worked with the district in various capacities. I'm going to say over the years. I can't tell you everything, but um Blair and Jason are here. They'll do some intros I'm sure and give you a little more info and present and um by
all means the understanding be be open to asking questions you know as the process goes on um and welcome thank you for coming and uh speaking and presenting and have at her. Yeah absolutely thanks for having having us here tonight. I'm
gonna kind of screw with your process a little bit as we get going. But, uh, to kick us off, my name is Jason Split. I am the business development director with ICS. Um, I've been with the company for about 11 years now, all focused on working with Northern Minnesota K12
schools. So, had the pleasure, as uh, Mr. Grover mentioned earlier, um, of working with you back in 2021. I think Lindsay, you might have been the only one on the board at that time. I think I was I was probably hiding.
Gotcha. Gotcha. Uh, prior to No, 22. Oh, prior to that, I was facility director at Park Rapids Schools. Um, and before that, I was a site superintendent, project manager working on K12 schools. So, I've spent my career working with school districts in Minnesota on
construction projects and facility improvements. So, hi, I'm Blair Stolman. I've been with ICS a little over just over a year. I spent um early my early part of my career as an engineer and project manager in manufacturing for the
for about 10 years and then I transitioned to the construction side uh probably for the last 10 12 years. Um I've been in your shoes before. I've I've served as a schoolboard member in Ada Borup uh West for about eight years and the last four as a chair. I had the
pleasure of actually working on probably one of the first projects Jason was on in 2014 was successful. So I'm it's been fun this last year kind of getting to see the intertwinings and workings of ICS from sitting on this side of the table rather than your side.
So agenda we're going to kind of go through about eight items here today and as we go through if anyone has any questions just raise your hand speak up. We'll just be conversational. So, we're going to jump through our background of ICS and our team. We're going to ask some questions that are important to
East Grand Forks, what is important to you. We'll go through our our approach. It's a five-phase approach. We'll look at team structure. We have some example timelines. We'll talk a little cost and then why choose ICS and then Q&A at the end or during
um little background on IC. ICS has been working since 2006 with school districts andor clients to bring innovative solutions for facilities. Um we look at funding solution that's our expertise funding solutions planning construction
and this overall ongoing operations and our client needs and we help that client plan build and operate kind of our three threeprong uh saying we have roughly about 110
employees spanned across nine offices. Six of those offices are in the Minnesota area. You know, Minneapolis, Mano, uh, Sock Rapids, Brainard, and Duth Park Rapids, which is our closest to here. Uh, we have a few other offices
in Fargo and Sou Falls as well. And we have a we have a satellite in Pennsylvania, actually. And by far our biggest office is Park Rapids. So, um, we've built built a whole team that is dedicated to northern
and northwest Minnesota that specializes in school construction projects. So, um, with that, before we get going into more about us, um, I always like to kind of get a feel for the district and what are some of the things that are
important to you folks. So, in front of you, I put sticky notes. if you could. We're going to start out with what are the positive things or what are the great things happening in East Grand Forks. And I apologize. I'm going to get up from the mic and just grab them and
just read them off as we go through this. We're just going to spend a couple minutes going through this. So, what are the great things happening at East Grand Schools? Yeah, we'll talk a little bit about this later on in the process, but this is part of our listening sessions.
So, it really staff community staff, students, families, communities, student activities and engagement, student and
involvement grow both politically and academically. Great teachers, wonderful staff, pride in our school, diverse offerings, steady enrollment, uh growth in
enrollment, activities and staff, family support and involvement. So perfect. Thank you for that. You want to hit the button. Next we're going to talk. I'm asking what are the biggest challenges that are facing
the Strandford schools today. budget, space, classrooms, finances, space, keeping up with the mans, staff retention. financial planning and budget constraints,
space and financial uncertainty in school size. Oh yeah, that's another big one. Teacher shortage. Teacher shortage. Okay, that's fine. Well, thanks. That just helps us kind of get kicked off through the process and kind of understand some of what you
folks are dealing with on a daily basis. And again, this is something that we tend to do with your your we'll do the school board through the full sessions, do staff, do community just to get a good painted picture of what is the true
challenges for East Grand Forks. And you know, as you've seen here, I mean, this goes far beyond facilities, right? This kind of paints that nice picture for you as a board on what are your challenges that everybody else sees that they're dealing with. So,
Um, when it comes to facility planning, ICS is not just a construction firm. We are planning, we are well-rounded, and I think it's really important that as the district goes through this process that they find somebody that is a good partner for them through the planning
process. So, as we talked about, um, I was a former facility director, Blair was a former board member. So, we've been in K12 schools. We've been in your shoes. We've tried to figure out funding solutions. Um, we have retired educators
on staff. We do have a whole robust team of CM experts. We partner with architects and engineers. We're not an architect or an engineering firm. We like to have the client pick who the partner is that they want to work with
that is the most convenient for them and is the best fit for you folks. Um, we talked about former educators, communications, community engagement, just went through this exercise. We'll talk a little bit more about that as we go on. Energy. Energy is a big piece of
our world today. And are we efficient in our buildings? And how can we be more efficient to save some of that funding that you guys get now? How do we put more of that funding in the classrooms versus going up that stack of our
boilers? And then facility assessment experts, whole team that is just dedicated to assessing facilities throughout Minnesota. So we'll shift over to our our our fivephase approach. This kind of gives a a big screenshot of what we're
going to go through over the next handful of slides. You'll see if you look at the top bar, the number one integral part of it is communication, right? It's communication of findings, the process, the recommendations all the way through to the implementation and final
finalization of your project. It's holding us accountable all part partnerships that even Jason mentioned between the school district and ICS but also our partners that we use inherently throughout the process. So going through we have five phases. So phase one
assessment right we're talk Jason mentioned assessment we're going to go through the facilities the demographics the ed educational adequacy the guidelines for MDE those type of things so that's kind of phase one and we move over to solutioning so this is all process we'll go through the timeline in
further slides but phase two is kind of that solutioning financial solutions project scope solutions what is needed that fits all those groupings then we get to the decision process right we're working towards a board approval we're getting that fine feedback from community, from the district, from the
school board, all those parties that are important to make that final decision for the board. And then if that pertains to a referendum, that would be phase four, which you start your election campaign and your phase four communications. And then finalization would be phase five, which is
implementation of your project project. So we'll jump right into phase one. I mean, we're talking stakeholder engagements. We're looking at education. We're looking at those listening sessions, those thought exchange that we use as a tool, those surveys to gather
information from the key stakeholders, the school board, the administration teams, staff, the students, the the civic groups that we have in the community, um other business groups, and actually all the public that'll be invited to come to those, right, to have a chance to speak. What kind of
questions are we asking? What are the positives of the school? Kind of similar we just kind of did. What are the challenges? What do they see as challenges? Uh the mission statements, what what needs they might what do they think the school needs? Um advice for you as schoolboard members or administration or expectations of us. Um
how do they want to be communicated with either if it's during the process or how what kind of communications they use so we can get to everybody along the way. And then even talking to students even though they might not see the benefits or may be a different age they can maybe maybe their siblings can enjoy those
type of things you know that the school brought later after they graduated or got their diploma. So this starts to build that coalition and and the support between community and and the internal district staff so we can come come
forward and find a long range plan. And there's some other diagrams up there that we kind of looked at stakeholders from the community versus internal to see what were those paths cross. You know what I mean? What I want to highlight there is advice. So we ask school board um or I'm
sorry we asked staff community what advice do you have for the school board as you go through this process? And we ask folks what are your expectations going through this process? Obviously, you can't give yourselves advice, but trying to get that well-rounded, you
know, perspective from community and your stakeholders. So, so continuing on with this with phase one, um there's some diagrams up there. First off, we kind of used a few tools. One is called a demographic analysis.
So, we've we kind of started one here for East Grand Forks up there. You can see this was done here recently through our applied insights partner. That just kind of shows a lot of information of in regards to how many students are are
within the district, how many are are in within the district going to enrolled here, open enrollies and others. But there's a lot of information with birth rates and to delve into the to the early childhood all the way through K12 to kind of see where your district lies as
far as are we growing are we are we maintaining our current enrollments. You know I think on that one big thing is you know over the last 10 years your district total students that live within the district has grown 17% right so you got more kids living here now than you
ever did. your enrollment has maintained relatively flat over that entire 10-year period. Um, you know, and you have that green bar being the private schools that has slowly ticked up over time. Um, everybody else kind of down at the
bottom is is a little bit non-exist. They're not a big player. Um, you have the open enrollment out and then you have the homes kids. So then we have we what we call an educa educational adequacy analysis. It's kind
of taking it's 18 categories through the MD guidelines and we just go through each of your facilities in all 18 categories and kind of the example up there is just a school. It was Park Rapids that has multiple facilities as well. Green is adequate. Uh yellow is questionably adequate I think the word
is. So some of the things qualify some don't. It's it's regarding square footages and those type of things. And then red of course is is inadequate. We'll jump to the next slide where Jason will kind of walk through the facility assessment and capacity analysis. Yeah.
And you know obviously one of the big things that you folks kind of started this process through was facility assessment. And to me one of the most important things that we can do today is set ourselves up for the future. Right?
I know your facility director is of their age. at some point he's going to be leaving your district. I don't know when, but how do we capture everything out of his head and get it down so that you can transition on to that next
generation of leader within your district? And through my work at Park Rapids, that was one of the biggest things that I came into was that information wasn't there. I was starting from scratch. So, how do we take a step back and get everything out of his head
and get it onto paper so we make that transition that much simpler? Um, you can see up there, the top left picture is just roof maps. How old are our roofs? How do we transition that over? How do we prepare for those roofs? Our LTFM funding is only so great, right?
So, we need to start saving today for those roofs that we just replaced in 22. lot of big dollars. That's how we budget for that in the future. Um, next picture to the right is HVAC units. That
particular school, all the HVAC equipment was installed 1988 and had not been up. Um, keep moving to the right the shell. Just an example of the information. Um, you got color codes, same thing as kind of the EDA, red,
green, yellow, right? Good. simple stuff and everything's got a age and what is the life expectancy remain. So the final uh bar chart on the bottom is
just looking at a facility and what are the needs by LTFM finance code. So, I know I've worked with Ron for several years, Ron Carla, on just helping to put together that LTFM plan at the end of
the fiscal year into July the next fiscal year. Now, that was Ron bringing the projects and us kind of putting it together. It wasn't doing the big deep dive of the facilities like we're talking about here to really go out and capture all that information and
actually build that LTFM plan into the future. questions. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. We'll send it to Kevin and he can get that out tonight. Yep. So, once we have kind of all those
puzzle pieces, you got a lot of data that the district can start looking at to make some decisions based upon, right? You know, kids you're going to have to the future by doing a demographic study. We got our listening session results. We know what our our
educational deficiencies are just based on the MD guidelines. And then we have the facility assessment. So kind of got all those puzzle pieces to start making some decisions. So um as we look at
diving into some of the solutions, it's really a three-legged stool, right? because there's ICS, there's the district, and there's Ellers with some of the financial solutions. So, it it really becomes a partnership to work
together on changing or or in enhancing the education and the delivery of East Grand Fork schools. Continuing on with that. So after the phase one where we have some project scope and options for to address some of
those facility needs, we go through what we call a solutioning processing. So we're we're starting with I I have a concept below. If you start in the bottom right, it's it's a it's a concept of what we're going to do at a particular school. This happens to be Badger. We're working with renovations
in those green areas first and then we have some HVAC stuff showing on the left side of it where we're coming up with costing. The top right picture is kind of our what we call is our summary of the the financials, right? So we can present that here is an option and and
going forward you might have multiple x amount of options 1 a 1 b to try to finalize and start that solutioning process to have good discussions amongst the board and amongst all the other groups. So you provide those options we get and then we start to narrow down in the process and the scope also. So
that's we got budgeting. We're also looking at what are those effects on the budget comp. If we if it's an addition per se, what are we looking at a cost analysis for? Maybe it's extra help and maintenance. Maybe it's you know those HVAC the you know the energy and utility costs and those things. So we're
planning not only that of an addition or renovation but also the effects on the plan for the existing facilities while that happens. Um what benefits does it provide? There's some bar graphs. We'll do we'll have some studies done with through those listening sessions to see what effects does it improve education.
And then we'll have the timeline. We'll work with Ellers, that's our, you know, our partner. We'll provide those financials for each respective option in in those solutioning options along with the district. So that's kind of your three-legged stool within the solutioning. I don't know if we've been
through before. This is available funding solutions that a school district has available to to make get did get financing for certain things. So in the green these are the LTFM performance contract and general fund. They don't
have any direct impacts on taxes. You have the board authority but those are not not direct tax impacts to residents. But then when you move forward on the yellow, if you look at abatement, health and safety IQ, and then your lease levy, bonds, they do
have you have board authority, but you do it's a direct impact that you the taxpayer will see. And lastly is bond referendum. Of course, that's voter approved where you'd go to the voters and it would have a direct impact on your taxes, your voters.
2021 the funding solution there was LTFM LTF indoor air quality and update parking. So, so decision process before you as a board make any decisions, we always like
to go back out to the community and get feedback, right? We ask them for feedback initially. We've got all their sticky notes, etc. Now, we've got all our puzzle pieces. Now, before we're going to make a decision, we're going to go out and make sure that, you know,
we're going to test our different concepts. We're going to to the community. We're going to tweak and refine the plan before either board approving or going towards that rep. Now, we can typically do that a couple of different ways. One is community
meetings, right? Ice cream socials, you know, however we can actually get somebody into the school. I think that's getting harder and harder today is getting them in for open meetings. So, we also use a tool called Thought Exchange. Claire mentioned it earlier.
It's an online survey tool and on steroids um and ask nice open-ended questions and you can get some really uh quantitative data back from the community a little bit more detailed than just a general
survey. Um phase four election process. So again, that's assuming that anything that the board wants to do or or identifies needs to go towards referend. I'm not saying that that's the
solution that you folks need, but want to walk you through our process. So, um, Samper voter profile on the right, um, district has, oh, shoot, I believe I wrote it down before I had 7,900 voters, if I remember
correctly. Yeah, I can't read it, but but you know, you got a big pool to visit with and talk to and kind of gain some support. So, You know, obviously those folks need to be um have a lot of faith and trust in
your school board. We need to make sure that we do get out and get that community input. Make sure that communications are out there and accessible. We'll walk through our micro site here in a minute. Um got to understand the value, right? How are we
going to impact education through anything that the board does facility related? Um avoid focusing on Right. I think that's out there enough in our world where we need to focus on what is the educational impact of anything. Um
school board and teachers need to be visible through any process and we need to respond to questions within 24 hours. Finally, got a full guest that's out there to the school about what's
happening out in the community. uh referendum time frames. So, you know, there's five time frames that a school can run a referendum. February the 5year success rate is 67%, April 64, May 30%,
August 57% and then November is in that low to as far as success rates. So, um if the district um
districts running an operating referendum can only do it in November as well. So, um I think that's just some good statistics to look at. You know, when we look at May and August is obviously not in our opinion a
good time. Not only because of that, but People are thinking about summer. Their mind's not on what's happening in the school. August, they're in summer mode, right? We're not coming back for,
you know, another month. We're out in La. So, um, last piece of it is just district communications. So when we take customer through a referendum process, we really
strive for the micro site for accessible information. Everything's on there. If we get a question from the community, that question automatically goes onto the FAQs on the website. Respond to every single question and make sure it's
out there in the public. Um district newsletters and emails, brochures and fast sheet. Those are the two on the bottom right. Um, social media obviously is a big part of communications in today's world. Um, inerson
meetings, try to get people in so they can actually ask questions and not sit on social media. Um, media stories and more. So, you know, that's the gist of our our package as
we're looking at putting this together. Um, it just said I lost it. So, apologize. Oh. Um, the other thing through the listening session process is how do you want to be communicated? That tells us a
lot, right? You know, is it newspaper? Is it mailings? How do your residents really want to be communicated with so that we can reach them and reach them effectively? I think we've seen a good shift in the different over the last
five years even since I think it was newspaper it switched to social media and now I think it's coming back around to newspaper again so uh phase five if if we're successful as a referendum or go forward with a board
approved um project the org chart kind of shows as that we're ICS is below the district right we're an advocate for you we're working for the district, but as a program manager, ICS would would follow bel, you know, be above the engineering, the architecture, the commissioning, all
the construction management. We'd be underneath that umbrella and we'd be working with the district and then we'd go forward with low bid contracts. We have we have an opportunity to do source well, best value engineering. So, that's kind of how the hierarchy would be if we went forward and that's the project that
we would go for. Yeah. What I like about that is architects, engineers are all underneath us, right? So, it's one throat to choke in the end. There's not the fingerpointing of it's the
architect, the construction manager, etc. You have one entity that's looking out for you and your best interest as your owners. So and then like we had talked about uh this team would be our hierarchy
basically all of them out of park rapid office. We have Jason and myself and then we have our uh communication specialist RAP which she has a team of commun communicators that would work with our ICS marketing team and then we would be working with directly Jason would be working directly with our pro
senior project manager out of Park Rapids and then our our general sight soup but then the remaining would be just would be you know to be determined as the project would get closer. So again pretty much all northern based
Minnesota teams you know we're two hours from East Grand Forks. We're working up here every day working on Good Ridge, finishing up Red Lake County, working on Man, we just wrapped up Grand Fork. So, you know, our team is local and working
up here. So, well, that alludes perfectly to our our experience in northern Minnesota. That's right. We're working all across Minnesota. There was a there's 140 K through2 districts within Minnesota that we worked through the last I think it's a decade. I mean like you said we just
had wrapped up Red Lake County Central Goodidge is bidding out and we're starting that actually this summer. We have Manomomen going on in process. Um so it's been good and East Grand Forks we've mentioned before in the 2021 and all the other ones we're working on with Badger and other local schools NEAS and
referendum planning currently. So in this area we threw together just an election timeline and I know we went through the slide so we grabbed the months that we be most efficient with. So we just kind of wanted to show how quick or how fast
the process starting with election day. So we for a November election you're looking at you know getting a review and comment in by almost July July 1. So that's a month and a half away. So looking forward to like a February, you're looking at October, early to
mid-occtober. Um April, we're looking at December 1st and then a next year's election at November 26 will be back to your July date. So it's at four to five months to have the board decision and then all the the design and scope wrapped all together into the removing
comment process into Minnesota Department of Education. So going the next slide I have a little more detail. I'll just put it together an anticipated time if we did if it was a referendum in 2026 in April. So you'd cap off starting this
summer, you do, you know, two months worth of the first assessment and the planning portion. So phase one and that would work through the summer and you begin now you're solutioning at the tail end of that but probably working on it during. So that's kind of the the next
two to three months getting towards that October deadline to get that review and comment in and then the communications for referendum would start from there through to an April, excuse me, December, sorry, working through December, but starting basically you're
starting this summer, working through December to get to get towards that goal of an April referendum. That makes sense. So what is This process cost the district. So to go through phases one
through three, it's really about going through all the assessments, going through solutioning, getting you all the way up to a board decision, whether that's approved project, whether that's referendum, whether that's just get our
LTFM plan all buttoned up and put together is 16,250. If the board decides to do a future project based on that study, that 16,250 will be credited back to the
district. So the assessment phase is no cost. Uh four, referendum communications. Again, if the district were to move forward with a referendum would be 10,000.
And then phase five implementation of a project would be negotiated based on the scope and duration of the identified project. So questions on that one. Okay. Okay. Last piece of
propaganda then we'll get to your question. So why IC? We've worked with your district. We know your district. Um, we're excited to be back here with you. Um, we have the tools and the knowledge to help school districts. As I
said, we're a number of retired or not retired, we have retired educators, but we've all worked in K12 at some point in our lives. Um, dedicated to Northern Minnesota schools. I've spent my last 11 years working right up in this region
and want to continue to do so. Uh, funding You know, Blair talked about the different funding sources that schools have available to them. We've typically taken that even further and helping schools to find creative funding solutions, whether that's sales tax
exemption. Um, we worked with Red Lake County Central to get about $500,000 in sales tax exemption on their project. Um, using the IRA, using utility rebates, and just getting creative. You know, you guys
as one of your challenges. How do we best utilize the resources that we have? How do we find um we know how to involve the community whether it's these listening sessions or thought exchange and I think that's one
of the most important things of any process is involving community and communicating with that community. Um 2.4 billion in referendum across the state. And lastly, we care.
You know, again, we work in K12. We come from K12. It's one of our or one of our values is we care and we really do work hard to help school districts. So, um, couple months ago, I was down at the
legislation legislative office, both Senate and House, testifying for roof funding for school districts. So, you know, trying to go above and beyond to help give back to you. That's it. I've guess my question was as far as
like facilities. What is your sitting where we're at right now? talk about figure out but I'm just being honest because something that came to me last
week with staff talk with students you know that I'm you know not to say you know a lot can't done you know as far as the facility piece obviously the summer's a great time you know to see
certain things get in the But I mean is it realistic to get it done in the next two month and that's what I'm getting you know study of the structure itself and some of that but I'm a little bit on
educational just y yeah it's absolutely going to be tough I mean once teachers hit that door we're not going to be able to get them back probably until the fall Right. Um, you know, I don't know how
your contract works. if we can get them to come in. I not positive on that, but I think there are some things that we can do over the summer to gain some education and some progress using whether it's thought exchange or surveys or or some
of those pieces just to get some highlevel feedback from them just to educate ourselves and you as a board to kind of steer us in the right direction and then maybe hit them as soon as they come back, you know, with that back to school
um sessions and do the full-blown listening session with them at that point. Um that's completely dependent on the timeline and the needs of the district. You know, Blair talked about the referendum timeline. Obviously,
that's a a factor into that. You know, again, not saying that that's the path that you folks are on, but it comes into play. So, Other questions? Do you and maybe you had this in your slides. Do you have a
list of references that we could call? Absolutely. Okay. I can send you some or I would say that this list right here is a pretty darn good. Okay. All kind of your neighbors. Okay. From up here. And then your your project team was also on there was weren't they? Team members.
Okay. Yep. Yep. So, right now I got Justin and Nate Hendrickson. You want to dig deeper into, you know, the team itself? Is that what you're asking? I'll take a look at it. Okay. Um and then I can contact Kevin if I need to. Yeah.
Ask anything further. Yep. Happy to answer any questions. Okay. After this. Sure. And I apologize. We will get this out. No, no, that's perfect. den see it a little bit better. Yep. Yeah. I guess the one thing that I would say the one comment I have is timeline obviously,
you know, the budget part of it is but we want to make sure we do it right. So, I mean, if we have to push that timeline, it's I'm okay pushing that to make sure that we get everything that not necessarily everything we want, but probably everything that we need. I would agree. I
don't I don't want to rush anything whether it's board approved or referendum approved. If you push it, we're going to be pushing that ball uphill for a long time. So rushing a referendum doesn't sound like a good idea. No, never is. And making sure
everyone everyone in the community has the information and and the correct information. And that's the hardest part in our world. You know, one thing that we really lean on, whether it's listening sessions or or other piece of
the process, is making sure that you folks are reaching out, getting people to come in. You know, a lot of times if we're having a listening session, want each one of you to make sure that you get 10 people at this particular session so that we can get some
attendance. Um, you know, we've done other creative things. Um, we one district we brought in the National Guard bouncy house and the National Honor Society kind of were the babysitters of the bouncy house and
there was a meal served and we got a great turnout for something like that. So, obviously that comes at a cost, but it was great information and and a a good diverse group of community members. So,
by all means they will get the stuff to me. I will get it out to you if there's any questions thought about. And I'll be honest, we haven't talked. I'll let you guys know what we decide if we're going to meet sometime in the near future. If we're going to wait because we don't plan on meeting in two weeks for a regular meeting, if we're going to wait
a month and make, you know, we'll figure that out towards the end maybe tonight. um if we can and like say but if anyone thinks of questions because that's what happens is you know someone walks out and you go oh gez I should have asked that you know by all means um email I'll
send it and I'll send out to the whole group you know type deal um whatever the reply is and whatever the question was that makes sense. Perfect. Thank you folks appreciate it. Thank you. Yeah.
Just let us do a morning meeting. do a morning meeting. We can do a morning meeting, too. Absolutely. We need it, right? Or we can move the June meeting up and do it like June 2nd instead of 9th, right? Because the 9th
is my birthday. See what I did there? Well, make us if they have somebody wind. Yeah. Not not much left in the fields. Wind is falling like that. I know. I kept
thinking it was thundering today. It was hazy. It's hazy from all the dirt. So, we had experience playing the course. serve anywhere. Nice to meet you.
Hey Josh, good. I'm in good You want to carry it around like you're carrying prices, right? Houston ridiculous.
You move the mic. and Rob. All started. So, you're ready to go. Okay. Ready, set, go. Sorry. Yes. No, no, you're good. You're good. Uh board, uh second presentation of the night is Nexus. Um I know Rob brought
some stuff around and introduced himself um with Nexus. Um I think I've told you before, Nexus was the one that I falls worked with. Um again, did the same process, had three three or four companies, I don't remember, um come in and do presentations and that's who they
selected. That's my experience. Um Rob was one of the four groups that presented I'll just be hon or uh put a bid in prior um the tough part with the first go around before the grant went away was um they were a little late to
actually put the proposal in. Um he's been back um he'll probably talk about and visited with some of the staff again. That was their choice. He was the only group that came through and actually walked through the facilities um earlier and looked at them. So that being said, thank you for coming. Um the
one thing um we haven't talked about is um after um if we're not making any decision tonight, but we haven't talked about whether we're going to we don't have another meeting for a month. We didn't think about that whether we're going to you know wait and use that time or whether they'll make you know set a
meeting and do something earlier. So I will when we're said and done um in the near future let you know what the plan is. Great. So perfect. That being said, Rob Brown, school board. Perfect. Hello school board. So, thank you very much for giving me
the opportunity to to come tonight. Um, I'm for what it's worth, I'm a recently retired school board member myself, three terms in Hudson, Wisconsin. Um, I loved the opportunity to be on school board. The greatest part of being on
school board, in my opinion, was watching the students come present, just watching them be successful. Um, by far that was my my favorite thing. Um, flip side of that though, I also know that you guys are accountable to your
taxpayers. You guys are responsible or Kevin, you guys are responsible for budget. You're responsible for policy. And tonight through that view, I've uh was fortunate enough to spend some time with with your administrative team. Um
you'll see this first page just the common themes of the takeaways from every basically all the conversations I had over three days including some additional time with Kevin some of the things that came away and you'll find that my presentation here is a summary
of that and so goals and objectives based on what I think I've heard my understanding is that you know with your community they are conservative they're fiscally responsible So they look at their checkbooks, but they are supportive of your school. If you look
at your history, even the last referendum passed, maybe not by much, but their support. Um, you also have a large agricultural component. You know, just over almost 31% of your school district is considered a per the state of Minnesota.
And so all that is is important. Some of the critical points that I've learned in conversations, your student population is near its highs comparatively over the last several years, which is not typical. Over the last handful years, especially since COVID, we've seen uh
birth rates drop and people are wondering where are these kids going? They're simply just not being born for whatever reason. So, you are all very, very fortunate. Also, your sped population is extremely high. Uh, comparatively the state average just a
few years ago is about 12%. It's gone up to about 14%. You now are just over 30% in your school district. 30% 584 of your kids are considered special needs of the 1,934 students. And so what does that
mean? Well, from a long-term planning perspective, I'll get into that a little bit more as well as some of the conversations that I've had. Um, great thing back in 98. Well, the reason it came was not good, but the fact that you have three newer buildings that were dedicated 98 is is good. Um, there are
school districts like in the falls where they had buildings that were from the 60s, they were struggling with. The challenge you have though is that all three buildings are aging at the exact same time. And so from a budget standpoint, especially when you're looking at just raises, you're looking
at benefits, 75 80% of your budget is people. And so when you look at how do we invest in our facilities, especially when three are aging at the same time, you know, I forget what it is. It's like 400,000 something square feet. How do
you manage that? This building is about 220,000 square feet if I remember correctly. And so that also likely weighs heavily on you. Um, and we'll talk more about these items in a second. some of the goals that I've heard from the team. Um, ultimately, whatever
happens, you need to have your community support. Whatever happens, um, if you if the only time a a school district talks to their public is when they want something, they want investment, you typically fail. And so, how do we go about bringing that communication along?
How do we bring them into the fold, if you will? So, it's a communitydriven plan. Um, and I'll show you another slide here in a second, but you have preschool is a challenge. You also have special
education is a challenge. You have your facilities, which Ron, by the way, is fantastic. For you guys to have gotten him from Fargo, absolutely fantastic. But at some point, he's going to retire. And so, what does that planning look
like? Um, and so when we talk about your funding, it's how do we do best by your taxpayers while at the same time being cognizant that they're paying the taxes. And so we'll talk more about that in a
second. So this image is your high school. That was a postcard back in 1912. And I'm like, how cool is that? 1912. Could you imagine if they tried to build that today? how much that would cost. Crazy. Absolutely crazy. But
what I want to do is talk a little bit about who you go through the commercial quickly because I know I don't have a ton of time and just explain a little bit about who we are. And so Nexus Solutions, we are a professional services company. We do architecture, all engineering, construction management. Uh we do
commissioning as well as retro commissioning. Um and then long-term management. I know the last firm you talked to historically has done uh LTFM planning with you. Um I'm I'm looking forward to talking to you about a little bit different way of of that approach if
you'll if you'll bear with me. Um ultimately single source accountability is the buck stops with us. Something that's unique to Nexus is that if we were fortunate enough to work with you, if we go to bid and it's over budget for some reason, we redesign on our own
dime. Our change order rate is less than 1%. That begs the question, why? And I'll get to that in a little bit. And so we also have, as far as patients, if you don't mind, if you can go to the second slide and look on the back, it's a
basically a list of all the clients we have. Um what you'll see in the upper left corner well in international international files is pointing up. It's just there wasn't enough room to to show it. Um but ultimately UND is
also a client and so we have an office in Fargo. Is anybody here familiar with the Director Brewing Company? If you want a field trip, but ultimately our office is right near there. Uh we're happy to show you that if you like, but we're entering the new uh North Dakota market. We've spent
a ton of time in Minnesota and Wisconsin. All we do is K12. We do not do um city county government. We do not do hospitals. We do very very little higher ed. And that's only on request. Why is that? Because K12 there
are such nuances to education uh capacity. Looking at enrollment, special education, you can't just have a group of eight, nine people focusing on K12. You have to have an entire organization. Our organization right now is about 80
people focusing on all aspects that I've talked to you about, but also what are those legislative matters that are important to you. For instance, LTFM, if they're fortunate with this legislative session, that will also include the opportunity to do roofing as an example. And so, there are things like that that
we're tracking that we will ultimately roll into whatever it is that we're talking about related to long-term planning. Okay. Single source of accountability. Um, if anything happens, it's our responsibility. It's our responsibility.
So, if there's one throat to choke, it's mine. But also, and I found this on Amazon, this good job, Rob. Um, the one back to pat. We hope we hope that uh we're patting backs at uh at the end of whatever uh the future holds for us. And
also keep in mind, I'm not looking at a one and done. Like International Falls, like all of our other clients, my hope is to continue to earn a seat at the table so that every single time you do your LTFM planning, my team can be a part of it. It's not just Ron talk to
the facilities committee and talk through what he found. It's elaborate conversations on the 10-year plan that we have. This becomes a living document. This is international calls. I'll share it with you in a second. And then year in year out, how do we go about updating that and not just have nexus just simply
put it into the Minnesota or uh Department of Education format and just send it in? It's legitimate proactive conversations year in year out. What do you want to look like from a deferred maintenance standpoint, capital maintenance standpoint, but also
academics? Also academics. Part of that will go to the state from an LTFM standpoint. The other part will be a continued conversation with the board, facility committee, of course, always the administration, but ultimately your public as well, if you allow me to do
so. Again, this is what you just saw. Um, proud of the work that we're doing at UND. Happy to answer questions if you'd like on that, but for the sake of discussion, uh, program manager at risk. What does that mean? It means that we believe enough in our relationship that we work
at risk until there's funding for a funding for any kind of project. And so whether that's referendum or not, whether that's LTFM or some other source of funding, we work, we pay the bills. Doesn't mean that there's ultimately not
a bill to cover those expenses, but we believe in full transparency. And so whatever we do, whether it's community engagement, engineering, architecture, other resources, we're not going to hit your fun one. We're not going to ask you to come up with stuff. community engagement um surveying as a for
instance we will touch every residential mailbox in your community as many times as is necessary to make sure we have the right information. School district doesn't pay for that until ultimately there's a project and we again we will show you full transparency what all that
is. The thing that you'll see here maybe you can't see it because it's small. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Um you guys can well I'm hoping you can read this if not but the bottom is every single column it ends
with communication but I also share with you that it starts with communication every step of the way. And so during the planning phase, budgeting and communications internally and externally during the design work when we look for um design subcommittees, we look for
those folks that might have interest as as an example, career tech, we may have an opportunity, and I'm just learning your district somewhere, whether it's at the middle school or even at the high school, to do something. And if in fact that happens, maybe local business has an
interest in participating. Something else you don't have given 31% is a you don't have an a program. And so what if you decided you wanted to have an a program? What does that look like? We can invite farmers and other folks that live in that industry to help
participate because they're the ones that are going to be providing jobs as an example. All right. So, what is different here? Well, you see on the left, that's a typical school roof. Um, historically, from an engineering perspective, it's always more cost-effective for the
designer to simply go straight up. But what does that do to the roof? It creates penetrations. It's heat loss. When you roof it again later on, it's that much more expensive to do that kind of roof. What you see on the right is a Nexus solutions facility where we
intentionally work through all the mechanical and all the electrical work so that we have very few penetrations. The new school on the right was built back in 2001 in Elk River. Um that was the first elementary school that was actually built as a
two-story elementary school in the state ever. Um and why is that? because it's from a footprint perspective, it's far more cost effective as you know in a two-story house to go up than it is to build out. And so by providing
state-of-the-art systems, not just, you know, the cheapest available, we were able to create that facility and actually save them back in 2001, $500,000 on their budget. All right.
school for elementary school. Elementary. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because I mean most communities when you know the the old high school becomes the elementary school or the middle school. It's like an inherited thing. Handme-downs. Um in Elk River, this was the first brand new elementary school
that was twotory. You're like, there's threetory buildings. Come on. All right. 10ear planning. And so I'm going to take you through a couple quick slides. My my promise to you is that we
will maximize the use of every existing square foot that you have before I would ever recommend an addition. And you'll find as we get into your schools, and I have some slides to share with you, you have a lot of space that isn't in conversations with your principles that
isn't as well used as perhaps it could be. And we'll talk more about that in a second. This is a typical school floor. You'll see the library with the stacks and some desks. Um some of the work rooms and then the classrooms, you know, in
order. First step that we always pursue is flexible furniture. What I've heard from almost every administrator is how do we make each classroom more functional, more flexible? And flexible furniture is a great way of doing that. I'm not here to spend your money. The
last out my my job as a consultant is to provide options. Another commitment I'll make to you is that we will always for the problems you have provide good, better, best options and then provide the pros and cons of each option. Inc is ink is very cheap but in order to talk
about budgets and ultimately to talk about what the pros and cons of cons are of each solution provides a lot of flexibility to the administration, to the board and frankly your community. And this happens way before we, you know, put any kind of shovel in the
ground. All right, building elements. What we see here are the addition of some barn doors. Um, you'll see that in the library, the stacks are gone because, believe it or not, um, 60% of all titles in any library, generally speaking,
haven't been checked out in the last year. And so, what does that mean? Well, we have a lot of space potentially to do some pretty neat things if you so choose. If you so choose. Um, and you also know that in your middle school,
your two elementary schools, they have some classrooms that have those folding doors, those accordion doors or uh walls rather. Well, there's there's some noise issues. Is it Jill here? She just left. Um, well, long on the short. She was
talking about seventh grade and how We have uh three of those classrooms that are preschool and she has some seventh grade over there and when they're testing they have to somehow coordinate with one of those classrooms because it shares one of those movable walls. The best thing we we could do if
we're not going to team teach is to make those walls permanent, make those walls structurally sound and a lot more quiet. That'll help from an educational standpoint just as an example. And so here with this example, um certainly we can talk about team teaching and how you want to use your space, but before we
talk about additions and every and anything else, we simply talk about what makes the most sense and what are your goals and then work together. All right, the last piece would be reconfiguration all within the ex existing same footprint. You see the library, that wall now is partially
glass but mostly gone. You see that center classroom has become more small group and then some breakout space between the two classrooms. And again, the as long as you have the footprint and we don't touch loadbearing walls, we can do a lot of really neat things. And
the interesting thing you have in your school district with the three buildings that I mentioned, the middle school, the two elementary, is that you have all sorts of flexibility. The other thing that I've heard in conversations and you see this in the summary is, you know, when
um um when your K2 building ultimately moves some of your that larger class those classes up to self, that's going to create some additional challenge. Something else that's notable is that in 98 when those three buildings were built, they didn't they took into
consideration maybe 12% special education. Now you're at 30%. And so now you have larger classes, potentially six, seven sections again. And that's what the building was built for. But from a special education standpoint, you're running out of space. And the and
you'll any principal that you talk to here, they will tell you that they make do with the space that they can find. And so you have special education here, special education here. And so ultimately that adds people resources that you really don't want to have to spend the money on. So, we'll talk more
about that in a second. Um, so depending on your need, what it does is it it creates spaces that are more specific to the type of education. So, programming wise, let's say special education becomes more of a a desired outcome, then instead of having multiple
special ed rooms all over the place, we would want to consolidate those classrooms um small rooms. so that we can do the things that we need to do, but then larger rooms when it makes sense. And at the same time, we're able to potentially use or have a need for as
many paras because they're consolidated and we're able to help more kids potentially. And so, yeah. So, long and short is with this exact same square footage like at your middle school, like at your two elementary schools, you're able to do more with what you
have. Any other questions? I'm really zipping through this. Okay. All right. And so here, this came from the Department of Education. As far as your standards in math, reading, science over time, you know, I I believe this is a
challenge for you. However, what I would mention is that well, a couple things. One, 30% of your population is special needs. They're special needs. Everybody has to most everybody has to take this test. And so how does this play into
better results space? How are we allocating the space? What are we doing to maximize what we have? And again, I'm not telling you to spend any money. What I'm saying is with an intentional 10-year plan where we're talking about programming
and goals for that, goals for the programming, which incorporate space. It's not just people. It's not just curriculum. It's what does this space need to look like? I believe we can do better. Furthermore, um you likely have given that you have such an ad community, probably a number of
students, a large number of students that maybe English is not their first language. That's another opportunity from a facility standpoint where we may be able to do better and help this. Okay, graduation rate. Honestly, this is something that I believe given
all the other districts I work with, something that you should be proud of. And so when we talk about the intentionality of providing students and I was talking to Surhea and some of the other uh administrators the intentionality around how do we make
them career ready how do we make them lifelong learners because you're already here we have opportunities to do more so that they are engaged. Um, when I was here just a couple weeks ago, you had just lost a student at the high school who
was apparently fantastic at building motors. They just didn't find themselves in the school. And I believe that with that intentionality and again some focus on that planning, we'll be able to do more do different and make education more
intentional for every student. All right. So, this is the the meat of the presentation. Um, in the middle you see the 10-year plan and this is a monitor so I can't use my laser on it won't show up. Um, but ultimately starting at the top that
based on everybody I've talked to the preschool space um talking to Diane she was very helpful uh gave me some of her planning and um some other goals and some other information. So thank you for that.
um you have opportunities and from a good, better, best standpoint, my intent would be to not tell you this is our simple recommendation. It's you have three schools where potentially you could do something at and you have another opportunity to have a to create
a standalone space. My job as a consultant would be to provide to you budgets and ultimately pros and cons of each option and then lead a conversation through that effort. It's not for me to tell you what to do. It's not for me to tell you one option. It's here you are
from a capacity standpoint and here are the results if you do this, but here are some of the benefits and here's here's the budget for this work to lead that conversation and then once you all land on maybe two opportunities perhaps we have a community task force perhaps and then we talk through some of those
solutions as an example. So again, my job is just to lead conversation, provide the technical and budgetary background, and just this is your community. You guys are responsible to your community as is the administration. I just I'm hoping to be a partner in that work. Um, athletics and activities,
we'll talk more about that in a second, but ultimately congratulations again on boys hockey. How cool is that? Seriously, I like and talk about community morale. I mean, the green wave and you guys are crushing it. I mean, that's awesome. But you also have
success in other activities in athletics. You use your auditorium, as I understand it, excuse me, for community. Um, there's community groups that come in and also use it as I understand it. And so, the taxpayers pay for your schools. They enjoy athletics. They
enjoy the activities. How do we make them want to be more part of what it is that we're doing here? And so, I think there's opportunities. Career ready, future ready, we've talked about a little bit already. Flexible I'm sure we've talked about a little bit. Maintenance planning. Again, my intent, if I'm fortunate enough to work with
you, is to not just receive your LTFM planning and then do the paperwork for you. It's intentional visiting with you and talking through where are we at with our 10-year plan from a facility standpoint, but also from an academic standpoint, are we making progress?
Where do we where are we thinking of investing? In a number of districts where I work, initially they they suggest we're never going to go to referendum and then they do ultimately. And when we're communicating with the public early on, six, nine months early, many times, we tell them if we're
successful with this first phase, this this referendum, whatever it is, isn't going to address all of our needs. If we're successful here, we likely will be coming back. Nobody, the public, you as a school board, the administration, nobody wants to be surprised ever. And
so if we're intentional about our communication and let them know if we're successful here, we may be coming back because we have these additional needs. I've I have a school district in Wisconsin that was they're very conservative, challenged. They said they
would never go to referendum. They went to referendum in April of 23. They passed $6 million. And then in November of 24, they went back because they told them they were going to and passed $17 million. Just as an example, um,
International Falls, when I was fortunate enough to start there after having been selected, I was told by the board and the community that 60% of their population is 55 plus. Most people are on fixed incomes. There's no way that the community is going to support.
And we wound up passing how much is it? Yeah. Yeah. uh we all know it was like $21 million in a community where 60% of their population was 55 plus on fixed income. And so it's that how do we engage the community piece
um bus and parent drop off parking especially from an athletic standpoint. It's it's challenging in every every school building especially new heights. I don't care what time of day it is. Even with that extra parking that was just put in not too terribly long ago.
if you have an event, you're parking blocks away and then imagine living there, you know, and so there's certainly opportunities that we would have to to talk through. You don't have an a program. Certainly, you would have to choose to want to pursue um
investigating what that might look like for you. It would be my job to provide what does this look like from a facility standpoint. How do you want to overlay this? Where would you want it? Do you want something at the middle school as well as the high school? Do you want your farmers to be involved? It's those types of conversations that we could
have and all causes Inc. special education. We've talked about that. You know, again, if 30% of your population, more than 30% of your population is special ed, you are running out of space. You already are six seven section and you're already
challenged from a special education standpoint. How do you make this work? And we have some ideas that we'll talk about, but all of this wraps into what is a 10-year plan. If you go and look at your plan one piece by one piece by one piece, and you look at all of this stuff
independently of one another, nothing will ever get done. Or maybe one thing will get done like your preschool, but then you find out five years from now you were hoping to do something different and that's in a spot where it would have made more sense. Intentional long-term tenure planning. That's a living document. If
I'm fortunate enough to be your partner, year in year out, we will go back and talk about what are your goals, what's the mission, and then also communicate with your public if you allow me to do so. Okay. Okay. So, any questions before I keep going? It's really warm in here and
I'm trying to be fast so you guys don't fall asleep. Um, this facility condition assessment, uh, again, Ron's doing a fantastic job. Um, likely he'll continue to be wanting to work here for the next 10, 20 years
maybe, but at some point he likely is going to want to retire. And so what does that look like to be able to have again a plan where whether Ron's here or not, and he's a fantastic leader, but whether Ron's here or not, we have something where we can pick up and
continue. There's no drop off. That consistency may be important to your district. Facility condition assessment. These are all of the things that we'll be looking at. Um, we also will look at existing systems and put pull together a recommissioning assessment or a
recommissioning plan. You have a lot of great stuff in this building. Question. Okay. Like go ahead and ask. Um, but you already have a lot of existing systems here and many times what will happen is that you'll do a lot of work in a
certain section. Maybe like the the 2017 work that was done here, there was some work done, but Brian, we didn't touch everything in this building. Is that right? Or did we? No, not everything. Not everything. Thank you. Um, and so the things that were touched are newer and they were commissioned. But if we
didn't touch the rest of it, it's still on its old programming. It's just it maybe it's not working so great. With this recommissioning, what we'll do is we'll go through the entire building, regardless of age, and make sure that every sensor, every peripheral, everything that moves and its programming is the way it should be
based on current standards so that your whole building is working. You don't have to worry about gremlins. I mean, I'm sure there's not a classroom in here that gets too hot or too cold or whatever. I'm just guessing. Um but ultimately through this recommissioning, anything that we touch that's new certainly will be commissioned because
it's state requirement by law. Um the other part is let's make sure the whole building is is is one working singularity if you will from an operation standpoint. All right. Educational adequacy. This so we the first part was
run. The second part is everything that relates to education. And so looking at what are your goals? I understand you have a strategic plan. Maybe it's getting a little long in the tooth. Well, then you have a brand new
strategic plan. Um so we'll we'll lean on that because ultimately that will be the cornerstone of what your public expects. Here's your strategic plan. Hopefully your public participates a little bit and they bless it. Whatever the case is. Um and ultimately from an educational standpoint, we will bounce
off whatever those pillars are and make sure that we're working towards education and other u components where it makes sense. All right, so here is the high school. And I wish this were a white thing so I could use my laser,
but ultimately here's your high school. Brian, thank you for this. Um, all the red that's currently your special education and up in room is that 102. I think 102 is not just a box, right? 102 is sort of longer. Yep. It's all the way
to the end on that one. Yep. And so that's that's actually nice space. When we talk about a special education suite, that type of concept is generally what we're talking about. You're able to use paras um your other teachers in a uh in a in a closeup space so not spread out
of place. You also have in the library in that old computer lab and 124 other spaces for and I'm not sure their their purpose, but if students were to melt down, you don't have to they don't have to walk through the entire building to get to the suite. They have an opportunity to melt down closer to
wherever they are. From a education standpoint, when you have special education kids, especially at over 30%, you want those nearby meltdown rooms. They don't have to be big, but those nearby meltdown rooms. And then ultimately your suite can be
centralized. Um and then your uh STEM lab which is 222, right Brian? Y. And so that is a fantastic space. Absolutely fantastic space. Um in the fall it's used more than it is in the spring. And I understand that you had a
teacher once upon a time that was very much engaged in that space and they've since retired, moved on, whatever the case might be. And so, how do we take advantage of that space and proactively plan to do more or different with it?
Because you have the space. What does that look like? And then from a facility standpoint, you know, we can talk through does anything need to change. Maybe not, but at least we're having the conversation. We don't have to spend money to have a conversation. And that's part of the planning. What do you want
that 222 to be? Uh what courses do you want in it? um with Chad retiring and then coming back, which is a godsend because he's going to help with the uh trades uh helping kids find career work, right? Which is
awesome. I mean, in just talking to Australia, he's just he's ready. He's like, I'm looking forward to this. It's going to be awesome. Um but that said, how does he fit into that just from a planning standpoint? All right, here is the middle school.
This is a bit of an eye chart. Jill was kind enough to um take her floor plan, draft it up. I will share this with you guys. And thank God it's on Zoom, so hopefully you can actually see it. Um but ultimately, uh we'll start on the
left. You see the preschool that's in that black box? That's that's three seventh grade classrooms. You guys know this, but just from a a space standpoint, preschool needs to change.
You have the blue boxes. You have seven science classrooms in the middle school. You have in each grade typically is seven sections, six, seven sections. And so, is it was it intended originally where all kids in a grade would take
science all at the same time? Probably not. And one of your and one of your uh science classrooms is actually being used for geography right now. And so the nice thing about science classrooms is that they're big. So you can they have a lot of flexibility. You can do a lot of
cool things with them. But a lot of that space is misused space that can be used differently. Um let's see here. You see the the black on the far right career teched and then currently that's storage space that also the preschool where they
eat their lunch. Well, career techch ad, if you can see the note, it just says uh in inadequate, need upgrades, um awkward awkward layout. And so, and again, you have a great footprint, but how do we make make
it different, make it better, make it more usable, especially from a storage standpoint. Um there was a conversation on just wood storage. And so if you have if you're storing wood and it's outside, typically you have to wait for it to acclimate to the inside before you do
anything with it. Day two. And so they're doing their best with what they have. But and and storage is just one example of many. Um where the preschool and the storage currently is just first blush. That would be a
fantastic sped suite. Why is that? Because everything around it generally speaking is quiet. You've got storage, you've got mechanical, um you've got if storage mechanical, um CTE, however, but you've got some of the office office storage, whatever up near that
space that's just screaming to be something different, something better ultimately. And again, forgive me, I only have a couple hours in the building. This is me just guessing, but at the end of the day, you have tons of opportunity. Um let's see here.
The let's see here yellow the yellow generally speaking are just spaces that are mis misused and so you have the stage. Um they currently I mean it has some use but that's a lot of square footage and maybe
it could be something different. The two rooms below it are um rooms that are for exposition. exposition, basically showing off artwork, showing off things, and there's just odd-shaped rooms that really don't have any purpose other than storage. And so that's additional square
footage. Um, some of the white rooms that are noted on here, those are rooms per Jill that really don't have any great purpose currently today. Um, so why did why is that big yellow box in there? Well, ultimately
that's your library and you have a lot of rooms that are off to the side. If if 60% of your titles aren't read on a regular basis, that leaves a wonderful opportunity to add maker space. And
we've done that all over the place as it relates to libraries. And it's a cost-effective way of making better use of that room that otherwise is not used very often. Okay. Um let's see here. And so you'll also see this oval. I don't know
if you can see my cursor. It's not really moving that quick, but the oval here between the office and the exterior. From a safe and secure entry standpoint, this is challenging. And when I talked to your principles, when you came into the high school, if you
come in during the day, you know, you buzz in, you go into the high school office, you check in, state your business, and then you're able to go into the school. Your middle school, your two elementary schools do not have that. Somebody gets buzzed in, they go wherever they want. And for your principles, that's a concern. And again,
I'm not here to spend your money. I'm simply making you aware of just things that I've noticed. And if, by the way, if we were to move the office to near those perimeter doors, and there are ways of doing it, that whole office space, and not all, but some of it, then becomes available for other things.
Again, if you're right now at six or seven sections already, anticipating when they were built around 12% sped and now you're 30, special education kids require a lot more space than your typical, you know, your your typical
student. So, how do we how do we manage this? Again, this is just one idea with the middle school. And so, here's uh south and north. Again, they're mirrors of each other. And so, just sake of discussion.
But uh when we look at south, you know, we see the library in the middle that's got the circle again. Wonderful opportunity with all the breakout space that's there to be something different perhaps. Don't know what it is, but there's opportunities. Um the rooms that are
squiggled in yellow that are have black boxes around them, those are rooms that really don't have a terribly great purpose. So either currently special education or they're just they're just space. Um we have title ELLL some
special education some preschool. We have an opportunity to free up those spaces. Um Melissa's idea was to from a stage standpoint. Maybe there's an opportunity there. Maybe you know it's it's currently used for that gym
um you know special education gym. Is there another another spot for that? Free up that space. Again, just an idea. We also have here uh the office and the safe and secure entry issue again
um for both new and south. And so again, there are opportunities here as well. So I'm really jumping through this quick, but what questions do you have? My I hope that your takeaway with this
conversation is you have the space that you need and you have certainly challenges but through planning there's an opportunity to do a lot of great things cost-effectively for your taxpayer
athletics. Uh here's a couple of photos uh you know that I was able to get from your ad. Two on the left of course are the tennis courts. Two in the middle are track. Um those are likely more immediate needs. On the top we see
softball. And the challenge that we have there is simply safety. If somebody hits a foul ball, you know, you see the tops of the back stops are not curved to catch a lot of those balls. And the back stops certainly don't go high enough to catch. And to date, we haven't had any
major issues, but they're challenges. Again, I'm not telling you to spend money. I'm just making you aware of the things that I've heard from Scott. Your turf field, um, typical life is 10 to 12 years. I believe you've already had this conversation. You know about the turf
field. And so, where does that money come from? You know, what does that planning look like as examples? All right. So from a planning standpoint, I'm going to share with you this
financials in your plan. And ultimately uh the back of the book shares uh some of the financial stuff and that's actually a boiled down version of the overall plan uh because we ultimately went to referendum. And so what you'll
see with planning tools, this is uh a list of all the different categories. There are 22 that come from the Department of Education uh from Minnesota. And what we'll do is we'll go through all four of your buildings and others if you so choose. And we'll
provide, you know, a a qualifier on each of them letting you know, are you at standard? Yellow is 5% between good and 5% of standard and red is anything beyond 5%. And so you'll have this. The nice thing about this table is that it
provides just anybody who doesn't know understand education. They can look at the snake and see is it red, is it yellow, is it green. It's a pretty pretty quick read. My commitment to you is to work with your students, work with your students, work
with your staff, work with your community if you allow me to do so. working with uh students as an example. Um your juniors and seniors, they've been a part of your school district, many of them since they were in kindergarten. And so they
know they know the buildings that they they've been in. And they have a pretty powerful um concept of what has worked for them and what hasn't. More importantly, when they go home and they talk to their parents, this is going to come up that we've engaged them. And then the parents want to know what's going on. And that's
all positive. All positive. We also do this type of engagement with farmers, business owners, um booster clubs. I mean, you basically would tell me what are your um critical groups. I'll provide some that I think make sense,
but ultimately we need to be proactive and go to them and have those conversations. And those conversations make me unique. teachers do a couple different types of teacher engagement because teachers of course if 70% of your teachers live in
district in their neighborhoods when something's happening their neighbors are going to say well this is what's going on at the school what do you think and if they're not engaged they're not going to they're not going to think positively of it and so here we'll do a survey that will go to every staff
member um anybody who has anything to do with your schools it's not just teachers or paras nutrition could be everybody And ultimately we'll receive those u feedbacks their feedback back um as it relates to their space. What do they think of um how their space lends itself
to educating and other aspects of what it is that they do? Is it warm in here or is it just me? It's warm. There's a getting warm. I thought it was just me. and like um but also then some of the
outputs from us the staff survey you know we'll break them out by building or we can break them out a variety of different ways we'll provide you the the highest overall scores the things that people thought most positively about and also the things that everybody thought that were most challenging and that's
just one one piece of information the other item that I do are I I have a couple of exercises that I do with staff during in service days and you know I I ask them questions and they work together as teams to come up with what
they think of their space and what the future might look like. Are they proud of you know where they teach so on and so forth and that leads to common basic needs, common performance needs and delighters. Common basic needs, generally speaking, are those things that if you do a project and you don't
do these things from a teacher's perspective, the project's considered a failure. Even if you do everything else that you promised, if you don't do the basic needs items, they're challenges and all we want to do is be aware. Common performance needs, um, those items that will help me do more in my
space as an educator. And then delighters, there is absolutely no way that anybody's going to want to do any of these things, but I'm going to put it out there anyway. And where where most of them come from, uh the big big things are typically gym teachers. They want the fieldhouse, you
know, they want Yeah, it's u but oddly enough, most teachers are pretty practical. You can tell them sky's the limit. Spend as much money as you want on paper. What do you think? What are typically the top two things that teachers ask for? Anybody? There's no wrong
answer. Okay. Teachers. What do teachers want? time and money. Yep. Yep. That's good. That's good. Um, it typically number one is natural light. Most teachers, all they want is natural light. And the second most common thing is color. I
want a wall with color on it. I don't want it to be that, you know, industrial gray or stark white. Can I have green? you know, public opinion polling, we use a third-party survey consultant. We do not
survey in-house. Uh, when you survey in-house, just like statistics, you can make them look any way you want by having a third party um lead that survey effort. I don't have any control on what the results are. every single
residential mailbox will get one and we'll have that opportunity to hear from a nice cross-section of your community without me trying to put my thumb on it, trying to make the project bigger or lean on areas where I think maybe we want to do more. You don't want that. So, the survey is third party and every
single mailbox will get one. Here's an example in the back of that book. Um you see phase one, phase two, future. Uh we talk about the improvement by area. Um brief description and that ultimately leads to
a lot of specifics in that book. Um utility savings, operational savings, which is what you asked for originally with that um um the RFQ Piper was helping you with the block grants, total budget, funding source, so forth.
And then we look at cash flows. You guys can't see this unless you're looking at your laptop. But at the end of the day, as we're checking stuff in and out, the idea is with in working with others is what really might be the tax impact of doing anything by the type of fund it
is. In Minnesota, the nice thing is that you have some funding mechanisms that do not create any tax impact. You have others that create tax impact, but you don't have to go to the voter, as you all know. Then you have the referendum. Um, I find personally that if you have
an operational and you go capital together, in my experience, I've not I've not failed a referendum where there's been an operational and capital together. Why is that? Because you're able to tell a it's not a story, but the narrative is pretty
fantastic. Um, for instance, we're looking to invest in middle school career teched, and the operational piece helps fund some of those day-to-day operations, just as an example. Okay. change order rate. Um, some Minnesota
examples, less than 1%. Um, typically when you talk to folks, they will budget 5% for change orders. If you go to the Rochester School District, they budget 10%. 10% of a million dollars or $10
million is a lot of money. Where does that money come from? Because you can't go to your voters and ask for more. it something happens called value engineering which is an oxymoron. And so when you value engineer, if you've gone to referendum
or even if you haven't, you simply have had community task forces, you've been talking about here's the 10-year plan. This is what we're looking to do. And if for some reason you don't deliver on your promises, what does that do to the school board? What does that do to the administration? By Nexus investing as
much as we do at risk. We're not asking you for fun one money and dumping it into that book. We we avoid unforeseen conditions. We make sure that constructibility is where it makes sense. And that is unique to Nexus. There's no one else you're going to talk
to that you can talk to that has a change over rate less than 1% because there's no one on this in this area in this very big big big area that is willing to invest as much as we do at risk up front. Questions? It's gotten cooler here all
of a sudden. Good job. You're not just on. Watch out. Um, let's see here. If you don't mind, this last page is just population by age. Remember I talked about International Falls and International
Falls 60% of their population was over 55. That is the complete opposite here. The your median age overall is 34. 34. If you look at the big bumps of population in your area, they're either
parents or their kids, generally speaking. And so, how do you how do you gain their support, whether it's referendum or not? Simply by communicating, simply by making sure they're part of the process and that it's a communitydriven plan. Even if you don't work with Nexus, I hope you do.
Um, but I mean, at the end of the day, it's how do we engage our parents? How do we engage our kids? Because that messaging is what's going to carry you. Period. In my opinion, in my experience. And so, any
questions on the common themes that I sent through the three days of conversations that I've had about the demographics, about our experience. Um, I'm I'm happy to be an open book and and Kevin, thank you
for the wonderful opportunity to be here tonight. Um, and again I'm happy to answer questions. Hey Rob. Um, so you guys just are kind of you oversee everything, right? As with Nexus. Do you guys hire architects, engineers,
construction, all of that? So we have we have an AR we have we have an architect on staff that helps oversee and we also have a design team that oversees. We tend to work with local architects. Okay. Um, but we do engineering in
house. We do not do civil Um, and we do all of our own construction management. We do our own commissioning. Um, are like I mentioned the surveys. That's all third party. And so, um, really the biggest difference between me and the company just before
um, is that I don't have more architects on staff. Sure. Yep. I don't know if that helps or not, but Yeah. No, I just wanted to get a picture of all that works. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Other questions? Do you have a list of references that we could Yeah. call for
previous projects? Absolutely. Okay. Absolutely. And like I said with the one prior, you know, as we leave tonight and you get out the door and Oh, shoot. I should have asked that you'll send so they can have your presentation to at least go back and look at. And the same
thing, um, I will uh carbon copy Rob when I send it out. you know, if you want his email or if you want to I would prefer you went through me and so we copied everyone or Rob's pretty good at least to my past of trying to make sure all board members get the stuff. Um
because I think that's question is Yep. No, I think Yep. Yep. No, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much, Rob. So, I guess my thought is if we could take five minutes, let let Rob get out
and then maybe have a conversation and figure out what the next steps are and we'll go from there. Yeah. We'll have a conversation in the middle of the private section. Not for the private session. It's gonna
be a private session. Yeah. And the sun is on those windows, too. That doesn't help. Hey, when you come somewhere that's 98 degrees, what do you expect? Thank you so much. for sure. Okay.
Yeah, I work I work as a project manager base. Yeah. Yeah, we're growing. It seems like there's a lot of things coming in. Um they don't tell me a lot of bugs. Top
Yeah. The buzz I hear is that Yeah. Yep. Okay. So 10.0 was IC 11.0 was Nexus. 12.0 is board member comments. Your mic. No more. No more presenters. another person. Um, I'll start with you, Matt.
Okay. Thank you. Um, I just want to say a few closing thoughts on the the whole curriculum thing. Um, you know, I mentioned adding possibly adding a board member to uh our curriculum committee. I just want to reiterate that I don't want to be involved and I don't think any of
us want to be involved on selecting our curriculum. Um, I've been married to a teacher for 17 years. I know how much time and effort goes into being a teacher. Um, I know how much they care about their curriculum and their students and how much time they put into it. I don't want teachers to think that
I somehow come in here and know more than they do about it. I just feel that as a board member that we review our budget, we review our finances, our enrollment, everything else. Um, it's our job to approve all of this and I feel like um, you know, none of us are here just to approve it, right? We all
want to make sure that everything is the way that it should be. Um, on top of that, there's a lot of stories that have been in the news over the last four years, um, about curriculum, about, you know, Minnesota test scores, etc. I think there's a lot of people in the
district that don't know what goes on in this school and that um you know a lot of those people elected me to be a schoolboard member and I just feel like it's part of my job just to make sure
that um that I do my due diligence and all I'm asking for I guess is just a chance to review the curriculum um whenever that may be and just enough time to look at it and uh and you know we talked about some kind
of a presentation. I think that would be great and just enough time to uh to just take an overall bird's eye view look at it. So I look forward to um kind of coming up with some kind of reasonable solution for that. No, I think thank you the presenters that came tonight. I mean I think we got
a lot of information. We got a lot of things we got to talk about. We got a lot of a lot of um good things in planning in in the future of Eastcon Forks. Nothing else to add. Um, I don't think I could have said it better than Matt. That was very eloquent
and exactly what I wanted to say except for the being married to a teacher thing. Um, but it's Yeah, it's just I did owe what he said. Thank you for saying it so nicely. You're welcome. I agree. It has nothing to do with the teachers. I trust them and I love the teachers and staff in our district. It's just due diligence
and reviewing what I'm going to vote yes on is all. And I know, you know, growing up here, uh, my kids going through school here, Sierra, working here, I know a lot of the teachers here and I have the utmost respect and a ton of trust in all of them, all of the faculty here. Has nothing to do with that.
Exactly. I just want to know what I'm saying yes to pretty much or no to. Um, and I want to thank the presenters. Actually was pleasantly surprised. I had no idea what it was going to entail. So that was nice to see. Um, I want to thank the presenters as well. Uh we are nearing the end of the
year, so I do want to thank the teachers and the administration for all their hard work. Um I don't know if we'll have another meeting before the end of the school year. We'll see. We'll talk about it in a second here. Um so I just want to make sure to get that in. We certainly won't have a meeting probably before graduation. So that's exciting
for graduation. And with that being said, when should we have our next board because board of education meeting is on June 9th? Great day. Um, but do we want to have one? Do we play it by ear and see if we have
something to come to a meeting for? Two things. Number one, I think you're going to get a social studies applicant that at some point, I mean, even if it's if it's just that, it needs to be a five minute meeting. Yeah, you know, so that we can get that person locked in or, you know, whatever. The second piece is, and
again, I apologize for not thinking about it, but at least having a response. If we're waiting till June, you know, to talk about these groups, that's fine. you know, we're not in a major, yeah, you know, we want to keep moving and see where the process goes. Um, and secondly, is there anything
else, you know, give it some time, think about look that you want more info, you know, I don't want to say, let's meet, you know, four days from now, you know, and all of a sudden someone has all kinds of stuff to get that we can't, you know, so it's what is the next step? Is it part of your regular meeting? Is it something you want to have, you know,
special meeting and just deal with that conversation? your call. I kind of like Clint's idea of moving it up. I feel like May's really busy, so adding another one in. Well, what Yeah. What in instead of having it on June 9th, what if we have it on June 2, the first Monday, so that we don't wait
quite as long. That's your your call. We have like Memorial Day be done soon. If we didn't do it on a Monday, we could do it another day, but otherwise we really I mean, we're not meeting next week probably. Right. The second works for me. Yeah, the second works. I'm fine with that, I
think. Great. We'll go on the second. If something changes and we need to do it instead a morning meeting for five minutes, whatever. We'll probably have two in June anyway. So, um we'll have it the second and then the end of the month. Okay.
So, now Oh, not the nth. Move it to the second. Yes. Second instead of the n. So now you need to pause to go. Yes. So now uh I will pause the meeting.