i pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you
dave doesn't have attendance so I'm going to keep going y All right next up is the agenda approval is there any additions Brian it looks like Yep i had two additions uh HFA signed up to speak out of the forum
and um we have an employment adjustment um for someone we just approved at the last board meeting we had the salary wrong so just looking for that all right does anybody have any questions regarding changes to the agenda
if not I'm looking for a motion to approve the agenda i'll make a motion to approve i'll second there's a motion and a second is there any discussion all in favor say I opposed motion
passes next up is the consent agenda oh next up is open forum rules for open forum three minutes per speaker open forum shall not take a more than a total of 15 minutes no complaints about individual staff members about students
or about other persons at a public meeting all presenters will conduct their business in a manner that meets community standards for decorum the board will not take action on items presented in the open forum the board may respond in writing at a later date
does anybody wish to speak the forum go ahead Joe Ranger sweet hi good evening uh I'm not going to read from the script uh good evening my name is Joe Ranger i've been a teacher at Hickley Fson for uh 16 years now well we're working
through 16 um I'd like to claim that I'm just a science teacher but I've taught more classes uh in this high school than I care to admit that are outside my area of expertise uh taught somewhere between 1,800 and 2,000 students in my time here i believe that I have served Hickley
Fenderson to the best of my abilities i've taught members of your families volunteered coached their sports uh tried the fine work of your small businesses and I've tirelessly worked to try to uphold the values of community in the school district uh Hley Fison's
motto is that every student every person is known valued and challenged to succeed and I wish to discuss um some of the school board goals that we've have we have many schoolboard goals today I wish the one to talk about
the one that is ultimately what does it mean to be fiscally responsible now I know what you have here is a tireless thankless job i understand that innately and I appreciate all the work
here that we do my goal here is for us to think about the plans that we've had in place and the policies that we've looked at for all 16 years that I've been here as far as I know for 16 years
the school board goal is always to save 25% of our annual budget and I from my understanding and my research we have never undersshot that goal i'm not here to ask you to break the
bank but there is plenty of reason to look at the idea of reducing that overall savings goal to something a little bit lower to provide for our students our communities and our families we've heard a lot this year
about the reductions that need to be taken place and what it means to be financially responsible we have young men and women here that have heard that and have seen that and we've all felt
the hurt what I'm asking you to do is to consider the ideas that we are trying to stop the bleeding per se we're trying to stop losing students we're we need to try to stop giving people reasons to go
other places i'm standing in front of you as a staff member as a father as a parent of kids that are in this district and they are looking for help um you know we have our finances be
public and I'm not asking you to go deep into the well but what I'm asking you to do is to put the responsibility back into kids to get them to stay here to provide things for them that maybe we're not used to
um it's not a question of ignorance and I don't want to call it negligence but we're looking for the ideas to just put our best foot forward and not immediately assume that these things that need to just
be on the chopping block um investing in our schools isn't just about education it's about building a thriving community we're trying to in you know invest in student resources and staff retention that's another big school board goal we want to try to hire the best people and
keep the best people here it's hard especially when we have a lot of new teachers to tell them everything is going to be okay it's hard to look at young people and tell them that everything is going to be okay every dollar spent on education comes back in form of a stronger economy safer
neighborhoods and a better future for everyone what I'm asking to do is just think about for to take a hard look at not just doing the status quo things that we've been doing for 16 years and watching it go up and down and up and down i'm advocating for doing more for our
students and having than saving a quarter of every dollar to save money on an imaginary purpose that is neither intentionally defined or inherently apparent let's try to as we are as transparent as we can let's try
to take that time take that effort take that idea and push it forward let's try to promote that positivity by saying "Hey we see that this is working." And you guys respond very well to a lot of this we came last year and said "Hey we
need more help hey we need more help." And you guys continue to do that you provided more resources for us especially at the high school and the elementary school with our dean of students and they're doing great work and wonderful jobs what we're saying is we see that help we love that help
and we still need more we can't work in a skeleton type system um and personally I would love to see just come here come experience what we're seeing every day and then and then
look we can make make better decisions when we're all in this um together thanks for your time joe can I ask you a question i love questions are you being are you specific about staffing is that what you're
saying you know if we adjust the budget are your is your focus on stacking or what are some of the areas that you're reb um there's the answer to that question will always be
yes the answer to that question is always going to be yes but whenever the intense needs that we have in our area are not getting they are never getting smaller in my 16 years the intense needs are always getting larger
and larger and larger and it becomes quite a bit of a of a juggling session to try to juggle all of the needs of everywhere you know it's it's is staffing always important yes we
need more people more you know fully trained highly qualified staff that will do the best they can with the kids that walk in the door because we don't get to pick and choose and so staffing is a a very big
part and I'm not sure how big of the budget comes out of staffing but it probably is a payroll is probably a large part of it but we always need you know highly trained staff that are willing to come in and work with the kids every day and it's and it's tough i mean we get the emails once a month of
how much more need that we have so that's I think that's a big part of it you know the facilities are are great but it was it was tough to see in the audit that they have this much more money than we thought and then get a really big quick turnaround on the gym
floor not that I'm saying that it doesn't need it i mean I came straight from practice like it does but that's kind of a tough switcheroo real quick to to go from one thing to the next to see and it's tough to talk to other people about because they need
you know more communication more ideas when we have a goal what is the goal what is how does the goal drive ourselves forward into what's coming next a question for you a lot of questions these things that you're saying we're
kind of missing okay how will that raise grade point average and how do we raise that because would that attract more students so fundamentally grade point average is not my favorite way to look at things
um my best example that I use with kids is my dad my dad was a Marine uh he didn't like school very much he didn't do school very well for himself but he still had to do enough in order to make it through a kid that works their tail
off every day and gets a C minus is more important than the kid who sits around and gets an A because it means more to them to work all the way through so grade point average isn't always the best way to look at it now when you're talking
about like test scores and things like that that's a that's a one-time deal that's also tough to measure success that's why we take multiple levels of things and we're trying to chart growth and see progress and things like that i mean kids
need stuff when we're when we reduce down in staff it puts heavy pressure on the kids to take the few electives that are available when it's there if you only want if you really want to take welding the only thing available is fifth hour is study hall
or whatever else you might have to wait a cycle and sometimes that's when we lose kids you know so it's a it's a tough balance i wouldn't want to be in Katie Har shoes or Joe's shoes when it comes to doing scheduling but like having more availability to me seems
like a better problem than having less can I fill in real quick yeah please you know uh it's hard in a small district the more things you can offer kids uh the more you have a chance of hooking them you know whether it's a
sport whether it's an an elective uh whether it's a college in the school course that you can run or you make a you know make a a priority to run um you know in the in the recent past we've talked about uh daycare uh preschool
options like those are things like it might only it might cost whatever 40,000 to hold on to six students so it doesn't really pay or break even uh but in the grand scheme of things you know we're we're talking about wrestling here like those are things those are small things that might only serve a few students but
it might hold uh you know hold more people together and it's kind of a symbiotic thing because uh you know when you've got kids are very social and so their enjoyment of their education is is a lot about who who's who's in the building
and who's productive and who's working hard to be a C minus student you know that type of thing so it's really hard to quantify how those things build off of each other but point of my rant is offering things even if it only impacts three kids per grade that really starts
to kind of snowball in in my opinion so right and if I can add to that I just want to say one thing quick first though because we have three minutes left to open forum so I is there anybody else here that wants to speak at open forum okay then please like I forgot what I
was trying to say looking at that's okay i appreciate it um piggy piggybacking off of that you know with the daycare piece and looking at um we've tried to have a lot of efforts into bringing in new people into our district we have we talked about the developments being built across the town
across I don't live here i don't know where they are um but I think at the end of the day those are great conversations to have but I think an even greater conversation to have is what are we going to do to keep the kids that we do have right now so whether that's increased staffing so that way we have less students in classes if you are in
the elementary school and if you ever want to my door is always open i would encourage any one of you to come to my room and you can see that it is the cleanest most welloiled machine class I have ever had because I have a very small class i can connect with each kid
and it has been an absolutely the most enjoyable year I've ever had in this school district sorry sorry Brighton your class was your class was two seconds a second number two number two so um I think if we can start to have conversations about what are we
doing for the kids that we are servicing now word of mouth will spread on that and be like hey they are looking out for students best interests they are valuing and they are being challenged to succeed thank you I have two minutes left of open forum if
anybody wants to speak otherwise we'll move Okay uh hi i'm Dan uh I've been uh here a lot over the last few months um this is my son Brighton uh we we're we're big
into wrestling that's what I mean that I I love I love that sport it's his third favorite uh but it's my favorite that's so cool um I spend a lot of time talking with the teachers in the school district
um volunt Jamie and I my wife uh spend a lot of time volunteering and when I say volunteering I I mean volunteering to make sure that we have a baseball team we have a football team we have a wrestling team in the school we
spend quick math over a thousand hours a year doing that and I'm trying very hard to get something at a high school level and it starts right now this starts tonight to make sure we can progress
into a high school level uh with the wrestling program uh baseball it's well established until it's not and it that's a struggle that we're dealing with um we don't have the kids that we had when I
was in school 20 years ago 24 years 21 22 years ago i'm well aware I'm aging myself thanks a lot um but all these other
schools seem to have that and we got to keep progressing i don't want to give up here this is where I grew up some of you I rode the bus with you i I get gas at your gas stations i do all that stuff i see you guys every day every day and I
just I want to I want to keep it here i want to be here i'm I'm I'm a Hinkly kid i love it here i don't want to change it i want to be a part of this forever um so I just help
us out i'm willing to help you guys help me that's all I'm asking that's all I Thank you thanks Dan would I keep it under that two minutes yeah you got it
next up is the consent agenda does anybody wish anything for the consent agenda all right then I'm looking for a motion to approve the consent agenda with changes i'll make a motion there's a motion and a second is there
any discussion all in favor i opposed motion passes 6 moving on to budget considerations um admin team has been
working on some ideas nothing that we're asking for action on um just things that we've been thinking about none of this is fun to talk about but I want to talk about where our revenue projections are as of at least last week um and and the
two columns that I'll kind of compare to are the last two where we were last year in June and where we're projected to be um depending what happens at the state legislation with the state legis legislation here in the next month and a
half um a lot of numbers are pretty consistent i guess I want to highlight um this compensatory revenue because that's the big one that's was very unexpected most of the numbers if they're down it's tied to what our either enrollment is projected to be or
what our average daily uh membership which is basically our enrollment factoring in attendance um and certainly we know our attendance is is down this year so that's why most of these numbers are down but the compensatory revenue um is about
$280,000 down and that's not because of enrollment that is because um the state has kind of changed the formula for how how that gets impacted or reported um typically you may have heard or know we
send home what is typically called free and reduced lunch forms they're really called educational benefits forms um we saw and I guess I will rewind you you see a little bit of flux here in the beginning um we saw an increase because
if you remember during co the federal government paid for lunches and breakfasts that went away we that's where this kind of spike came in last year the state had a hold harmless they had already been talking about changing how they come up with this revenue uh
last year last year they decided to stay with the old method um we actually did better now the state is back to let's use our new method for determining this well meanwhile we have less families filling out those forms um they're going
by direct certification now instead of by both direct certification and free and reduced lunch forms we don't have as many people filling those out um there the governor's bill proposed bill does talk about still putting money back
towards that so there is a hold harmless um right now that's not approved so if if that doesn't get approved that's why I have factoring in 280 roughly $1,000 less that that's a big part of of why
we're or the biggest part of besides our enrollment why we're looking at decrease in revenue the other part uh I have in here we've talked a lot about special ed revenue um that number has been right around that 2.4 million that we've
talked about we have reports from staff from administration our special ed numbers do go up have been continuing going up we're not factoring more in right now because also part of the governor's proposal is to take away some special education transportation funding
so um when when working with elders on this we thought we're pretty comfortable keeping it the same because we know our special ed enrollment or special ed needs are increasing um however we don't know for sure what's going to happen at the state so that number is another one
that we're keeping an eye on otherwise a lot of these numbers are pretty consistent there's been a lot of questions what's going to happen with revenue from the federal government we have not heard um anything that title 124 is going away may it come from a
different entity maybe but the the federal government has said at least that I've read that title dollars are not going away the other big part the federal government helps with is with lunches uh we have not heard that's going away so we're not anticipating
right now an impact to our federal income but um I'll just kind of with the revenue part bring you to these last two numbers that's where I come up when we start talking about $800 or more thousand is is our revenue for our
general education fund is down um by that much again mostly because of enrollment but the biggest dollar amount one would be that compensatory aid um are there questions that you have on at least where the revenues projected as of
a week or so ago you said special ed transportation funding is going to go down possibly yeah is the requirement still going to be still going to be required to transport
with less just as much yes yep so then it brings me to just kind of what we've been talking about um I'll talk about fund balance first which my math could be uh enjoyable to follow here but if if you rewind back to June
of 24 that's when we set the current school year's budget uh at that time we were predicting that our fund balance as of 7124 which would have been the start of the this school year would be 4,241,548 the audit just came back um so
our fund balance was actually 4,763,916 um so then we take that number and we have to factor in what our revenue and expenses were for this year of course we're still in March we don't know how that's going to end but if if we use those predictions that we made at
the end of June um at that time after revenues and expenses and using our fund balance for uh possibly food service and community education when we went through that we were predicting then that the fund
balance would end at 4,341,259 now just using starting with the actual fund balance um and everything else being the same um which of course it's not but if everything else would have been the same the prediction at that time knowing what the starting fund
balance would be would be 4,863,321 and please stop me if I lose you in in my kind of story um to meet the district policy which again is based on what we predicted the budget to be in June Our current fund balance policy is
25% um and that's of our general fund um expenses so to be at 25% um fund balance would be at 3,863 240 so now with the new actual fund balance um with starting with what
our fund balance actually was putting in the predictions we would be predicted to be at 29.5% which is $693 $693,82 more again that's if everything we predicted in June goes according to
what we planned um simply we h I mean the easiest example of not everything going to plan is we haven't been able to hire all of our support staff that we planned and and when we predict new employees coming in we kind of pick a salary some we pick high some we pick
low now we have actual salaries in there so those numbers are not perfect but that's taking what we knew um in June with what the audited fund balance was so are there questions on the first five
my only question is last year when we when we did the budget we thought we were going into our fund balance to about 22 something% but without the hirings it went without the hirings we had more interest come in and we got a little
better special ed revenue than we had thought and the state before that and the state doesn't take all the enrollment loss all at once it's a gra it's like a formula it's a gradual it will come a little bit
now a little bit later it will they don't take all 800 some odd thousand away whatever the dollar amount is but I guess what I'm saying is we didn't start at 25% last school year we went into our fund we were predicting to go in cuz if if you remember we also added at that
June board meeting six positions so I had presented a budget that revenue and expenses matched and then we used fund balance to hire six more positions after that or keep back six more positions
um the board did vote to approve spending out of the 693,000 up to 300,000 to replace the high school gym floor um we have sealed bids coming in so we'll know that exact we have quotes but we legally have to
get sealed bids so that process is in place uh we will have those numbers for the next board meeting so we know exactly what that is um we talked last meeting that we do need to use LTFM funds before we can use fund balance
which in our LTFM funds we have 133,000 so of that 300,000 first which is what we were saving in LTFM4 so we'll take the 133,474 um and then after using LTFM and fund balance for the remaining we would still
have 527,276 questions on that part so things we're considering um first I guess I'd like to talk about capital budget um in my opinion a fund balance is kind of like our own personal
savings account um once you spend out of your own savings account it's kind of gone um so my thought which does end up impacting our total budget um and impact what our cuts would need to be um if if
we use kind of capital type purchases that is a way doesn't have to be the way but a way to um spend that one-time money on one-time things where if you put it into salaries and and I'm not saying we can't those always keep
growing and going and and are still here so that's they kind of both would help each other i mean if you put it the salaries okay we have more for fund or capital they kind of both work both ways but some ideas I had with the capital budget um as you can see we are total
right now at 464,000 my hope was to reduce that down um to 50,000 less than we spent last year um the state only gives us which I can
go back to revenue the state gives us operating capital angela I may have to number here $140,000 so we have to spend $140,000 on capital um that's what the state gives money for just for capital
projects i think I told you the wrong number earlier um we could reduce this all the way down to that um there are some there are projects in here that we would still get um just we wouldn't spend them all off capital we've always
historically at least since I've been here the state has never fully funded what our capital projects are we have always funded more um than what the state gives us uh but there are items on this list that we could bring that down
and it really doesn't matter my thought was um out of technology get some of these computers ordered now um because we don't know what could or may happen with tariffs um same and we've heard that may affect technology as well as
some of these bigger um things that Keith has um garage door we need to do but there are things in this list where I could bring that down either so it's lower uh by what we were thinking as of now 50,000 less than this 200
133 or I could bring it all the way down to 140 which is what the state gives us um other areas we're looking is and these next two are because of where our potential class sizes are or our
enrollment is up to seven teachers at Hinckley Elementary one would have to be replaced the one is because of lensure um up to 6.2 the point 2 is is we have a staff member requesting to go less than
full-time so up to 6.2 at the high school but four of those would re be replaced um because of lensure uh we have a request from our speech person uh to poss we're still looking she's still looking at it but she has made the
request to possibly move to 6 with that we would probably need to hire an SLPA as our speech needs are still there um we're going through classroom material budgets now but our kind of with the way we set it up this year would roughly be a cost
of4500 um talking with Mandy Hardold to reduce athletic costs by about 10,000 now that would be not necessarily going to game that's not mean means not trimming games or anything it's ordering equipment things like that can we make
things that we have last another year um we have some reduced summer work time um the other areas that we still need to look at is our other areas um we need to look at custodial food service um and
and district office as well we need to look at all those areas but these are the ideas of where we're at as of now um but we know we need to look at all areas of our district to to see if if we can find other areas where maybe we're
overstaffed um some like I said there are positions that would need to be hired back most of these are because of lensure there are five teachers and and again we roughly pick what a dollar amount would be um if the speech person does go down to 6 we would likely need
to hire back or hire a second SLPA um so with all those proposed ideas and then adbacks um we're we've cut about 678,000 and I should have said I'm starting at about that
$800,000 um so that leaves we haven't cut all 800,000 plus we want to give people raises um certainly want to do that we have negotiations coming up for our teachers our support staff will negotiate and uh
half of our managers will also negotiate um some other things that we can talk about um things that were kind of added during COVID is why they're on the list and we've kind of talked about these before i'm not saying that we're going to they're just things that did get
added um the high school the second dean of students the second nurse and like I said um at that time during CO we also added HR and we need to look and see if there's anything we can do in food service custodial transportation and there may not be but we are looking at
those as well um questions I'm talking a lot um does help us out with speech not with speech only part
C to B so they do birth to two they do some of the home visits but then when it comes to so they have a they have an SLP that does some of that speech stuff but when they're transitioning into the threes and that's when our speech person gets involved so they still have to do
some of that trans transitional stuff as well as those last few like home visits we have shared that position in the past with East Central um I don't know where that our numbers are so high that I don't know that that would be realistic
but yeah there's three schools that share that part C and B person but I think only two for the speech and do we fund the transition program too because a lot of our students still get speech with transition it's funded by Pine City East Central and Hinckley
Finlesson where it's divided by the number of students we have ADMs in that program or 18 to 22 year olds yeah yep um now kind of going back to fund balance so back to after paying for the
gym floor using LTFM funds um like I said earlier we have about 527,000 above what we thought um at least back in June so here were some of the examples that I had out of capital that we would do that and again why I
have some of the technology on there is if the board's open to that uh we could get those ordered sooner than later before technology may maybe it doesn't become a problem but that's why we specifically pick technology off that um and then I was just picking some bigger
dollar amounts to get there gas bus is obviously um the most expensive on there but um and we could certainly use fund balance to do more like I said we we could reduce capital all the way down to that 140,000 but these were the ideas
that we came up with for then for now um which if we did that that would leave our fund balance still above uh 253,000 again ideas we could do for that we could put that into the general fund just put it there that would help with
staff maybe save positions help with not having to cut as much would help with negotiations we could spend more on capital um a couple other things we're waiting or one other big part we're waiting to hear at the state not that there's not
going to be others but um they funded summer employ un unemployment the last two years out of the last uh budget coming from the state they have enough in the state budget to fund June we don't know what's going to happen for July and August if the state doesn't
cover that the district does for our district 3 months which would be July August and the following June that's and it's hard to predict but it's between 250 $300,000 um I have not factored that in yet the
governor's proposal does have money to cover that again we're not going to probably know that until May um and the other part um is and we've talked about this from years past do we want to keep our fund balance at 25% do we want to
drop it we've talked in the past all the way down to 20 um do we feel comfortable spending more than that as we go you know what do we want to do with our fund balance do we want it to sit at 25% as we head into next year or is there some
flexibility um like the board's given or is there more flexibility to go all the way down to 20% um like I said we talked about compensatory we'll talk about um co-op sports here in a little bit um
but thoughts that was a lot of talking by me or questions or clarifications the summer unemployment is there any look at that changing or is that going to be cuz after this year it would be up to the schools to fund it fully correct
and is has there been any legislative talk about changing that the governor proposed funding it i don't know how long that his proposal would fund it it would fund it at least for this going into next school it would cover July and August um I would hope June since that's
part of the fiscal year i don't know how long term so there's talk but I don't know where that's heading it should cover two years right it's a bianium budget they hold together so it should cover the next two years unfortunately there's still a lot of
unknown and we I mean they're set to they're supposed to be done by May 19th um hopefully they are if they're not I mean we we kind of have to wait and see what happens and and if there are any other things that you know we don't know about that we may
have to do as well but it's the hard part is try waiting and seeing so we get the best picture yet if we do need to make cuts also the human being side of even though cuts are hard giving people a fair heads up if we have to go down
that road so by our next meeting in April we'll see class sizes what's coming in i I would anticipate following feedback from tonight that you'll start to see reductions coming on the next board
meeting um may not see all of them until maybe more maybe in May and June um again it's trying to keep as many programmings and staff as we can but also waiting to see what the state's
going to do uh but I would anticipate you'll start to see some of these uh even as quick as our next meeting in a couple weeks what is the estimated um percentage of the budget that is spent on staff i was right i didn't get to the
percentage part so our budget's roughly uh 17 million i did was running just some staff we spend about a little over 11 million on staff cost so 1117 whatever that percentage is pull my calculator i got you you got
me 60 64.7% So if we went down if we changed the fund balance to 202 what would that you say every% of our yeah every thousand be about 150 give I mean maybe that's a little high
140 to 150 for every percent so that's quite a bit of money depending how low the board would be willing to go and I know we can't vote on that today but just to hear your thoughts so
we can prepare and and I can certainly bring a recommendation at the next meeting for our fund balance if there's openness to that um but then it also gives uh Mrs scholar Mr a lot more and I a little idea of
knowing i mean without knowing if that makes sense well if you spend your savings account without any chance of getting it back in a savings account okay so how would we get it back in a savings account no our students okay so have we
identified why they're not coming here why they're losing i mean in a real honest way and if there's changes to that because I know it wouldn't be immediate but it would be a gradual thing biggest feedback I got and there's
certainly others was a lot of because of behaviors that are happening in the schools okay I've heard that too how how do we solve that i know you can't kick kids out because the state says you can't so you can't get rid of the bad apples
consistency from the top to the bottom i think there's huge who do we copy that has similar population and has it under control more under
control any any ideas there i'd say enrollment in our general area has decreased across no matter what school we're at every principal I've talked to that's been the case maybe not as high as ours but because there's
other options maybe a PSO or online school home school and online school okay on we saw a lot of kids go to online school this year well in our our our amount of kids open enrolling in
Dinkley is down what like 40 30 something correct yeah we we have less kids and and less kids came here uh from other school districts this year than compared to other years so behavior has been an issue for
a long time it's not just recent so when you look at it behaviors um has this been a conversation probably especially since co I mean behaviors have always been here in at least my
tenure but I would say they've got the the more well all schools will have behaviors they probably in my opinion they've gotten more significant more often since coming out of co um that's my opinion now I'm not in the
classroom but it it seems like you know from Joe and Bonnie I hear about things that we'd only hear about never or once in a blue moon more often um I think the frequency is more often
um especially since co ended Were there any other changes that occurred you know so we're trying to pinpoint some things so consistency is obviously one thing you know co changed a lot of things but were there was there
anything else that was changing in that time period any curriculum is there any Well we had superintendent principal change multiple times well not superintendent but principal multiple times um our curriculum hasn't changed
well amplified changed in reading and math but that we're on you're on year three of it and year three of math as well in some Well in some grades didn't All the child cares in this area have
gone away and how many have been lost in the last two years just at HSN 100 in two years 100 kids 100 kids at Inkley Elementary so I mean and in that time
almost all if not all in our district have closed there might be one or two home inh home ones yeah a couple have opened up within the last year and a half i think they fill up pretty quickly
um our early childhood program used to be kids for not even at 40 and I think statistically people aren't having as many kids but that's not that's not the now problem yeah i think
the census says they're out there their feelings about first the extra fund balance ideas or and then I guess the second question is once that extra that
we weren't planning on is spent is there are there feelings about reducing that for going into next school year so my first qu you know are there feelings about other ways to spend that excess that we weren't saving for
it happened um and then followup is there feelings about coming in under 25% as we set the budget for next year well I know we're getting late in the game for a gym floor i mean we're getting close so if they can't get the gym floor
done by August could that get pushed off one year and then we put anotherundred and whatever of LTFM in there so then trying to find my numbers we have 133 in there is that from one
year or 2 years 2 years so roughly about 60 65 roughly,000 so then we would have almost 200,000 in there but I'm guessing the cost of the floor is going to unless they would probably let's say hold the unless they
hold the code if they can't get it through yeah and I won't know their timeline till I know and we meet next Friday is that correct the 10th yeah a week from this Friday oh twoth a week and a half
so I won't necessarily know their timeline till I know which company yeah yeah i mean we can try but they're sealed bids i don't even know who was What was the deadline on those bids you remember Frank they have to be in the
Thursday before we open them so they come in Thursday we're opening them the next day and then we have a board meeting Monday after so I don't remember the dates off the top but they come in Thursday we open Friday board meeting Monday
so they're due by the 10th when we 11 that's only I guess that's one of my um thoughts if and on those bills there's no completion date it's just we're asking for what it would cost to do that yeah then not a
completion date we can ask the companies who reach out to us you know what would be your completion date we didn't put that in the bid quote when we start getting class sizes um can we get like state average area average
with that so if we went below the 25% are you looking at overall lowering it to say 22 23 or just like last year doing like a one time yearly thing it's a good question
we don't have to change a policy we don't we don't have I mean the board we could lower it without changing the policy correct which which we thought we were doing in June you you all don't have to change the policy but could still spend it um
has it always been 25% i can the policy has stated to try to stay at I believe so i know when we talked about it it was uh earlier in the school year we have the highest fund balance around
percentage-wise um which is a good and can be a bad thing i mean yes if there's a catastrophe we have prepared ourselves for that we don't want to be where some of these school districts are with having operation debt things like that having
to go up for we don't want to get there um but we especially in the last couple years we we are at the top of the at least region five six between here and St cloud at the top of the list um I don't know that we need to be the
top in my opinion but we don't want to be the bottom either i'm being flexible yeah i'm okay to be facing you i would like to see like you said we have on this what we're considering to
reduce all areas transportation maintenance food service district wide if And is a bus necessary for next year i mean is that I know our fleet is getting
older but with decreased enrollment is it something that can wait a year or two i mean we could possibly I mean these big purchases if they could We How many extra buses do we have proofs
probably five are we Are we trading some buses in can we trade some buses in or are they worth that much to trade in probably not basically scrap yeah I think they'll give you a scrap price for bus there was
somebody that we had used before they would take the bus and give you x amount of dollars for the bus and then you could purchase parts back from them it's kind of like a a salvage yard type
situation no cash involved just a credit so you can He didn't purchase a bus last year we purchased one in 20 two yeah last year we bought Van this school year we bought vans type three um
we bought a bus last school year correct are are all five of those extra buses DOT inspected and like ready to go yeah so they're in good running condition so they are passing DOT as you guys saw
they are also getting old i think our oldest we purchased in ' 07 or something like that maybe even maybe before we have some old buses but they are passing DOT correct um so could we yeah
is it hard to get a bus like it was a few years ago i don't think so um seems like all the parts and everything are you know it's not like the co days where everything was you couldn't get
this or you couldn't get that and so if say we approve a bus next month how fast are you going to get that bus that I didn't ask him i guess usually it's September or October when we get them i don't know if they can go faster
that's what the last one was we got it in October after school after the school year started and I think we ordered middle of April do we ever run out of buses in like say spring sports where you got all five of
them being used if I can find some more drivers yeah it's more we run out of drivers not the buses not as of yet there's a few days upcoming that are questionable i got three things going on in this direction
[Music] but you have the buses to go there it's just the licensed drivers yeah I mean we we don't have to get a bus if that's just we've been trying to stick to that every other year so we update
our fleet but our five in reserve are good to go we were off because we couldn't get one the one year yep we missed a year we missed a year getting one yep we didn't a long while when I first started we tried to get two some years um we
haven't done that for a long time i don't know that we'd be in a position to get two next year but Bruce and I can certainly talk more about that yeah nor do I think we probably need to i mean if we see enrollment come out
um different things but are we running the same amount of bus routes that we were with 80 less kids um I think we took one out but our type threes go up and one of
those drivers help with those type 3s so it might not be you know taking as many buses out but the drivers are still going to get our type three kids to and from can you take other students in those or does it can it only be
for type three it's supposed to be kids with special transportation needs so they have to have like I correct with uh special transportation written in there yeah has to be written in there and how often do those get
looked for yearly yearly real and some sooner but yearly at minimum everything is in for sports right if they're purchased with special ed dollars which we have a couple vehicles that have been there needs to be special
ed kids on board um most of our I think we have two that have been purchased that way uh the rest of ours have been bought with general ed money so be used for So that's fine yep okay that that is something we could do which I guess I'll save that when we get to the
transportation stuff how much do we spend with SCR it's a good I don't know that dollar amount off the top of my head we don't want to know and our and our costs continue to go up this way um yeah they have salaries and inflation
and things like that too my if I don't know I'm going to if we ever left we could never hire the staff that SCRED provides to cover the needs of our um special ed kids we'd have to have OT PT
special ed director probably um without even thinking of all the names but I'm guessing it even if it was cheaper we'd never find all those positions um be really hard to do so that's one benefit of being in that
co-op is yes we spend but we have all those high need unique cases covered but I can get that dollar i don't know that dollar amount off the top of my head but as I understand it from asking in years past when you weren't the
superintendent we have to be a part of something so then we would have to go like to Rum River no I don't know if we have to but we would have to have all those resources depending on who's enrolled and what their IEPs say and um
you know having special ed administ you know we get a lot of education the three administrators on special ed law but we didn't go to special ed school for our degree that I'd be a little nervous and it's huge for us like
the the people that we can contact and get answers for like instantaneously and making sure that we are following the law because I mean that's what you run into when you have IEPs these are federal documents fedally legal documents that you have to follow
so it probably keeps us out of a lot of lawsuits to be honest like that's that's what they do on that support side of when those kids who are serviced by an IEP find themselves in a in a difficult situation they're kind of they're the experts in it so that's
where we're able to kind of tap into some deeper education and supports what about the services to our PT and OT how often do you see that i mean because they're split between multiple school
districts yeah they're generally overseeing all six SCRED districts so a lot of their support is indirect so they're working with our special ed teachers to how have them know how to how to like
work with their PT or their OT or they're working with the DE teacher um most of those 90% are indirect services so there's some that are [Music]
seen six times a year there's some that are seen three times a year it just kind of really depends on the need of the the student [Music] now did they also have an issue with having their um the school psychologist do they have school psychologists on
staff we have two we have two at this year okay because didn't they have to hire essentially your temp agency there for a bit last year we had a virtual school like other questions you have or thoughts i'll probably
bring some of these or some ideas it doesn't necessarily have to be these but you said like I said you may start seeing some reductions as quick as our next meeting but any other feedback as we or ultimately I build the budget for
next year i think you should have some options about going below the 25 if necessary not saying that we're going to but I'd hate to see it go down to 20
do a lot of schools have ranges like ours is very specific are there some schools that have like ranges of like we'd like to keep it between Good 20 and 25% so you can kind of keep those numbers good line good question i don't know i I can research that
and the other thing is is there a plan in case federal funding is lost i haven't heard we're going to lose it i mean if if federal funding is gone I mean back to that's you know that's another four or
$500,000 um I haven't heard that but so no I don't currently have a plan for that if that happened but everything I've heard is that we are not losing that money that's what I have on that topic yep is
that it all right then we're going to move on to co-op transportation so a very similar document to what we had um last month i do I had our our community education coordinator and activities director pull up some numbers
um which I've heard may not be perfectly accurate um but these are the numbers that they gave me these are grades this year's grades so 24 25 students um what I was told is girls hockey for high
school is 712 boys hockey is 1012 um wrestling can be 712 and gymnastics is 712 um I know we have some gymnasts who do participate
that are not on this list but I believe it's because they are in an independent gymnastics um or something not affiliated with the school i think um you know having a little conversation today I wonder if our bo boys hockey numbers are not accurate because they go
through Pine City's community education and the same would maybe be be for girls hockey um but these are the numbers that I ran as far as how many kids if if we did it this year what grades they'd be in um and assuming they all moved forward uh having some other
conversations i do think if transportation was provided these numbers would likely go up um don't know about all four sports but I would anticipate them growing if if transportation uh was provided i know specifically the person I talked to today was talking
about wrestling that more kids who did stop uh would likely come back um we talked about cost one way i guess that's what I heard the board was more supportive of than going both ways um so
if you go all these are high-end costs if we provided one way I think especially if we were going south uh wrestling hockey and gymnastics they wouldn't be three different standalones um they would maybe be combined together
so um those costs would likely not be as high but without knowing which kids are going um that's how we ran the numbers and same on the bottom for if a bus was to be provided um I was talking starting to
talk about a little bit just um if if the board the board had asked me to look at this if if we needed to buy type three transportation which depending on numbers we could have to buy up to two um one going south one going north one
way to fund one of them um we do have some MA money which kind of go back to the last conversation has to be used on special ed um we could buy another vehicle for special ed and repurpose another one um if we needed two type 3
vehicles um first of all the MA money we have about 27,000 and at least the last couple vans we bought were 34,000 somewhere around there 32,000 so it wouldn't quite cover the entire purchase of one van if we needed to buy a second
that's roughly 30 35,000 um more than that i I do think um it is something that would be good to do for ours i struggle um when we had just talked about needing to cut up to
$800,000 or more putting ads in place um I I hear you know the four different groups uh three different sports and and their requests i just struggle with um the unknowns and adding potential costs
to our district but um the board wanted to bring this back this month um I do worry on the flip side does it we don't want to lose more kids i I I get that completely but with with our budget being where it's at I just struggle
recommending making any ad even if it's one that would be good for some students and I do think this would be good i just struggle with adding or recommending to add more cost when we're looking to cut over
$800,000 can I speak to hockey on that hockey person to give some information on the hockey are you just giving us numbers um and also just to say it doesn't really apply to hockey in the same way it would like I would focus
more on building like wrestling that's going to be here as a sport but now is the time to bring that back i love wrestling my brother was a wrestler i managed it here too and I think that is doable our hockey timing for it to even
need busing no I'm a I'm an eighth grader who may get pulled up to JV next year so you're looking at the earliest like freshman year even mattering and the and what we also know is they have to leave uh class early so you're
looking at schedules not even matching their with practice times so I guess I would focus more attention on the wrestling group and yes the numbers are not accurate there's there are a few more hockey players in there but youth
time doesn't matter it's all over the place um and we're grateful to have sports pass covered to the extent that they are we're um for us transportation
is not you're talking boys or girls both both okay but primarily right now boys and they go to P City yes and my daughter would be a seventh grader here playing hockey also but um that's also
not something that I would ask the school to mental transport for girls kind of thing out so I knew that would be a lack of getting funding or transport is not
going to if it was just wrestling that you know I'd say focus more on wrestling and building that as a sport that is here but how can we if it was just wrestling and we took a type three it'd be almost 3,000 if we ended up needing
to take a us uh cuz numbers went up it would be 10,000 a little over 10,000 but I'm saying if so they're all so all but girls hockey ourself correct they would take one bus it would leave right after school right move events so you it's
really just a gymnastics number to look at on the high end cuz they would ride in the same vehicle am I that would be my yes like it's not three no we we drop if we did it we'd go to Pine City drop off wrestling and hockey then go to Rush
City drop off gymnastics so the most it would be would be that 14 14,000 right with a bus with a bus with a bus cuz they would we would be taking
separate vehicles the the issue with a bus just which we talked about if not even just the cost is it's hard to find licensed CVL drivers and all of our current drivers are on
route so that would be the hard part not that it's impossible but if if everything was the same from now to September or whenever you know winter season started hard to find drivers with CDL license um I did also find out I had
someone ask find out what our other co-op schools do i did hear from Mora mora does provide transportation for two for swimming and for oh I don't remember what else hockey girls hockey that they co-op with and Rush City told me they uh
they co-op with Bram which I didn't know that but they co-op with Bram and do provide transportation uh for those i asked them both if they had a a minimum because we had talked about that last month morris said no and and Rush City didn't answer that question rush City Bram Wrestling and
you guys can correct me if I'm wrong it's kind of split almost 50/50 like they practice at Rush and they practice at Bram half are at Bram the meets half at Rush City yeah once they got the numbers
up to a more equal and they split practices Wednesdays they stay at their home where we were at at home i think we used to do it that way am I right hley and Pine City used to split it or was it always that was kind of the gray area where I was quite around there um but uh
it used to be when I coached when I was 21 22 you did Pine City strictly came to Hankley that was it um and then Hley started having more wrestlers and it just sorry and we end up having to go
back down there but like I said earlier uh last month um if we can get numbers they are fully willing to split that that time some here some down there practice time yep yep so that that would
cut your cost literally in half again too you know it just Yeah we look at transporting two days a week likely with that cuz they talked about mimicking the rush so two days a week kids would go to Pine City two days a week the Pine City kids would come here and then Wednesdays
and practice in your home location i'll take that responsibility of trying to get that that those numbers up here all right just need a little bit of help on the front side lower cost for two days per week and this is the cost for hiring
what if there's a volunteer driver are we then it would just be then it would just be uh if if the it's just paying for gas really at that point and if we had to buy a vehicle but all this fod I don't
even remember what WC stands for thank you work comp um it's just paying paying the gas and the mileage and then whatever tear but yeah and if there's a volunteer does that affect hired staff having the opportunity to drive if they
wanted to i guess it's up to the school board i mean I I will say all of our current hired people are driving yeah i mean we would have to hire if we were going to hire we'd have to hire someone specific for this or in conjun conjunction with
someone else so I don't think it would affect our current Yeah drivers cuz they're already driving are already being utilized all all the practices happen right after school correct yeah so that that that's that's what we're going after just get them down there at
3:00 or 3:15 3:30 yep we're good from there so just get them yes just getting them there that's it if we did have somebody offer to drive to volunteer their time to drive um that would be like a type three vehicle if it changed to a bus I'm not
sure if that person would be willing to go and get their bus license but as it stood right now there was one person willing to drive the route south and how many students can
Seven can fit in our vans seven students six well we can get nine if I mean that's full i mean it's not like we're going to nine including the driver so it' be
eight participants do you guys know anything about the volunteer or the person that has volunteered to drive have you heard anything about that yes okay all right i think I know he spoke to both
Mandy and I too so okay so it could be more than one person it's probably the same person okay yeah they would need to do a background all done everything and it's all done
everything is done so we're not talking whole lot of money to volunteer well what if a bus is there are they willing to get there i mean because if these numbers truly are going to go up I mean seven's not a lot of kids no you're not even like
we're looking at a bus here we're not looking at a type three but would it would we be just looking at a type three for next year and then the following year if it goes up then we have to explore the other options for a bus most what it seemed like to me most likely
cuz then when the word gets out of like hey like this is actually a feasible thing but that would even happen this year it doesn't take very long to hit seven I mean well especially if we're doing wrestling hockey and gymnastics right once they find out there's
transportation you know we have we have to plan on a bus like that were to get out for next time it could like what happens if we can't find somebody to drive You don't know that i mean I mean our
our routes take precedence o our routes would take precedence over driving to practice i mean we've had to cancel other athletic things from very rare but last year we had to cancel other athletic things cuz we got to prioritize getting kids home that might have been
two years ago two years ago hey Joe do you know if that volunteer was willing to take wrestling gymnastics everything the whole I spoke to him about it and he I told him it kind of be like a oneshot deal all the way down so boom boom boom and come back and perfect sound like he
was okay with that yeah that's how I understood it as well and verified that so awesome though there's no gymnastics on here but if they heard it was obviously I get it they hear there is transportation maybe they would but as of right now there's isn't i agree with
that anyway you almost got to have two numbers here one with just a few kids and then 3 months later you get a whole bunch more uh we prepared to go to the higher number i mean you have to we have to plan for we
have to plan for these numbers so we need to find I mean that's great that somebody wants to volunteer but in reality it's going to be Yeah you'd have to plan i mean we hope it's a bus which is a great thing you know the most you know gymnastics being the
furthest or girls hockey that those are the two numbers with the bus that we'd be looking at ryan that's your tab for the driver staying too oh sorry sorry these are the two numbers the 25,000 if we take a bus to girls thanks Joe 25,000
for girls hockey up to 14,000 for Janette because they just could go all the way to Brush City and come back and the added if we if the board decides to I would think we would have to buy at least one type three vehicle
if if we're throwing girls hockey there probably two um like I said one could probably mostly be covered with MA dollars which doesn't come out of our general fund or our fund balance it's a restricted fund balance
um but there's a possibility we'd have to buy up to two vehicles which would be which could be used for other things during the day could be used for other things and other things would come i think Joe is volunteering to get
his license i I have robotics in the winter so I'm a little busy but I'm going to make a shameless plug that you know there's a lot of other schools that I go to that also have 15 passenger vehicles for some reason or 12 it makes it type three i
know we we fight about this all the time i'm just saying like somehow in some way shape or form they're doing something special that we are not and they're not private schools they're public schools you drive down to Rush City and I took a picture and I sent I sent it
every time he goes somewhere he sends me a picture send a picture of this thing and I'm sure maybe they have to have their little B bus license or something too but a bus license with a 15 passenger van that I could use for robotics and I would definitely consider my options i do think you'd have to have
your bus license i'd consider my options all right so you're volunteering for your bus license you're volunteering to get your bus license if I can take it to robotics and do whatever a day
without driving I don't have to take all three of times that's mileage yep times 52 round trips so so but then earlier so Tiffany had
mentioned not being as concerned about the girls hockey because they're figuring something out so then I would probably take that off of my mind but then I've also had the question posed to me that I had mentioned earlier with girls hockey is why are is girls hockey
connected with Moose Lake not Pine City is that something to reevaluate maybe not at this point maybe no but like for down like years yeah I don't remember the why bonnie maybe remembers the why pine City's
recent I mean girls within the last what four or five years mhm uh yeah yeah it's just that down the road you know if we're looking at doing a bus would it make sense to have everyone go along the way only thing about is having to go double
A strangle me right now sorry and you have we'd have to get them here yeah and so some of the students that aren't here probably wouldn't even qualify for girls hockey riding the bus and that would be a year two years down
the road i can review my memory with Bonnie and try to remember the why sorry but that was a question that was just to me yeah I I know what I've heard but wouldn't take much for jogging my memory
okay co-op transportation is there any more questions if not I am looking for a motion [Music] i don't think I know how to read it right but I would make the motion to approve moving forward with co-op
transportation for one way for one way the trees i mean I I mean the goal I think is to grow it and then I think if we grow it we keep these students here and I
know it's like one of those risks you know like we're looking at budget and it's really tough but if we can keep students here I mean we've exhausted a lot of different options of enrollment and what we can do and there is a need like we're
hearing the need if we can keep the students that we have here and if sports is that reason I think it's worth a shot do you have any statistics on you mentioned last time sometimes they give a
wrestling they go to basketball do a lot of families move to another district so last year we can only speak to the wrestlers that we lost from sixth to seventh grade last year but we had two different families that two families
wrestlers of wrestlers that's which means well we had we had so we had um five wrestlers and one hockey so there's six kids that left our school district last year moving from sixth grade to 7th grade which is the first year because
that's and they got up and moved their household to the other they still live in Hankley just went to Pine City the other so then that family is is transporting them to that school the school picks I was picking up and then I don't know
what I I don't I the Pine City I think Pine City will pick him up right here um he lives just across the street you know um so the school will pick them up right here at the high school and then they drive down to Pine City um the Mora they
she works there so she's able to just bring them to school but yeah the bus will bring them right to their house yeah so they don't have to move no they didn't have to be a student they have to move they just switch schools
and that's like I said that's every year every couple years you lose a handful of kids to that or you have the kids that quit wrestling because they can't Oh sorry with that are you It
is not going to take away from transportation i mean that's just a given right yes that it doesn't take away from our transport getting our kids Well we legally have to get our kids home would come first right so if we don't
find a driver this doesn't happen it doesn't work absolutely but I think we give it a shot no right yeah i'm just clarify safety here we almost have to budget a school bus and a driver because we want it to grow so if it does grow we got to be prepared with
the budget yep that's what you're saying okay and I would like to with no minimum because if it's that situation where you know if we say there's a with a minimum of five kids and say we have you know
that many type three it be less money yeah then we're not hurting families that have chosen to stay in the district because of sports and then finding out that sorry we don't have enough to participate so that would be my motion if that makes
sense i second that motion is there any discussion all in favor say I i opposed motion passes six we are moving on to daycare uh I met with a couple board members
with a community member staff member um who came to us and asked if we'd be willing to open a daycare at Hinckley Elementary School we had a follow-up meeting with the same two board members and Mrs scullard um some of the reasons and I just chose some of them the the
individual shared a lot of the things we've heard um that Hinckley really needs a daycare we just talked about a little bit ago that there's only one maybe two uh locally that are often filled or there's not spots we know from previous conversations when we were
talking about Finson that there's quite a need for daycare uh in all of Pine County but but Hankley as well um we believe Hinckley will have open classrooms next year four or or maybe we don't know all that yet but we think there'll be four classrooms that could
be open next year the person who came forward was willing to be the point person was willing to help the district with writing an application was willing to work as a daycare provided by the district um there would be some needs um there's
probably more than I just have on this we know um we would need a playground that's appropriate for birth to four years old um that if if the board was on favor with that we kind of need that anyway at Hingley Elementary and really in elementary anyway as our playgrounds
are appropriate for grade ages six and up um so that'd be a two-part benefit we know we would need some CS classroom supplies and probably fencing around the playground there's probably other costs but those were the ones um that I know about for sure
um we talked back in August about costs roughly for staff um and rates that we could charge which I had this is what Anna had shared with us so it's why it says Finlesson is that's just what it said roughly and we were looking at
toddlers at the time um but roughly we were looking at salaries for teacher and we called them assistant teacher classroom aid again depending how many uh students we have how many staff we have um at the time Anna kind of broke
that up if we had one classroom she broke it up if we have two classrooms so just doing m if we had up to four classrooms that number could be doubled now most of that would be funded for by families um I you know we would have to
build it we wouldn't necessarily hire two classrooms if we didn't have kids for two classrooms um and then she ran rates for us with anywhere if we charged 170 bucks an hour which I believe is what the county reimbures a day a day
I'm sorry um sorry um yeah no yeah and but commonly in the area you know I've heard that you could charge 240 250 maybe more but these were
the numbers um that Anna had pulled for us back in August she put down the 80% revenue just for attendance but you can kind of see what the revenue would be uh based on how many kids come in the other
tab I shared also came from Anna was just some data um that she had shared with us about child care centers what the ratio of of staff to child would be um this person who came forward was interested in working with any age group
or all age groups is is kind of what she said um and then you can kind of see what the rates of some local daycarees around us what they're charging families so as we met with the individual we
talked um about just kind of what the process would be and and the first process which the board had talked about three years ago approved um then we got to August and didn't do it but we we talked about now should we apply to run our own daycare out of Hankley
Elementary School um and while we're going through that application kind of do some more investigation into costs maybe put a survey out i don't know perfectly how to do that survey cuz I don't know everyone who's having infants but put a survey out to the
community um to see what the need is in Hankley um not voting on this tonight but just the thought was to have a conversation as a board tonight to see if you're interested and then maybe go as quickly as voting on applying to open
or run a daycare at our next board meeting in April um the individual we met with did meet with Leslie Solder and Anna Riser um it sounded from that conversation that the grant that we had talked a lot about was not available to
us i I will say I took a text today um not much came out of it just kind of wondering if if we were doing it and I said we're discussing if we want to consider doing it tonight um but wondering the board's thoughts or what
information you'd want me to gather um as we lead to kind of two weeks from now if we want to talk about applying to run a daycare at Hley Elementary School and certainly the board members that were with me can add in bonnie was with Canadian um that's my
summer well we did a lot of talking here about one chson and actually before that uh they I'm not sure who came up with these statistics but at that time there was a need for 200
daycare children in Hankley and 75 in Fison now as other ones have been built like in Sandstone if that number's come down not sure the radius they were talking uh it was just school age kids or families that are in the school i don't
know how they got to 200 or the 75 but they stressed a number of times at a number of meetings I've been at with Lesie Solder and Pine County Group it is the number one econ economic driver in a community
so number one you talk to a lot of people who travel a long ways for good daycarees not to mention a daycare teaches these youngsters so many things you it's hard to believe um 2 years old they know the
alphabet they know color so they start to read and identify their name and they've got a real jump on education probably help our grade point average make all the teachers more successful all those things it just brings the
quality of students up it becomes sorry it becomes a u a driver for attendance in school that's what I got
so the daycare grants then that must be there must be two other facilities because that daycare grant was uh P technical community college and then there were it was meant for three yeah it was a mystery they wouldn't tell us who the third one could be or the second
or third we believe that they are going to open a site in Hankley what we've heard is they don't have and I don't know I haven't heard this with my own ears but what I've heard is they may open a site in Hankley they don't know who's going to
run it um and I heard the third part went to Willow River um for their daycare that's in the school oh Willow River is going to have a daycare in the school any idea how many children are there i don't know i
can find that out though i don't know well they were going to offer us 30,000 for the Finson thing if we voted but we voted down so we lost the 30,000 cuz they didn't we didn't as
a board think that 30,000 was enough to make it start up are those other grants still available with the um there's couple other organizations that the donations yes we don't know that i don't know that
there may be other grants out there i don't know we could ask about the Was it one donation 1,000 and what was the second one yes that was for all of all of it was for the donation okay that would maybe not be available if it went
to him correct how did So with looking at it at the school would it be year round the the individual said they'd be willing to open be open year round and days off other than probably holidays what are your thoughts
uh I think it's there's things we would have to think about like um I think it's a great idea to start there i think having something on site something close to the freeway so I mean you're not going to
get just our school kids there you're going to get community members that are driving to wherever for work um I think it's a good entry point into our school um obviously I the thing I look at is the educational component of the rest of
the kids in the school and how do we like divide and conquer per se um the end of the building that I'd be looking at for that would be we could seclude them there um we have an area
that we could turn into a a playground for that age of student um I think bathrooms could it'd be a wonky thing but we could make it work um I guess one thing I might dabble with down the road would be
a secured entrance just for the daycare people so they're not like going through the whole building as they're dropping off at all different hours but is it doable absolutely would it be less cost to have it at weekly versus than listeners
less cost startup cost um I'm guessing probably similar i guess I don't know that like Finison we would have had to we were talking about removing the band room putting them somewhere else i think there I mean the rooms were there
but location of other classrooms were were needed to be moved these classrooms will be empty just due to some enrollment issues anyway so we don't have that additional cost the playground does need to be done uh I worked with a
couple vendors this week uh we could get a really decent startup for about 40,000 and that's it's not huge but it does in that space at least allows us to build onto that in in due time and like Brian said we need something for
our preschool anyway i think the costs would be pretty similar depending how many rooms we open and what kind of fencing apparatus you know we'd need to put around for safety um a benefit every room I believe I'm
accurate when I say every every room already has sink um so we wouldn't have that problem um and bathrooming I don't know what all the rules are if we were going down to infant but bathrooming would work Um we'd have to figure out if
food if our food service could feed you know I'm sure there's some rules between what MDE covers and what they don't cover i don't know if they go all the way down to toddler probably who's eating but we'd have to investigate that but I'm sure other schools do it so I'm
sure there's some kind of framework to figure that out shirt to get it started according to um the application for playground equipment the only thing that's needed is three pieces
of durable outdoor large muscle equipment per group so we don't even have to to start up it doesn't have to be a huge expense i guess we'd just have to cross that with MDE because if our preschool kids are going to be using it
as well we've been getting by with I know we've been getting by but we're liable we shouldn't be Well it said like what age groups for all for that's toddler through Oh toddler toddler and then preschool it
says not No the new Hinkley isn't it birth up oh yeah what because this Oh wait i don't know i don't know i guess I don't know what what I assume they're opening birth up but I don't know that for a fact okay and I don't know for sure when
they'll be ready to open um Oh wait are you talking about i'm talking about the one our ours or the one with the If we did No if we did it here at the elementary school we was there like we heard before application takes six months um we don't know that for fact so
if we started in April what 6 months from then Octoberish maybe September October we could be ready i'm thinking age group like what we had talked about that day i I I hear you what I what we talked about that day was
like we would like to start an infant room infant a toddler room and school age room like a whole family that has we're going to have to take our four-year-old program down to four days a week so then that fifth day they're going to need
somewhere to go uh they talked about only charging when the kids were there so you're not running into the same daycare um issues that some of our families were running into um in the past um
if if we had kids to you know fit that bill so potentially three rooms right is that what you just said that's what toddler so then how many staff would be required
for three rooms how many kids and then square footage of the room as well yeah i mean I mean we kind of compared to what the Pine County site was going
to look like and I think our rooms will be fine we have to get Melvin in to to do some accurate measuring but I know it's 35 square ft per child but I don't know that that was what age that
was i think it's like six in how big the rooms are that you have [Music] um I believe preschool 782 ft toddler 594 and infant 376 per how many kids um
probably that's the 1 to 1 to 4 1 to 7 1 to 10 uhhuh same ratios up there so you need at least three staff and then somebody overseeing it so four probably four if we had three rooms probably at least four staff just to
give them breaks and so you know daycare doesn't run on just an 8 hour shift you know some start at 6:00 a.m some might get picked up at 6 depending on our hours but I would think if we had three rooms at least four staff
is there any advantage excuse me of the operator that runs the program of them basically leasing the the rooms and they
take over the operation for like a dollar a year would there be any advantage to the owner of that thing i don't know sarah can you answer that or would you It wouldn't be I don't think it'd be an
owner i think it'd be a staff member okay so it' be a districtledd okay what if it's not a district employee just a personal person that basically if a private person came in with their license is that what you're asking yeah
basically if we gave them like free rent or something yeah i don't I guess it would look different because it would be if it's in the elementary school it' be more center instead of a home base and with home base it's like one adult to like two infants three toddlers and like
three preschoolers but if you put it in a spot where there's going to be a lot of children you'd have to have an adult for each ratio of that child in each do you know what I mean so it wouldn't be a benefit for Okay so for a center there's
more the ratios are different mhm they're higher [Music] he got me the name at the end of the video [Music] bbd I think it's a good idea that we do
something i thought to fill this was a good idea also is there more information Leo or anyone that if we have this as a action item to apply that you want answered or as best I can do in two
weeks is there any cost involved in applying for grants two years ago uh for grants or for the daycare whatever or two years ago when we approved applying it was $500 i don't know if that's gone up since then or not
[Music] so I would I would like to know if the playground if if we could discuss the school garden as the playground if um the fencing is um
up to par yeah i don't think the fencing would be the post would be but the fencing just replace the Yeah i don't know what you would for fencing around there that's cuz right now it's essentially chicken wire you see a lot of them with just a
cycle together yeah is anything happening with the school the weeds grow really really well i I've asked for somebody to and it's just want to do something that it just it's so it's not being used somewhere
else so it it it would be actually a really great space for our uh preschool playground aka here program and is that close proximity to the
uh close enough yeah i mean definitely doable that's good good exercise to walk that wherever it is if it's in the back so it doesn't say how far a trans has to be from the facility i don't I
didn't see that i didn't see anything but think about a lot of them are just attached to the building you part of the building is No that's what I was wondering if it's a ways away is there any Oh if it's too far yeah like what's the I
didn't see we can hold off later about talking about building a new gym cuz that'd be all right too but we can wait on that now I mean we need one cool well if you think of any other questions you can always let Brian know obviously
we'll we'll have this on the April um board meeting yep um does anybody have any other questions i should have asked that first before I otherwise we're going to go on to um the
school weapons policy 501 yeah I'm putting this now because it's a mandated policy that I can't find a link to anywhere um and the last paper copy I can find is from 2004 so just doing a first reading this
is coming right from M MSBA we follow this but we need to have the policy uh available to us so but I did sign it in 2022 you did i sent it to you yeah and the link you sent when I go to open it
there's just not a link it doesn't exist so I can't find it anywhere other than 2004 so we need to get that uh approved so any questions on this policy if not we will be approving it at the
April board meeting yes and we're at the end i'm just looking for a motion to adjurnn the meeting i'll make the motion second there's a motion and a second all in favor i opposed