good evening and welcome to this working session of the Lakeville Area Schools Board of Education for attendance purposes we will have each person present introduce uh or present introduce themselves and their role please speak loudly and clearly for the microphones Bri shindle Board of
Education Emily McDonald assistant superintendent Carly Anderson Board of Education Renda alre administrative Services Judy ker Board of Education Peter Le pollster Brian Thompson Board of Education Bill hren Business Services
Terry Lynn Board of Education Doug vanile superintendent great thank you we're gonna I'm going to switch um the order you may want to let them know what you're doing oh oh um this is binley and I am um in place of Kim Baker and Dave
Anderson tonight they are both gone from the meeting tonight so I will be running the meeting um this evening we have two items on the agenda and I'm going to I'm going to do a quick switch um the first one we're cover is the summary of the superintendent performance and evaluation um let's see here so I have a
summary and I'll read that and then we'll move into the community survey results so the summary of our close session was the school board met on July 9th 2024 and continued the meeting until July 18th 2024 to conduct a performance review of Dr Douglas vanile
superintendent the school board reviewed the three long-term goals previously established with the superintendent regarding decision-making budget development and maintenance and relationships the board concluded that Dr Dr vanile has made progress on each of these goals but would like to see
more progress the board did not discuss the communication goal that was added in March due to the short time short time period between that goal being developed in the July 9th meeting and after that we will move on to our community survey results for
potential funding requests so this evening we have Peter Le them in the pollster as he called himself here to share some information with you he's been here before most of you have seen him so they he's going to follow up on a survey cuz about a little over a month
ago when we met we had the conversation about what we have coming down the pike as far as levies renewals things that have to go before the community for vots and and the conversation was do you have an operating Levy do you do a bond we we got do you run them together do you run
them separately at the time the board said run them separately so we kind of engage Peter to be able to come back and say it was in the spring when you did your last survey what is the temperature now and so he'll explain what's going on with that so I'll turn it over to Peter
super it's a pleasure to be here with you this evening to go off go over the the survey results uh somebody is going to be the clicker is right there in front of me oh perfect excellent we want to go forward not I'm going to go this way okay uh
just to review with everybody what we undertook this time 625 random sample across the district uh this is hot off the presses uh the today the fieldwork was July 8 through the 17th uh much shorter survey it's concentrated uh uh average interview
time was 6 minutes non-response rate 62% 625 projectable to plus or minus 4% in 95 out of 100 cases uh cell phone only households this time 58% 99% landline only the remainder have both landline
and cell phone if we look at residential longevity in the district 37% have been here for 10 years or less well 38% have been here for over 20 years median comes in right at about 15 years the typical residents's been in the district 15%
have a preschool or an infant a third have a child attending the Lakeville Area School District and then 63% are empty nesters and that once again for everybody that does not uh infer an age we have a 24y old it's just lack of
presence of a child in the household so once again uh 2/3 basically are your non constituent shall we say just residents uh 15% are renters uh median home value uh comes in
you know you have the higher values it comes in at about 450,000 uh with the higher values on the scale men and women were equally distributed 50/50 uh continuing with the age we have 26% that are 18 to 34 year olds 33% over
the age of 55 typical residents r at about 45 years old uh Highly Educated a majority are college graduates and that includes post-graduate degrees Masters doctorates 20% high school graduates or less um one item and it absolutely
impacted your questions last year like we talked about the macroeconomics of the households um last year year that was about 50 55% and I think earlier this year we were in the low 40s it continues to
improve um we're seeing that the the norm you know last year the norm uh first quarter was almost 60% kind of got down into the 50s by the end of last year first half of this year it's been going down to the mid-40s so you're a little bit under so that's a good
position that the macroeconomic situation you'll have less people that would support but simply can't afford to support the good news the bad news is it's still higher than it was before the pandemic um you know before the pandemic we're about 25% so
you know it's still up from there but it's moving in the right direction um and then uh the geography I split Lakeville this time uh we'll write it up in the report any differences between the North and the South and then uh Burnsville and the rest of the
district um we Revisited a few of the at atmospheric questions and that was intentional typically I wouldn't do it but obviously the night I was here to present the last time was uh the event
with the teachers and everything going on so we wanted to check in to see if there's any lingering impact on the atmospherics of the district what's the most serious issue facing the district well the lack of funding is at
10% it was 20% this spring um so Focus has changed a little bit we have more items what's new well 8% talking about the teachers contract and the strike that whole discussion um budget cuts at 8% because that's been part of the discussion over
the course of the spring um and then you do have a lot of idiosyncratic that 10% that's just less than 2% doesn't fall in you know come into a category um so it's very much all over the board a little bit of a concern that lack of funding
went down but if you put in I think the teachers contract the strikes that's kind of part of the conversation budget cuts that's also part of the conversation then that gets to 26% that are talking about a financial issue within the
district some perceptions does the district spend taxpayers money effectively and efficiently it has not changed uh from the spring 71% bless you um and so we're going to see on a lot of these items now if we' had done this
survey at the end of May the results would have been different but there's always a cooling off period for everything when public opinion happens like right now you're going to see polls coming out on the presidential race tell you right now don't listen to them for about two to three weeks you have to let
things settle let them get into the water so what they were 6 weeks ago doesn't matter it's where you are today and and this has stayed the same do they still trust you to do what's right for children absolutely the decisionmaking
it's down a little bit and that's obviously going to be part of the The Fallout it's still 6827 Norm on that right now is about 2 to one so still above the norm although it has decreased a little bit what about
another set of atmospherics what about involving the community obviously there's lots to involve the community on that is stable over 20 course of 2024 and then what about the question the schools are good investment and i would
support a property tax increase to protect that investment um the agreement hasn't changed um but the disagreement did go up Five Points it's something to look at we'll talk a little bit more when we test a specific question there's been some movement on it um but still
the threshold we always look for is 30% or less on that because once again this is in concept this is your core opposition because we're not saying operating Levy Bond Levy or Bond referendum Tech Levy we're not giving them a dollar amount just in concept
they disagree they will not support any property tax increase so that 25% um it's one and four that's the core opposition in the district currently what about Job performance ratings across the board
unchanged um the the uh School Board uh 66% the superintendent actually an Administration went up uh 7 points to 72 uh and the teachers did not have any sort of uh blowback on it um so I mean
everything is stable in that regard the one item that it has changed statistically significantly is really the microscope is on District finances now and so the overall rating of financial management
um this spring it was 73% it dropped 16 points to 57% uh they didn't and then the only fair and poor it was 20 it went to 40 That's the shift that we see in the concern because you you're not unique in
this there a lot of people have a lot of questions across the state there's there's a dissonance here with the legislature and the governor talking about funding last year and all these districts making cuts um and then the discussion of
future cuts and going for operating Levy people are really confused now about what is going on the property tax climate pretty much unchanged it was in the mid-50s last year and you know like we talked about
last year it was the macroeconomic situation of the household it was property tax hostility it's abated a little bit it's 49% so it's under the 50% threshold uh School tax is 51% so St statistical tie on whether the total
taxes or the school taxes are High um so it's still going to be a concern a little bit less of a concern than last year you know at the end of the day we ask these questions because we want people to understand are people going to walk in the voting booth and make a
decision based on what's being asked for how much it cost and the benefit or are they going to be bringing in my household situation I'm mad about taxes um decisions the school boards made the
teachers situation all of those sorts of things and I think we can say well there's it's not a straight line from the survey this spring to where we are now things have settled out um you know the only concern is the look on the financial management and that discussion
of it because it is a dissonance for people to understand why this is happening you're not unique on that because at the same time the concern is there it continues to drop the perception that you're adequately funded
so now we're down to 37% saying yes the district's adequately funded um with 58% saying no so that's good in the sense that that message is already understood um that there is a problem
with the funding I think the district's still in communic ation should talk about reasons for that mandates from the legislature all of those sorts of things that come into play you have to keep it at a higher level because obviously I
think there's only like three people in the state that understand School finance and highly it's like a foreign language um no offense bill um but I mean it really is this complex you don't get down in the weeds it's like a two sheet
picture of Instagram post type thing explaining it um all right how much would they support for a property tax increase for an operating Levy uh the nothing's at 27
we always want that under 35% at the outset so we're well below that we have 23% at six bucks a month 211% at 12 and then we have 20% at 18 bucks a month or above um so the typical resident is
willing to esort about 12 bucks at the outset okay that's the tolerance but the key is always what's going to be included in that so what we tested was going to the cap 491 million or 490 491
million we wish that's a bond referendum it's in 196 um 491 per pupil unit operating ly and we told folks that the funds would be used to hire support staff for
counseling tutoring and behavioral intervention as well as special education and early childhood programs they would also be used to attract and retain staff due to ongoing student enrollment growth that's the purpose for
the funding request they were then told on a $400,000 home can you repeat that one more time yes the funds will be used to hire support staff for counseling tutoring behavior
intervention special ed and early childhood and then also to attack attract and retain staff due to uh ongoing student enrollment growth okay they were told a $400,000 home the tax
increase is $18.50 a month or $223 $ a year on a $600,000 home it'd be 28 per month or 335 a year so if we say 500's the median um the typical resident then is about 24
bucks a month it's double the tolerance but you can see the impact because of the use of the funding we actually have 64% support we have 33% opposed intensity is basically tied strong
support versus strong opposition still it's less than a quarter feels strongly about this um that's the good news in the context but just to give you an idea it's not an Apples to Apples comparison so I didn't put up a comparison chart what we tested this spring was a $400
per pupil unit and the support was 75% okay so that's the attrition that's happened um and see typically over the course of a campaign from a spring survey it's a clean environment there's been no campaign there's no vote yes
there's no vote no it's when the campaign happens over that course of the Fall that there's typically we talked about it attrition from six to eight points okay I would say that yours kind of started early here because of
everything that happened um with the teacher strike the contract the campaign almost kicked off this spring and that's why there's more of a focus already on District Finance and thus you have attrition from the high number before there was a discussion about what was
going on okay did did you break down at all with these uh responders around their appetite for supporting a levy because right now when you list it off retain staff attract staff support staff counseling tutoring special education
Early Childhood it's like everything in the kitchen sinks and so did you break it out say would you support retaining staff over counseling no you just just said I'm going to do all this yep within the parameters of the 491 million got it
okay yep at this point we wanted to test a question okay that well and I think we were wondering sorry y go ahead I think we were wondering too with the climate from the spring would it actually build on the support just in terms of asking about supporting teachers that built so
it sounds like it did not it did not increase but the threshold the 7 5% was high really high at that point in time you know and and that was we were pitting that one had the bond referendum potential in it along with the operating
Levy so you had people trading off between those and the preference even at that time was the operating Levy um in a sense um you know I really I I think this is just typical attrition that we're
seeing what's the reason for their decision now this is something that if you do go ahead need it needs to change pretty quickly and that's the need portion of it as the
reason education's important is wonderful but it doesn't drive people to the polls having children in will get parents but as history shows parents continually underperform um the need needs to be numbered one um cost is reasonable
that's wonderful too but nobody wakes up on Election Day and says I have to go vote because the cost is reasonable um they have to understand the logical consequences of what happens when it fails I normally don't put up 1% on a chart but I wanted to put up the not needed so you can see if people are
making a need calculation it's 13 to one of needed versus not needed where's the opposition coming from poor spending that's Universal constant 8 to 12% in any District the cost too high the taxes too high and no
children now we tested four arguments in support and four arguments against uh the levy basically these all are inseparable as a whole um attracting and retaining
teachers much more likely would you like me to read the exact statements would that be yeah maybe I'll do that okay so uh the exact wording on this is um with additional Revenue the district will have more stable funding and be able to provide staff support and attract and
retain high quality teachers 39% much more likely 70% indicates that it would have an impact on their vote um the next one for years State funding has not kept pace with inflation creating an $18.3
million gap in the district's annual budget 39 % much more likely 67% indicate that it might sway them to support mandates from the state legislature have impacted employee wages insurance and other benefits which has cost the district more money than the
additional funding they receive from the state 37% uh much more likely impact a potentially 70% the one that actually has the most at one point is the bottom one and that is required special education programs cost the district 8.8
million doll more than it receives each year from state and federal government putting additional pressure on the district's operating budget uh 34% much more likely 71% say it could impact them um basically when you look at this they're basically operating in the Echo
chamber of support and we're going to see how it plays out uh with the with the post test um but a couple of them the attracting and retaining teachers does make people feel more stronger
the special ed cost does give pause because that is an effective argument for republicans and conservatives that don't like unfunded mandates um and they hear that number and that has been impactful in the past now those are
reasons for support what about reasons for opposition still the number one reason um is with inflation and the cost of living many cannot afford a property tax increase that dwarfs the reasons for
opposition uh 66% indicate that that may IND may cause them to oppose local property taxes are next local property taxes are going up too quickly homeowners just can't afford additional taxes for education then the legislature
increased education funding last year so local taxpayers do not need to provide additional funding and then finally kind of the the interior you know what's happened over the past few months I cannot support an increase in property taxes for the school district since I
disagree with the budget decisions they have made um 19% much more likely to oppose 48% total say it could impact so those are four Arguments for four arguments against how do people fall out after hearing those
arguments I have the preest up here the blue we asked it before we've given them information the yellow is was the post test and the green are likely voters 65%
support on all three categories before after and and amongst likely voters opposition was 32 goes to 30 it was 33 goes to 32 amongst likely voters it's 33 there's no change in people's position
on this regardless of the arguments they're hearing um and also so at this point in time this would be atypical except for what happened this spring um because typically likely voters at this point are much more
motivated um but you've already like I said kind of started off the campaign six months earlier four four months earlier than you typically would um and so you don't have normally at this point you still have parents saying oh yes I'm
going to vote and they're they they don't and then that drops the the likely voter the profile this likely voter profile um is much more in line with your demographics when I look at it it's not atypical uh for any of the demographic it makes sense on who's
going to vote this year um so it's pretty entrenched on where folks are at at this point in time and then we ask this question at this point because this goes beyond their personal
opinion on it and we ask them regardless of your opinion from everything you've seen or heard do you think an operating Levy will pass this fall and this TAPS in then to what they're hearing and so
it is a little bit of a concern that it drops because that tells us that they're hearing potentially more negative than positive they support at 65% but 57% think it's going to pass it's
something to watch it's something and we know that the grap Vine is alive and Lush down here um always has been and you can see that uncertainty at 133% people don't know how to weigh out what they're hearing uh in the community uh
over the past few months I think in summary I would just say on the atmospherics things have pretty much settled back on the macro involving decision making um you know just core
opposition basically unchanged The Fallout is on the financial management more under the microscope more explanation needed the support is there for the operating Levy this fall all things being equal at this point in time
but this fall what is going to determine is turn out and who turns out and right now God only knows who's going to turn out um because we really don't even have a candidate on one side well we kind of do but we really don't um so that will
have a major impact on the profile of who comes out to vote this far questions for Peter how um so one thing I just want to point out I want to point out one thing and then I ask ask you a question so one of the things that I was asked was um
kind of why the survey methodology is the way it is why don't we send out something to our whole school community and I think my answer I just want to make sure it's right is this is much more representative of our voting community and in terms of who actually comes out to the polls to vote and our
school Community is obviously not our entire Community that's going to get out to vote but would you say anything I I could go on for yeah that's a nice short summary but at the end of the day this is the only way to have a St scientifically valid sample when you
offer it out in a mail out if you offer it out in an internet survey you have self selction um interestingly I mean this is my 30th year of doing this the first 10 to 15 years if you did self- selection
surveys they tended to be more negative you heard from people I mean those are the ones that come to board meetings uh they're going to for sure fill out a survey um and so they skewed negative in looking at um you know there there we
have one competitor in Wisconsin that does all mail outs what the trend is right now with districts that use them is the yes people on referendum questions try to win these surveys um and they actually are much
more positive um and then they don't represent the perfect example there was a district in Western uh Minnesota a couple years ago um put out a a mail out survey for a bond referendum and the survey showed it would pass 7525 so the board went ahead
and did it it failed 30 to 70 so then they went into the data because nobody really thought to look at the demographics they had 74% parents in that sample and the actual representation of parents in the district was about
22% um so it didn't even make sense at that point in time so this one with us it's the only way to get over those inherent biases of self- selection that happened I just think that information is very important for people to know absolutely um and then next my question
for you is thinking about what happened last fall with us passing one and failing another do you have any thoughts about how that impacts these results or how that may impact our decision making from well I mean I I think the the clear
thing coming out I mean last fall was not good across the board you know 41% of districts passed 11 you actually beat the average 5050 on that one um the key is having a unanimous
board um and you know we talked about that in in the last year and you you saw a play out with question question one passing and question two not passing so that's part of it but also those macroeconomics those things have started to settled down and in a general
election um you know the issue in a general election is not going to be information or get it's not going to be getting out the vote because people are going to vote you know who over represents still can happen but 75%
turnout um probably you're not left the whims of how 25% and who that 25% is the key is the communication uh effort because a surprised voter is a no voter um and so if everybody if people are just focused
you know the typical I don't know if we talked about it in the spring um about drop off may I don't I can't remember what school boards I've talked to or not um one of one of my friends clients what have you uh is just the
political junkie and went in and looked at the last four presidential elections and looked at school district levies or referendums on the ballot on that same time looked at the total vote for president and then the vote for those
School questions that are lowered down the ballot the typical over the last four presidential elections is 24% drop off so if you have a 100 people vote for president 76 get to the bottom of the ballot um and so that isn't even a no
vote cuz they're surprised they're uninformed to flip the ballot over or what have you so that is also it's not only about making them where it's going to be there and what's in it but make sure that you turn the ballot over or what have you I mean that's all part of
the communication effort it's just the different than relying on the whims of who shows up in a 20 25 30% uh coalition excuse me I did look at the uh state of the election board or website whatever uh I think during the presidential year
in uh 2020 there was about 40,000 Lakeville residents voted and then two years ago during the governor race about 32,000 and so I anticipate obviously with L Lakeville growth will be 40,000 Plus in in votes now that doesn't
include our entire School District ballingry that's just the city of Lakeville from from what I saw um one last comment I just want to make sure that I understand this correctly uh the the max is about 491 is what you guys propose per pupil when you've got about 12,000 students we're looking at an
additional $6 million overall and so that $6 million needs to based on how I'm hearing the survey have to incorporate some of these uh some of the the areas that we uh that you got support for such as
retaining staff attracting staff uh supporting staff counseling tutor during special education early childhood and so while the proposals that we may be reviewing next if they are not if they're not aligned to these then the data is skewed would that be a fair
statement if I mean because if we're not if we're not if we're proposing something for a question that we didn't even entertain or ask the constituents then then we don't have the right data is that a fair right if it's yeah if it's fundamentally different
yeah I all of a sudden if talking just about I don't know lowering class sizes right yeah yeah that then it would yeah I mean then I would go back to the community supports about 12 bucks a month yeah that's it yep I mean we're I mean so again we're already contributing
the community is already contributing $56 million out of the $28 million budget so we're already contributing 28 million 28 27% of the School District budget so if this referendum the Max gets approved now we're jumping to 29% %
so we need to make sure that what we bring to the forward what we bring forward there's a need and it fulfills that need and uh we communicate it very well and and making sure it resonates with the community so what percentage falls
off what percentage of taxes would be falling off in the near near term May me well remember operating yeah what we do have an operating Levy that needs to be renewed a year from now okay and I believe that that generates
around $6 million I don't don't have it right in front of me so that's you know for the future that's that's a risk um when we look at um Regular debt which which would not be in that 50 it's above that if you know our total our total of
is closer to 75 in that ballpark somewhere um that debt falls off in about three years um I mean substantially but it would be you know 10 Milli but you would backfill that with probably another um well that would be the plan another yeah another Bond or
whatever to look at yeah is to look at our our debt and try to keep that flat so we don't see the levy going up and down and up and down we want that to remain as flat as possible because I think our community always sees us adding taxes but they don't understand
that there are referendums and bonds and things that are coming off on you know after the expire and stuff so they don't see or hear about the ones that fall off correct and and then every year the taxing capacity or the tax maximum that
we can charge per people that increases every year correct so it's not like we got to like once we hit the max like we're done for however many years well the max is a per um pupil unit tax okay so as our pupils or our enrollment goes
up then there's more tax generated you have to you have to have more growth in order for that ceiling to move forward if we stayed flat and you went to the max you're at the max and then there's a second piece to that is we have on the operating levies that we've asked for in the past
we've asked for an inflation Factor so that's another place where it slowly moves it up a little bit so that the money we get this year is equal to the money next year because of the inflation so so then so if all things stayed constant we did not add additional students over the next three to five
years then this maximum number that we've got 6 million we wouldn't be able to ask for anything more over the next 3 to 5 years is that my understanding do it actually unless legislation changed it wouldn't change at all got it unless we went to an operating level where we
didn't get a renewal yeah then we'd have a hole again Y and but we do anticipate growth roughly 200 students every year and so as that goes up ideally the maximum would go up with it eventually you know here and there well again the maximum per student stays the same it
does stays it's just got it yeah but when you get more students you still have more costs so you still got to hire teachers you got to do all this stuff so I want to be super mindful like if if the max is six do you want to spend the max now do you want to wait do you want to do half
of it do you want to do three4 of it is it prudent to spend six I don't know the answer but I'm just saying if that's the max next year right the more that we can we we won't be uh you know doing another Levy for more just because as more
students come in we'll get that dollar amount but we're not charging more to the to our community does that make sense what is what is z Dina or Stillwater or wetta are they he's got some of that for you all right let me pause here as you may going to share a
little bit of that I was going to be mindful of Peter time I guess one of the questions that I have Peter is and I think the board would ask the same question is knowing that we kind of are behind in our ass we're probably a couple years behind and asking for levies or bonds and those type of things
we're going to be stacked pretty solid with Board elections B renewals Bond issues for about the next five years yeah by not asking now you're the likelihood that you're going to double up something on a
ballot probably increases what does that do in your opinion or in your research that you've done to ballot questions well it it would I mean so if you had to stack an operating Levy and a bond referendum on the same ballot obviously that's going to increase the cost quite
a bit um and then what typically happens is it's kind of an either or situation in some districts um like for example we have that renewal that bill talked about if you since you can only do operating levies in November that renewal is going to be coming up in November if we don't
do an operating Levy now and you wait another year and you say oh now we do need an operating Levy now you're stacking an additional ask on top of a renewal how does that play renewal can be also discontinue that renewal and replace it with a new one but ends up being a 12 million versus a six
potentially I'm sorry go ahead yeah you could do the revoke and replace but next year would be the that's the last time to renew correct so I mean I I the older I get the more conservative I am on this
when you only have one more bite at the Apple you don't do a revok replace you do two questions you don't you don't risk losing the renewal uh because you know over the last 15 years one district has failed a renewal in
Minnesota um and so typically they're at the 75 to 80% threshold which is why the legislature gave folks I mean it just became work and cost money in order to rubber stamp something that you know 99.9% of districts just pass
automatically because the question there would be like it's no tax it's no tax it's no tax increase people are going to right and so then I mean then it becomes a challenge well it depends if you have an inflation Factor if you have an
inflation Factor it will say this could increase your taxes yeah but does it have to go to the I mean didn't the state pass a law where the board can decide and that's what Peter mentioned is that you still have you still have the ability like you did last year that
you did a renewal but I also know that there was some conversation among the board about if that was what you wanted to do that's that's still the decision you have to make you either can pass it as a board or you can take it out to the people to vote so that just boils down to what you as a board want to do I was
just saying if you had to run a renewal because that's what the board wanted to do and have people vote on top of another Levy you're you're having two of them at logger heads with one another sometimes right and I I think to the bigger picture Doug is you're talking
about um um you know this is like we talked about it this the next five years is going to tell a story and I think you have to lay out in Communications each of the chapters of the story realizing that if you have a bond referendum next
year people are going to come and say well you just ask for money because 10% of people know there's a difference between a bond referendum and and an operating living you're still but but at least it's part of the narrative um we're looking at operations first then
we're going to look at facilities um and the facilities is going to be it's going back to when I worked with the district in the 90s where okay this year we're coming for a middle school and then we're going to do an elementary school the following year and then I mean I I mean I was like every year in the 90s I
was down here with Carl doing surveys and and it was telling the story in the plan because we're going to do it as we need it not only is that responsible but the whole bite of the Apple to do it is so cost prohibitive um that it doesn't
make sense and so you it's all part of the communication and the wrap up ramp up to to the election and then to 25 and moving forward Terry had a question and just a comment um one of the things I really liked about the survey is that
you asked if would they be willing to support tutors specially at Early Childhood behavioral a wide range of things that would affect everyone at each grade level and I think that's
really important when you're going out for a levy to be able to appeal to a wider base it's not like we're just going to add something onto a school one Middle School let's say right I mean this way I think it provides more
ownership and people are probably more open if they're affected directly by it you you're absolutely right the the broader it is the more support um there is and you know it's kind of like a a bond referendum you know if you're you know a okah and
you're going to build an elementary school in Andover why does Brooklyn Park care um you then you're strategic in okay we're going to do these facility upgrades here similarly if you just came in and said this is all about restoring music to I don't know if you have it or
not music in Middle Schools well if my kids in high school and I don't you have so you're absolutely right when you broaden it there there's more in for it um but it's it's also important to talk about the ramifications if this fails
correct you know and what are those logical consequences in the coming two to three years of operating budgets you know some school boards get very nervous about logical consequences because they think they're a threat really not a threat what drives people's perception
of need is they understand that something's going to change if this doesn't happen cuz if you just hear nothing's going to change okay then perfect I don't have to support it um that this is important and to talk about the future and the bud and
potential budget cuts coming up I I mean it's just all part of that conversation to lay the groundwork thank you yep anything else for Peter thank you wonderful than thank you so much to
see you so Bill does have some information he's going to hand out do we have a is there a slide Deck with this one no okay that he's going to hand out and go around uh and share with you and one of them I think ties into
the question that was Brian was asking so kind of you're talking about comparison so what all three of these sheets okay all three of these graphs compare us to other districts the top one is referendum Authority okay which
we're just talking about right now um you can see that we're at $24.95 or if you look over in Eden Prairie Bloomington minona they're almost at 3,000 per pupil okay and why are they hired well they've asked for money and passed them they went for the
they went for their max amount these are there 29 there 2927 is the max okay sorry the what number the very top number you get we right these are at the these these Des are at the max got it so then but but I'm looking at if we if we
do a 491 people increase right that would take us to what number for us you take this number and just add the 491 the 490 okay one which is put us right right about three we'll be at okay so we so we currently tax 2495 correct okay so um the reason you
see the two bars on there remember that we have L um is now it's kind of a guaranteed operating Levy for future all districts across the state do you have the ability to put that up there if not that's fine we got some
folks not right this second you have another sheet any another sheet do you have an extra one right here that than oh okay gotcha okay anyway you want to go to the second the second page this has giv you
a little bit of a different perspective this includes our capital projects um Levy and any other capital projects levies that are in other districts you can see that where we compare when you put the two together you can see that some don't have any Capital project Levy and we
have a relatively small one compared to some of the other districts and then the last one of this group this includ this includes our debt service so anything any bonding that we're paying for for buildings is also included here and you see that they have a relatively low to some of these other districts where you
see you know shak's almost their taxes double where we're at when it when we put all three of those pieces together so this is just for reference um where where we kind of stand against other other districts and then just to recap we
currently spend or let rephrase it we we are currently receiving roughly $2,495 per pupil and then the uh yes proposal potentially would be to increase it by $491 so that we can get it close to
about 2927 correct which is the max yes right now legislatively that is the max from time to time you know districts go to the legislation legislators and ask for more and it happens from time to time they they'll increase that Max a little bit but that Max is for every
school GI across the state of Minnesota and that's roughly about $6 million and that would be a 10-y year yeah well you you mentioned earlier you know it's that 491 is technically multiplied by our pupil units got it not just our ADM okay so if you remember our high school kids
actually from seventh grade on up we get 1.2 P units compared to just to 1 ADM so that pushes up closer about 132 it's multiply against that number okay okay so that 4491 ends up being about 6.4 6.5
$6.4 million is what'll generate out of that 491 new Authority if we get it pass so that information is just kind of a comparison you've got another one there too so be a comparable to Eden PR's at
2853 minona at 2927 and again our community we've been at this 2497 range for like years and right no because we just added $100 last just recently for the uh Elementary
School we've asked for and then before that was uh 19 when we added quite a bit okay okay now what I have here next is just so you have an idea of tax impact because you asked the question well what if we don't do 491 what if we do less
what's it what's where is a tax um tax impacts sick right when we look at now these numbers here are a few weeks ago when we start first started talking about a possibility of an offering Levy I just called Ellers and I said you know
what's 100 what's 250 and what's the max what do they cost you see the max is on the second sheet um so you can see that on the on the front $100 um per people unit it's going to be $50 for a
$450,000 home and that's about a $416 per month when you jump that up to $250 now you're at $124 a year and that's about $10.30 a month so if we're really looking at that that
tax level that Peter had talked about when we talked about $12 that's about $300 per pup unit and that would generate us about $4 million um and when we talk about what um some of this money is going for we
handed out a sheet with some estimates but remember if we do anything facility wise and we end up putting a new school on we're going to need some funds for new Staffing in those buildings as don't want to forget about that you know you need new you need principal if if we go for our new Middle
School down the down the road you we need principles we need Deans we need office manager we need custodians we need all those pieces to go into that building so if the full if you go to the full 4991 and use it for whatever we're going to use it for then that gives us a problem in those in that new building in
the future did you print off that sheet yes so that kind of leads us into what I had shared with you this is a little bit updated and we do have a couple of folks if you want to come up to the table you sure can if you want to stay back there you you can stay back
there right now yeah because because what we wanted to put together was based off of the information and and I think I emailed this to you the other day was some options of what would be some things that would be taken a look at based off of what Peter uh pulled the
folks about and so we kind of broke it down and gave you some chunks in regard to it uh you have the high school to finish out the counseling department at the high school because right now there's two at this for this year this would be able to give them a third uh
this would also what we did took a look at the middle schools and provide three counselors to each of our existing middle schools that the question that I know gets asked is so what does a counselor do and so that may be something that Kim can come up and share
with you uh in regard because it's not just hey I'm going to sit in my office and and be a counselor that our Deans currently now play the role of counselor social worker administrator disciplinarian and so there are some things that are Inhibitors to our
Student Success and so I think that's a legitimate question that people would ask is so what what do you see the counselors doing in those particular because our elementaries each have a have a counselor this would be putting counselors at each grade level six through n and just to clarify they would
have a different role though on a secondary level they would yes they're different at the and that's why Kim is kind of here to touch base a little bit on that so I'm looking at the budget we've got three counselors slated for this fall for each High School correct it would bring it to four so this would bring it to four one par I'm assuming
one for each grade level yes okay yes and they would be paired then Brian with the dean so you would have a core as a student you would have a dean and a counselor that would assistant principal I'm sorry yeah assistant principal and a counselor that would work together to
support your your varying needs as a student let me clarify what do you mean by assistant principal is that the same as a Dean or they do different things it's just changing the title so that what we've done in the past we've had this Dean model which was your your counselor your social worker your administrator your all of those things
we're actually separating that the counselor will be focusing on career and college readiness academic support and social and emotional um strategies for our students what what we have found and
and as the world of work continues to evolve that that time that's needed to meet with kids to have that discussion and that growth about what classes are you taking how what is the pathway to that is is an Ever Changing and ever
evolving um situation and and we want more opportunities for kids to have that discussion along with the emotional support along with the academic support do Deans not do that today they do but at the same time they're doing discipline they're doing teacher evaluations they're doing all of the all
of the other tasks it's become it's become a point where is getting lost in the absolutely yes and and it's and our kids are the ones that are not getting the support it's it's they're doing their very best they're working super hard but we're we're not able to check
all of the needs not enough hours in the day there's not enough hours in the day and they do they work beyond the hours but that that that is and the counselors would have nothing to do with discipline correct no well that's the important distinction that's that's a major thing you're not going to go talk to your Dean
or assistant principal about your emotional needs because they're dis you know like that's corre two two things in in the administrator's contract it's listed as Dean assistant principal so really all we'd be doing is dropping the dean title because so it's the same role
the way it currently is the the other aspect of this is I think to what Peter was also asking and as I've talked to the folks in the Teachers Association as well is that having a counselor also provides them support it's another person for them to be able to have kids go and talk to that they can go and talk
to and they say well Bri came and talked to me about this she's thinking about doing this in career Readiness not all of our staff is fully equipped to be able to say this is what you should be able to do to have that support say hey I'm struggling with this kid but I think you have a good relationship with them it's another it's another support that's
there that many districts have that we don't that not only benefits our kids but is a benefit to our staff as well so so you're doubling the workforce and so do you have data to validate that you need you need like four more extra FTE so like like are these Deans not meeting
with the students for career college readiness or like how are you guys tracking that um what we have been tracking for the years that I've been here we've had an a significant increase in student behavior um
disregulation academic uh performance has has not necessar recovered from covid and so what we're we're finding is that we need more supports for our students on a on a oper Behavior operations how to how to
function kind of um need as well as the academic need we can't do more with the same the needs are greater than the people that we have so yes we're at we're we're splitting this we're actually using the counselors to dig into some of that why are we not
performing they they're the ones that can also dig into the how do we help you get there when you have growing schools and you have students who are not who are disregulated behaviors that are sometimes small escalate rather quickly
and so having my having a team of assistant principles be able to address those needs and issues sooner prevents the escalation so we want calm quiet learning environments for all of our students as well as then the the Sy
principles can actually dip into classrooms and help with classroom management help with the adults in the building manage the the systems and the operation of the school and I think the other thing Emily can I'll let her talk about but she and I have gone around and talked to the kids at the high school
they've had some issues in regard to the support that they get so if you want to touch base on that yeah I mean I think what's happened over the years is that we we can't forget that our Dean a assistant principal not only have the work with the students
they have the work with the adults and then they have the work for the building and the system so their job has really become as we have grown untenable because they're trying to wear five different hats they're trying to do 17
different roles and you know all the things that just happen in our high schools in our middle schools like somebody has to be leading that work so whether you're talking about you know test testing or you're talking about teacher evaluation and observation you know whether you're talking about um
supporting groups of students with their their individual needs what happens is as the behaviors has escalated and Kim you can weigh into um in my conversations what they've seen is they've become reactive so I have like this whole list of things that I have to
do as an administrator to keep the building humming with my principal and then I H I only have time to be reactive to the situations that are coming up and occurring which then takes time away from that proactive work for students to
be able to number one maybe get in front of these things and um and then be able to help them plan and manage their High School experience in a different way and to Carly's point we heard from kids that said it is really hard um the dean
schedules fill up very quickly we it's hard to get in because they are so busy which is a reality and then if they have a disciplinary experience with a Dean then they don't want to say oh can you now tomorrow help me with my College
Planning right it just creates a confusing Dynamic um for students in a lot of ways so um so it definitely I will say that one of the takeaways from our student meetings was definitely to dug's point we want more access to our Deans or our you know we don't have
counselors so somebody to be able to help me navigate this experience I'm having and provide support where I need it so and I I can vouch for that um I've been doing U mentoring of students for the last
several years and there hasn't been a year that's gone by where the kids haven't said that it takes too long to get into their Deans or they only get certain things from their Deans but they really need help with the college navigating or something else and it's
just not there for them them so um and they're not mad they're not mad at the Deans they're like I can't ask them I I sign up and I know they can't get to me because they're they're busy so the the kids aren't blaming the Deans they're blaming there's not enough support for them support for them another couple
areas too are every semester kids want schedule changes you have to go to the dean that takes forever you and if you think about if you think about schedules your Deans are actually making at least one of them is making the schedule for
the next year can you imagine the work that goes into making a schedule for a building so there's a lot there I also like say that the needs at the high school those same needs are in the middle school and then the elementary and if you go to ask the teacher what
what the biggest issues they have this year and we did this in a meeting confer I asked that question they said behavioral issues self-control issues well they're if then if it's behavioral issues is that a is that what the Deans solve is that what it is or we are they
going to are we having behavioral specialists because I don't expect a counselor to be doing that if we're going to do academic counselors right not necessarily all academic I guess my thought is like there's been a lot of changes and I know we're still talking about the new student management handbook that's coming out and I'm I'm
excited to see what that looks like but that takes people to do yeah enforce all the like when this Behavior happens this is the plan that we're supposed to follow through and I imagine if you're short staffed would execute that right that falls through the cracks and so then there's just not the follow-through
that needs to happen to make sure that we're helping students grow through that process and not have the disregulation and and I and I think the Kim's point and I think what Carly is saying as well is that if kids know that they have access to somebody you may be able to
catch it on the early end instead of it having to build and now their frustration gets to the point where it is a behavior it may be something at home with Mom and Dad it may be they just need somebody to be able to say I'm stuck I'm working at I'm working a job I'm I'm struggling in school and they
just need to be able to vent to somebody whe and teachers don't have all the time to be able to do that either they need some help and offloading some of that and so it may not necessarily be that I'm misbehaved is why I'm seeing somebody it may be I'm struggling and before it becomes
misbehavior somebody is intervening and knows me well enough to have that communication a with me to prevent that from taking place and and that's kind of what Emily and I were hearing from kids is our folks are busy the adults that we're trying to see and it's sad to me that students can recognize that like
they they they know that their resources are available to them because they know how busy the people are that to Brian's Point are there ways to measure this like pre just to are there ways to look
at like we monthly are tracking our attendance we track our Behavior we track our our academics we we have become we have become really data driven and following and and I will say that we have each year have seen
increases in the fs and the behaviors and you dig down and you know the kid and you know I just can't we just can't get there faster so if I'm not mistaken what you're requesting aligns to support all those dashboards that we've created
and that we see all the needs so you're getting putting resources in place to address those areas that are continuing to grow and get worse that that we've seen and and we've heard from our administrators we've heard from our staff we've heard from our kids so we've
tried to triangulate it to be able to say it's not just oh this is something that we feel we we've really tried to get some things to be able to say based off of what we're hearing what we're seeing the folks that are boots on the ground in the classrooms needing some additional help and support and I think
when you talk to our staff they know that other districts have some of these other helps and support So when you're talking about attracting and retaining that's something that they also weigh not only dollars that they get paid but is there somebody there to help support me in some of these other areas so and
and that that's that's a a concern for some of our folks as well because that they're having to shoulder some of that in the classroom we want them to have great relationships with kids but that be can become very burdensome if they're trying to deal with at the high school 100 plus kids that they see and so
that's how we tried to Garner that information that we put together Kim just you still have that yearly state report that goes in with the number of suspensions yep the d report yeah that data that that would show the trend too
that you provide there so if anybody wanted to look at that that would be available and so we had Kim just here it's the same at the middle school as well as far as the they honestly you know when you when you are a middle schooler you're looking at high school there's a lot of track like if you want
to be a medical if you want to be in in a finance field there there's courses that you're going to want to push that way so when we can start talking about what is the world open to you what are the options and have those discussions earlier and often that that's important
for the whole system so that we can provide what our what our kids need as we do registration processes and things like that so that was kind of that component of we also have Brett here as well to talk about the behavioral thing because that the behavioral so yeah Kim welcome to stay I
just also want to tell you that that we kind of had the high school middle school elementary chunk together the elementary chunk is the behavioral interventionist so as you finish up with Kim Brett's on Deck to talk about that if we want to yeah did we uh did we have counselors in high school
last year no we didn't have any okay and so and the Deans did all that well as much as they could correct outside what percentage of time do you think the Deans allocated towards behavioral work and then academic advising 100 and 100 and 100 and 100 I
mean they they just they just go okay and sometimes they're intertwined and sometimes they're not um they are hardworking people and got a lot on their plate they have a lot on our plate and I would say that I I often hear that our staff say I wish we would
see or be connected more with Administration and those folks can't leave their office because there are people coming through those doors all day long yeah so uh go ahead I was just going to say would we expect to see any decrease in Outsourcing of Mental Health Services with counselors present in high
schools I would think so I do know that you know with our with social work and things like that we do bring in resources for families who don't have the means to get to other um clinical experiences I I don't I I don't know how to answer
that for sure because we're a growing District as well and so could it could we have this drastic reduction in and mental health yes or we because we continue to grow we'll have just different different is as we work through that so I I don't know how to
predict that that answer so if Deans can do counseling work in addition to I mean AC academic advising and and disciplinary why why don't we just get like four more Deans it's the can versus should right I don't feel like it's also
lure like can't be counselors um Deans are playing the role of a counselor but they don't have a counseling degree they have an administrative degree so they're not actually trained counselors um in that process so that's
so we've just asked over time we've continued to ask ask ask they've just said sure sure sure so we've never had counselors in in our high schools not maybe before we had the Deans we might have had we've always had the Deans no
and I and I think that that for like I was a dean here in 2005 yeah I loved the job I loved the craziness of all of it but the mental health and the needs on that side of it have grown exponentially
to the point where I I mean sometimes my Deans will come to me with a case and I'll go I I we're not I don't I don't know like we're not trained counselors to really dig into some of the things that have come forward so I I think it's
really important that we have counseling for the the trained people that are counselers and we have administrators for the jobs that that they are and we need to we need to separate that so that we are better taking care of the kids that we have in our building I think we've Evol I think I
think for a long time the district has done it kind of on the cheap and and had this One-Stop shop mentality but there is hardly I I can't even know of another high school that does it this way because it's not effective it's just too much and and I think to the question you
asked Brian as as I talk to our folks part of the EML they they love what our administrators do they don't want administrators more administrators because that doesn't play well to the community and it doesn't play well to our staff they
because they know our administrators are need if they just had some other help and support to pull some things off their plate then the administrators have the opportunity to get into the classroom to help them with tier one instruction to be able to do so they don't want necessarily want another Dean in even though I'm sure that would be
helpful they really want the other supports that have kind of been added onto the plate that Kim was talking about of the the Deans to be able to allow there to be separate roles on how our students are seen and how they're treated and staff as well so so are the councelor not part of uh the
administration no no who are they EML but is an EML just aren't they teachers or Em's licensed professionals so so then so these counselors would be abl would would align to the EML schedule the the steps and
lanes and and the and the days and hours that they work yes there this the counselors have their own component and Brenda can talk to that if she wants to of the contract it's not exactly the same as a teachers if I remember correctly put me on the spot I don't know but they're in they're in the EML
contract they're not in the administrative contract no this that's confusing to me I don't know why all right because they're not administrators administrators have a different degree and different lure agreed and counselor has a different but a counselor is providing academic advising they're not
teaching correct well they're teaching one one well they can they can do they go ahead in elementary our counselors work on skills building so they're teaching social emotional skills they're teaching they're so it's just the application at a higher level when
you're when you're when you're dealing with uh you know 16 17 year olds you're maybe not teaching as many of the social skills that come that that maybe are developed but in elementary school you need a counselor who we have we I think about a 5-year-old coming into kindergarten I'll just use this as an
example is because um I have some 5-year-olds who are already reading uh books without pictures okay and I've got other ones who don't know the letters in their name also they might have a student right next to them who says no and they go whack and they hit the kid
or other kids know that they do this and and so everyone comes in with a different set of skills and a counselor is one of the people who helps contribute to that so how they get grouped with the teachers is because they're all contributing to the overall well-being of our kids in our school
where as an administrator we are making decisions that are um could affect adults or kids within the building right so you almost have that separation of what we do as administrators versus what a counselor or a school psychologist or a special education teacher versus a
teacher like everyone has a different way to contribute towards our ecosystem of Education it's very it's very common for counselors to be on the teachers contract contract yeah I'm just CU I mean the difference between administrator and counselor many times
is the administrator evaluates staff and and a council will never do that but would you have more versatility Having Eight Deans in in your in your building pardon would you have more versatility by having eight Deans in your building I think when we were talking before about how and I'll just
speak from the having gone through graduate schooling for mental health like there's not the same background in training for his counselor versus a dean and what they're trying to do in the schools so like I I don't I've never felt great about a Dean doing counseling
work they don't have that background but we're doing career planning and Readiness I mean we're and social emotional counseling needs so then what problem are we trying to solve is majority of the problem social emotional learning or is majority of the problem College and Career Readiness it's right it's what you what
you have at least what I'm hearing is Dean's right now are doing like six different jobs half of which should be a counselor so you have instead of of having a Dean who's overworked and doing six jobs they do three parts of their
job then you split into what seems more appropriate given the job description well so I just want to be mindful that we're not spending you know we're not hiring eight or four high school counselors and and majority of the time is going to be focused on you
know non-academic purposes and so that's what I want to be mindful of I think everything ties into the academic purpose what they do increases academic success so so Brian the so every for for any thing in teaching in the education world
is all based on lure right so everyone has their own path of what they're going so for me I'm early childhood so I'm teaching very very young kiddos to kindergarten and and I got a K1 or k K3 license okay so I have experience in I you know I have a k6 license but I'm
more into that K3 you have your school counselors who are working on yes academic success plus working on social emotional needs where your Administration isn't focused on that they are right now currently because they're overloaded but you need that separation between the two you have high
school teachers who are not versed in the elementary so they're not going to teach down there because that's not where they're at so every licensure is going to be different and in this case counselors are going to be an important role for that that student to move forward in their career as a student
because if you don't then they're getting lost in the shuffle and we have all of these issues so that's that's just the explanation of just they have to have different lures and right now our Deans aren't licensed in those areas but they're doing jobs that they're not t you
know and you can't and you can't necessarily be a jack of all trades master of none when you're talking about what's happening and things have become much more specialized in education as far as what the needs are for our staff and for our students and so to have people that can be more more focused on
that to devote more time to that those are the types of things that that we're hearing from our administrators our staff and from our students as well that we just need some more folks who can focus on these particular areas the people are great but we also when high school kids will sit at the table with
us and say I love my Dean but I don't know how they're doing the job they're doing I can't get in to see them and the these are some of the kiddos that not that they don't cause some troubles that are pretty self-motivated you know they're willing to come and sit and talk to Emily and I and have have a conversation and they're like I don't know how some of my my friends aren't
like I am I'm not I'm outgoing and I'll go see my Dean but my friend won't because they know they're going to go down there and be told it's going to be two weeks and they're like I don't have two weeks to wait to see somebody so this operating Levy is requesting an extra counselor for each high school so
that there's four in each one and we have only three going into this fall correct so ideally you're short one in each high school for this fall and and if if I'm looking at this is about $300,000 and maybe that's something we should consider earlier than sooner than
later so so that you have a full staff going into this fall so okay okay that solves that so then that applies to the second the middle school as well that same conversation and that group that you have there as far as the counseling at each level Middle School through high
school then that other component that on is on that first grouping if I'm not mistaken is the Behavior Uh interventionist and Brett is here to kind of talk a little bit about that so Brett you want to touch base on that absolutely and I can speak to it since 2019 where I had a behavior support
specialist who then we converted to an assistant principal because my evaluation load was getting so High um this year we're going to be at 725 still and it's just me um and you know when I think about what I what I used to do
when we had 530 kids when I started 10 years ago and where we are now in in the 700s um and and the students that we serve uh number one is that I was talking about the skills building we have kids who come in and as as much as we want everyone at kindergarten Readiness that
they are ready for school um that is not the case we have some kids who it takes the first month of just getting them to not cry every day in the classroom okay I see much more of the of the issues that we have around students learning how to get along with each other like
the the the unfortunately we see kids are quicker to react and because they also have access when they go home to keep the fire burning that they come back the next day and the whatever the issue was that used to just go away overnight tends to stay because kids have more electronic access to each
other um it's something that I never dealt with um 10 years ago to where we are now that um I I I just hear this like spending your time in your office and like taking data I think about every educ climber report I have to put in and I go oh like I I get home at night and I
go I forgot to enter that you know like this is the stuff that we're dealing with now because the behaviors are much more frequent and when you have a counselor she's actually scheduled out to go into classrooms but like I have you know 29 sections for instance that's 29 classrooms to get to in a month you
think about we have 20 school days and then you have the schedule your time to get in there and then also your small groups are you saying the counselor goes in there once a month we try to get like our we do our word of the month we do our you know we pull our classes and talk about like okay so when you're on the playground how do you like we want
kids to like learn the situations of how they apply learn skills and so you can't just teach it once and then hope that they remember it it's that constant modeling and guiding so is that a common practice in every single building Terry I I I can't say that but what I I don't think it is what I would say you're
probably doing more than they're doing in other buildings frankly well from what I understand and when when they were prep time it was once a week yeah yeah prep and but that also had its downsides when you're a prep Giver right I mean there's there's I think there's the there wasn't a downsize there that's
where you did the preventive stuff that's where you had a a theme every week and you went to every classroom and it was you know yeah I can't speak much to that because I wasn't even we didn't have when like the counselors were halftime and I shared my counselor when I started here so like exactly right it was a different it was a different
environment and these behavioral people aren't in place of the counselor they're an additional support would be very concerned I would counselors I'm sorry go ahead I was if if the behavioral interventionist goes into place I would think that would give
the counselors an opportunity to kind of expand their contact with the kids it most definitely would it would like to see that Terry it would also give me a chance to be back in classrooms a lot more because I both both yeah because what what happens is you think about two
and a half hours of our day are spent on the playground in the lunch room okay so like that's wherever we have our less supported areas so on the playground 140 kids two adults what's what are the outcomes of of that many kids in in a situation
right so each grade level in my building for instance two grade levels out at one time right oh one no this is one grade level that's cuz you had the bigger school we have got it and so like as I look at my class list and I go wow I don't have a grade level below 100 so you think about two adults one per 50
kids hey and and these are new supervisors things are bound to happen and so who gets that call that's generally me not the counselor exactly because they aren't the disciplinarians they shouldn't be correct and another reason you have two is because you were
cut you were cut a lot of uh clerical time yeah there's I mean we talk about all the things that have happened right but where we are right now is is that I I can attest to what a behavior um interventionist does is that for our
kids in the morning that we know um that need extra support is we're checking in with them and setting their goals make helping making sure that they're they're starting their day off right because a disregulated child also disrupts other students learning right and so it's it's
that and and but I love when I see kids exit out of tier 2 and they don't need that check-in we don't have to do a point sheet or we don't have to make sure that we're checking in and checking out at the end of the day those are temporary things as the kids build their skills but um that's where I use my
behavior support person or my assistant principal and my counselor right we do this we do the small group then we do the individual when you don't have that things start to fall off and then we do become reactive here's a gray area for you and I'm not sure how you handle it
does a behavior interventionalist deal with special Aid kids um well are you talking about funding then no no I'm talking about the can you have a behavioral correct but yes then absolutely I mean I I I mean I I'm a
specializ licensed and I I think about the number of instances that might happen with kids who are on IEPs because they don't have the skills that they need do they not get support from a behavior interventionist absolutely not the the whoever needs that service at that time
gets that support but their special education teacher would be working with them doing those things but we want to talk about our teachers when the kids go out to lunch that's the one chance that most of our special ed teachers get a chance to quickly eat and and deal with whatever and so if going hey we need you
out in the playground um you know we try not to put everything on our case managers um in those situations so a behavior interventions would definitely work um with special educa work with all of our students okay but that would not be but they would not be providing
services this would be supporting all students they would be treated as as as a regular as a lake Maran student I would use that exactly yes okay so you've got counselors what I see in every single building corre element so this isn't asked to add eight behavioral
specialists to uh to the rest of the elementary buildings uh $1.1 million $142,000 for one person that's what I'm that's that's what I'm seeing is that is that right Bill ran those I don't know the the numbers that's not going to be
my wheelhouse as much of what that is but because that seems awfully High I mean I mean do we that's for everything benefits not just their salary yeah are these we have to put in these are EML teachers as
well so you re you know the Matrix okay and most of these people are going to be towards the far do they have to be EML teachers can they be behavioral specialist that are part of par the par professional group I'm I'm just curious I mean I'm we're looking at $1.1
million for eight people $142,000 that's not going to impact all the students I I I get the counselor p because you're talking to every single student as they go through their academic progression the behavioral specialist will be focused ideally on
those that have behavioral issues and is generally not going to be 100% of the students so the impacts 100% of the students I was say there's a downstream effect of that because it because I will also say our behavior interventionist is an integral part of our school every kid
knows who that who that person is because we involve them so if you see the behavior interen it's not because you're in trouble sometimes it's because you're earning a reward our PBIS system is weaved within this whole thing and every kid participates in PBIS I mean every Friday is a big prpa meeting day
is that you I mean the kids are thinking about the choices they make and how they and and that's where that behavior interventions also steps in so it's a positive behavior we don't want to frame it as the negative behavior it's behavior and we're teaching the skills and we're we're also responding with is
this I'm sorry go ahead you question I was going to ask what the what is the background you ask that first I'll I was what's the background of a behavior inter behavioral intervention specialist versus Aah Just to yeah is this the only path it well so
it's a good question that you're that you're asking I I speak from the experience of um of having somebody who is is licensed to teach okay right there is some there is a lot of training that goes into how do you best apply skills
and I'm actually all the people I've hired have either been out of counseling background or special ed background okay they just happen to have that that's the the candidates that we've selected or social work would be the other social work would be another but I mean where you work in these places that are but I
I'll tell you what I've got a couple teachers who are very interested in what would that look like if I did that and they're excellent teachers but they also look at like huh wonder what would happen if I worked with all grades so so I don't want to pigeon hole anyone um um gr but then when you talk about the pair
professional um they I have some immensely skilled pair professionals um but we would need to really train them up though because when you're doing behavior intervention and you're doing the data collection you have to be able to pull from where do I how do I choose which things I'm going to apply um for
many repair professionals they don't have as much of that background so we would need to be able to teach yeah correct and they wouldn't and we and we do have some existing behavior interventionists that we have the job description for that are in our schools and that's what we built this off of that same that same model of I think
otana doesn't have teachers as behavioral specialist doesn't does otana have teachers as behavioral specialists uh there's I thought I was I thought I heard they've got a different model where they I want to just make sure we can maximize like because I when I think
about one behavioral specialist for 500 elementary students that just seems like I can manage only one of cla's friends in my house so you got 500 of them running around and the behav I'm just you got what so how
do we like how do we maximize it so you've got enough you've got more adults in these buildings uh how do we allocate $1.1 million to add additional adults during unscheduled time during during recess I mean like we've got to find a
way to do this I mean 142 sounds awfully High to me for eight individuals so I take the other side to this Brian and though one very skilled behavioral inent in um that position can do so much to be
able to deescalate all the situations in a building to make education happen and learning happen and teachers being able to teach and so it's if you find the right people in this skill set they are
able to do a lot and we don't need it's not about more people it's about finding the right people doing the right job and supporting our staff and students the way they need to be you can make the same case for Deans then you you can but
you can but you're not getting the same type of support no and I I you're not getting the same type of support and budget and counselors are budget friendly and and we and we tried and we tried to build this on the conservative end because the last thing you want to
do is say you put these things in place and we're going to do X Y and Z and then we're like oh we under we underestimated how much this was going to cost so these are these are probably a little bit High to be conservative on the side of being able to say if it's something that that the board chooses to do and the
community supports the last thing you want to say is well we were going to be able to add eight of these but we can only add six well so who's now not going to get it so that dollar amount is based off of an average correct me if I'm wrong based on an average and of course mostly position systems are over to the
right hand side plus it's not going to happen right now so I built a 3% increase into what we've done in a is now because there'll be a year from now before you hire them okay I I do want to make just one one note I noticed that there's eight behavioral one in each
lunch but we have nine we already have we already have exist go ahead Emily oh thank you sorry Doug um we have one so we have two buildings that currently have Behavior Support through the adsis program so that leaves seven buildings that do not and then with the addition of support at uh Early Childhood that's
where the eight come from so it's the seven elementary schools plus cleck Y and then the two we already have existing that that would balance us out across the district so how so how are the other so how are our other seven buildings doing this compared to the
other two that are doing this I mean falling on the principles you know at the elementary school um we are somewhat unique in the sense that in many other districts they have a secondary administrator or they have um
other Specialists like Behavior or intervention specialists in the buildings um and so you have like secondary and tertiary support when something happens in the buildings at our elementaries now that we have no
more assistant principles it is solely on the principle to manage everything that is not a specific job for someone else so the teachers are teaching the the counselors are in classrooms or meeting with small groups or whatever
they're doing that it's just the principle and so when there is a higher level Behavior response that cannot be managed within the scope of the classroom that's where that's where they are so um So currently that's how it's happening and in our conversations over
the past well I can speak since Co for sure this has come up for our elementary leaders over and over again because not unlike the Deans they they have to wear so many different hats so you have your
phones ringing you have a parent wanting to talk to you have a kid melting down your short Subs your whatever it's it's one person to manage that whole dynamic and so again we become reactive as a system and what we really need is we
need when you when you talk about attracting and retaining you need good licensed skilled people in these positions because the behavior work is extremely difficult and extremely timec
consuming and so if we put somebody in there that maybe is making you know an hourly wage it's less likely that and we train them it's less likely that we will retain them and our history has shown that because it works hard and they could maybe go do something else for the
same pay so we want what's best for the kids which is to provide the uh a a a person that has expertise to be able to not unlike our conversation with about the counselors to support our kids who have the knowledge and the background
and the training to support the principal to free them up to actually do a lot of the more um proactive work and Leadership of the building and to get into classrooms which is so important um and build relationships with parents and families and those types of things
um which is why which is why we're really looking at licensed professionals to respond to what we have seen and heard as District admin Administration as one of the biggest challenges not
only in our secondaries but in our in our elementaries as well I think I I want to I want to Echo the point you made about teacher retention and attraction is when teachers feel supported and I I'll tell you I feel like I've let down some people as my
workload has gotten higher I haven't gotten to everybody that I know I needed to get to in a day and and so when te when teachers have feel like they're they're being supported by a student who might be temporarily experiencing parents get divorced kids things come out sideways with our students it's just
the reality of of being a child and when teachers feel supported by one of their peers who's coming in and saying hey I you know thanks for telling me about this kid this is some of the things I want you to try the power to Dynamic is we're talking as peers if I were a PA professional and I'm telling you what
you need to do in your classroom that may or may not be received in the same way as somebody who is coming alongside we're all Partners in it but if I said I don't like your idea and you're in a a PA professional compared to a licensed staff in the hierarchy of things that there's some things that we would want
to you know think about and I I just realize our licensed teachers are so skilled and when you hire somebody who has those skills especially when you help them hone it and and get better at it it just it's better for our kids it's better for our staff and our families feel like we're doing our best for our
kids i' like to make a comment regarding Elementary principles since I kind of know what they're like um they're the one person they're the only person in the building that the parent wants to talk to there's no Deans in those buildings they're the only
person in the building that's evaluating every single staff member every single year licens non-licensed whatever they're the only person in the building that does the schedule I mean you throw that all in there with everything else and the
increase in the self-regulation area that's a lack of self- regulation for for kids um yeah it's way too much and the documentation we are in a paper World in an email world where like I my inbox every morning it's like that I
have to know how like how do I want to dictate my day by what sitting there and if I don't respond to you how long do I wait until someone's calling saying he didn't respond to my email today I want to talk to you but I'm dealing with some other situations these are the realities of our our schools and so having
somebody who does some of some of that immediate work that's what a behavior specialist is You're Building skills but you're also being there to react and help deescalate whatever a situation might be um and then some things rise to my level because I am the principal I I there are certain situations where I go
nope this is me I'm making these phone calls talking you know those are the things that happen but when you have somebody who's dealing with the some of the squabbles some of the things that kids are just learning how to um be friends and what what how you hurt people when you say certain things or
that's the stuff where um the behavior support person um is there for would you rather have a Dean um I think I don't know I mean if Terry says this a tough job I'm I'm coming from having an assistant principal for the last uh four years now
I mean so so you already have one I I I am skewed in what what I've had right so that's I don't think it would be fair for me to respond when I'm speaking to Elementary in general well that's I guess one qu I know this is not part of um this discussion but with the change
in the assistant principles I imagine that obviously putting behavioral intervention uh interventionists in schools would help alleviate some of the stress that you're experiencing every day but I also feel like the numbers are
very different across our schools there's some relief for our higher population schools from this past year but then you lose your AP and you still have 700 some OD students so like is there a standard for when we have an AP and when we don't numbers wise or yeah
when we hit when we normally when we hit 700 we take a look at putting in assistant principal or splitting if you have two buildings at at 700 depending on where we are financially came up in the budget conversation where we said you guys saying like we're going to help out with
teacher evaluations and it just obviously we were in this budget crisis and just want to make sure that our principles and again it go it goes a little bit back to not that we couldn't use more administrative help but that's also a component of the conversation in
the community that doesn't normally catch as much traction I I think our our staff and and our administrators understand it but in the community they don't necessarily understand that they they want to make sure that some of the supports and resources are going to the teaching staff and that's the other thing with the behavioral
interventionist they can actually go to a teacher and say hey I know you're working with Doug here's some strategies that maybe you haven't you haven't tried XY and then come back and check on them so it's not only working with kids it's also another support for the adults to give them intervention help and
strategies as well so those are those are the things that we chunked together uh that kind of touches every level high school middle school and element El to provide some of the things that we've heard are big bubbling issues for us as the district and as somebody somebody said a little
earlier no offense to anybody we've we've continued to add stuff to some people's plates that now they're and we're expecting them to continue to perform at a high level and that's not a fair position to put them in whether it's a building principal or a Dean or a staff member in the
classroom if they don't have enough help and support it's not a wonder that we have some of the struggles and stress that we have and this this isn't going to solve all the problems but it's a step in the right direction what's your priority between these three I would say those are the three priorities so ranked
what would be the district's point of view from if you had to choose between those three how would you rank them I don't know that that's a fair question because because it's not necessarily up to me it's probably up to the teaching staff and they're the folks who brought these things to us and they
didn't say hey we're picking one over another they're saying and you talk to each one of our levels these seem to be the priorities that come from each one of our levels so the reason I asked is because we've got this bar for Middle School a great point is that required is it not required is it that's a great
Point Brian that's one thing that I would say Kim has also can talk to that that's something we're implementing that probably has a little bit of flex in it as far as doesn't necessarily have to be bar but that's the model that it's being built off of and and our teams took a look at that I don't know if you want to
speak to bar at all I know you're just getting ready to kick it off this year why that why that's something that seems to be supportive of your staff and your students I think the one of the things that makes bar appealing is it is Data driven it is um data that we've already
been collecting so we can actually focus on comparing where we're where we're coming from to where we want to go um what makes it unique for the high school level is it takes some of the concept of teaming um teaming of teachers to wrap
around students uh in in ways that we have not done so scheduling wise we're figuring out how to get students in similar um clusters of teachers so that when we do the work with the data about kids who are um struggling that's one
piece but bar also takes the time to say what let's find out what each kid's special gift is and so that we can help them grow their gifts and realize what they have um which takes a little bit of I mean it takes some time and it takes
some people who can then uh coach them so I just think for us it's a structure that that gives us a chance to look at data and students in a way that takes the data but then pushes it into personality and people and and growing kids to build the culture of our school
I totally understand that but in the middle level there are teams and kids are assigned to teams that have the same teachers so how would Barb be different than what they have now what what's different is we are for the past many
years we've had grade level plcs where we talk about our kids you're talking to high school yes I'm talking to middle school I I don't I don't know how to say but they don't have teaming the way we used they don't have it the way they used it's not the way it used to be it's just a hybrid version of it so it's not completely there I thought you were
asking about what bar no I understand I understand your that's okay I don't even know I don't know what it is so that's why so I appreciate it that void because they don't have it's not the teaming of old it's a hybrid team that we have in there when we brought it back what is
the old it's a team though of of staff that have the same kids I think the if I can waigh a little bit Terry I for me the difference is at the middle level we have the structure in place we have
teams we have groups of teachers connected to groups of students which we don't didn't even have it all the time I understand the high school per what what has been absent because if you remember when we passed our Levy and we went back to
teaming which was certainly the right thing to do for our kids exactly then we have Co and so what we didn't um what we didn't have were the systems and structures and processes and
coaching necessary to work within those teams to make sure that all of our our students are being as successful as they can be that we are minimizing any challenges that they have and we are finding ways to help them like explore
like Middle School you know is so it's like such a great exploratory time they're really being able to explore their gifts and to Kim's point it's very very much um a different type of datadriven process more than just we're going to come together we're going to
look at grades which is one data point right and we're going to maybe talk about some students but it's really about doing that doing that also having access to additional data that maybe they haven't had before and then having someone come in to help support um
support the teachers in from a coaching standpoint on how they can sort of best meet the needs of kids so I would say structure is there but we don't have a system all the buildings are operating differently in terms of how the what so
we need three coordinators to make that system work no that's just no that the the $80,000 is for the three buildings each should be part of the bar program which gives them the training and support that they need from the from from the bar folks so is that a onetime
training cost it is a I think it's a twoyear training cost isn't it don't they give you two years and you can choose to reup it if you want I I mean I in my you can choose it's either two or three you can choose to reup it if you want they've had District that have done it in one
year and been done and they've had some success they would say from their process and it's not something new it's been around in in many districts in quite a few years uh and and so but we're asking that's it's really it's really the $240,000 you're talking about
there is for them to get a person from the bar program to come in do the training and support to help develop the process for the teachers and staff as well that's where that the counselors themselves are not that's a that's a adding the counselors to the school like we were talking about before the bar is
240 we're going for a 10year levy we're surely AR going to you spend $80,000 a year to train people for 10 years right no no it would be up to probably three okay and then that would free up those dollars based on you know normally when you're looking at something like that
what you want to do is we have obviously we're implementing in the high school so we want to track track that and make sure that it is the pr pring is effective and that we're doing the right things although is there a bar coordinator at the high school are we is there going to be a designated bar
coordinator at the high school two two of their day yeah okay in each building or shared no building each building has a two so one part of their day you like one class a day is actually their coordin so they would like teach four and then they' coordinate bar for the
fifth period is basically how that works but could we use them to teach Middle School well that's an individual building POS so the the um the training and the coaching comes from the from bar itself we don't do that internally yeah so they they would come in so to Terry
to answer your question so they would come in as we're monitoring and assessing then that would eventually in three years free up $240,000 where we could say all right what do we need to do to improve
the program or do we need to um put those dollars somewhere else but it's just a chance for us to get things up and moving and we haven't been in a place where we can just say well we'll just absorb that 240 for 3 years and not have it part of this we just don't have
that flexibility obviously with our fund balance so um so it would be a it would be a cost over a couple of years and then those dollars would be able to be utilized for program Improvement or other things it makes more sense thank you so you can see what we tried to do
was chunk some stuff together so you got secondary middle school and Elementary with the counselors the middle school and Elementary that ends up being about3 million I'm going toip over that next section and go down to the other staff section can before you jump down I I do want to just wrap up on the middle
school you're looking for three counselors six total so we've got three middle schools so am I missing something here that was at other Ty it's two at each building oh two two counselors in each building okay and then we have Deans right now in the middle schools
correct two two so so the intent is to have a similar model at the high school two counselors two deans right all right and so tell me uh the social worker we we don't have one today correct correct well there you have some people that are licensed social workers that are doing
that uh student support position that see that student support in each one would be restructured so they some of them are social workers but are doing kind of counseling Social Work position so they would be certified to be able to be hired in as one of those
social workers so that's why it legal requirement to have social workers in our high in our middle school required but but it's another but it's another tool that our staff doesn't have that is a different I think Carly could talk to it as well that it's a it's different than counselors it's also about
connecting with families and reaching out to provide supports with third party providers in the community it's not just School based it's more community based in connections and also by having a social work not that we don't transition people well our social workers then can
kind of hand off we've had a family in elementary now they're going to middle school either that now they can hand off to that social worker so we don't lose something a kid doesn't fall through the cracks got it do we have any uh County social workers in our buildings uh they come in and help support some of our
families I think that's what Kim was saying we have some outside resources that come in okay all right I appreciate the overview thank I I just have one more question y the 10,000 hours of leaf support we're not on that area yet don't don't jump ahead of me Terry oh I'm
sorry thought you were down here oh well I'm going to skip over the middle school first and then go down to other staff we'll come back to it yeah yeah I've got one just one more I want not a question but just more of a comment so I just want to acknowledge and thank you for sharing and providing additional context around the Elementary High School uh I
definitely understand the value of an extra counselor at high school to even it out totally makes sense from the behavior of Specialists on the elementary deci side uh and and understand the consistency that we'd want to have Middle School to be similar to high school um back to what Mr uh it
Morrison Leatherman something Johnson Ser a guy he his question he he made a very his uh his comment was around we need to provide a need and while uh those that are in the
classrooms see that there is a need uh those that are not in the classrooms may not see the need and so uh if this $3 million uh proposal of the counselor of the of the middle school counselors being added in the behavioral
specialist how I mean again this is going to have to go to a communication point of view but as a parent or as a stakeholder like what am I not going to get if I don't approve this because I'm getting three counselors already in each High School um teaming still works in the Middle School I've got the current
model as it work as it works today whether they may not see it declining or or exceeding they just it's going to run as is and then the behavioral specialists you know they're going to be like I don't have them I don't have them in seven different buildings right now
why do I need to put seven more in and so I don't have an answer but I just want to make sure that we think through that the communication and the need for these things resonate with the community if uh this is a proposal you guys want to move forward with that's all well you'd have to sell a community you tell
them you'd have to tell them why well it might actually I mean this is where I think some people actually like to see some of the data around some of the behavioral things um how is that actually disrupting classrooms and for people who maybe aren't as data driven about it um I mean maybe some teachers
would be willing to talk about how behavioral specialists would support them or how having counselors you know like maybe obviously I I would say that's part of the communications plan and and working with uh the outside group that also helps run bond that does videos and stuff you and of course you
have to work with our in cooperation with our association folks be able to say these are areas that you have shared with us how are you also willing to be able to help communicate and support that whether it is through a video whether that's through US pulling some data that shows some of these things so I I think there's parents that could
also tell you what because I get calls occasionally they'll say what are you going to do about Doug in my kids classroom because they had to they had to empty out the classroom to day because he was tipping over a chair or throwing a fit or what so that does interrupt the learning and I think more
people feel that and understand that plus our teaching staff struggle with that because they want to help Doug who's throwing a fit in the classroom but they're also got got 25 or 30 other kids in their classroom that now just had their learning disrupted that they're feeling like what other help and support can I
get myself so I'm not feeling like I've lost 25 or 30 kids for 40 5 minutes out of the day so I think that's part of the storytelling and the communication I think that's the point that maybe you're trying to drive home is how is that story whatever those stories are and then lastly maybe we can show 150 kids
in the playground which is one adult watching watching them so I would make them all alarmed by the reality I do I want to see if we can if and if this is okay with you guys I want to make sure can we can we allocate if there's appropriate funding like how do we
increase unscheduled time well some of that's coming in this next year area too yeah let's so kind of jumping down over that middle area cuz we'll come to that one the other staff this is another area in visiting with our folks uh that we've heard about the the media specialist that was part of the budget reductions
that we had when we went through the budget reduction so we were would be looking at adding back six positions to be able to make those positions that could help with the media and the digital technology aspects of that would that be full-time positions in every building yes that's full-time positions
in every building okay that would be welcome yep the art the art full-time and the music full-time positions that's adding they're now currently 08 and here's where part of that travel and they do some traveling but with 08
we're able to meet the class sizes and case loads of our schools if you make them 1.0 instead of 08 that means that there's some additional time in their schedule that they would we'd have to figure out what we're backfilling that time with because normally what we do is
we say here's how many classes we have at the elementary level and based off those number of classes we assign how many teachers do you need to teach in those specialty areas art music those type of things and so that's why we're currently at point8 and Brenda if I'm
saying something wrong tell me that I am so but we also know that that's a struggle when I was an elementary principal I had full-time people I had four sections of every grade level and I had full-time but then my counselor was helping with l Duty my art teacher was helping with lunch duty my PE teacher
was helping with lunch duty that's not something that is currently the structure that we have so maybe something that would be asked of them but then you're also maybe either reducing something else because we they may be doing reading tutoring I'm I'm just saying that
there's something else that's going to be asked of them differently than another teacher is going to be asking them to make them full-time because the way we currently are set up with a number of classes point8 is what we need to to cover our classes you make people full-time 1.0 there's something in their
schedule that is not quite the same as every other teacher is that an accurate way to say that yep that's that is absolutely correct so not that we would love to have full-time people but there's a reason why they're not 1.0 right now but I do know that that's something that that our folks feel
strongly about and you've gotten some Communications uh from them as well to be able to say how do I become a 1.0 instead of A8 but the reason the rhyme and reason behind that so those are kind of addb backs or additions is why those are clustered down there at the bottom
if they were 1.0 what what would you what could they do could they do other things we'd have to negotiate that I'm I'm guessing correct Brenda yeah I'd have to um look at the contract language to see if there are any restrictions in the contract language um you know some
some districts have them fill in in other areas if like subs or whatever okay yeah I I just think as as as a full-time employee you'd hate to be able to like oh I'm at point8 shoot you know and there's a Flight Risk there's other
variable so if it's we definitely understand the reason they're asking but some of it is contingent upon what we have the flexibility be able to do okay go ahead Terry I'm sorry I'm sorry A lot of times these people are are full-time they've had full-time positions so if you're 08 in a building
you're going to be 0 2 somewhere else and that's the travel and I mean there's a lot of people that are in two buildings because they it would be great if they wouldn't what it would be good if they weren't into building exactly and that and that will be the issue I
think as well because these aren't the only folks that are point8 there's other folks in our district that are poting at they're going to say well how do I become 1.0 and that then that's Bill looks at me and says we can't we can't afford to you have you have to look at
like like fied for example accesss in every building you're going to have more than one fiet teacher in every building because of prep time issues so there's going to be parttime people um the point I was going to make is uh if you're a a dape teacher there's no way you're going
to be full-time in a building if you're adaptive fet there's no way it's going to happen the advantage of having a fulltime is is another is scheduling for the elementary because if you're sharing a person with someone with another Elementary building you've got to work that schedule out between that other
principal the thing that I'm a little concerned about is if I have if there's a building of 500 and a building of 725 and the art teacher or media person is full-time in each of those buildings and and they're and they're providing
prep time like the art teacher does you're going to have some time that you can use that person somewhere else and and that needs to be structured in my mind and that that's part of what I think we were saying we'd have to take a look what those obstacles are in the contract or it have to be an mou or an
MOA to understand how that would play out that's a great area that needs to be defined yeah I agree but this is an area that our folks felt strongly about these three roles are all inor media is also the middle schools Middle School okay art music in Middle the art and music
and our elementary okay can I can I ask a clarifying question because I know when we first started talking about this um with doing this Levy a lot of it was based on like trying to support teachers which at the time we talked about salary
which what I'm hearing tonight is they're wanting more support which means a lot of sense you want feel support in your schools but this is in collaboration with EML like this is what they're saying their teachers need I've met with them twice I shared this plan with them and there's some other things
that they mentioned but and we can share those with you it was like special education support it was there wasn't saying hey put more dollars into the salary it was about additional supports other positions to maybe make fulltime the challenge in doing several of those
things like for example when Peter said reduce class size well there is no great if you're going to reduce class size from 30 to make it really a class size reduction you're going to 20 you know how many staff that would be and we don't have the space or locations to be
able to do it just going from 30 to 29 28 and then we grow and we put you right back at 30 you know that's adding 8 9 10 teachers that's not really reducing class size it would have to be something major and that would be an astronomical
amount of money and to be able to drop class sizes from 25 to 18 things of that nature not that salary because I and that's that's go ahead and to that point of it that didn't they didn't say hey add more to salary part of it was I
think they understand that they're hitting more people with some of these position it's across every level where some of the things in salary would be very specific to a group of people not that everybody W like to be able to be paid more that would also be part of what would have to be figured out
through negotiations and the contract because you just can't say we're going to take this group of people and give them $5,000 more that that's a negotiation issue that is a little more complicated than just saying we're going to run a levy to add teacher salary now
you could say we're going to run a levy and we're going to take dollar amount to that and set it aside to be used in the next negotiations you know say hey we're going to use a million dollars I'm just picking a number you could do something like that but to come back and say it's
going to be specifically yeah for a specific group of people that would be very challenging to be able to do and I think it would be a hard issue for the association and us to be able to explain well why did you just pick where Bri breeeze on the committee that talked
about it and she's going to be impacted so now that's just something that Bri wanted it wasn't something that everybody and so we don't want to put one group against another but I think if there was something that you wanted to do it have to be a dollar amount that was set aside for future negotiations because you have to remember if it
passes in November you don't get those dollars till the next year so would the the thought be this is really about improving culture and that when you're improving culture that helps your recruitment because people are happier
hopefully and that helps not only retain but because I feel like when we talk about recruitment we know we're behind salary not total package wise but salary wise and so is this more create a more positive culture that
will hopefully expand to other communities to get people to apply I think that's a good point I would also say this and Bill can throw something at me if you want really it's not attracting newer teachers our salary schedule is pretty good at at the front end up front for brand new teachers
through like year five I think what you heard as people were coming to us was year 10 15 that's why we tried to add some of those longevity steps into those areas as we were negotiating to be able to do that so attracting new teachers for a dollar amount really isn't our
issue it's maybe once they get to year 10 or 15 the retention of that but if you're year 10 and 15 and you're taking a look at well am I going to get three four 5,000 $8,000 more in another district and they have this support this support and this support that we don't
have that's pretty enticing but if you can say is it worth3 four $5,000 to go someplace else and uot have to learn a whole new climate and culture and do that some people may still want to do that not saying we don't have to address it but now there's another area that's
not a stumbling block because there would be some other supports for them that hopefully they see that they they've talked about it they've asked about it and now there's some supports coming their way well that's part of the story yeah like to the point absolutely sing story to the community how are we
supporting teachers is by creating more supports yeah because our teachers are asked to do just like our administrators and other folks and I'm going to let you all go here in a second unless they have a question sorry I appreciate you all sitting there patiently uh you know I think that's part of the story too not only are some of these other groups that
we were talking about the counselors and the Deans and other folks being but our teaching staff is being asked more because they don't have some of the supports that other place they don't have a behavior person they don't have uh a counselor they don't have some of these things that some of these other districts have been able to provide and
so I think that does address some of the things that we've heard in my last two years here of you know H how do we get some of these things ultimately it takes dollars you're either giving something else up and using those dollars to do it or you have to find new dollars to do it and and that's the opportunity that
we're looking at okay but I do agree with you I I think over the past six months as we went through this negotiation phase there is a tremendous amount of support for uh you know making sure that uh how do we recalibrate market market pricing for for our staff
and teachers and total compensation I mean again some of the things that I with the news Union contract PDF that's on the website you know you're a first year teacher making 51,9 n6 and obviously after 20 years being with our with our district you're making
97,000 but if you don't get your master's degree in continuing education we've got let's say a a first grade teacher who's been here for 10 years and they've got their you college degree they're only making $59,000 and someone who's been in their
profession for 10 years like that to me doesn't seem like a very uh reasonable Market calibration and so the cost of going to college is so much more the cost of of continuing education credits there's a $50,000 gap between a first
year teacher and a 20-year teacher not saying that 20-year teachers don't deserve that but we need to make sure that all of our newer teachers or or teachers with less years of experience like what does that look like and so it does because if we've got four Mill
because if we got 4 million if we got 6 million do to spend all right if that's the number that we want to work with does it make sense to think about where that where those dollars ought to go well those those dollars are going where I understand this all this came from the
teachers we we shared it with them not every not every we put some of these things and shared it with them and they and we've heard from them on it it wasn't them handing us a plan and saying hey here's what we want we sat down and talk to them but the only way we're going to increase not teacher salaries
but all salaries is that we get additional funding from the state or we have additional Capital coming additional tax revenue from here and so I get the other staff the media the art the music I get the extra counselors I get the behavioral specialists I get that but
also if we don't have teachers that are not getting compensated you know what we think is appropriate I don't know but those are negotiation things that's I was say there's two things I think what I one of the things I said earlier is you could say hey we want to take we want to set a dollar side amount
for next negotiations the challenge is you have to remember it have to be negotiated yes you just can't say we're going to set a million dollars aside to take care of year 10 teachers because that's something that the association would have to agree to and it's more than just year 10 teachers that are
impacted by Emily and I have a solution for the problem we just say everybody every teacher starts making $100,000 a year out of the gate and that's what you stat and then we just increase it from there but that's an expensive that's an expensive proposition to be able to do we costed it yeah we did we costed it go
back to teaching but but but again for for the community as a whole and and this does play a part in it's like what is our and I keep saying what is our allocation mix or of Staff within these steps and bands and so you've got younger teachers that
make 51,00 996 you've got 20 teacher 20 year teachers that are making 97 472 not including this longevity pay so if we've got right now Bill 60% of our teachers in the highest step possible in our bands is that an accurate statement no
that's that's a little high it's closer to 50% there's other bands you know that are way over though right right all yep so 50% in one category versus one3 in one side one third in the middle one thir the other where are we as a District on our average salary you know
uh you know compensation so uh not saying we have to be in the middle but whatever that number is and what is our risk tolerance because if you've got a 100 teachers or 100% of your teachers making the highest band you can I mean that's we're we're in the service business and and again ultimately that
boils down to negotiation agre agre so and then with loveby remember it's not right away yeah it's not be the next round be the next round so anything else for Kim or Brett they've been gracious enough to spend their time on thank you thank you I appreciate you all for
coming in and helping with that you so much the last group the last grouping that's there is we were trying to be creative in a couple of things because we've heard from the board saying if there is something that can be done to proactively plan for the future but also
maybe take a look at some fund balance issues that are there this was one of the things that we thought would be a useful conversation to be able to have which is knowing that at some point we're going to have to do something for a middle school or some type of building I I know some people have talked about K8 buildings I know some people have
talked about adding on to existing middle schools at some point adding on building new or adding on is going to require some staff so what we did is we took and just said if a new Middle School were to be built because we're talking about running a bond next spring
these dollars could already be earmarked to be able to do that because when we ran our last one people like well how come you didn't already have this money set aside to be able to do this that could be a way to be able to do it and then you could use these dollars why that school is being built to either
help build your fund balance back up or use it on one-time expenditures for example you go to our high schools we've got some furniture in there that's 20 years old we've got some materials that we probably could use our staff could use you know and we haven't had a math
adoption for 20 years there's probably some curricular items there prob some redact things that could be done you could year mark those dollars to be one-time expenditure so those dollars would be there once the school is done or you could say hey we're going to take a portion of that and rebuild our fund
balance until it gets to a certain level so this to me is one of the areas that we can say we're we're planning for future growth and using these dollars they'd be set aside to be able to be used for when something new is built and
we need to add these particular staff into these positions and then those doll can be used while that building is being built to hopefully proactively address some of the other areas that we have whether that's materials furniture or building your fund balance so that's why
we put that in there and why we tried to break it into three sections because at some point you're going to have to decide you want to go for the max do you want to go for less than the Max and so we tried to chunk things in some way that made sense that you could pick part and parcel of one two or three does that
make sense what I'm saying yep and so that's why we put that together bill Emily anything that I missed on that no so Brian when you mentioned earlier you know when we're talking about Staffing and if we want to allocate all the dollars does this answer that
question of adding it into this because this is asking full ask yes this is the this is the full dollar it actually is a little bit more cuz it's about kind of bit over but we we okay we we know that and so there could be something that like for example if we didn't want to
said we want 240 for bar not to be in there then that drops us basically down to 6.4 yeah that's the issue I mean you can ask for the full now um but if you ask for the full out you need to make sure you've got funding in there to pay for your next building which might be
two three years out from now and then if that's two three years out from now will the community be willing to pay or or vote Yes for something that's not even here yet and we got to wait until next April to to vote um you can do half of it you can do 3 million uh and then
leave an extra 3 million in extra capacity when we need it in three years from now if the new Middle School gets built uh but like Doug said earlier we've got a lot of lot of uh levies are that that need to come through and and would have to re come back and revisit
this um 3 years from now uh could we be in a different financial position where we may have $2.4 million in operating uh income to operating tax revenue to offset it we have um teachers that may be retiring you backfill them with
uh you know cost teachers and that saves you funding funding there is it enough to save 2.5 million probably not you're looking at close to at least 205 teachers retiring and you backfill them or probably close to 50 because you don't get all of that um I don't know uh
but I do feel like the community has been has historically and I'll looked at Judy on this one historically have asked uh ask for what you need now not versus like but we're trying to be planful too where I hate to have another building
and then always ask for what we need and just what we need just what we need Y and and and that's kind of why we broke it the way we did was to be able to say if for some reason there's something you want question about this though Doug so so your intent with this with this
vision and this proposal is to possibly look at going to the cap and asking for it all now so does that mean and then we would do a bond in the spring and we wouldn't do a November 25 you w have to do another 11 that's the other concern is the community doesn't want to be
asked over and over so you have the renewal remember you have the renewal Levy but that's just the renewal correct which you to Brian said earlier you could either choose the board to approve or take it out to voters but this would also even though it's asking for a
little bit more than what we need right now it can still address some of our issues that we have right now corre so that takes care of that and um it helps take off that one more ask of the community that they have asked and that's exactly what our thinking was is
that it instead of having another Levy ass stacked on top of an something else later on if people were willing to support this and it was going to be able to address again you as a board that's probably what you need to be thinking about is it helping rebuild the fund
balance are there onetime expenditure I would tell you this is we've got more than this in Furniture needs uh you know you know we also have some materials that I think Emily and her staff would be able to say we need some help and
support so we could break it into onetime expenditures over a couple of years to be able to do it and still have these dollars set aside to be able to address whatever the community and you as a board decide to pass or move forward with the bond because it's to Bill's point we also tried to plan that
we're building a little bit of of growth into it because we know that we're not going to get it in November when it passes and then building a building and salaries and everything else goes up over two or three years so there is a little bit of flex in there to be able to cover it so we're not having to come
back and ask people for something again which is to your point that what we tried to plan we took a look at how many things we're going to be asking for over the next 5 years and this just seemed like a way to be able to say let's ask now show people we're trying to be proactive with planning be able to give them a list of this is ultimately where
the dollars will be spent if you as a community approved to do a bond in the spring it's going to be a couple years but we can use those dollars one time to address fund balance onetime items something like that so they actually can see some benefit to needs that as a
district we have so we could potentially do 2.5 million and maybe use that to build the South Dome or at least half of it and then next the following year we can build it and it'll be done hey this is for Terry uh when when we approved
the second uh when we built the new middle when you approved that um do you recall the I'm sorry the new elementary school when when that got built or approved do you recall uh that that you guys had um funding in your operations
to to to operate that or did you know at that time that you guys will need to get an additional 1.5 million to operate it for I I wasn't sure if there was enough capital in there we knew that we had it was 900,000 is what we were estimated we needed at the time okay yeah yeah we
back at four years ago it was at the time and now that's grown yep but did we know at that time that we needed to do a levy or did you did we had the did we have the funds to okay typical I think I mean I guess my concern with this is I don't want to be negative nany about
this but um once we get it we can spend it well no I just I I think we would be very mindful about the onetime expenditure piece but I also think that if we don't ask for this now it's something that makes good sense to
support in the future so if we need to ask for something else in the future like getting if if we get the bond in Spring and two years later whatever we have to come to ask for the operating Levy at that time can we combine that with other things that the community is
clearly going to get behind or based on our fall performance last year they're not going to leave a a new school empty and so people might not exactly understand it but my thing to when people asked me was we're not going to ask for the money before we need it we're going to ask for it when we need
it like Judy mentioned and so in two years we would have the opportunity to say here's our Levy we need to operate the school and potentially roll in other things we need at that time versus I have a hard time believing that
everybody's going to get behind the idea of pushing the levy before we even know that a school is so so the cap I believe is is 6.5 6.7 so we'd want to leave enough room roughly two and a half million assuming that's that's why we
chunked it the way it did we did we didn't we didn't build a plan that said it's all or none we tried to chunk it in ways that to us seem to make sense based upon what was being asked and give you the board and the community the opportunity to decide what they wanted to do because if people feel comfortable
going to the max here here's what those Max could be because we do have other needs with Within the district that are are one-time expenditures but again that's a communication and a sales point that some people will understand or not
understand okay we we spent what two hours going over the the report what the community would be able to accept we and looking at this what is the next step because I'm concerned we have two board members gone what's the next step yep
you vote next Tuesday vote next week the next step is is kind of what we did a month or so ago you as a board to Hey try to put something together that addresses an operating Levy for us and so that's what we've done we tried to put together a plan that shows that and
gives you the opportunity on next Tuesday to be able to say hey we're ready if for some reason you're not ready you have another week or two I want to say August 13th is the deadline that you have to make some decision for uh about if you're going to put an operating levy on the ballot in November
uh because if you're not you have to remember you're going to be waiting a whole another year and then waiting a whole another year to get those dollars and so the question becomes is there something else that you've heard from our staff or from the community that you think we need to put some
dollar amount to for you as a board does does this make sense and do you understand that you have the ability to say Well we'd like this section we like this section we don't like this section or we like it all that that's kind of what your next steps are is either say
we want to go to the max if you don't want to go to the max that's about $4 million I think what Peter said correct if you do to the $12 look at the 12,000 and so you know that would be fairly close to two of these you know if that's what you want to do unless there's
something else that you want to do if you want to say hey we want to do this but have a million dollars $2 million set aside for next time things are negotiated knowing that you're not going to be able to necessarily control where those $2 go
that's going to be through negotiations how it is if you want it to go into salary those are things that you kind of have to think about between now and next week or this by a or or by August 13th um I don't think this group is ready to
make a decision next week I could be wrong but we have to make a decision we have to make a I mean so for to do some horse training personal opinion in in looking at this and understanding it I really appreciate how this has all been laid out but but um I of course um
support the 3.26 here for the top part of it and even the other staff piece down at the bottom I think makes sense and um although I do like the creative thought process around this Middle School
Staffing I prefer to hold off and have that at a future time um and um um because but I think if we do that I think when we're going out for
the bond referendum it has to be very clear we're going to come back with part two because we aren't legally able to ask for these dollars now so we will be coming back to you and asking for additional dollars for the staffing of it and um and it's going to depend on
what you as as we as a district decide to be able to say what's going to happen if it is a new middle school if it is a if it is an addition whatever that building is but we we at least wanted to show you what it would take to roughly staff a new building and so so for me I
would just say the top section and the bottom section here this four and a half or 4.1 whatever is would be what would be um suitable to go forward I think we can
talk about how how all of this goes first and third Parts have to do with um the student and focused on learning right and um and staff and supporting staff but that's that's yeah but that
ultimately impacts the learning bottom line This supports learning and so to me that would be what I would recommend going forward with um I feel the same I would agree with you I I would just want
one caveat um I the the second the middle part I have trouble saying telling the public we're going to spend it on that and we don't the first few years I have a problem with that because we should tell we spending we wouldn't tell them that I think we would tell them it's optional I mean the middle
part we would be collecting that M the Middle School part but that's what she's saying the Staffing part the Middle School Staffing you're talking about the middle part that's what I'm saying I'm saying don't put that exactly I'm giving you Aon agree with that because I because I think I I'm I'm comfortable
telling the public that and then not spending it for two years on something else yeah my caveat on I I agree with the first and the third I would like to see a commitment to that bar that $80,000 or whatever it is a year y if
it's going to be for three years but this thing is for S years I want to take the other 500 and some thousand and dedicate that to something else yeah so just a really quick point of clarification around that so it's it's $80,000 a year right per year per
building for how per year per building for per year per building that's how we got to the 240 that's why it's 240 it's 8 I got it for as long as we want to continue to have access to the resources and the coaching what we what we committed to at the high school is three
years so we could potentially depending on the program the needs and the Staffing we could extend that Terry if we wanted to but we have control over that so we can say we're going to do the 880,000 per building for three years after that we can decide to continue or
we can decide to I think that's what he's saying is that if you stop doing it what else with those dollars I would like to see a commitment to another area so the public knows that but we might not know what that is until we get to the program I just more comfortable with it but I'm okay with one and three yeah
I I like the other staff that that makes sense I would like to add an A1 where what would it be uh to add an additional adults adults during playtime because I do I do keep hearing un scheduled time is is a hot mess and more per professional whether it be more Paras I
don't know someone can figure out like how many additional adults but two does not seem enough for and and part of that's going to depend a little bit on these positions being filled back at full time they again that would be have to take a look at the contract because that may be part of what some of those
folks are doing is either help cover lunchroom or help cover recess I'm not I'm not saying that's guaranteed I'm just saying that's something to have to take a look at but I I hear what you're saying there there I mean I don't mind and it's good that we're putting licensed individuals up front but they also need supplemental support there's a
lot of behind the scenes that happen and we want to make sure that we're not shortcutting uh you operations just because hey we we brought teachers or we brought licensed people on I'm good with I I think the secondary that that makes sense to me the elementary makes sense
to me I'm hesitant on the middle school not because I'm not saying bar would not be successful but we haven't implemented it and we haven't seen if it is successful yet and so with it being in the high school first there may be value in waiting waiting and seeing before we
allocate an additional $1.5 million towards a middle school program and so well I guess I would say this is that it doesn't have to be bar you know I'm saying the counseling positions in those schools the bar component is just a a
continuation of what's happening at the high school and from what our team saw that's why they felt it was good to be able to build that in there so to me the counseling positions are still something that is needed at the middle school level as I've listened to staff and as I've listened to administrators and the
supports from our kids as well so I'm not I'm not trying to argue with you but you you could pull the bar piece out of it and not call at bar but still have a counselor and an administrator at sixth grade a counselor and administrator at seventh grade counselor and administrator at 8th grade it sounds like bar is nothing but professional
development it's not a person or anything like that well it's a person a model it's a model yeah it's it's a model and then it's a part um a part of an ft of a person to help coordinate and be able to provide data and be able to
coach um the staff so here's what I'll say to basically what reiterate what Doug said which is the General Public parents bar saying bar means nothing to them we can't run a levy campaign and say we're gonna
Implement bar I mean because they're going to be like what the heck is that we're going to have a bar in high school that's not going to be okay what we need to communicate is we need to communicate what the need is and then what we are going to do to fill that
need because it's like anytime anything gets titled it becomes a thing it's not about the thing it's not about bar it's really about what are the outcomes that we expect for our students and our staff to be able to move and improve and
get their needs met whether it's bar or whether it's something else so I can appreciate um I can appreciate your point Brian the the bar piece is really only that little top part the rest of it to Doug's point is really about creating a system of support beyond the similar
to what the high school exactly and to get aligned there from building to build I mean if we've got 6.5 million and and if we're going to put two and a half off to the side for the new Elementary Middle School whatever that leaves you with four to work with and that's it and so if you end up going with the
secondary uh Elementary the other staff uh that's about 2.5 and so if you want to add the middle school so that it's consistent with the high school then you're closer to the 4.1 I I think for me I don't I want to just think through this because it's not a lot but uh I
feel like our community has said hey what can we do to help with uh you know staff compensation and and so forth maybe we allocated a million versus versus zero dollars um I don't know I don't have the answer but um I I'd like to just when I think of the Middle
School like two extra counselors in each each building one social worker in each building like I know they're middle school kids but most middle school kids are not thinking about what academic career progression they want to take no but they're going through a very very part of but that's life like I didn't have
counselors in Middle School like how do how do kids become resilient if they don't go through resilient things I mean all right I'll pause okay I like to hear from uh Carly and from Bri on these on these proposals I kind of want to get this going a little bit I said I feel
very similar I think my concern is about how to justify kind of getting the the new money now but one thing I will say um and and again this just goes back to Communications and I think we as board members can really get on board with um
advocating for these things this fall as well I just think that we had a failed uh number two that was largely driven around mental health and I think people don't really understand what that necessarily
means and so when people he hear social workers counselors they go to a certain place and so I think it really is about like you're talking about it's what is the need and really not only do we hear about salaries for teachers we hear
about the exhaustion and just the day the burnout and so how do we present that in a way that it's not just mental health even though I'm a mental health Advocate it's all the the stuff that people need to
see and that's why we had that's why we had Kim come and explain to you what right they CU because it's a whole lot more than that it's not those kids or you know it's every kid is going to be able to benefit in some way shape or form from that support communication I
think the question to in the fall was too ambiguous or people didn't kind of get it or we didn't get the point across yes know and so this I feel like the the one or the couple of the top things and the bottom thing all kind of yes there's a more consistent story and I think we
all need to tell it and advocate for it in a way that's so you basically one and three again yeah I agree um I get nervous using all of the dollars um right now just because there's so many things that we need in the future um
having something available for us um and that that conversation will come up again you know as the new middle school or whatever building that is decided on but I feel that we need to have some of those dollars just just in case and allocating them all right now I think
would be well I don't think it'd be allocated if you if you request it you're telling the community that that part would be put off to the side no I understand that but yet that those dollars aren't being used at that point in time so if we needed them in the future we wouldn't be able to because they're being allocated for that piece
you can't use them somewhere else so that's my point um but yes I do agree I think um secondary middle Elementary and other staff is great so if we have four people agree with this does it go forward on Tuesday it would but not not
I'm just saying to me we got to come and present the information to you so what I would say is if there's some other feedback you have in regard to what you think the plan would look like if if you want to know what a million dollar would get in salary you know Bill can run that number it's not I'm just going to tell you it's not not a lot we only have 4
million to work with is this something that is presented in full at the next board meeting or is it just an overview of what we just talked about how does as far as what we can we can walk through this whole thing again is that what you're talking about yeah I was just curious to know if is it just whatever
youall want okay you just have to tell us I'm not saying it has to be I'm just asking if you know we're probably not going to have Kim and Brett they may be here but we're probably not going to have them if you had a question you know I would say if you have a question about something that's on here about the
counseling about uh behavior interventionist you know we can try to get those answers for you if you have those specific questions I think many of them were asked hopefully you understand what we tried to do is take what we had heard from you all to be able to say what can we do about fund balance what can we do about operating leving we
tried to paint a picture for you to give you different scenarios based upon what we heard or the things that people were telling us were the most priorities and ultimately it boils down to what you seven board members feel and because we did hear hey is there a way to build the fund balance is there a way to address
some other things that we have and so we just took those areas with that chunk there in the Middle with Middle School say here's an option to be proactively planning for but also to be able to say here's what you could use it for because if we' have just said whatever you know you would ask what
could you use it for we got plenty of things that I've got two questions for Bill if before y I'm done uh so one so we've got three counselors in each High School I believe at the last budget meeting you said that we were able to add a third one because of some Grant or something well it's not even a grant
it's new actual funding from the state of Minnesota okay and it's funding two counselors one in each building got it and do we have to pay for that the following year that's continued at this point in time unless the legislature changes it that will continue to come every year okay so so so they're covered
so so we should be covered for that okay should okay and then the third question is that the $2.5 million if we did bring that out and and it got passed in in two years if not three we we'd roughly have $7.5 million added to our savings
account which we roughly have about five so if we can get to 10% let me rephrase that we can get to $10 million which is 5% of where we want to be according to our policy how does that drastically impact like our ability to borrow money is it cheaper is it not as
cheaper I mean just because it's only a $5 million Delta I'm just caring this like is 5 million a big difference compared to 10 compared to 20 yeah is it even is it worth it when when Moody looks looks at our finances they look at what's happening over a period of time okay so if we look very positive going
forward like I said growth looks very positive in our community and it's growing with generate more tax revenue that's very positive and we should get a better rating okay along with improving the fund balance the two together will I would think the next time we whenever
that time comes about our money we will move one level okay because because I think when we when we borrowed $20 million our interest R interest rate was a little bit higher but still better I mean to others but it's that it would have an impact if they saw as Bill said
a positive growth in our fund balance now how much it is it really depends on them they're they're going to say well you were here and you ended up here now you've only climbed back to here yeah they may not give a full the new Middle School might cost you $150 million and if we're looking at a two and a half% or
a 1% savings I mean it could be enough I mean this extra $5 million could be valuable if I remember right the difference in the rating from Moody's was a tenth of 1% okay not 2% right I guess my other
question that I could ask is this not that I'm saying you could do it you could break this into two questions but you ask two questions no it makes it more confusing we already we already experienced that that's that's your only other option I would say I would say you
either go with one I had a reac but but I would say that that's the other option you've done it before you know how that plays out I'm just saying if you're breaking it out I am because you're breaking it up and you're letting the community choose it's not my money but I so my concern about really breaking that out is think about the survey data and
what the the biggest kind of negative or not Sor I didn't mean to make another issue talk about sorry I should have just wait just wait so with the survey data the biggest like won't support it was based on poor
spending and so my concern is the narrative that like we want this money to replenish our fund balance when people still are like what happened and like really I think we should ask for this money when we need it for a new
school because that's what it would be used for sorry I threw that but I was that's another option that's there and you as a board can say you want to do that sorry I have a question um is it possible to get all this all these handouts to the two board members that
aren't here because if they just listen to this thing they're not going to have this so they need to get this as soon as possible if we're going to make a decision on Tuesday we can email it to well we can I'm happy to talk to one of them too and we can fill them in yeah that's true and they had they basically had
this they had that yeah they had that but they didn't have that other they have this and they didn't have this the the community survey results we just got that yeah they need that okay we everyone good so if if you have questions you want to know something
else email us and let us know all right so we have completed all items on our agenda for tonight thank you for thank you all in attendance and those listening have a great evening