e e e e e e e e e good evening everyone and welcome to the
regular School Board scho District number 882 I'm calling the meeting on Monday March 3rd at 5:00 pm to order please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to of the
United States of America and to the for it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all first order of business will be approval of the agenda so moved second
moved by Melissa Curtis second by Casey root all those in favor please I I all those opposed please say no motion passes how we got today 60 all right we have no citizen comments
this evening we will move on to fisal stability and looking for approval of our consent agenda all moved second moved by Melissa Curtis seconded by Casey root all those in favor please say I I all those opposed please say no
motion passes 6 on to item number six collaborative connections and superintendent Eric Olsen will be talking about the gifts all right before before the resolution um is read
I'd like to uh briefly share uh what we have in front of you here today dalheimer beverage uh $500 for a fishing team sponsorship Gan hos foundation for 2750 for the Monty pythons robotics team to pay for the costs incurred in
building the robot and participating in the competition season this includes materials travel entropies shirts safety gear Etc um also um another one for the fishing team um Fain companies $400 um to go towards uh their expenditures so I
have three wonderful donations coming to you today to help student programming across our district ifer be resolved by the m Schoolboard number 882 to gratefully accept the following donations dalheimer
beverage $500 for the fishing team sponsor sponsorship Jean hos foundation $2,750 for the Monty pythons robotics team to pay for costs incurred in building the robot participating in competition season this includes
materials travel entry fees shirts safety gear Etc and the Fain company's $400 for the team sponsorship second moved by Jeff hegley seconded by Melissa Curtis all those in favor please say I I
all those opposed please say no motion pass is 60 again just super grateful for our local companies that are constantly giving back to our community and programs like this to make us better so thank you all right moving on to Item B
building staff meetings budget update I'd like to bring up to the podium Director of Business Services Tina work holder and superintendent Eric Olson all right uh first I'm going to just do a summary sitting and then I'll meet Tina up at the podium but um today uh we have a unique presentation um
we're going to mesh together uh three very important uh presentations the first one is um Tina and I and what we've been doing across the district we feel it's really important for Schoolboard members to feel that through the budget um season comes when you're
doing realignment it's really important for everybody to hear the message that we've been delivering across the district and then along with that message we also want to make sure that as school board we have new school board members um and just as a reminders for all that uh this is an important process
uh um as part of our fund balance policy but is not only cutting and reducing but also knowing what your options are for potential Revenue um so our financial advisers will do a presentation Ellers um and we have Matthew hammer and Beth
DS here from Ellers Incorporated and then we also have just um a reminder of the effective uh governance that um we uh have John Edison our legal team uh member here to bring forth um just the roles and responsibilities of board so
it's just a good we it's it's once you see them all together you'll really understand how they flow together and why we uh tin and I are really um think it's important to be doing all three together so further Ado up at the podium no budget season starts in
November and then um it concludes at that first U meeting in April when we have to um announce by contract any certified staff that won't be um back with us and so it's hard to stand in front of Staff uh and be able to share that but it's important to give them the
transparency and uh the FaceTime that they deserve from uh the Director of Business Service and superintendent so we think it's also important for you to feel what we is it there we go all right so um the school buildings have goals departments have
goals I have goals as well and one of them is to have constant communication and consistent communication about our uh finances some school basic 101 information not only to staff but to our
families and the community as well so during this process we could uh created a is- 882 budget Outlook flyer that went over some of those School Finance Basics as well as give us a budget status update uh also throughout the year we
have newsletters that we give to staff and I call mine the magic minute and all of my newsletters this year has had a financial topic whether it's enrollment property tax levy uh budget
update just a uh a financial topic IC each month for people to learn on and so with this presentation we'll go over some of those Basics on that flyer as well as our budget update so where does our Revenue come
from the largest source of our Revenue comes from the state uh 76% and the next largest uh sum is property tax revenue and both of those sources directly tie to student enrollment so it's very important for us
to keep an eye ion enrollment as it's a uh it's a driver in our Revenue budget this slide was a a key ingredient to tell a story that um even me U being here um for uh almost uh actually 20
years this year um I I guess you don't realize what the big picture is until you put multiple years together so a lot of times we do a three and five year look back uh for this one we did back to 2003 and what this showed us and show it was able to have some I was able to have
some talking points with our staff is enrollment wise we are about the same as we were um over 20 years ago and that's a scary thing when you look at what we've built um for programming um are the programs that we've built um on the
backs of all of us um in the district and the school board is quite impressive um and it's you know when you look at the creativity at at at uh each of the buildings and in the programming that we're putting forth whether it's career Pathways whether it's stem uh whether it's nature based whether it's online
we've built these things in short order in the last um few few years and we're really proud of those things we're proud of our special education department we're proud of the delivery model but as Tina just said the number one source for income are your per pupil units and if
you're decreasing at the same time you're trying to be competitive with school district we run a school district that's often very challenging for our Administration our staff um because our Revenue sources haven't kept up with um the desire and
the need to really keep up with our neighbors and keep up with very strong programming for most importantly our students and so when we showed this um we I even it was in the fire um in that flyer went out had a few staff members
that actually emailed argued with me there's no way look at the box stores look at there's Firehouse there's Chipotle there's Starbucks all these stores are going up but that doesn't mean that they're bringing in students and so there's no doubt that we continue
to work with the city and um and so some pieces of this there is some reprieve on the horizon um where we know that there are two to 300 building permits going up in the next uh three years that's going to be awesome but that doesn't account for the years when there was four per
building permits uh for single family houses or 15 and when neighbors are putting up hundreds of of those second tier houses so it's uh been um interesting and we really felt like this was a slide that really gave us the talking points to show the staff really
why we're in the financial uh situation and cycle that we're in this becomes the imperative story that needed to be shared so how do we spend our money uh the majority of our budget nearly nearly 80% is salary and benefits we are a very labor intensive
industry so our largest investment is in our staff who are either directly or indirectly support our students every day the remaining funds come from Transportation curriculum uh technology or just facility operations as a whole to make
sure we have a safe and effective learning environment for our students so with lower enrollment projections our Revenue budget is expected to decrease and if we don't adjust our expenses will outpace our revenues creating Financial challenges for our
district proactive planning and thoughtful budget adjustments will be necessary to ensure long-term fac uh Financial stability while contining to support our student needs so we met with the budget committee on January 27th to go over different forecast scenarios and
with the most conservative Revenue assumptions we wanted to Target our minimum um 8% fund balance at the end of next year we have a fund balance policy where we try to be within 8 to 16% of our expenses so that was a Target uh that
helped us in the next uh budget alignment Direction along with the budget process uh we've been pausing on this slide and really doing some teaching this is a slide that has to happen every year and this is the you can um pay for what you
can afford slide and so while it's part of the budget process it's not part of the budget realignment and it's really important for us to understand this is what we do every year and we look at um so as a former Elementary principal at uh both East and Pinewood one of the
things that we would um work with with the district office every year is how many FTE you could have in each grade level because of you know to create um a standard of classroom size and so there would be some years where I maybe have
um eight sections of first grade and the incoming kindergarten that uh that would not support that number because maybe you were lower or maybe that you were higher so you already know right out of the gate that that grade is going to have to potentially reduce and then Tina is working her magic on the forecasting
of kindergarten and usually kindergarten um the people who register um aren't equating the number of staff that you end the year with in kindergarten so you might have to reduce one or two so even before I even got to pass first grade I might have to reduce three staff members
because that's what we could potentially either forecasting afford or what we could afford by what we know in the grade level behind us and so this happens at all buildings all elementary um and secondary buildings we pause every year to see what we can afford and
how many FTE we can afford before we have before we go any further with the budget process so we reset this knowledge for all of our staff to understand that just even if we fix our budget problems this slide does not go away because there's going to be some
intricacies in each grade level um of of of bumps in class sizes or or decreases in class sizes and I'm talking the overall graduating class size so we've seen numbers in the high 3s we've seen numbers in the um you know the 270s and
so that's a you know can be a 100 student difference uh between um an incoming kindergarten to an out going um graduating class so we took the budget alignment fa round alignment into a couple phases
round one um we try to focus on identifying any inconsistencies we saw across the district as well as look at overall operations to see where we could be more efficient this allowed us to address those before we gave specific buildings and departments Targets in
round two so in round one we looked at the co-op indirect charge back with the co-op they don't have a separate business manager HR Director or technology director or staff to to support them they use our
staff um so we get a percent of their budget through a chargeback for our service we're just asking for that chargeback to to go a little higher as it's been frozen for a couple years grant funding alignment we have a couple grants that are ending at the end of this year so if we we don't have those
revenues we need to reduce those expenses or reduce expenses in a similar amount in a different area if those Grant expenditures are important to us non-certified and certified Staffing alignments again looking across all buildings to see some buildings have
certain things versus others so wanting to have that same consistency across the district as well as different schedules wanting to make those more similar redivision of Staff Development we are required to set aside 2% of our general education aid for staff
development one half of that or 1% of that 2% stays within the district for our professional development days the other half goes towards district-wide curriculum and our building staff development so we're just asking for the amount that goes towards districtwide curriculum and the building staff
development have a little more shift to the districtwide professional development days transportation and utility adjustments we will have one less secondary day uh so we'll see some Transportation savings there we also got rid of our
analog phone lines so we'll have some utility Savings in under phones as well elimination of building supply carryover this will be over a two-year phase traditionally we have allowed buildings to carry over their supply
budgets so going into next year we're only going to allow half of whatever they have remaining to be carried over a lot of school districts in the state do do not allow that they have a date in place where let's say it's April 1st where you should have everything you
need for the school year by that date and don't allow any more purchases for the rest of the year there will be some exceptions we have graduation in June we have field trips in the spring so there will be some ex exceptions for purchases in the spring um in other 12-month
departments you know we're going to need toilet paper and soap so we want we would allow for those purchases beyond that point as as well and then district and admin Staffing alignment as well looking at those inconsistencies and having similar schedules across the
board so just to catch up on summary um first process was the certified Staffing alignment to enrollment um that I talked about and that was four um FTE at the elementary um that is 1.4 at the middle school and 1.5 at the high school and
then Tina just got done explaining um a little over a million dollars worth of budget reductions and now round two that's where we're at right now so our building principles are um at this stage right now where they are looking at these final dollar amounts um in order
to realign the budget and and meet the targets of that 8% fund balance and so it's been a a process that we've been working on since November it's a um a challenging process with um lots of different pieces of communication with um administration building in District
and then also building um District administration getting across the district to share this message and then building principles working within the message to uh make sure that they keep the culture of their buildings going the right way during um obviously a three
stage um reduction process and so as you can see there on two assignments 51,000 from District departments activities are reducing 76,000 and I'm I'm just reading the ball Ark numbers here uh East viw Education Center in nature base 38,000
uh Little Mountain Elementary 57,000 Pinewood Elementary 76,000 Middle School 76,000 and high school Alp uh 134,000 and so that is where we're at right
now so before I move on um within the budget committee meeting that we had in January we looked at a lot of different Financial Trends and how we spend our money compared to other school districts either our size or that are surround us and so just looking at that looking at
number of students in each building looking at staff in each building and how we spend our budget uh these amounts were generated as targets for the buildings and departments so what's next we have gone
around to all the buildings uh to present at staff meetings we're continuing to meet with our building heads and department heads to finalize um the reduction targets we're going to have separate meetings with employee groups to go over the affected changes
finalize those Staffing assignments and have individual meetings with staff prior to spring break and then in April and May um we'll present those Staffing realignments uh for board approval through Personnel matters as timely
inappropriate so like I mentioned we have a fund balance policy 714 where we try to maintain unassigned fund balance of 8 to 16% of expenditures that's around 1 to two months of expenses as of June 30th last year we ended at 99.2% with the budget revision we're
projected to end this year at 7.88% so that's below our minimum and hopefully through the board training that I've done with you why do we try to maintain a fund balance that helps with those unknown situations we
had over a 100 fewer students show this year uh that um took a hit to our Revenue budget so our fund balance um helped with that because when we uh do a budget we're going to staff um based on an estimate and we're
going to continue that those Staffing assignments whether they show up or not so that took a hit um if you could have higher than expected costs and we did have that this year with additional Transportation routes so it's important for us to have a fund balance and try to stay within that guide It's not not
extravagant by any means um the one month is is pretty low uh we go through 5 million in a month just with salaries benefits and health insurance so and then we end with this slide right here and if it was up to me I'd like to
have about two more slides and they'd be all about the revenue things that I would be able to present to the staff uh when we were going around but instead I just talk about enrollment because that's the one thing that superintendent that I can control and Lead and so um as you know I've U presented uh the start
of a marketing plan that was a little bit too robust that we're trying to pair down you'll see some of the that those pieces tonight at the work session um and we are moving forward with what we can control as a superintendent what I can lead with our people but enrollment is going to be a big piece um of how we
attract um students to our school district the things that we're doing are amazing and we need to tell our story better and we've all kind of talked about that as a school board and superintendent and so enrollment um as um we've been doing a lot of phone calling of people who have left our district and I showed that um piece of
the pie um in the the or the pie chart and the amount of people that we're finding that are leaving because they're dissatisfied is is the smallest piece of the pie it's a lot of people leaving to go towards um uh you know um proximity
on their way to work it's it's um a few uh that that are going for different types of programming um some are going to online that are not ours and so we know the reasons of the people who left this past year um because uh we made
personal phone calls and so we know that we can we have um ways to go about attracting others but we also think it's important as a school board um for you to know some a couple other pieces and before I get to the tool I just want to share another piece that I paused out at
every building is we talked about the school board that we get to work for and how proud We Are that you guys value the classroom you value the students and that's why we were why we did round one that way we were because it was the farthest away from the classroom and that was part of every budget discussion
that was part of every whole group discussion every every U member across the district heard that um and so now that you've seen our presentation on in on on uh what we've been doing across the district with budget realignment we
also think it's really imper to um equip our board members with um experts who can teach us about more Revenue tools that we're well aware of but that we should be um we should all be on the same page with all right so I'm going to
invite um and Beth up to our Podium here for delivery of their portion it should be just locked in go oh here we come Matt and Beth can you guys introduce yourselves and what company you're with sure thank
you okay uh good evening everybody Matthew Hammer from ERS I've got my colleague Beth DS with me as well we're the district's financial adviser and we get the pleasure with working with school districts across the state of Minnesota so really what our objective
is tonight is to provide some background information about the school district specific to the school district right but also some trends that we're seeing across the state um from a revenue perspective um at the state level and some other things that are um what I
would say uh um creating some Reliance for districts on certain revenue streams for from the voters um and we'll touch on all those things um what we'll see right away the school district controls very little of this except for putting
questions out you can't control your tax base and and various pieces of it but there are a few things that are within your control that are um outlined in statute and um districts uh can take advantage of those things when they're put in front of them so with that I'll
let uh Beth start we'll go through the presentation thanks hi um so our first slide we have tonight is our property tax base for the school district so this is the breakdown by classification of all the property in
the school district that's taxed so um there's a lot of information on this this chart but what it's basically showing is all the valuations for the district and then the net tax capacity on that very right column is what most of our levies are spread on and um as
Matt mentioned these valuations are done by your county the school district doesn't have any control over how any properties are valued in the district it also doesn't have any control on the classification percentage so for that net tax capacity um those amounts are in
legislature right so 1% for residential property 2% for commercial Etc so um School District does not have a lot of control over how the levies are spread or what their tax base looks like they're really just taking the information from the the county and the
state just a quick breakdown of what uh the school district looks like as far as residential property so back in 2020 we had about 5985 Parcels um 2024 we're up to 6174 and you can see the average residential market value has increased
pretty significantly so back in 2020 right around 258 and now we're up to 378,000 for an average uh residential property and again nothing under the control of the school district when it comes to this this is all County valuations and what the market is
doing and why this uh makes a difference when we're talking about your tax levies and your um what you're paying as a property owner is that tax levy that the school district approves gets spread over that tax base to get a tax rate for all of your
properties and Tina mentioned this uh during her part of the presentation too but just because the school district tax base is incre increasing you're seeing your own property valuations increase doesn't mean the school district is getting any more Revenue year-over-year School District revenues are really uh
generated by your enrollment um and there is not a lot that the district can do to increase uh revenues um other than asking for for voters or to start charging more um for certain programs or fees there's really not a lot of Revenue generation that the the school district
has control over um you'll see the tax rates up there that NTC like I mentioned before there's also something called an RMV tax rate it's just another property tax base that your um School District levies are spread on it's different from a city or or a County as well
Tina it's mad at me there we go thank you uh so this is some background on the general education formula allowance so uh Tina had mentioned during her presentation quite a bit of the revenue for the school districts come through state aid and
it's basically um a per pupil formula is the biggest driver of that so what this graph shows is if we um start back in uh 2003 and we start even and um look look at inflation over the years up until
2025 that blue line would be what the per pupil amount should have been increasing near over- year if the state was keeping up with inflation that orange dotted line is what the state is actually paying so for 2025 the district receiv 7281 per student a little bit
more for the um grade 7 through 12 um but if inflation had kept place like it was supposed to we'd be up to 8645 so it's almost $1,400 difference per per student which is a lot of money when you think about monacello um and 4,000 students and an extra $1,400 per each of
those kles to help maintain your programming so um basically what that means is that really pushes a lot of Reliance on referendums to districts to try to generate as much revenue as they can and that usually means going back to voters and asking um for some additional
help above and beyond what the state is allocating for you every year so there's a couple different uh ways that school districts will ask their constituents for funds one is levies are for learning right so we talking about operating referendums or Capital project Tech levies those are
amounts um that your voters approve and they generate annual revenues for you to help you increase your budget um the other voter proof funding is bonds um so there are building bonds issued that help to pay for those big construction payments you Levy taxes over time to pay back principal and interest on
those um so that's basically what this next side is um is kind of saying that you've seen it before you had a um voter approved building bond election in 2016 um was the last one so you are um still paying for those amounts so what that means we start looking at those bonds is
you've got that 2016a that I mentioned there's also another 2019 bond that was for health and safety projects throughout the district but this graph is showing the tax rates we talked about your tax levy divided by tax base is your tax rate um so this graph the left
side there is a tax rate and you're just around 5% um it's really consistent we've got a little drop off coming in um about 19 or sorry 20 I put my glasses on but this is still tough for me 2044 they're small numbers um so we've got a
really low tax rate right now for the district there are districts across the state we see anywhere from 20 to 25% being charged for the different um building projects the district also has a couple of debt issues that they're using their annual revenues for so the
district gets long-term facilities maintenance Revenue every single year and the state allows them to borrow against it so they'll borrow against it get a larger dollar amount to do those big projects and then they'll use that ltfm funding to pay off that debt so the district has utilized that um to do some
big projects without going back to the voters and affecting your your tax rates yeah so that that's kind of a summary of of uh where we're we're at from the standpoint of where our existing um levies are for our existing
debt um a couple things just to point out you need Mike oh no I'm just making sure that okay yeah um so um as we look at those those tax rates we'll see how that or those tax bases we'll see how that kind of plays out as we move forward because
it really will depend um on how those levies are spread and um when we look at an operating referendum you'll notice that's spread on referend to market value tax base um that is we're lucky enough as a school district to have two
tax levies uh or two types of tax bases um we have the referend of market value tax base which four levies are spread on and then we have the net tax capacity tax base which is where most municipalities including school districts spre spread um a vast majority
of their Levy um for your school district it doesn't have as big of an impact when we start talking about how much the residential homeowner pays but it does have some impact when you think of your commercial base um and and how those levies are going to be spread because the the commercial property when
we start looking at some of these other levies will pick up a little bit um more of that tax burden um so the district has an operating referendum in place um the current state cap is 2,266 31 Statewide um that number is
figured every single year by the department Department of Education um and that is uh inflationary adjusted the same way the school district's Levy is adjusted um the school district uh currently gets about $3 million of Revenue annually as part of your
operating referendum um but you're about a half of where the state average is from a voter approved referendum perspective so the state average is 1,147 right now Statewide um school district is about half of that when you kind of think of where you're where your
Levy is um typically this Levy used to have an aid Levy component to it um you're you're uh or it's not you're a little little bit more than half when you look at this speach but uh that state aid component really has went away
from the school of the school for operating referendums um that has shifted now because those factors are um set in statute and if you think of that valuation those valuations adjustments that you saw from a home perspective um
those were not impacting the district's budget um but they do impact the district's Revenue that they receive through local Levy versus state aid um so there's been a shift that's happened that's shifting more of the um annual revenues over to the local taxpayer and
away from the state in essence um doesn't mean the district's receiving any more Revenue but the where the revenue is coming from has shifted so this is an outline of the district current operating referendum um if you look at fiscal 25 that the district's Uh
current Authority is 67207 per student that generates about uh $3.1 million for fiscal 26 so that was the last Levy that was set by and certified by the board in December of 25
um that Levy uh expires after fiscal 27 um the uh 2023 there was a law change that school districts now have the authority to board renew one time um at
the same term with with the same term and at the same amount um and for you guys your term was 10 years um so that means um within the statutory window you'll be in that window you're already in the window as of July 1 of 24 um and
that window ends June 15th of 2026 um what that means is that the school board could choose to renew that Levy like it never expired um one time um so as of fiscal year 28 that
72527 would take the same inflationary effect and continue on um as if it as if it never expired so when you think of your overall budget that's about $3 million and I put that in context for the reductions that you guys were looking at
from the standpoint of um maintaining your budget um that's a significant portion of the district's budget that's important for ongoing planning um as the district is uh is thinking about their plans as they move forward um we'll talk a little bit about what the Statewide
trend is here uh right now there's been two cohorts of school districts and school boards that have went through this uh process and have went through their windows I call them their periods for board renewal those are represented in the top so fiscal uh year 24
expirations and 25 expirations have made it through their window um Alla one school district across the state chose chose to board renew that Authority um and we'll outline some of those districts as we move forward in the upcoming slides there was one District
that chose to revoke and replace their existing Authority and that was for a specific purpose um they had an authority that didn't have an inflationary adjustment on it and they were going back to voters for asked for an increase so they wanted to um get that inflationary increase on their
total Authority and not just the portion that they were asking borders to renew um the bottom two uh pieces here represent cohorts that are in their approval um window right now the fiscal
26 cohort is a large cohort there was 50 school districts in that um uh cohort across the state 30 of them have acted to board renew um two chose to go back and revoke and replace and then 18 are in progress and or in discussions right
now ahead of their window of June 15 25 um and then 27 is just getting into that window of approval um as we as we move forward here as of July 1 of 24 this is just uh some illustrations
just for reference of districts and different levels of authority um you look at the first cohort that that Authority averaged 33584 um for the districts where that chose to move forward with those board renewals um the second cohort there on
the right that it was through their cohort as a 24 um that average was 84060 and you'll notice um just regionally right Buffalo Hanover Montrose was in that group um and they acted on that at the board level um this one's a little
harder to see you'll see uh on the left represents the districts that have acted as part of the cohort right now of those 30 um big lake is in one of um is part of that um I think Rockford is in part of that it's hard for me to see um but
you can see the various districts that have acted on that um currently and that average Authority is a little over $935 per student on average and then we have uh several districts that are on the far right that are um are taking
action is um in the window um through the fiscal 27 window and it just gives you a sense of it's not just Metro not just rural it's districts all across not just Regional right it's districts across the state of Minnesota and really why that
um that law was passed really was um a recognition that it cost districts to run these elections and they were virtually um 100% successful right um so there was that burden from the
standpoint of not only the cost for the district to run the elections but also from a planning perspective as districts are making those decisions um those have been the discussions really at the board level that um districts are having um can you live without that 3.1 million
from a budget perspective um and having that in place to be able to plan route and is a very important thing for um the school boards and school districts as we've been talking with them uh the capital project l uh referendum is another tool that
school districts uh can access for generating additional revenue for their operating budget so um if we go back to that slide that Beth uh had up there when we talk about levies for learning bonds for building the two levies the
one operating referendum that one everybody um pretty much knows about right your district has it the capital project Levy are often referred to as a technology Levy um is another revenue streams U voters can um present to or
districts can present to voters to generate some additional revenue on an ongoing basis for your budget and really when you think about this right um this is things that are in your existing budget they can be freed up and the number one thing is technology um technology is a big
component of your budget um curriculum textbooks those types of things are other um districts that run their own transportation fleets that's another mechanism for them to fund um transportation Vehicles as part of their annual budget and when you look at um
generating Revenue in this uh way to support your budget you're really looking at those things that are in your current budget that can be freed up um from a resource perspective to to go towards other things in the classroom right um and generate some additional
Revenue to pay staff to to fund programs uh um things that are part of your ongoing budget this is a little different um because the operating referendum is a per student driven Revenue stream this is
actually driven by a tax rate and that tax rate is part of the ballot and voted on um by voters and then that tax rate is applied to your net tax capacity so when we were talking about that slide about the district's overall
tax rates have been coming down over the last 5 years because as valuations have grown the N the math becomes a larger number divided by your annual revenue that's driven mostly by enrollment um has stayed the same um so your tax rates
have have dropped sub subsequentially this Levy um is going to adjust as your valuations or tax base changes um you could get more Revenue if your tax base grows you also can see it inversely if your tax Bas declines um you you'd get
less Revenue as part of a levy like this um the revenue um the ballot language looks a little bit different because on an operating referendum that language is very prescribed in statute this is going to look more like a a question that was
presented similar to your 2015 election where you're presenting a board question and you can outline specifically um the types of things you would look at funding so this does analysis on uh the two types of levies um like I said
they're spread over two different tax basis so referendum market value tax base is the operating referendum it's a single tax rate that's applied to all Property Owners um that pay towards that Levy um on the right is a net tax
capacity Levy with your Capital project Levy and that's spread um 100% Levy but I'll say the operating referendum for your school district hasn't generated anyal state aid for quite some time so when we look at these two types of levies they're really um going to come
from a local taxpayer exclusively right now um per pupil you can put that inflationary Factor on that the school district does currently have and a point to just clarify there too is the state of Minnesota every year figures that inflationary adjustment as part of um
your operating Levy the district doesn't decide that um that's that number as the state increases the cap so that 20 that 2,266 that's currently the State cap um as the state increases that they apply
the same inflationary factor to any District that has um that included in the in their ballot that was presented to voters and it's very common it's more common than not to not have that inflationary adjustment included um you can see the allowable
uses change a little bit the election dates um for an operating referendum have to be in November um a capital project Levy has um dates that are prescribed in statute um in the five months that are listed
there February April May August or November albeit as we look at the upcoming slides the levy timing of when the revenue comes um doesn't necessarily matter depending on what election date you're going to receive those the revenue in the same fiscal year and then
there's a maximum length of 10 years U for either um type um of Levy uh it's very uncommon for us to see shorter terms I would say the the term is typically a 10-year term um there is
some cases for various reasons why districts would have a shorter term but what I will say is that 10-year period comes faster than you think after after it's authorized um when you're coming back to have these discussions and then the board renewal right now only only uh
applies to the operating referendum on a one-time basis it doesn't apply to the capital project at this time um but there is some discussion at in in at the legislative session about bringing that in as well so Revenue recognition and timeline
so as Tina um talked about that 18% of your budget um coming from the tax levy so the tax levy that would have been adopted in December right that impacts taxes that'll be paid in 25 and revenue
that's going to be collected in 26 or recognized in fiscal 2526 right now if you have an election if it's held in 25 it would be included in its authorized by voters it would impact taxes paid in 26 it would be
revenue for the school district in 27 um so when we think of this point in time and as the district looks at their budget the soonest that new Revenue could be authorized by voters and impact the school district's budget is fiscal 26 27 or July 1 of 26 through June 30th
of 27 um so next fiscal year right that is um going to be part of a budgeting process cannot be impacted in any way by any vote at this point in time um the far right just represents that same
information if if uh for example a district would wait to hold an election even in the spring of 26 right um or um in the case of an operating referendum that it would impact the tax year of 27 and not be Revenue until
2728 um just to give you a sense of of that Revenue recognition for a school district so this is completely hypothetical example um as we look at tax impact and um this we just picked $1
million as as an example of if the school district looked to generate an additional million dollars in either one of these ways how what would the property tax impact look like um and for your District this isn't pronounced as
pronounced as others um because when we look at these two different types of levies there one is spread on referend and market value tax base single tax rate for doesn't matter what type of property you have so if you look at $100,000 residential and $100,000
commercial they pay um uh the same rate on that operating referendum at $25 as you look at the capital project Levy those classification rates that are defined in statute become applicable to how taxes are collected and if you look
at a $100,000 residential home they pay $12 on a capital project Levy and that commercial property owner then pays $28 um because of the way taxes are collected when we start looking at a net tax capacity Levy and that's virtually
municipalities across the state there's very few um referent a market value levies still exist in very rarely in a city perspective school districts are the only School District or only
municipality um that by law uses that refer market market value tax base when it comes to a certain portion of their Levy um so you can see the the difference outlined here this is again this is
hypothetical generating additional million dollars um in either scenario for the district's budget above you're currently um paying for taxes when we look at voter approved Authority comparison um this gives you a sense of
all your neighbors that touch you currently what and I i' like to talk about this is this is revenue that these school districts generate um on a per student basis above what the state of Minnesota provides through their
formulas so this is additional Revenue that's helping support programs Staffing operations um um to help run programs Elk River um regionally their operating referendum is uh a little bit north of
1,500 per student um and then you can see what we're representing here is the two types of levies as we as we scroll down um Big Lake uh is represented there we're we're cutting off some names I noticed here but big lake is represented
there in the second they have uh uh two types of levies um their Capital project Levy is represented in blue and then their operating referendum which is basically close to the same rate as yours is represented in Orange at 702
per student so that uh equates to not quite $1,000 per student of Revenue that they receive to help um run programs your uh your operating Levy right there is represented currently at $6.99 um in this representation and this
would be for fiscal um 26 so this is Statewide information 1147 is a Statewide average uh the state voter approved Authority right now um for school district 74% of school districts across the state of Minnesota
have some form of additional resources that is approved by voters um uh 26% often times isn't for the lack of trying um when um you look at school districts across the state they uh um depending on
their different dynamics of their tax bases it can make it more challenging for them to generate Revenue um specifically when you start thinking about how the operating referendum formula functions um school districts that have large amounts of egg property or seasonal wreck property the
residential homeowners can have to contribute more to towards those levies um which has some impact on their success um just to conclude um I think when we look at uh information like this uh we
we just picked that information at the million dollar level again that was a hypothetical example to just give you some um clarification on what it would look like in your school district I will say all of this is highly regulated right um when school districts are are
going out to present questions to voters um they have to be done in a certain way um the questions have to be presented in a certain way and then when it comes to uh the things that are uh driven at the statutory level from legislature right
um most of those things um including um um how the process for going about the board renewal um timelines all those things are are clearly articulated in statute and I think we'll get to some of that as we move forward so we can answer
any questions folks have or if we're doing that later we can next one any questions for the other group I just had a clarifying question on slide two you kind of answered it here in the last 30 seconds on the non-qualifying Agricultural and qualifying agricultural
because one goes from 229 million down to zero and so that would be Farmland that doesn't have a home on it so we're only getting tax based from the property y so for it's it's not as big of an impact here right but you're exactly right so the the on the referend and
market value levies egg qualifying egg property so the property outside of the house garage in one acre um does not pay towards a um operating referendum or a referendum market value Levy um where they do contribute towards net tax
capacity Levy so that's exempt from paying and um seasonal rre is the other type of property that's exempt so cabin owners um when you start thinking of like a brainer Public Schools um they have a significant portion of their tax base that's made up of seasonal record
cabins those cabins don't contribute to the the operating Lefty um operating levies for operating referendums because they're spread on referend and market value and those that market value you can see is pretty aligned to the estimated market value assessed by the
county those are pretty one for one um when you start looking to the right that's where the classification rates and the numbers look a little bit smaller on that chart um because those class rates are applied to the to the market value that's assessed by the county to come up with that tax base
number I have a couple questions could we go back to the slide that shows the state uh line graph with the revenues versus what we're bringing in for state aid to the district and while we're getting there I'll ask
you my first question so in in regard to this 2023 law change where we can Auto renew that Levy from 2016 what do you think the chances are that the state will change the law again so we can do a second renewal I I can't answer that question
that's all legislative driven right from the standpoint of what what what legislators do from of when they when they go in session and have those discussions what do you think for that change first time well the change uh
came about because of the cost that school districts were occurring in the state of Minnesota to run the elections and for the most part they were um virtually 100% successful um so instead of having the school districts um having
to uh plan around not having that Revenue in place right um from a budget perspective because you think of that timing when Tina and um Eric are setting up their budgets right now um if the district had to plan to potentially not have $3 million as part of the budget
that was a that's a pretty significant um thing to to plan for when you think of your operating budgets on an ongoing basis from a stability perspective um and really that was the number one driver right is um the planning side of
it but then also the cost that school districts were having to occur to to run these elections that were that were pretty much 100% successful okay it doesn't elections for schools um it's not an insignificant amount of time um
money that gets um attributed to especially a superintendent in the in the administrative staff it would make sense to me that few more they would look at doing a second Auto renewal then which is kind of an eye opener to me to think
about so in regards to this slide here um we're talking about inflation with the solid blue line correct yeah and state aid to the district to the monol 882 District on the red dash line that's
the basic education formula that school districts everybody in the school distri everybody in the state of Minnesota gets that that bottom line right on a per student basis for every student that you serve right do you think that the the general
public should understand that the State Rep Rue more so followed the red line or the Blue Line these are this number this information right here really is the trend right um when you think about that
shift of um of uh revenue and Reliance for school districts to have additional resources right that's really what this is showing um from the perspective and you also look at this trend right um along this
line right there was other things that have come into play that our school districts are required to do right so not only has it not kept up with inflation over this period of time um but the other things from a perspective that school districts are mandated to
provide services for including special ed and other things that um have happened over this 20year period are also not in significant when you think of that Trend right here so not only has the inflation um the for not kept up
with inflation um the other side of it is is there's other things that school districts over this period of time have been required to do um um not chose to do but they're required to do right per law a discussion in point yeah you make
good points there with the requirements I think the tough bill for us to swallow is and my belief is that we look at that blue line right there that represents the cost of living with inflation right over the last few years and families have incurred that and some families
have been able to generate the income to pay for that which is taxable income which the state collects taxes as a percentage of income so I would say that the state's Revenue more so follows the Blue Line than the red line and if
that's the case then the state has additional dollars that they're not giving to the district to help the district follow that inflation trajectory on the blue line and that's tough cuz when we're saying that it costs more because of requirements and we're going to give you
less then we're putting even more burden on the local level and I I would say that the state looking at that probably is aware that they're passing the buck yeah and I think you look at that that Top Line there rep that represents
the spread and really the goal of the last legislative session was to try to close that Gap a little bit when they were applying the increases the basic education formula um inflation hit as we all know if you go to the grocery store right you're buying food you're going to
the gas station wherever you're wherever you go right costs are up the school districts are experiencing that too right goods are more expensive um costs more to have supplies in the classroom costs more to buy janitorial supplies more to run buses um if you have
transportation right all those costs um for the school are are going up at the same time as as that as that Gap is widened there and those inflationary adj adjustments that was about a seven seven over 7% increase in inflation and about
another 6% last two fiscal years there compared to a four and a 2% increase from the state for me the the tough takeaway from that then is that we're we're having a
conversation at the local level of how do we ask the local taxpayers to cover that Gap and what we should be doing is going to the state and saying why aren't you fixing the gap which is tough cuz we should be
working with other districts to do that but we're one small District kind of fighting for ourselves and so we end up going back to the locals and we're talking about $12 a household which doesn't seem like much but if the Blue Line keeps that trajectory and the red
line keeps going where it's going then you're going to end up in Dallas instead of Seattle in a couple more years so it's a tough one to figure out as a school board but I'm glad you showed us that chart that's helpful I guess I I guess in short the
state's becoming more efficient at failing to support the school boards or the schools in general is what you're stating and I I really like the fact that you put in here how many school boards have been put in a position to have to renew
because of the fact that this is falling short so at the end of the day we have to provide a place for students to get educated and I'm grateful for our staff that have worked hard on you know the budget reductions and everything you
guys have done but at the end of the day that's still not enough for what we're seeing and the gaps that we have and that the district's put in this position and at the end of the day Mark even you nailed it we're only one small District we only have one representative that
represents monacello Buffalo St Michael Elk River we're one or down in the city sometimes they have 12 different reps right so that their votes count but our vote is like Mark said it's a small portion when we
go to Voice our opinion on anything too at the state level so I appreciate this this was eye opening and my question for you is how many districts do you see right now
having to go for a capital project as well to help offset say that technology Levy that they go for that could free up $350,000 for and it looks like a capital Levy is
going to be way less on the voters the residential home owners residential homeowners versus the I'm a business owner in town versus the commercial yeah they take a little bit more brunt of it but that would free up 300 and like say how much technology
is is there a lot of districts going that route so um the capital project Levy as a whole Statewide is um there's been a lot more districts that have been using that option when they present questions to voters and there's various
reasons for it right because depending on that tax based makeup that was on the second slide um nobody looks exactly the same right so um you might be a community that has a fair amount of egg and then you lose that whole portion of
your tax base um so that may be makes the decision to look at a capital project Levy in some way a little bit more of a way to balance the tax levy right um based on your um um tax base
makeup so right now wide there's 62 districts that have some form of a capital project Levy um that they generate additional revenue for predominantly if you would have went back 10 years ago that would have been more of a a Metro dominated list um a
lot of Metro school districts they refer to it as their Tech Levy they don't even call it a capital project Levy it's just called the tech Levy um and they generate um a significant amount of Revenue a lot of them do for um funding their technology needs and Technologies
broad right technology means um Safety and Security Cameras it means uh it means technology devices that the students hold it means training for staff on technology um the Personnel all those pieces that um it's a pretty broad
thing so for the most part um that's a pretty significant component of a District's budget as you look at potential ways to generate additional resources it also is nice for school districts um to have a little bit of a balance um from the standpoint of how
the revenue is generated so your overall Community here no surprises growing right when you have new types of property coming in um new commercial property um maybe homeowners that's not necessarily um representing um new kids
but there is new tax base um and that re that Levy is going to be generated based on the tax rate that's going to adjust by the the the change in your um overall net tax capacity of your school district um so that um can have some impact to
offset the declining enrollment you think of declining enrollment and another reason why school districts um a lot of times are looking to have that Levy as part of um the revenues that they receive on an ongoing
basis so um yes it's uh I think uh two or three years ago we had right right around 50 so there's been about 10 or so school districts that have asked for that form of time of Levy over the last couple of years for helping support oper
operations and it's about a 50/50 split between rural and Metro now I think there's 33 Metro districts out of the 48 that have some form of capital project Levy and now there's 29 um districts what I consider outside of the the 48
Metro I guess that just leads me to another question and just keep looking at this chart or this line graph here and I'm wondering what the future looks like and it scares me to think that that that Gap could grow and if we're talking about
renewing a property tax levy that could cover $3 million a year it looks like a Band-Aid to me if this Gap keeps growing going to be enough would you I don't know if you're the right person to people to ask
but would we be wise to ask you if it makes sense to go back to the drawing board and talk about a a technology referendum a tech Levy that you're talking about Capital whatever we want to call it I think it's easier to sell a tech Levy to the public right now than
just capital projects as opposed to automatically re renewing that $3 million ones go back and take our chances for I don't know $10 million so that that in case the state keeps doing this to us we can stay alive here yeah I I
wouldn't um I wouldn't propose that right um when you kind of think about your existing revenues and what your budget currently has in place I I Tina can correct me but I doubt you have uh $3 million of current technology
expenditures in your operating budget right now um so that 3 million of Revenue that's in place that you can plan around is as important as anything right from a budget stability perspective if you're looking at trying to close the gap from the standpoint of
your future budgets and in um creating um some stability in your budget As you move forward um the capital project Levy could be something that the school board could explore and we can run different scenarios at whatever level you would
want to do but you really got to think about that from the standpoint of what's in your budget that could qualify for that right um as you move forward to um be able to support your operating budget As you move forward instead of try to go about it in a in a way where um you
would potentially go out and chances and then risk a component of your operating budget As you move forward and just uh we want to thank you for being our financial advisor and come in here to share like just a wealth of knowledge for all of us to consider as we move forward I I can just see
obviously the engagement of questions and and um engagement of everybody on the board is just uh really high so we appreciate that and then I think we better bring up our cleanup um hitter our for our our Le from our legal team um we
have on Edison here to um just give a little bit of governance um overview uh to support um as as you as we all move forward with discussion in the future all right thank you for those of you who
don't know me I'm John Edison I'm with the law firm Squires walburger and mace we've changed our name a few times years but we've been working with your school district for a long time um met most of you in context of Schoolboard meetings or individual meetings over the years um
and like Ellers my firm works with school districts across the state so I mean the issues that you're talking about at the table tonight I mean there are issues that that school districts all over Minnesota are grappling with right now I I'm I'm hearing about challenges moving forward especially now
as we start talking about getting into negotiations later this year and it's going to be a you know it's going to be a tough bargaining season I think because of some of the challenges that that school districts are facing um my portion of the presentation tonight I think is probably going to be the shortest of the three um I'm going to
talk a little bit about effective governance and some best practices and one of the things I wanted to say just as a starting point is I think uh you know the years that I've worked with your school district I I consider this board to be a high functioning board so kudos to all of you for that I'm not
just saying that because I'm here I'm saying that because there are some districts where I do have a lot of conversations about uh disagreements between board members and things like that and and this is not one of them so so I think that's a good thing a starting the first thing I wanted to
talk about is just statutory responsibilities of a school board and I think this dovetails into what you heard from from from the people at Ellers in terms of the authority that you do have because when when it comes to revenue you know there's a lot you can't do
there's some things you can do and then in terms of what do you have to do there's quite a bit of discretion here in Minnesota law and so when you look at the statutes that apply to school boards there's a lot of General statements about what the board is responsible for
So and I've got some of these in the slide so in Minnesota statute section 123 b.2 there's a provision that says the board must have the general charge of the business of the district the school houses and the interests of the schools thereof and then it goes on to talk about how the board's authority to
conduct the business of the district includes what's specifically listed in statute and then implied powers that can be construed as reasonably necessary to carry out the specific duties that you have in Minnesota law and that's really
the same standard that applies to any political subdivision of the state of Minnesota so when you look at a city or a county it's it's pretty much kind of the same framework that applies to them they're all considered political subdivisions of the state and the powers they have are largely driven by
Statute um another good General statute that talks about the board's Authority and responsibilities is Minnesota statute section 123b .09 subdivision 7 which talks about how the board shall make and when deemed advisable uh change
or repeat appeal rules relating to the organization management of the board and the duties of its officers so again that's General oversight Authority which is again repeated in the next subdivision subdivision 8 which talks about how the board must superintendent superintend and manage the schools of
the district and adopt rules for their organization and instruction so when we talk about what that means so what does it mean for the board to successfully be able to superintend manage the schools of the district there 's a lot that goes into that and you know I don't have the time
tonight to talk about all of that but there are some key things that that come out of this one is that the board has to furnish school facilities and in fact there's another statute that specifically talks about how the duty and function of the school board is to
make sure that there are School adequate school facilities for the students that live in your school district another thing that goes into superintending and managing the district is to arrange for Transportation there's laws that that apply to a District's obligation to
provide transportation to students which I I grew up in North Dakota so I always think that's it's interesting because when I where I grew up we didn't ride the bus to school and you know here it's very different in Minnesota um the board is responsible to PR prescribe textbooks
and courses of study another thing you know we spent a lot of time listening to presentations earlier tonight about levies and and Authority for raising revenue um you know one of the responsibilities of the board is to Levy for necessary funds for the conduct of
schools paying debts and other proper expenses of the school district and in fact there's another statute section 123 b02 that talks about how the board must provide by Levy of tax necessary funds
for the conduct of schools and proper payment of proper expenditures of the district and so now the determination obviously of what it means to be able to do that I mean that's where you as board members collectively make decisions with input from your District's
Administration and outside experts like Ellers in order to make those determinations I mean there isn't a statute that says that you must do this in order to meet your obligations as a school board another thing so kind of moving on to another General topic one of the
things I talk about a lot in presentations and board training is the role of the board versus the role of administration and so really as I'm sure you've all heard before in board trainings through the msba or other sources that the board the role of the board is macr management and once the
school board sets the policy or general direction that will be taken by the district then it's up to the superintendent and your Administration to carry that out that implementation of the policy or the direction that you set for the for the district to go and so to
state that another way if you're talking about a map and a road trip the board would identify the destination on the map that the district needs to go and then the superintendent and other designes under the direction of the superintendent would drive the car to
that destination and pick the route that would be taken to get there when we're talking about difficult decisions related to money and Staffing and cutting budgets and all of those things it's very common for citizen
complaints to go along with that um and those could come from a variety of sources people upset about their taxes going up other people you know a concerned parent might be might be worried about a class size you have your employees who are other constituents who
you know might end up being put on a unrequested leave or laid off because of a budget cut and all of those people might end up coming to you with a complaint or a concern about what's happening in the district um one of the things that I think is really important
when you're dealing with citizen complaints is to follow a chain of command or protocol when those come in and in my mind the best practice for that and what I think highly functioning boards do is they listen to what the
concern is and they document that concern and share it with the superintendent and then they also direct the person who's making the complaint to the superintendent or principal depending on the type of complaint as the person who would be able to to more
directly address their concern and possibly conduct an investigation if it if it's that type of complaint that would warrant an investigation and when when you're providing uh when you're directing the citizen to the superintendent or the principal as the administrator who would
be able to further review the concern that's being raised I think it's obviously a good idea to provide contact information let that person know that you'll be sharing their concern with the superintendent so Administration can act on it and then explain that you know if
it's a complaint like a harassment complaint or something like that or bullying in the context of uh student bullying type complaint that that the citizen may be asked to complete a Complaint Form to document what the concern is if the district has
one another question that comes up a lot in this context is what what about an anonymous complaint so if someone submits a concern doesn't put their name on it there's no contact information attached to it does that mean that the district can just ignore it I think the
obvious answer to that is no um you know to the extent you're able to do so I would follow the same process for an anonymous complaint that you would for a complaint that has a name attached to it because there may be a perfectly legitimate complaint that's submitted
anonymously and it should still be addressed and so why is this chain of command so important I think I I like to talk about this by not being disparaging toward individual scho Schoolboard members but
acknowledging that everyone who's on a school board brings certain strengths to the table and that's what makes a board as a body so great and representative of the community that that everyone lives in but there are certain things that that individual board members just
aren't trained to do most of the time sometimes they are one it'd be very uncommon for a board member to be trained and how to conduct an investigation in the school setting and and in fact if an individual board member does take action individually to
conduct an investigation into something someone could actually inadvertently create legal liability by by trying to investigate and that could be in the form of a data practices issue or something else um another thing that's important in these types of situations
is it especially when difficult decisions are being made at the board me board board level it's it's important for a school district to have a clear and consistent message and a lawful message in terms of what can be shared and what can't be shared that's delivered to the person who's making a
complaint other Witnesses and you know if it's a complaint against a person the alleged offender and then another reason is because the board acts as a body and individual board members unless the board has specifically given authority
to someone to do do this would an individual board member would not have authority to conduct his or her own investigation into a complaint and then finally individual board members might not know the full story of what's going on what's been done in the past or what's happening
right now with respect to a particular issue you know for example if Administration has already been trying to deal with something before get to the board level so those are all the reasons why the the chain of command is important another thing that that we talk about
when I'm providing training on on board uh governance issues is what not to do when someone comes with a specific complaint or a concern and one is don't pick sides two would be don't promise a
particular outcome because again the board acts as a body not as individuals and and one person can carry through on ensuring that a that a particular outcome actually happens another one is don't promise confidentiality a lot of times people
come forward with a concern and they want to be confidential that could be include that could include a parent it could include an employee it could include someone from the public who maybe is concerned about raising a Viewpoint that's maybe not popular with the majority and and wants to be
confidential in that regard and the reality is there the that the district is subject to the Minnesota Government data Practices Act and there's a lot of circumstances in which a complaint or a concern or information about a complaint or a
concern could be released to someone else it might not necessarily become public but it could be shared within the school district with people who have the right to access that information or if an investigations taking place other Witnesses who would need to know what
the complaint is to respond and so so for all of those reasons I would not promise confidentiality another one is talked about this already don't investigate an issue yourself um another one would be to try not to act individually as the
decision maker so to speak because that's something that an individual board member can't do you act as a body um another thing that I would recommend not to do is not don't offer to personally address a concern I've seen that happen other places where someone
says you know I can I can take care of this is if I just talk to so and so and then they go and do that and I've seen that make a situation much worse and then finally when you're dealing with things as board members it's really unsettling for a rank and
file District employee to have a board member come to them about a particular concern out of the blue that's another thing i' I've seen happen in in other school districts and that's where I think it's important for board members to talk to the superintendent or the superintendent's cabinet when there's a
concern and not go below that and and try to speak directly with with other District employees so now obviously you have constituents and people come to board members to to talk about concerns or things that are important to them and
they might want to come to you to you know to try to lobby for you to lobby at the board table for a particular course of action I mean that's how our that's how our system works that's politics we all know that so I mean obviously things like that happen all the time and
there's nothing wrong with listening to a concern a person has asking questions to understand that concern and then bringing it forward to those in the district who are able to do something about it which could be the district's Administration or um the board as a
whole so what about the flip side what what happens if if you've heard someone out and that that someone keeps coming to you with the same issue over and over again and is maybe being rude or disrespectful about it the obligation
for a school board member to continue to engage with someone under those circumstances or can you say no you know what I I'm not going to talk any further with you about this particular issue um and and the answer is there's no legal
requirement that would obligate an individual board member to engage in a certain amount of dialogue with a with a particular person so you all have the ability to decide how much you want to have those conversations and if they
become if they enter into a realm where they're not being productive you could exercise your your decision-making authority to end the conversation if you if if it was warranted and so you know options obviously could include referring a citizen complaint to
District administration which I talked about earlier um you could decline to engage further with someone if you provided information and answered the question that was raised um and you could choose to ignore Communications or emails if if someone's being abusive
assulting or argumentative um even end a conversation or a phone call under those circumstances and so I say this because um you know I think we live in an era where there have been a lot of acrimonious Communications that have
gone on and a lot of of places and I think I was thinking about this recently and talking to a friend about it and I think some of what I've Just Seen just as an attorney representing school districts in Minnesota is it started in my mind with with the pandemic where
there people had a lot of opinions and wanted a place to voice the opin their opinions and there wasn't a place to go to do that except for public comment at at government meetings like local school district meetings and so so we started to see that happen a lot more and more
and then at the board level board members and Boards as a whole were grappling with the the question of you know we want people to be heard but we also need to carry about our business and make sure that's completed and how do we put up the guard rails so there's
a lot of discretion like I said that that particular issue and then finally the one of the things I wanted to note is that you know if there's a complaint that's filed that requires a response the law would impose that requirement really on the district as a
whole or the school board as a whole and so you know for that reason that's another reason why you know there's a complaint that that comes forward that it should be channeled through the superintendent so the superintendent can work with Administration or legal
counsel if necessary to ensure it's it's handled appropriately and then the last thing I want to talk about is a and this kind of D dovetails into some of the communications that that I've seen across the state over the past five years or so and that's just dealing with
threats of litigation because when you're when you're making tough decisions and exercising discretion where there's not a lot of clear guidance in terms of what you have to do that you know it's not unusual for someone who's upset with the decision
that's made to to threaten to take legal action against a school district and and file a lawsuit and I just wanted to talk real quickly about you know if that happens a properly initiated lawsuit involves a document called a summons and complaint and that has to be served on
an appropriate District representative which in State Court would be under new rules would be the board chair or if it's a federal lawsuit it would be on a member of the school board or the superintendent of the district and so there's a specific way that that that
has to be done and then outside of that administrative agencies both at the state and federal level have a lot of authority to um to investigate complaints that are filed and when that happens usually school districts are put
on notice of that through a letter that goes from the ad the agency to the superintendent of the school district so I'm just telling you this so you know you know if you see a document that's characterized as a lawsuit I know that can be unsettling but there are specific
ways that that needs to be an issue iated and if you get something that wasn't initiated in one of those ways chances are it's not a legitimate legal action against the district and then if you do receive something that that purports to be some kind of legal notice
about a potential lawsuit the proper way to handle that would be to notify District administration right away and then Administration can report it to your insurance company and work with me to to make sure that it's handled the way it needs to be handled and so that that kind of takes
me through what I'd prepared for tonight can answer any questions if anyone has [Music] any thank you thank you was a lot of info and we're not done yet uh we're on to item number D capital
budget 2526 please welcome back up to the podium Director of Business Services Tina Burkholder all right well thanks everyone I won't take that long to talk about Capital budgets so um yeah we have
uh nearly a million dollars in capital Revenue uh allocated for next year um as in previous years annual Capital items remain a top priority while other varying Capital needs are considered as funding allows um in November and
December I went around to each site talked to the site administrators seen what their requests were um kind of divied it up is this capital is this ltfm um and then from there we uh you know we want to ensure that we're kind of getting their top priorities um
requests through this process um and then in addition to Capital funds we receive uh long-term facility maintenance Revenue which is tracked separately through our 10-year plan however the demand uh for facility
for facility maintenance continues to exceed uh available funding again if any Capital funding comes in under uh budget the remaining funds are returned to the district office where they were reallocated so again if you take a look
at the um and this is an action item we want to to act on this tonight um you know a lot of the requests that came in um we're for classroom settings um the ones on the top are kind
of reoccurring they come in every year um you know you have the curriculum you have technology Jamie which you were talking about that's a big line item that comes in every year we have salaries um the $2 set aside and again some uh helmet stuff that Gary needs for
football hockey and Lacrosse um but now we get down to the ones uh that the sites were requesting the high school um we thought that um it'd be a good time to approve
uh these tables that the um they need for their uh welding a class last year we gave them I think eight welders so this will kind of kind of shore up that project that they're doing um at the high school there's a
kiln that no longer is working so they need new Kil we want to make sure kids can do pottery and and and all that and then one of the killings that they had at the high school the lid is actually broke so we wanted to make sure we had two functioning kills for
them uh again the do um the parking lot study here that we're conducting um at the middle school that's another one of the asks we're doing that right now um little mountain with the changes in start times we found out very quickly
that um it's very dark still in the morning with those earlier start times so they need three more parking lot lights so that they can uh get the the students in safe um again here the corridor emergency lights that was um that's kind
of been ask I think last year that was a ask so we're we're pushing that through um the pool we're going to be doing a pool project here we're changing out the lights there's currently dry Niche lights in there and we're switching that out to a a uh wet Niche
um but we need to pay for the electrical circuitry through Capital because that is a new item the lights we can use ltfm funds for um it's the the electrical part we cannot um Pinewood uh we're going to
give them a door fob that they need uh to help uh get kids in and out off the playground a little easier and then uh on the buildings and ground side we have um you know we have Capital we have uh custodial equipment that we need um we
have a have a big budget when the last time I think anything was purchased was 2017 so things are getting old and and falling apart so um yeah so had a question on the top line a lot of these are aligned with previous years
uh however the the tech director one is about 300% higher than last year can you elaborate that um the change that's being driven by that so previously we only funded part of the tech director's position through Capital with our budget
alignment process we are allocating all of that position to Capital since we can um so that helped us reduce our round two Targets back to the buildings this would be all just salary and benefits then correct
and Terry I think you mentioned too but none of this is frivolous needs this is just to keep us operating and keep things functioning yes yes yeah I had a heart attack this fall when Dave let me know
that the dry Niche lights in the pool were leaking and and the company that makes the gasket is no longer in business so it's either fill them in with no lights or change it to a wet Niche and in talking with Gary and um
and a lot of the swimmers it's it's just a different kind of a feel or environment while the kids are swimming and you know want to kind of give them uh give them uh a good swimming it's a safety issue yeah just like little
mountain well and that's what that's actually the they're actually not required because of the lights up above you have enough lumens so in the diving well you'd have to have a water spitter then too you'd
have to put something else in because that's safety so yeah it's it's it's a it's tough and we want to again support Sports and the classes and as you can see we don't have a lot left over at the
end so um any other questions for Terry final comment So Jamie you asked about the list and our needs are much long longer than this um you know a
million dollars doesn't get us very far um after Tech and capital and uh curriculum needs and helmets um we have a lot of projects that we would love to do across all buildings um there's just not enough funds uh to get everything done and at
the same time we're trying to use a multiple year approach to some of these requests just to make sure they're fully vetted and we kind of get everything included that's needed for these projects um so we try to do the best we can to make sure you know each building
is getting something um we don't have all the buildings on there we try you know look across multiple years is to see how we can make sure we're hitting buildings you know equitably and and making sure everybody gets something any other
questions well thank you and board this is an action item so moved second moved by Melissa Curtis seconded by Casey root all those in favor please say I I all those opposed
please say no motion passes 6 on to teaching and learning I'd like to welcome up to the podium director of teaching and learning Cindy poshing and District literacy League Kristen Hall
talk about our districtwide literacy and professional development up all right well thank you for having us um and I am Cindy this is Kristen um so we'd like to share with you tonight our professional learning update for this school year we've been
working on a lot of things we want to share just a few of them with you I'd like to start off with a quote from two of the most uh foremost leaders in Education and Research across our country and probably across all countries um um Robert uh Robert mzo and
Rich Richard defor and he said they said in their book um leaders of learning one of the most powerful things a school can do to help enhance student achievement is to guarantee that specific content is taught in specific courses and grade
levels specifically we're talking about State Standards here and so this year we've been doing a lot of work with state standards and uh we'll be doing that in the next several years I'd like to start with science standards science standards are implemented this
year the new science standards and we'll be seeing the new science MCA 4 test specifically what I'd like to talk about is what's going on with instruction within each one of these and what we're doing for professional development and so science standards are implemented this year our English language arts
standards next year social study standards the following year and then math in 2028 uh provided that they are finalized through um ruling and they are in the last stages of ruling right now in the science standards what's new in the science standards is that we've switched
to follow the Next Generation science standards which are phenomenon based and so what educators are doing is they're starting with a phenomenon to begin their unit of instruction and then they're focusing all the instruction that unit on that phenomenon for example
the question or the wondering that might be posed let's say is um why do leaves change colors in the fall and then they'll take that question or wondering throughout their entire unit and then work with students on Discovery and using using investigation and
manipulation to answer finally at the end of a unit why do leaves change colors in the fall and so students will be able to do that so all of Science Education right now is based on phenomenon on right now that takes a lot of changing in instruction and so that's
what our science teachers have been working on in English language arts and starting with the English language arts through social studies and math standards the state of Minnesota has in implemented what's they're calling anchor standards and learning progressions and that means
that they take the same set of Standards called ankle anchor standards and they apply them from kindergarten all the way to 12th grade starting at the most Elementary level and then they progress those same exact standards and benchmarks all the way through 12th grade
but progressively um getting more rigorous all the way through and so that's happening now through Ela uh social studies and math English language arts specifically were focused on reading writing speaking listening um and I'm missing
something thank you critical thinking um and all of our professional development is focused around that um in the area of social studies they have made a switch again they're using the learning progression starting with very basic elements through kindergarten you can watch that same standard progress all
the way through 12th grade and see what a student should learn uh in fifth grade and what they should have learned in fourth grade and what they're going to learn in sixth grade it's really valuable for teachers to see that but what I really like about the change in social studies instruction is the move to inquiry base so it's very similar to
science instead of phenomenon base it's inquiry based so they think of um a topic that they want to research or wonder about and then they use the content areas that they're studying to answer those questions present presentations or solutions to those
questions or problems happening in society so it's inquiry based forcing again critical thinking and decision- making and then math is doing very much the same thing again with the learning progressions really focusing on rigor um
and really focusing on conceptual understanding and thinking and talking about mathematics and so our teachers are engaged in professional development across all four of those areas uh throughout this year and they will for the next four years in order to do that we as a staff
all the way across our district have been engaged in compass cohorts through our um multi-tiered system of support So if you remember that multi-tiered system of support it's that triangle some sort of thing that you've seen before where um tier one instructor
is the instruction that all students get for all core content areas and so 80% of students should be successful in that tier one instruction that they get in their general education classroom um about 15% of the students at tier two
need a little bit more intervention and then about 5% of the students need a tier three Intervention which is with extensive supports and possibly even special special education referral so the group of teachers that we've had and administrators coordinators working
together on quality high quality tier one instruction this year um these are some of the outcomes that we've been working on developing a shared understanding of what really high quality tier one instruction looks like what are those strategies that we need to lever to ensure that all students
meet grade level content we're using just in time supports or we want to train our teachers in just in time supports to engage all students and what that means is that every student should have the benefit benefit of learning their grade level content no matter where they're at and then as they're
learning that when the student begins to struggle or you can see a class is struggling where they maybe Miss some content you pause you provide an intervention just in time to help them catch up and then you keep moving at grade level instruction and then maybe pause again give them more supports so
it's called just in time uh supports in order for learning acceleration to accelerate students to meet grade level content and instead of students being behind year after year after year so that's one of the things we're really going to be focusing on we're also aligning our instructional materials and
professional learning with best practices so those are some of the things you can be looking forward to over the next several years and the school year we're working on all right thank you Cindy there's so much learning going on in terms of what our students need to no understand and be able to do as we Implement standards
over the coming years how we teach it is also important to to think about our teachers are engaged in a lot of learning about how to teach responsibly in ways that will close some of the gaps that students have and ensure every student has one year's growth in one year's time we're busy creating the
conditions and the support for teachers to develop that instructional agility and try some new instructional strategies that align with these best practices really this is about supporting our teachers to pull new information and use it to best support our students focusing first at the
elementary level we continue to move teachers through structured literacy learning um it is required that we create this space for teachers to bring evidencebased practices into our reading and English language arts classrooms these practices that are going to be
more impactful for greater numbers of kids to learn how to read we're celebrating approximately two dozen of our teachers have recently finished their two-year letters Journey we've got about 90 teachers that are 2third of their way through their online language and literacy Academy and we have about
another two dozen of our elementary colleagues who have just started their letters training this year so that're they're nearly a third of the way through their two-year Learning Journey so we are well underway with building our teachers pedagogical practices to
meet the everchanging needs of our students those practices are the first step bringing it into application is continued learning also we are fortunate to have a team of amazing Elementary administrators and reading coaches that that are supporting our teachers
bringing new practices into place in job embedded ways with our amazing curricular resources our Amplified knowledge building curriculum at the elementary level really helps to build students language comprehension this year our learning focused in August on how to plan evidence-based units and
lessons that lead kids down the path to that shared understanding and that guaranteed and viable curriculum that Cindy had mentioned now planning and delivering instructions is the first step we followed that up in January with PD for our principles and coaches on how to
look for these evidence-based practices in play with effective coaching strategies for our amplifi ckla because that coach on the side is what brings good practices into place also in our in our functional phonics curricular resource that coaching is an important
part of that model we have a multi-year partnership with Carrie at the U ofm to really help us bring good practices into play with this highquality instructional resource this year our coaches are getting a lot of support in ensuring all teachers are solid with their instructional design which really is
baked into the curricular resource itself and now that that's really going in a strong direction we're layering on top instructional delivery those in the- moment decisions teachers might make to be more responsive to the needs of the kids in front of them as we continue our work providing our coaches opportunities
to go partner with a mentor coach in another district and see and share some strategies and go and grow together and come come back and help our kids out that's key in this process as well we all are Learners and we're all doing better every day and then finally we're we're seeking partnership from Carrie in
site visits where we bring them in we visit some of our classrooms and they are helping us critically reflect on where our strengths and where our opportunities to grow next steps I'm going to pause here because this is an ongoing partnership we've had with them and we've been fortunate to have the same team from Carrie keep coming back
that relationship really helps us get to know our classrooms on that nuanced level we're going to celebrate a couple of successes that have been pointed out now that we're 2third of the way through these visits this year some specific improvements that have been noticed by our external partners coming in they're seeing increases in student engagement
it is student engagement that does lead to more opportunities to practice and strengthen their skills they're seeing more clear and explicit instruction there is that the umbrella term for that um literacy based instruction that leads to more students acquiring the skills that they need to read write speak
listen and critically think through all parts to their day and finally that lesson pacing our teachers are able to move through each lesson chunk each lesson set of days in a much more fluent manner which then allows them to be more in tune with the kids to provide those
just in time supports that Cindy mentioned now it doesn't stop there we also have work going on in our secondary schools because while kids are learning how to read as they move through Elementary School it shifts when they hit secondary schools our focus in the secondary
school school really is on in ensuring our students are able to apply their foundational knowledge in the content and disciplinary areas every teacher is a teacher of literacy in monello school district every teacher has the opportunity to expand students vocabulary background knowledge and
understanding in all of the parts of the day and through that it really helps our kids to know how to shape and shift their Futures but this is built on a solid foundation one of the things we've recognized is our dadish has shown that over the past several years anywhere from a quarter to a third of our middle
school students struggle with reading these polycab and polymorphemic words big words um let's pause and take a look at what some of these are and think for a second about a middle school kid that's in your life now or was at one point there's a few words up there that a middle school student might misread
again about a quarter to a third of our students were misreading words like this now we see that and we can see oscillation but a middle school student who has not had access to structured literacy might read it as observation they might read Aesthetics
as Athletics when they look at the first and the last and they're not sure in the middle and that final word they might see industry and shun at the end if we think about what that means for kids as readers though if they're not able to accurately read the words in text they're losing out on meaning for the
words and so about a month ago we spent some time at the middle school ensuring every Stu every teacher had the skills that they needed to be able to present a simple protocol for attacking these multi- slabic and multimorphemic words with uh our Middle School
administration team willingly stepping out to model these practices using words across the content area and providing our teachers with a scripted lesson plan to really break down some words in their upcoming units we are building our teachers capacity to build our students capacity to acquire more information and
text and I know that the Middle School administration team will talk a little bit more about this coming up next so I'll move on as we hit our high school because as kids grow up through our system we absolutely want to make sure that we are using data to inform our decisions we've expanded our Universal screening to include 9th grade and
Beyond at our high school and what that does is three times throughout the year it allows us to take these dipstick measures to take a look at a system a site a student level how are our kids doing where are their strengths where are some opportunities we can strengthen them in both reading and in math
Universal screening is a best practice and it is expanding into the high school so that we can continue to be responsive to the needs of our kids and celebrate their successes along the way now finally we also want to be responsive to our staff and at the high school they've engaged throughout the year in some
personalized PD where our staff is exhibiting voice and choice in selecting some small segments to learn and apply their learning in relevant ways a common request from the staff was on strategies are impactful for multilingual Learners as well as strategies to address
literacy in all of the areas and and so on the screen are just a sampling of some of the topics from a recent session as well as the agenda which when we think about Job embedded professional learning we're creating the space for colleagues to learn collaboratively and reflectively and bring it into action so
just to highlight a few things that are going on in our district those are some highlights so to wrap up I'd just like to say that we're going to continue the hard workor with our teachers throughout the rest of the school year and our administrators of course and then um hopefully at the end of the year we'll
be able to gather all of our data together we'll come back to you in June with the results of all of our hard work and we're really hoping to see uh some great improvements any questions questions no and I just think for me tonight is all about um showing
the practice that we've been putting together across the district and showcasing that in midyear review it's kind of important to see that the things that we're all working on at the administrative level is being um disseminated and and worked on and um
all the way down and as I've been able to see all um staff meetings this year um multiple times just see I'm seeing that across the district and I think today is just about like showing the district um level um discussion or um highlights of where we're going but then
just bringing in that application and being able to have the Middle School um showcase and and they they're really teeing this up for the middle school to be able to to show what we're what we're working on across the district yep so we'd love for our Middle School leaders
to come forward and really show what great work they've done this year I just want to um Cindy this was just a plug for how important it is for students to do the standardized testing for us because it doesn't to reflect on their grades I
mean I can't tell you how many times my own kids have been like is this going to change my grade I'm so I'm like no it's not at all just relax um and we kind of make it fun cuz I let her get a special treat for it right but it's important for the district to see
where we're at and to be able to adjust if we need to adjust and and we have we only have two ways to really well we have several ways to measure it but two key ways to measure that and that's through our um fast Bridge testing screening for where kids are are missing Concepts and through our MCA testing to
see where where are we meeting the standards and where aren't we and where do we need to improve upon that it's not a it's not a focus on the student it's a focus on our district and our Improvement So yeah thank you for saying that well thank you Cindy and thank you Kristen I appreciate it all right now
we're moving on to monacell Middle School midyear review so help me welcome up to the podium Arman Sol Middle School principal Jeff sherber and assistant principal Rachel sanquist the clicker okay thank you for this opportunity to share a little bit
about an update from what we're up to at the at the middle School level specific to what uh Cindy and Kristen had shared uh Eric had asked us to share a little bit about some of the trainings that we worked with staff on specific to the uh science reading um so we'll kind of go
through a few slides in that regard kind of give you a snapshot what we're asking the Middle School teachers to cover and then Rachel's going to share a little bit of what we've seen since that training and that's probably going to be more of the uh interesting dialogue that we would have just because it's been
pretty neat to see how uh some of the training and the help from Cindy and Kristen has helped kind of it's got some legs in what we're seeing in the classroom um we we typically start uh every meeting that we have whether it's a leadership meting building instructional meeting staff meeting with
bulleted Point um focusing on getting on the same page for Collective efficacy uh our mtss process and particular tier one instruction and then we will always ask ourselves what does that look like in the classroom what does it look like what what are students doing what staff
doing um the different part about this slide this last year is we added with the primary focus on the instructional framework and the science of reading uh the instructional framework is is not anything new to the Middle School staff uh that's just good teaching best
practices how you handle yourself as a professional the the new part for the Middle School staff is that piece on the science of reading um and a lot of training at the elementary level about letters training and Ola training and at the middle school there's a handful of
folks who went through that training but uh with the 65 plus adults in the room there's a a number of them we want to get on the same page so uh one thing we in order to get everybody on the same page we want to get a handle on where you're at so when we reference the S science of
reading it's a big concept um we actually started the school year August and Eric was in the room when we did this and we asked that question how do students students or children learn to read we gave them a chance to turn and
talk and they visited and all these highly qualified professionals some of them struggled a bit because they know a lot they've been through the training others uh if you weren't hadn't been through the training it might be hard to answer that question um then we gave him
this challenge um now that you've turned and talk talked about it we're going to have you put it in writing as if somebody very important to you that you respect a great deal has asked you this question it might be the superintendent it might be a school
board member you're caught in an elevator you've got one minute share with that uh individual that you want to impress how do St do children learn to read they were given that they wrote it on their cards and it was an awkward
minute as they all scrambled to condense what they know and put it in writing they put it in an envelope and then they turned it into their uh their ilt leaders and that's the folks in the top row there so Joselyn got all the ones from the math
department Caitlyn got them from science Ryan gathered all the envelopes from social studies Nate took the language arts uh we had Casey take the specialist Corey gathered the special ed and then Sarah gathered those information from
the Student Center so that August day we archived what everybody knew and then we knew we were going to spend the year sharing and talking and working with Cindy and Kristen on what the science of reading is all about we're going to spend the year they work in cohorts they
discuss the trainings we'll share a little bit about one of the trainings that we had and then on May 20th we're going to open those up actually we're going to ask them to write a new one now that you've been through the train and you'll be able to measure what was in your on your mind on that uh
August day and now it's May 20th and in these cohort meetings they will discuss the dialogue they've had throughout the year I'll give them a chance and Eric you'll be able to do the same open up that envelope and hopefully you can discuss as a group of Professionals in
the department uh all the growth you've had in that regard so it'll be very interesting to see that so and I actually one of the slides here if you get stuck in the elev with the middle school teacher and you want to ask that question we've got a cheat sheet for you
too so you can know what you're looking for um little bit about the training we had on that January day um it getting everybody on the same page was uh we said being part of that Collective efficacy across the board it did involve
if you can share the next slide um we let them know we start the meeting letting them know these are three key components and when you walk out the door we're going to give you a resource uh we're going to train you on how to use that resource and then it'll be very clear this is an expectation that us
here at the middle school will be using this and when you walk into a classroom you'll be able to see it in use it will be familiar to the students you should be able to walk in and ask them uh how it's being used and uh give a chance for a child to not code switch from class to
class and provide that continuity uh we also included we wanted to share with staff this is just one piece of the puzzle this isn't just one training uh that it's a start uh we we uh have other bulleted points that we're
working on but that fourth bullet down was a key part of the discussion we had on the 25th and that we're going to ex instill the expectation that everybody at the Middle School uh uses these strategies uh I'll just give you an example part of our turn and talk was to
look at some of the words that Kristen had up there and often times at the middle school level we would when a child gets to a tough word we'd let them skip that word we would let them substitute for an easier word we might even change the entire rigor of the
dialogue to help them and scaffold them through it Cindy Kristen is asking us as a staff to one part of the science of reading is expect the child to navigate through those tough Works work through the trainings and we'll have an example of
here but uh they know that's just part of the deal at the middle school we're going to expect you to to be able to attack those big words and be part of it and it's going to be part of a process that everybody's familiar with this first slide
this is uh just an articulation of what Kristen had shared uh scar bral's rope is just a complex depletion of what it means for the science of reading um I it's a beginning it's a lot for
staff to absorb but to provide that structured reading approach as opposed to what we've typically been trained in with a balanced reading approach it's just it's just a beginning and a first step approach to have staff know that if it's the first time you've seen it if you're a middle school teacher you've
probably going to see it a 100, more times because knowing and understanding the complexity of uh the science of reading especially if we're not all of us are as trained as some of the elementary teachers are uh this is a example of one of the
posters that we would share with staff if you walked into a classroom uh you'd see this posted you also get some instruction from each teacher how they're how they're expecting students to attack these words um we went through this we kind of clunk through it as a
staff we had some fun um then the next step was to have staff share how going to uh model that in the classroom as adults and expect that from students uh this is just another
illustration it's when you we shared this with staff that it's one thing to say we're going to deputize you as a reading teacher Middle School teachers whether your social studies science social uh fiad what does it look like uh it's just another example of making sure
everybody knows and understands their role at the middle school as we address our literacy needs there's your cheat sheet so that being said uh you walk into a elevator and they can check those
boxes you've you've got somebody that's really nailed it it's a pretty complex issue uh and again we've just started Rachel's going to share a little bit about uh what we did next and what she's seeing in the classroom and some of the cohort meetings yeah so just really
quickly as Jeff was describing you know we have these PDS that are meant to be learning based but we also want them to have takeaways and things that they can see themselves actually applying in their classroom and working on with students and so after the PD on that
January day we had them go back to their cohorts and Jeff had articulated kind of what we have been doing to try and address our literacy scores you know fall 2021 probably previously and then up until today um and then we just kind of talked about what what the practices
have been and then asked cohorts to just really reflect on what is different about your instruction this year or in the past six months or in the past six weeks or what have you learned from this session that will help us get the results to that 80% that districtwide
80% that we're all aiming for um and so if you would walk into a math classroom you would see them reading and writing and speaking and listening to each other talk about math and they're at the boards and they're articul ating what their thought process their critical thinking and they're listening to each
other um our English Department is always hard at work they're doing a um curriculum review right now they're looking at the data to be able to say like where our kids need to be and what they need to work on they're really focusing on that vocabulary and that's been a really big focal point for them
um and really we're being intentional too I think it's important to note our El staff are um presenting at our staff meetings because we have a larger and larger population of El students that these vocabulary strategies work well for and they work well for everybody so
just a reminder that as we speak through like oh this is a strategy you can try for not some but for all I think that that has been really intentional pockets of strategies that we've been sharing with them in order to help everybody um our social studies department is working
on vocabulary squares where they would identify different parts of speech write the definition use visuals and context Clues our science department is always really a bright spot they're um continuing to incorporate a lot of technical writing in their lab reports
and at their end of unit assessments they're called cers claim evidence reasoning um but that has morphed naturally into the English Department also picking it up the social studies Department asking how can I Implement that there and they're just really
focusing on um that writing piece of a very cont ENT very vocabulary heavy um content area and then our Specialists you would walk into a choir room and hear the vocabulary and the reading and writing that happens in that space those those music classes are very literacy
heavy they're literacy based in their content area and I think that's the message that is in the middle school is that we really just embrace the content area that we're in and also are intentional about implementing those literacy strategies so that we can build
those scores so those are just a couple of examples that I wanted to share today and that's it I think I clicked oh okay questions just going to make a comment that I'm impressed with um how much uh
it has been understood that reading doesn't just Encompass English language arts it's incorporated into all of the subjects and you guys have shown that you've uh submitted some great strategies in order for the the teachers to be able to do that that so thank
you yeah we've been very impressed with and Rachel will share this some of the best days we have are coming out of the cohort meetings sharing with what what the teachers are doing and commitment they have make no mistake they've accepted this challenge uh when we ask
kids uh what's different we I am speaking more in class I am writing more in class there is less lecture and I'm not getting let off the hook I'm expected to explain myself whether I have to articulate it in writing or
verbally one way or the other we want to know where you're at that's work that's work and the group of teachers has accepted that I just think the teaching and learning that we're seeing across the district from all of our leaders to through all the classrooms has just been
uh truly exemplary this year and it's a pretty neat to see everybody on the same page I mean colleagues talking across um you know town to their their cohort of elementaries but then talking to secondary and seeing everybody um really uh being mindful that uh um our instru
instructional best practices is a focus and um to walk in as uh in in my role and and see that I mean I I get pretty emotional and pretty excited um of the amazing things that I'm seeing you guys do it's and and then seeing the teachers apply it in the classroom after and
they're excited I mean you're your staff meetings are truly evident of excitement and people digging into new learning and I think that's um it was a perfect fit for the district uh uh Cindy and Kristen to be able to um kick off what they've
been trying to do districtwide but then have you guys at that middle level where you're not even you know not supposed to be reading teachers right and we haven't maybe been for um for decades but now you guys are digging into it and seeing all the different leaders within step up
uh in your own organization El teachers were mentioned and all teachers are just it's it's phenomenal very proud of you guys all of you guys and that's that's yeah this meeting would have been really long if I would had everybody you know but so we did we did a midyear
snapshot so your Elementary and SEC and high school counterparts should be absolutely caring you guys uh you know out on your on their shoulders tonight and I just want to say thank you um for your guys' work on creating an awesome
culture um with your staff and what you got going on with the coh hearts and the groups and your leaders and I can just tell by the smiles on your faces when you talk about it um how awesome that is and that just continues to funnel down to the rest of the team so thank you
that's awesome because it I mean it's a challenge right you guys had a challenge and you're like okay let's let's do this and let's do it together so feels good it's been good we meet with that instructional leadership group those eight folks every month and that is a
fun too just to hear a Ross the table from the social studies Department sharing a little bit about the challenges they're having and they're with being reading teachers along with the math department and that's a fun meeting to have and it's pretty clear when you walk out the door we're all on
the same page it's a great group to work with learn and grow together I like it okay I'm just going to one more and I I wish I I'm sorry but I just need to um I sometimes at a board I'm not sure that you can even recognize how intertwined
you your decisions are and so one thing that you made a decision on last year um was school start times and the unified amount of time that we have across the district especially at secondary has increased amazingly and so those of you
that I know have um been in coaching teaching um professional organ uh organizations and and and working with kids you understand that you don't just learn from a workshop uh one time a year you learn from consistent approach and
our building administrators are using a consistent approach that doesn't affect the families so like we a lot of school districts to get this learning in they do early outs or um late starts and we've done a away from those but we've
Al in order to give families not that crazy day of those types of days in the calendar and so like that decision has given our people their their PD calendar is robust across this District and we've never been able to do that and that is how you make impr so some of the
decisions that you make I'm not even um sure I wanted to point out how connected they really are that one is truly connected Devon has made a survey that um she's having all administrators pass out at conference time coming up here um this week so we'll we'll find out
districtwide families students in grades uh 3 through uh 12 and um and staff what they think will present that at a work session or board meeting but um yeah they're just very connected so I
just tee that up no anything else thank you all right now we're moving on to Innovation and Leadership I'd like to welcome up to the podium uh director of buildings and grounds Mr Terry Woodworth
to go over building program staff shoutouts and Laura are you coming up too right with them or is that okay yep that's fine I'd also like to welcome up director of nutrition services Laura Wacker Hansen I'd like to give a shout out to
uh and gullen the night lead at monacello high school as you know there's a tremendous amount of activity there every night and he just has this way of juggling everything between the tasks that need to be done um and the
Curve balls that get thrown at him uh on a nightly basis and just being able to just it just all flows and uh he's just uh he's a tremendous asset that we have he's got a servant mindset great
customer service critical thinker great Problem Solver um you know it's as everyone at the high school knows Andy smiling it's just it's it's a hop in building and to be able to make sense of it all each and every night it's
um it's tremendous ability that he has so I'd like to give him a shout out um I would like to give a huge shout out to um Beth Doo she is one of our incredible Cooks helpers at Montello High School um Beth is the definition of
hard work and dedication she consistently goes above and beyond to support our students ensuring that every student who comes through the door has an excellent experience in the cafeteria her passion for helping others shines through in everything she does and her infectious positive attitude makes the
school environment brighter for both students and all of our staff uh Beth is the Ultimate Team player she's always stepping in when needed and offering a helping hand without hesitation her hard work and commitment does not go unnoticed she makes everyone around her feel appreciated and valued whether it's
her warm smile her willingness to do whatever it takes to make our school a better place Beth is truly an invaluable member of the monacell nutrition services team so I just want to say thank you to Beth for everything that she does she makes a difference every single day her kindness enthusiasm and
dedication are deeply appreciated by me and all of our staff awesome thank you awesome woohoo like my favorite my wants to clap I all right and now we are moving to safe and health culture I'd like to
First welcome up director of student services Sarah walk to talk about our school social worker recognition week this is keep the ball rolling right yeah cool thank you guys good evening um this week is Minnesota schools social worker week and so we would like to be able to
recognize and appreciate the critical role School social workers play in supporting students families and Educators as mental health challenges social struggles and economic hardships continue to rise their work is more essential than ever through their dedication School
social workers remove barriers to learning Foster a positive School culture support staff well-being and create safe inclusive environments where all students can Thrive they also provide valuable support to Administration and staff serving as a
vital liaison between schools in the community to all of the monel school social workers thank you for your compassion advocacy and unwavering commit to Student Success your impact is truly invaluable thank you awesome thank
you Sarah and it is um everyone within our school district gets so close to the students and sometimes it is difficult some of the situations that they have to handle and and being able to go home and then be whoever you need to be at home too it's
tough so you're you're appreciated we thank you now I'd like to bring up Director of Human Resources Rob Daner to go through first reading of policy all right chair Stephen members of the board superintendent Olsen uh we have 10 uh policies this evening for
first read um and we are currently in our uh review cycle we are in the 500s and so all of these are coming forward as part of that review cycle some of them also uh due to legislative update that occurred in Spring of 201 4 as well um and then just in terms of I should
mention um legislative uh change that took place in Spring of 24 msba typically does not put out their draft um updates until fall or winter of the following um after the legislative season that is so some of these are a little bit delayed so the first one for
consideration this evening is policy 5:15 protection and privacy of pil records the purpose of this policy the school district recognizes its responsibility in regard to the collection maintenance and dissemination of people records and the protection of privacy rights of students as provided
in federal law and state statutes uh this one is coming forward because of review cycle and legislative update as I mentioned um Minnesota has very strong PE uh P record uh data privacy laws um so this policy itself is 15 excuse me 30 pages long 15 pages double-sided um so
quite extensive um there were no significant uh major major changes but um uh any questions from the board on this one at all okay all right the next one is 519 interviews of students by inside agencies um and so the purpose of this
policy is there are occasions in which persons other than School District officials and employees find it necessary to speak with a student during the school day student safety and disruption of this educational program is of concern to the school district uh the purpose of this policy is to establish the procedures for access to
students by authorized individuals during the school day uh this one is coming forward due to uh the review cycle alone however it has been the topic has been uh somewhat in the news recently and so um of note is that this um this policy the practices of our
administrators in the district don't really change regardless of um Federal determination of which uh law enforcement entities might arrive at a school doorstep so um that's the good news our policy procedures remain the same on that um any questions from the
board on 519 no okay um next is uh student disability non-discrimination and this is coming forward uh through review cycle timeline but also legislative update in Spring of 24 the purpose of this policy is to protect students with disabilities from discrimination on the
basis of disability and to identify and evaluate leaders who within the intent of Section 504 the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 Section 504 need Services accommodation or programs in order that such Learners may receive a free appropriate public education otherwise
known as fape fairly straightforward the changes were uh not significant in nature okay moving on next is 525 uh VI violence prevention and this is applicable to students and staff and
that um bracketed kind of subtitle is is necessary because this is policy 525 and 500s are typically the student sections of policy but again this one would be applicable both to students and staff this is coming forward due to our review cycle the purpose of this policy is to recognize that violence has increased
and to identify measure that school district will take in an attempt to maintain a learning and working environment that is free from violent and disruptive behavior the school board is committed to promoting healthy human relationships and learning environments that are physically and psychologically safe for all members of the school Community it further believes that
students are the first priority and they should be protected from physical and emotional harm during school activities and on school grounds buses or field trips while under student District supervision and this one um I might have mentioned is coming forward because of our review cycle so no legislative
changes on this one okay moving forward to 526 this is uh hazing prohibition again coming forward due to our review cycle the purpose of this policy is to maintain a safe learning environment for students and staff that is free from hazing hazing activities any type are
inconsistent with the educational goals of the school district and are prohibited at all times and so this is um one of the Cornerstone um Behavior Uh pieces that's in the student section of the policies um hazing bullying uh being the two major ones any questions from
the board on this one okay moving forward to 528 this is uh student parental family and marital status non-discrimination uh this is coming from for due to our review cycle the purpose of this policy students are protected from discrimination on the basis of sex and marital status pursuant
to Title 9 of the educational Amendments of 1972 and the Minnesota Human Rights Act this uh includes discrimination on the basis of pregnancy the purpose of this school district policy is to provide equal educational opportunity for all students and to prohibit discrimination on the grounds of sex
parental family or marital status um and then uh viewers may remember an audience members may remember that in um February we updated um our Title 9 policy in itself so this is goes goes hand inand
with that one any questions from the board on 528 okay hearing done uh we're move on to 529 this is Staff notification of violent Behavior by students uh this is coming forward due to our review cycle work the purpose of this uh policy is as follows in an
effort to provide a safe School environment the assigned classroom teacher and certain staff members should know whether a student to be placed in the classroom has a history of violent Behavior additionally decisions uh should be made regarding how to manage such a student the purpose of this policy is to address the circumstances
in which data should be provided to uh classroom teachers and other school staff members about students with a history of violent behavior and to establish a procedure for notifying staff regarding the placement of students with a history of violent behavior and so this policy um goes uh
hand inand with 515 which was the first one I mentioned tonight again Minnesota has very strong people data privacy records however U approximately 10 to 15 years ago years ago the legislature carved out this piece from that privacy and so students with a history of
violent behavior and that's defined as students will be considered to have a history of violent Behavior if incidents of violence including any documented physical assault of a school district employee by the student have occurred during the current or previous school year and so if um uh the legisl carved
legislature carved this out of uh the data privacy so that schools and schools administrators could let their staff know if um students in their space or under their supervision um have that history any questions from the board on 529 okay moving on to 530 uh this is
immunization requirements this is brought forward because of our review cycle work fairly straightforward but the purpose of this uh policy is to require that all students receive proper immunizations as mandated by law to ensure the health and safety of all students and so immunizations are
mandated by law for um folks in the school environment however there is also uh an opt out um option and that is articulated within the policy as well any questions from the board on 530 okay we'll keep it moving uh number
531 the Pledge of Allegiance and this this is coming forward uh due to review cycle I also want to mention that there uh was no changes uh to this policy or uh through legislation since it was last revised in 2020 the purpose of this policy is as follows the Schoolboard
recognized the need to display an appropriate United States flag and to provide instruction to students in the proper etiquette display and respect of the flag the purpose of this policy is to provide for recitation of the Pledge of legiance and instruction in school to further that end um and in Minnesota law
uh the idea the concept is that the um Pledge of Allegiance will be recited one or more times each week any questions regarding 531 okay and finally 532 uh this is the use of peace officers and crisis teams to remove students with IEPs from school
ground uh this is brought forward uh from a review cycle also there were some minor legislative uh updates to this um policy largely due to um the work the legislature did in the last two years regarding school resource officers the purpose of this policy is to describe
the appropriate use of peace officers and crisis teams to remove if necessary a student with an individualized education program from school grounds and so in the unique circumstance that that would take place um the policy outlines uh and defines um that an SRO
or school resource officer is a subset of the larger organization of police officers in general and that um excuse me peace officers and those peace officers may be called in to assist the school resource officer in such a scenario any questions from the board on
532 okay and that was first read no action necessary tonight we will bring these back for a second read when the board reconvenes later in March awesome thanks Rob quite the list all right and that brings us to adjourning our meeting at
7:27 p.m. on Monday March 3rd our next School Board meeting will be Monday March 17th at 6:00 p.m. and following this we will begin our work session we'll take a f minute break and then come
back e