for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all reminder to silence your cell phones any additions deletions no to the agenda no or not can I get a motion to accept the agenda as we have it second any further discussion no I don't
think so all in favor any oppos visitor comments we don't have anybody the agenda no next uh consider the consent agenda which includes consideration of the minutes of the January 29th reorganizational and regular school board meeting the monthly cash flow including Investments monthly bills paid monthly bills paid for the activity accounts donations which
I like to mention CTC gave $500 for the robotics team Pillager fire department gave $1,000 for the robotics team Lincoln area Business Association gave 7500 for the football program for helmets so thank you to all of them and then the personal summary more thing I need okay I'll make that and I need
a second any further discussion all in favor say I I any opposed motion passes next we have special board reports with possible action first Personnel we did not meet any you have to add about that Mike no just that we might be having a meeting sometime end of February beginning of March so I'll let you know okay curriculum but we are reading
feary we are we have one for February 28 lots of things coming up um I did just a short little update um the big one with high school registration I've mentioned it that we're moving it to online through the course planner which is the school links program part of um that PLP that we want to have that is more of an active um process and not something we do in nth grade and then we don't ever look at it again right um so
high school registration will start in February and they will be in the schooling system they've been in it all year long but that's where the registration will go and then they'll have the opportunity to fill in those additional years and so what I have for you I just did a little screenshot of uh the first screen is as they're going through registration it is an active process so as they pick classes in there it will tell them that if they have met the credit requirements um as they go if it is doesn't go
in that top or they have a required class that has to go before it it'll tell them as they're going a lot of times you know that paper process they're waiting for either Sue to answer that question for them or looking for that they get that feedb way um that PLP is something they can work on all year long as well so as they go they can make those adjustments and those changes what we'll do for registration is we will go to a date
we will say registration is closed we will pull the information from the system they still have it on their end they can still make those adjustments as they're taking notes throughout the year but we will take as of U I'll just say February 28th we're going to take that the registration information we will run our SE and what age does this start for nth grade nth grade so our eighth graders this year will actually be filling out for next year does this also include like helping them for um like NCAA requirements and stuff will that
will that walk them through that kind of stuff it'll give information about it you're still probably in terms of like your school counselor is going to have the most information to make sure that requirements but their classes will be tagged of does this class meet an inci requirement okay so they can do yeah um so that's that's pretty cool that's coming online the back page the piece that I st there this is just a sample I printed out of the demo site um but this is what that PLP will
look like in terms of this is their four years this is the areas at which they're taking those classes and then you can see on the back side it'll give them a total I made this I made this particular nth grader have 25 credits in in nth grade they don't really have that um but one of the things also at the top is getting them thinking about that postsecondary where do I want to go that pathway these and so we have four kind of pathway clusters that kids are working into so we've got
business hospitality we've got the healthcare industry we've got uh manufacturing engineering those pieces and we have the Arts and so trying to get kids thinking about where where I might go right what I might do with that so they're pretty broad category I have a question so if like seven say you have a seventh or eighth grader that's Advanced are we do those kids have the availability to take like college classes if they want or if they qualify for them so there are
some classes that for instance that creator that takes algebra one Algebra 1 actually counts as a high school credit okay and so those are things that we probably manually enter into the system but they have see that so there math is one of those that's a little easier in terms of we have some mechanisms to do that um some of the other like high school or college courses that would be out there that's going to be a lot more requirement from the college level that kind of answered my question
was how customizable is this what it like if they choose a pathway it doesn't really matter they can still like they have they can I pick them yeah they can take classes from all of them it's really about them thinking about what they might want to do the um the courses that they have in there you know it will help them in terms of it will say this is a required this is this is a prerequisite you need to take for it this matches a pathway it get them started in the college world as yeah it gets them to think about it
but they have the ability to take any of those electives right in those pieces and the things like if they did take a class earlier that was say that's a middle schooler they took one Sue has the ability to put that into the when that happens does that count as their High School Credit it does elge one counts toward High School no matter what age they take most of our eth graders are taking elge one they have enough High School Credit and Mathematics that counts for the three
credits that are required by the state or three years I should say here at but um but technically other one is a high school level course the the other couple things that I just put on here just to to update people we continue MCA test just prepping for that pie but the act just so you know we have the ACT coming up here uh March 4th we'll be here on site we do it here on site every
year do somebody post that on Facebook um it goes on our school website goes on our school calendar students all get pulled down to register for it so we have students that take the ACT we still have some that go out and take the SAT don't do that one here asab all of those placement tasks whether it's for college military or even just job plac and then um a couple of curricular pieces just to keep you updated
on Elementary are finishing letters we are almost done with that that piece of it we will have bulk of all of our El teachers trained in science of reading um we'll have handful of people either people that transferred into to us or that we just have to clean up P of it sounds pretty good because when you look out when I talked to teachers that aren't here like people are just starting so it sounds like we're they are through the thick of it and it's like there's a lot of people that aren't within our
we get a lot of emails or questions about how did you do it yeah wee of them and so it's kind of nice to be on that end rather than you sending the email say we don't know what we're doing what we do right makes me think of that Meme where that guy's like all buggy he's got like red dots all over and the string is all over you're like like this that's exactly what it feels like most um the math standards just to
give those um the math standards in particular we're talking pretty heavily over the last PD day and as we go into this spring the update um on those standards I I will say as a math teacher are thrilled about it it is focused more on statistics it's really heavily on statistics and how to you use data and how do you read data um and so that's gonna be a big change for us as we move forward um and then the science uh we've done this implementation over the
last three years middle school science changing physical science earth science around with our six and eth graders it's fully implemented this year's MCA test will be align to that so hopefully we'll see the data look like that and then the last one is the um Addis is our one of our intervention programming pieces the window open and we will we're in the process of applying for next okay
thank you and just upcoming curricular meeting on February 28th corre policy um consider this our second reading of policy changes policy 503 policy um student attendance policy 507 school resource officers policy 606 textbook and instructional materials and policy
605 and a half Library material I have not had anybody reach out to any comments on so okay thanks activities we did not meet did not meet anything you wanted to add Mike uh no um we'll probably have a meeting in March 2 as well wrapping up the winter and spring starting the spring so um okay facilities did not meet also
it looks like got meeting and a meeting coming up yeah and we'll talk a little bit about at that meeting uh capital projects ltf projects wait room I got some information coming from W and from isers on that whole weight room project that we can share so budget we did not meet uh we do have something to do here we have to consider the resolution for directing the administration to
make recommendations for programs and position reductions and that was enclosed in your packet this is an msba resolution that Pillager School Board uses every year so that admin can do what they need to do to keep the district solvent for the next school year I'll make that motion okay I was second any discussion what is it again because I read it earlier and I really it's just a resolution that the school board is telling Administration to
make Cuts or reductions at need it's a resolution that we do every year as we plan the budget so we have it in place it's not it's just recommendations though it's not it's not it's not a recommendation it's just telling us to look at it it's it's a resolution to go through the process to if we need to make reductions or not or planning when we start looking at the budget okay but the final decision is still made by yeah we yeah we're oh okay I confused you're just telling me to look at it by all means which you would
do every year but and make recomendations and make recommendations if needed yeah thank you any further discussion all those in favor say I I any opposed motion passes and we have our business manager report Missy if you want to present yep so I give you a hand up at the beginning of the meeting um it's very similar to last month's we have the second budget
revision which is ongoing as of right now and will be presented at our February 20th budget committee meeting and then reported to the board in March and we are also working on our 2020 just should say 2026 official budget for next school year kind of getting the laay the land for that um that will be approved at the June board meeting um we are still working on our special ed fiscal monitoring um they have made their second request for
documentation and that will have to be submitted by this Friday so we're on track for that and we are also still on fiscal monitoring for our Esra funds so they have submitted their second request and they have that information so I'm just waiting to hear that from that as well um current budget spent for this school year so we're just over halfway through the fiscal year and we have currently spent 46% of the budget so going
well yes any questions thank you thank you then we have an educational finance committee video presentation yeah this is I'm going to have Brian put it up here a a second uh this was a bunch of school districts presented to the education uh Senate educational committee uh I think it was about a week and a half ago they were down at state capital and they talked about mandates
and current state of schools and funding and where a lot of schools are at I think it was just very interesting for you guys to look at this uh I think this is some of the things that are going to hit us this spring as we start doing our planning as well um so I just wanted to to share with you it's a short video about things are going on across the state with all kinds of schools and from small schools to Big schools so thought it was good to for you guys to see we've asked the local school officials superintendent school board members to
come and talk to us today about um some of the issues that they see that they face with all the requirements uh that the state um asked them to do above and beyond um what federal requirements are um we're expecting to need to potentially make some pretty significant Cuts but a lot of times less is better um when we do get mandates um if they can be fully funded and I'll
on three that have that have come into place lately I'm going to talk a little bit about um one item which is just the general administrative burden that schools are feeling coming out of um different bills that have been passed by the legislature over the last few years um to give you a little bit of perspective the overall administrative costs of districts Statewide historically used to run in the 2 to 3% range we're now seeing those costs have climbed into the 4 to 6% range um
the most recent data that I could P which was the Statewide information from fiscal 23 was the Statewide average was 4.9% for administrative cost it seems like we've kind of lost sight of the goal of public education to try to keep things simple really focus the dollars that we get in the classroom our people are experiencing all these range of emotions because over my career we've seen a steady increase in the change expectations that are being delivered to schools um and it really feels like I
would say a heavy burden it's a heavy lift so we're at the Bare Bones when it comes to committed funds we we have no more and so again many of the pieces of legislation have combined to have an adverse impact on our financial position and and caused us to end where we are we again we just don't have the staff the administrative staff to monitor all the mandates and it's really making a big change in our program so on behalf
of all the small rural districts Educators administrators who are tked with these mandates we it's overwhelming after the last legislative budget budget session there were more than 30 new school policies that districts were required to implement due to new uh State statutes there was no opportunity for superintendant to discuss or contemplate these new policies or their boards no room to decide if these new policies were best for school districts
they were simply passed down from St Paul with no input from local communities boards or administrators they were one siiz fits all mandates on how to operate our school but we'll face is about a $2 and half million dollar hit in that unemployment mandate another 2.6 million for paid leave if we do not have new money over the past two years several legislative actions have been enacted that have or threatened to have profound and detrimental impact on our
small school we Face a $463,000 shortfall to implement the state mandated K4 curriculum in case you are keeping track of the total underfunding for these four mandates the total for my district is $1.5 million or 19 teachers am I going to be able to find enough people to keep in the classroom so that again our kids are served so I just think yes good program obviously there's some cost we
recognize that we've already cut 10 teachers in the current fiscal year we have another 12 teachers um that will be cut in fiscal year 2025 26 when we're in financial difficulties and the District Administrative Office has to hire staff it looks absolutely terrible and that's not what we want to do we want to keep that funding in the classroom so I have teachers coming to work doing one
and a half people's jobs I have people in the business office coming to work doing one and a half people's jobs and I have people worried about their jobs as they head into another spring of reductions with the expanded use of esst and paid family medical leave and already difficult Staffing climate could become almost impossible this newly created crossup City will inevitably Force our district to make Staffing reductions we're also looking ahead at the 2026 paid Family
and Medical Leave law we've analyzed our leaves taken in the last school year and 400 of those uh leaves of absence would have increased from 12 to 20 weeks had the law been in effect um in in addition to a shortage of substitutes to fill those positions that would be a $ 2.77 million additional payroll tax for our district Rising costs in salaries and benefits combined with revenue streams that do not keep up with those necessary costs mean we will face budget deficits in coming years this
cycle of financial strain is unsustainable and forces districts like ours to make reductions that negatively impact students again I'm on the hook to lose over 300 grand and I'm going to have to make reductions while intentions in adding all the requirements are typically very honorable um the reality is implementation causes considerable increase in administration and dollars that again should flow to the classroom where they belong we are
fastly approaching statutory operating debt um in our fiscal year 25 budget our balance our unassigned fund balance is projected to go negative uh the compensatory issue that's been raised will uh be a reduction of about $65,000 for our districts heading into for my district heading into next year there was a scenario where we would not have to cut budget for the first time in six years and with these AIDS leaving that scenario is off the but all
these pieces of legislation are really having a synergistic adverse impact on our school districts and our funding and so as you heard already today there are many Minnesota school districts that are on the verge of statutory operating deficits yet our district must live within the budget and many districts not just ours are deficit and meeting to cut um Pine City is a small District rural District when we do one siiz fits
all Solutions it doesn't work for Pine City of Minnesota it's just too hard for us we don't have the staff that the bigger districts have we don't have um in smaller districts they know every single person they can fit in everywhere we're we're already so overburdened over taxed when my colleague said that people are doing one and a half times their jobs we're doing one and a half plus some so what I what I want you to take away from this is we need some help up here
in northern Minnesota uh we want to reflect what's Best in teaching and learning we just need the time to do it we need the resources to do it and I know I'm echoing what a lot of my peers have said but we are struggling um we want a world class education for all our students please Empower us to do the job that our local community has charged us with and return local control that has made public Ed education so great correct underfunded initiatives and refrain from
imposing new man Cates particularly those that are underfunded or unfunded trust in our school boards in our communities to make the best decision in the interest of our kids grant us Equitable untethered funding necessary to support our students and ensure their success I respectfully ask for your thoughtful consideration of the impacts of underfunded and unfunded mandates on public schools while these programs are well-intentioned their unintended CA and consequences have not been fully account
for in evaluating their effects on our students I just want to wrap it up by saying again we we need your help I don't know what else to say I can reiterate everything my colleagues have said about unemployment compensatory redact we we just need help we don't have the resources to maintain the level of Education that I think you feel is appropriate and we feel it's appropriate so please we need your help thank you so I just want want to share that
with you as you can see about which I've been asked to speak um you could go all the way from a small school to a big school and everybody's doing the same thing so as I start Missy and I have started working on our our budgets a lot of those same issues are going to hit us the the safe sick time the the unfunded mandates of re act um cost of salaries you know when you're you know you're giving a four and a four and a you're getting 2.4 from the state our enrollment we're we're pretty
fortunate because we've been growing um and that's how we've can exceed I was at a superintendent meeting last week with all area sus and there was probably eight or nine of us there wasn't one Superintendent at that meeting that didn't feel that they were going to be cutting in going into next year so it's it's just kind of interesting where it they passed a bunch of mandates and didn't fund it and here we are so just wanted to share that as I start working with the budget committee uh we're not going to be very similar we're going to be very similar to a lot of those
District with some of those issues so so with these with these mandates is it take a full con Cong not Congressional they're not Congress but they the a full year for them to change it right some of just change it right right uh some of them take effect January of 2026 okay so they passed the legislature last year so most of those are mandates that the legislator legislation passed so in order to change those a lot of
those were passed without fully funding uh they had put money in some of like for uh for uh hourly employees for workers comp workers uh unemployment insurance they put away $120 million to do that 90 million of 80 million of that went away in one year so they have $40 million left in that pocket and how is that going to fund that for the next X amount of years it's not you know you
know there's lots of good program you know like say a a food program you know students lunches and that's $400 million a year it's a great program everybody loves it but where's that money coming from the react we had to do all these different things for react well they didn't fully fund that you know so it's just on and on and on and all those things add up so just wanted to to share that it's just so when I come to you and say these are where we're at we're not any different than everybody across the state you sure you want to
yeah so we're actually in better shape than most of them right I some of them are in stat like upsa has been in statutary operting debt for a year and a half two years and they're going to go even deeper in debt so anyway just wanted you to see that it kind of interesting that that came across my desk from uh from the senate committee well I will say that the one thing that my biggest takeaway from my msba thing was you better make sure you got a good superintendent and a good finance manager that understands finance
and understands School Finance big difference of the you know corporate world that I was like so kudos to you too and thank you for thank keeping us informed and crunching numbers thank you yeah okay uh we have a committee meeting coming up for Budget on February 20th correct anything on other no okay then we'll move on to superintendence report I don't have a lot today um Kindergarten
Roundup went out it's uh we sent out little postcards we did a little different this year we used to send a whole big pack that cost us quite a bit of money we did a little postcard reminder of where they can get the information to fill out the brain to the meeting yeah um so it was a lot cheaper and and and so this the kindergarten open Roundup is on Tuesday March 4th coming up at 6 PM uh reminder no school President's Day February 17th and last thing I have
daddy daughter dance was on Saturday we had over 250 people signed up 70 more than we've ever had so it was a great great event and a lot of lot of people came so kudos to John Gordon and uh Lisa for all the organization for that event and think went very well now we have movies reviews in our house the ice cream was a huge movies for Mom are coming up so that'll be coming up here in a few weeks I'm not exactly sure in the on that but
yeah well that's all I got cool how many of these little guys are we predicted that are uh in District can we predict those kind of things well we're we're assuming we'll be around uh 90 kids again close to that can only hope 200 little kindergarteners are coming have yeah yeah we're anticipating somewhere around that 90 number again and our room it's 105 yeah so we
should have plenty of room we have less people on the list this year that we mailed to than we did last year and we were at 90 91 or two I think last year so we're anticipating to be somewhere in that 90 range again this year based off of our usually in District it's only like 50 50 yeah yeah most I think we're about yeah 50 in District rest are open Y and reminder too just remember that uh if we had a family that already had a kid they
we accept the kindergarten even if we happen to go over that they would be in that Lottery piece first which we didn't have to do because we felt we didn't have the numbers to that so we accepted open enrolled people already y awesome all right record timing I need a motion to ajour I'll make a motion I'll second all in
favor March meeting will be longer we have I gotas good luck doesn't sound like it's gonna be very good I think you want put this just in case next couple meetings that might be needed
really day in our day it was
bye then you know not the person