conv be this meeting our regular meeting a study session here the time is 6:45 it changed just on the dot so um on our agenda tonight we have uh three discussion items and that is the policy development first reading of policy 515
protection and privacy of people records then we have an update on the world's best Workforce and Essa and then we have a midyear budget approval and 2026 budget assumptions approval presentation actual approvals coming next week right so this is like the presentation about
that and then we have a tournment so um we will go ahead and jump into discussion item 2A first reading of policy 515 protection and privacy of people and um and I'm gonna hand it over to um
Ashley for policy 515 so this policy um is one that has been approved previously um we made some pretty small changes to it in regard regards to some concerns that came up around how people opt out of our requests after reviewing the
policy we actually made very few changes to it and what we decided was that our procedure is actually what really needs to be updated um so I can share a little bit about what our procedure will be looking like moving forward but um currently the practice is that families get a paper physical copy if they have
request um within their school location the family fills it out and it's a it's an opt out of all data um so that includes photo which means potentially families can't have their students in the yearbook any programs um so like if
they're in a sport or something could potentially mean that they don't get to be featured in those um those communication pieces but it also means that they opt out of any time we share data so things like military recruitment um they would also be opted out of that
what we would like to do in our procedure and what we are working with uh Teresa zingle who's our power school expert within our district is to add more options for us to manage these opt outs so that people can select which ones they would like to opt out of so
that would be a new piece of our anual student update each year where families will get to fill out a form we haven't filled out that form yet but it will directly go into power school with I opt out of social media I opt out of my photo or my students's photo being taken
I opt out of information um any information about my student being shared and the state statute also changed on that in the last couple years so that's reflected in this as well um but I just wanted just to at least update the policy and make sure the
policy language itself reflects our curent practice questions comments feedback um I'm I'm the one who brought this forward so thank you I agree that it's the procedure um that the policy
was mostly fine and I'm glad to know that we're making it align with our practices but that the procedure that is fantastic that we'd be able to like break out different things because um I guess my only other um I guess ask would be can
we be very clear with families on the Forum about exactly what information can and will be shared mhm cuz we collect different types of information right and we collect um maybe like a preferred name and a legal
name we have both of those so what do we send when someone does a a data request I think is very relevant to people's decisions about what they want to opt in and out of I think we can build some type of clarification in that I believe that that question was posed to me about
what do we do in certain types of situations and our move is currently if it is a um um one of the identified um organizations or entities that is approved by the state so military recruitment would be an example
of this um we would provide exactly what it is that they're allowed to ask for which is legal name um and then contact information for those the parent actually is what how the current statute reads um so that's what we would do in
those situations for our own internal requests and again most of our requests come through like PTO would like a list of contact information so that they can do whatever type of event or function it is that they're planning um we would go with preferred name so that's the the
move that we are um looking to make how that gets worded into the um the procedure will will vary super it's just as long as we as people know like can make that decision knowing exactly what what what
information okay I also um I was seeing in there that we have a a notice in there that folks can opt out of for example like the disclosure to military recruiters but it has to be done by like
something like the second Monday or something of school and I didn't know what the timing was on that and then I I don't have high school age kids so like is there notice that's going out to families in advance of that or do they have to have read this policy to know
that that's correct at current moment um after we moved off of and this happened a few years ago after we moved off of the annual student update being mostly Power School forms and part of that was because the forms within power school we heard was more difficult so we started moving some of the forms to Google
there's still some of the forms that are required for students in that platform um so that it may have been one that got moved away from the uh from what people received an update for this year we're bringing that back again it might not be
a Power School form but it will be something that goes out when we start doing our annual communication within we typically start that now in April or May um so then families have time from that point that the back to school communication goes out until the second
week of school to complete that opt out but will it so it would just show up in there it's not like I don't know I is there some sort of like newsletter that goes out to families at the beginning of the school year like preparing for school like it might be worthwhile to just be like hey just a reminder right
yeah if you want to ask your kid out here's how you might do I don't I don't know what that yeah so that's that's part of that back to school form we send them out pretty early so that will come in the spring here and then we will continue that and we usually continue our back to school Communications into
um October or so um but that piece of it we'll do a heavier push leading into that knowing that we have a deadline for that um first week we also have a couple other deadlines unrelated to this like immunizations sure that to be done by the first day of school so those are
things that we're also communicating in those back to schol forms thank you other comments questions thank you all for speaking up to today we know that we have people in the back of the room that sometimes it's hard to hear and we're having good discussion so thank you for that um any other comments
questions no I just I appreciate it I I can think of a lot of reasons why people want to protect their students information right now um and so I think it's really important and it's nice again I think I appreciate again some Choice there too and not like a blanket because it's sort of like whoops I don't
want anybody to know about this so I can't be in the earbook I don't know that seems a little harsh to me but um so I appreciate that policy and feature so this would then come to us for approval at the next second reading second reading so is there any concern or questions about that coming up then
okay all right well thank you very much director zuku and thank you um for um everybody who worked on this all right that brings us up to world's best Workforce and Essa and uh this is a presentation to re that fulfills a
requirement from Minnesota State Statute to report on the world's best Workforce for each School District in the 203 24 it's got some got some funky numbers showing up here school year um and so we have Becca star here um to present to us and talk to us about that so thank you
Dr star sorry didn't mean to no good evening chair Cox and superintendent Hines and members of the board and the cabinet um I'm Becca star I'm the data scientist and the title coordinator and like chair CL said I'm here to talk about the world's best Workforce which
is required reporting um in a public meeting um annually so I'll start with our mission statement St Louis Park schools sees inspires and empowers each learner to live their Brilliance in an environment that centers student voice and experience to create racially Equitable
learning that energizes and enhances the spirit of our community um also like chair Cox said the purpose of this um report is that it is state required reporting so this presentation fulfills the requirement by Minnesota State Statute to report on the
world's best Workforce goals um that are required for each school district and this is from the um the goals from last year the 23 24 school year and those four goals are number one that all students are ready for school
number two to close the achievement gaps between student groups goal three is that all students are ready for career in college and number four is that all students graduate um so that's for like up until
last year 23 24 um just sort of as a preview uh worlds bu Workforce is changing its name to the comprehensive achievement and Civic Readiness and will include an additional goal for this year going forward which is to prepare students to be lifelong Learners so
we'll be tracking participation in our College and Career Readiness programs for that also on this slide you see our balanced assessment system and inside the orange boxes are they represent kind of all of the um instruction and lesson
planning um that and the the instruction that's going on in the classroom the formative and and summative assessments that go on in the classroom all the great work that our teachers are doing um but for the world's best Workforce we're Lar using these um ass standardized Assessments in the blue
boxes on the outside of that system um to measure the progress towards these goals Dr s can I interrupt just for one second the um change of the name is that by is a school doing that or is that MBE yep okay thank you for that
clarification um so on the screen now you see the assessments that we use to measure progress um throughout our district and the ones in blue are the ones that I'll be reporting on today that are specifically um in regard to these world's best Workforce goals um so
that's that'll be the fast Bridge early reading for kindergarten the Minnesota comprehensive assessments um and the act just to give you a little overview okay so now I'm going to go through the goals so goal number one is
that all children are ready for school so for each of the world's best Workforce required goals each district writes their own smart goal and so for ours it was the percentage of kindergarten students scoring in the low risk category as assessed by the early reading fast Bridge assessment will
increased by 2% from the fall of 2023 to the spring of 2024 and in this case by risk we mean the students risk of not meeting the end of the year Benchmark okay um so we want students to
be in the low risk group we want them to be low risk because we want them to meet The Benchmark uh so the outcome was we did not meet this goal and you can see in the graph uh the blue bars represent the percentage of students these are kindergarten students um in the low risk
category in the fall is in blue and then uh spring of 24 is in red and this is across our four elementaries so you can see that uh Aquila was able to increase their low risk group low risk Group by 2% um but the low group got smaller for
the other three schools Dr star can I ask do you want people to wait to ask questions to the end or so I it I think it may depend on the questions so like I'm going to be kind of digging into fast bridge in much more detail a little bit later if it's a specific question about the assessment
if it's a specific about this goal I think maybe that would be okay okay well I have a question about the goal but I guess I don't know I don't know enough about the assessment to know if it's about the assessment or goal I will also just note that um Celia texted me she's
at home recovering from ill this but she came can't hear very well so she asked if folks could speak up and speak slower um so I looked back just at last so you look at these like initially and they look like particularly like where we're
you know minus 27% - 24% when we're looking to go plus two like that feels concerning MH um but then you know also I looked back at last year's uh presentation
which I I think Dr layette maybe gave and um one of our schools was like minus almost 40% I think it was like 38% um when you looked at fall to winter
so are these numbers as concerning as they feel to me when we're seeing this consistent right and can you help me understand why we're seeing I think they are concerning um and like I said I'm going to dig a lot more into the fast assessment and what it measures which
might be helpful and to the point of sort of breaking it down by subtest to see like where we're struggling I don't know if that would be helpful um sure I I'm fine if we come back to it I just want to flag that like I'm reading this as saying we should be doing plus two
and we're doing - 27 - 24 that feels like a problem y it's concerning did I move on okay uh so goal number two now I feel like I'm yelling uh to close the achievement Gap um and
our smart goal for this was that or two smart goals really the reading gap between black and white students will decrease by 2% from Spring 2023 to Spring 2024 as measured by the MCA mtas reading proficiency and this is for um
all the grades 3 through 11 that take the MCA or mtas and also that the math Gap will decrease by 2% also as measured by the MCA m T um and we also did not meet this goal um so as you can see this so this this represents the difference
between the proficiency of black and white students on the MCA in reading and in math um and in both cases they actually got 1% bigger is it Statewide or is it sales this is our just um just sales partk Y
is this still counting um people who opt out of taking it as a fail so this is um yes it participation is an issue um but our participation rates are getting
much better right much better if you're um in our particip uh the participation rates in the elementary and the Middle School are are high at the high school they were not high are they but they're getting much better okay so with since this is showing us um grades three
through 11 does it make I mean statistically speaking doesn't make any kind of difference whatsoever meaning well if I sorted it out by and I think in at the high school is it only 11th graders that are taking the so it's 10th grade takes I get this mixed up 10th
grade takes reading and 11th grade takes math or vice versa but that's it like they just take it each one once during um so I'm just wondering if it like are the opt outs at the high school having an impact on what we're looking at right now I mean they could be yes they
definitely like affect the proficiency rates um I'm I'm I'm guessing that they you'd still be still see a big gap yeah so I mean yeah between black and
white um goal number three is that all students ready for career and college and our district smart goal for this was that act composite scores would increase by 2% from 2023 to 2024 is measured by
the act for all this is 11th grade students and that would equate to 041 points um and we uh increased that score by um just 0.1% so that goal was not met um but for context uh we are our
composite scores are higher than the Minnesota state average which you see in the right bars there can I ask a question about that is the state average among schools that do act for all or all act takers in the
state I'm not seeing how that's so some schools have everybody take the test and at other schools only students who take the test take the test see what you're saying yeah I would guess it's all all the acts in the state yeah everyone who took it
okay okay goal four all students graduate and our smart goal for this was that the percentage of St Louis Park High School students graduating in four years will increase by 1% um and this is in the Minnesota sleds data and this goal was also not met you can see that
um the four-year graduation rate from 20122 to 2023 um it's going a little bit in the right direction 4% um again in context we are about four 3 4% higher than the state average
and then Taylor you had asked um if this was the first increase since the pandemic and it is and so at least the right direction yep one other question that I had on this was his shows 22 and 23 data is there a reason for like a year yeah it takes a while to report it
so we don't have the 24 data yet got it yeah thank you so that was the that's it for the Like official worlds bus Workforce required reporting um and so the rest of the presentation is some context um and looking at some data from this year to
see where we are this year good on goals on the official presentation I guess I have one other question on goals are those all set like do we set those goals so the the first slide that where I just listed the four you know ready for school you know the
four stra that's the requirements and then the district sets those when I read like more like the paragraph like will increase by 2% etc etc and what metric we use for that is decided by the district okay I think looking back on last Year's Day there were five goals to
they took one away they took one the uh reading by third grade one got thank you so and they're adding a new one for next year can you say more about who sets then sort of comes up with those stats is that like oh that was set for our district yeah well that was before my
time I'm assuming it was historically that's teaching and learning team or so that's historically the trend is a 2% increase and I think we talked about it last time but the um so the state of Minnesota when we submit reports what they want to see is at least at 2% one
of the things I would encourage us to do is when we think about the goals is to go back to the balanced assessment system because when you think about the opportunity gap for example right the uh we want to decrease the Gap but when we actually disaggregate the data by grade
level and taking a look at our white students and black students in some places we actually see an increase in both groups and so and historically so when we compare it longitudinally for some of our um grade levels black stud it's the highest we've seen even pre
compared to pre- pandemic data and we just looked at some of that today for example okay um so just some so so the data that I'm going to present now is from this school year fall to winter because
obviously that's how far we are um and they're just kind of related kind of providing more insight to then related to the world's best workfor schools so I'm going to show you some um fall to winter fast Bridge kindergarten data a little bit of fall to winter map growth by race to kind of get at that goal two
talk a little bit about tier one instruction and career in college readiness so here's where we're going to get kind of a little bit into the weeds um there's always a lot of questions about the fast Bridge early reading and so up until this year so up until
through 23 24 so that this data that I just reported on for goal one was based on the early reading composite in kindergarten and the early reading composite means different things depending on the language it's in and the time of year so I've bet this table
here across the gray across the top are all of the subtests um that are available um in fast bridge for this early reading assessment and then in English are in blue the light blue are the four sub where the X's are are the four subtests if you test um for fall
composite and then in the spring is the darker blue so you can see that only letter sounds is the only common subtest and then there's these other subtests and then the orange the light orange is Spanish in the fall and then um the darker orange is Spanish in the spring
so just kind of the point is that reading the early reading composite can kind of mean different things at different times and in different languages but that's what we had been using um up until this year now the read act requires the four subtests um at the bottom here that are in green letter
names letter sounds word segmenting and nonsense words and so that's what we're requiring to be tested now and going forward and when you can look at this by subtest you can kind of try to better identify like where kids are
struggling or do for the redex that's um the ones that are that you have highlighted in green so those are tested in the spring as well as the winter spr all three time points the same so it's better to compare you know it's a little easier to compare
we're actually doing the same thing so but you'll just be doing these areas and we won't be testing concepts of print and teachers have the option like it's still available if they want to dig in deeper to see how kids are doing these sub tests are still available and for
example like PSI still uses like the Spanish comp composite um so it's available but this these are the four that we're focusing on and kind of reporting at the district level okay um so just kind of give you a taste of what's going on this year so it's
important to note that the benchmarks also change as you go as the year progresses so they become more rigorous so for example for letter names you can see in the this bottom box I have um the early reading kindergarten benchmarks is 14 plus letters this is letter names
letters in the fall so like a student has to be able to name at least 14 letters in the fall um to be considered low risk of not meeting the end of your benchmark and then by the winter they have to be able to name 42 this is capital and lower case if you're wondering why there's more than 26
letters um so and then to kind of address your question Virginia um so there could be like growth so like let's say a kindergartner got 14 letters in the fall and was considered low risk and then like 40 in the winter there's been growth but they would still Fall Into
the Now Su risk category got it okay kind of I mean like but I'll wrap my head around it and get it eventually yeah and so um you know you can see here that from fall to winter we still are showing a decrease in the low risk um
across our schools um so we want students to be in the L yes and so but what with your analogy what you just shared with me the idea like even so they're two letter um short because they're in 40 but they would be
considered in moderate risk yeah so now they would go into the Su risk category so there was still you know they still learned or at least you know on the test they're producing whatever 20 some more letters um so there's been growth but not enough growth to stay at low risk
get it for yeah I I'm assuming um that teachers have more more data than we are so that the students in front of them they have information about the students in front of them so that they can make
good decisions yeah and most of the T do their okay um okay and so real quick what it's the uh the target then for spring assessment is that still 42 letters no it's higher I didn't I didn't put it on
here but it's probably another what is it 50 oh you have them in front of you it's only 50 yeah okay 50 um okay and so letter sounds um same kind of thing uh you can see the um um you know the benchmarks in the
fall in Winter and you can see that um again the lowest groups are still falling um from fall to winter for letter sounds the next subtest is word segmentation and this is the ability to separate a spoken word into individual sounds or phon
names um and again we're falling in the lowrisk category across all of our schools from fall to winter but here's some good news is there a difference in spring on that one too is that a higher yeah they all they all inre I just I didn't them on the
Range is much shorter okay and this is all the kindergarteners this is Kinder yep yep all kindergarten and this is nonsense words um and they all went up from Fall to Spring
um but you can see like fall is being able to name three nonsense words and then winter is six nonsense words is like the the ability to decode a word like a set of letters that make sense but it's not a real word like V iix FX like they can read it but it's not
really a word um so it's on up here do they have to recognize that it's not a word I think they just like read it if they read it correctly correct okay I know we're teaching them all these words yeah so it's about reading so again because it's not about like identifying
whether it's a nonsense word in that sense it's saying can they make sounds can they identify things that are there got it identify the letters and that's nonsense I just think kid should just be able to say that's just a bunch of nonsense keep going thank you great um and I just
just wanted to like um talk about PSI um so PSI still does the early reading Spanish composite and this is their fall and winter um and their low risk group decreased by 3% but it's still um well above 80% okay any questions on the fast so
that is testing so that's early reading Spanish um that's just more you said just more composite this is yeah that original table with the orange so it was the four so test and spring yeah and one thing to note I think we're noting on here and know Cory's not here
but because I know Le is on there he explained to me that I was it just this year that they started doing at kindergarten it's like 20 minutes a day in English right and so in Prior years they weren't doing that until second and third grade right and so they're just
starting to do the biliteracy biliteracy so the test in Spanish is it using Spanish words or English words this okay so the they're required to do the English for the read act now um but they do the Spanish composite Spanish Spanish
reading Spanish words like yeah y okay that's what this is but then it'll be separately tested on in English which gets to sort of but when you go back a couple slides and look at like their their letter recognition in English keep in mind they do 20 minutes a day of
English and the whole rest of the day is and when you get into Spanish You're introducing other letters things like that I don't I can't like explain this from that I'm just saying I think it's helpful and as the Le on right in an imersion school they're not really in a full imersion they're not really expected to sort of catch up in English
till like third grade so it's it's it's it makes sense that they they were lower in the screens before but yeah they're turning into the B literacy now okay um so this is uh kind of getting back to goal two which
was decreasing the opportunity gap between black and white students and I just wanted to share I wanted to look one way we can look at data is the map growth projections um to kind of I really like looking at growth because it it's really focused on what that teacher can do with
the students you know they can't control where the kids are when they get them but then they get to work with them for several months and so I like to look at how many kids or percentage of kids that could meet their projected growth um and I just so this this graph is
showing um in blue is the black students who met their um uh sorry projected growth and then red is the white students percent met their Pro met their projected growth from fall to winter um and I just wanted to show here that those racial gaps are a lot smaller than
if we just look at proficiency so um you know they range between like 5 and 10% difference for reading and then from like 1 to 23% gaps um for math I mean sometimes I just I maybe I'm
completely wrong with map but sometimes growth is hard to always nail down because if you have a student who is already like really high in reading that their growth like they only have a very small percentage to grow so it's
somewhat difficult to to look at growth always they I mean I think it's pretty high before you would hit the like ceiling I mean even in I see what you're saying I think that lots of times the high proficiencies don't meet their growth targets but I I
believe that's kind of more of a factor that they're just not getting that extra help that they need um you know lots of sometimes teachers are more concerned about the the kids who are maybe scoring a little bit lower I mean I think there's a lot I teach seventh and eighth grade I mean there's a lot of factors
that go into why you're not going to see if you already have a person um a student who's already at high proficiency to get them into growth is um somewh more challenging for a lot of different reasons they're middle school kids and well I mean like for real like
they're middle school kids and they're probably taking if their High proficiency and reading they're probably taking um ADV like more advanced math or whatever that it happens to be so yeah yeah um all right so uh in the data I've
presented so far nearly all the groups that I've talked about have been well below 80% in achievement and in growth um and our district is really wanting to focus on tier one full classroom instruction so this is the graph you probably all seeing the multi-tiered
system of support um where the the idea is to meet the needs of 80 to 90% of the students in that tier one core instruction um and then tier two is like the when we start talking about um targeted intervention for 5 to 10% of
the kids and since our data is not reaching that 80% Mark we really need to focus on the tier one um and I just wanted to share that in some cases we really we are seeing effective tier one instruction in the classroom um so last year and this year I've been going into
classrooms to talk to teachers um who have shown Effectiveness in moving their data um they've had high achievement and or growth scores across the the prior year and I've gone in and talked to them about how they use data to inform instruction their beliefs about data how they think about data and I've noticed
several um practices that these teachers talk about when they're asked these questions about how they use data and it just kind of wanted to share like the themes that I found in the interviews that I did about a year ago so February and March of 2024 um and what came up from these um
interviews that these teachers believe that Gathering data is is a continuous action so it's not just you know three times a year we give these tests right they're constantly observing and collecting information about how their students are doing every day in their interactions their observations um the
student work uh they talk about using multiple sources of data and they understand that that data is found everywhere you know in that all the qualitative data that's going on in the classroom they need to know the standards and benchmarks they need to be able to like
pivot and change their approach in order to meet each student where they are in the understandings of the concepts and they do use the assessment reports and when they look at the standardized data the focus is on what the teacher needs to do or change in their practice to help the
students I just wanted to share a quote from a third grade teacher I look at the trends with the class and I look for outliers I make tier one accessible to the whole class while also targeting students or groups of students this pushes the higher level concept faster and I retach or scaffold
other students I use literacy data for differentiation for math there's solid tier one instruction followed by partner small groups to help students achieve they can all do it I want them to learn math deeply and be able to apply it to anything and again this was a teacher
that um had really um high achievement and growth data so Dr SAR I just want to interrupt right now we're going to take a short break about a f minute break for our um Muslim fames so we'll take a a break and then we'll resume here in just about five minutes okay thank you I
should have made that announcement over e e e e e e e e
e e e e e e e e e e
e e I know you're very close in the end but this was important for to so go ahead Dr star y um so just a little bit that I wanted to mention related to the secondary goals which were goals three and four um just wanted to talk about our High School uh where the career and
college readiness programs are really growing they're now offering academic learning and Hands-On experiences in all of these areas that you see listed on the screen um where students are getting industry specific skills early college credit opportunities um and internships
and like I said at the beginning next year um world's best Workforce or actually I mean this year for reporting on this year next year um changes to the comprehensive achievement in Civic Readiness and will include an additional goal preparing students to be lifelong Learners and so we'll be tracking the
participation in our College and Career Readiness programs so just expectations moving forward um expectations of the district uh number one is that the core literacy curriculum will be implemented at elementary sites as intended
number two continue to focus on tier one instruction number three continue to increase care team rigor um we can learn from focal students um to meet them where they are and moveing forward to help reduce opportunity Gap and number four to increase participation in career
and college readiness programs and classes okay thank you other questions that people have now that we've seen the full presentation we' seen goals and some of the data that's broken down anybody cabinet
members I have a followup question for my question earlier yeah and this also built on I think it was Taylor who asked who sets the goals um I guess I wonder as you're looking towards like the not the big picture goals but the ones that
the district sets for next year do you anticipate continuing to set them at that same 2% right which you know 2% in this area or what have you when we're consistently not meeting those right and and so what
is the thought process behind making those decisions um when we're seeing it's just hard as a board member to sit and see like a slide that says we our goal was plus 2% and we're minus 27% like that doesn't I don't want to come
back here next march that's assuming I'm sitting at this table which I'm not saying I will be uh but I'm just saying I I would not like to hear this presentation again in March and have the same thing that because like and be able to look back at the last year and say the same thing and so I know there's a lot of work happening please don't hear
this as like we're not working hard at this it just doesn't make a lot of sense to me to continue to say the same thing if we're going to have these double digit the wrong direction you want to well I can start I can start by saying you know one thing
is the report to the state right around these metrics that are supposed to tell us if our students are ready for school or are reading proficiency but the ways that we study data in our school district and at our data team meetings we take a look at qualitative data and
quantitative data which again I would point this to the balanced assessment system because all year long what we what we've been doing at every single site is looking at our continuous Improvement plans taking a look at learning walk data so as we walk around to different classrooms looking at
seeing how our professional development is um impacting what we're then seeing in the classroom because what these metrics continue to reflect is how well we are teaching our tier one first and foremost so that if we are implementing as intended then what we can do is then
study where the gaps are but if we are not implementing as intended it's hard for us to study where the gaps are so then we continue setting goals that we don't meet right and so when we take a look at um some of the data that hasn't been reported here as world's best Workforce but that helps to provide the
context for the numbers that we see we take a look at some things like for example our core curricular resource collaborative literacy there was a recent report that talked about the minimal red flags that it actually um is in the core curricular resource which
contradicts the carry evaluation that was adopted by mde so there's just as in any peer review process there's always going to be evaluation studies that take a look at the uh curricular resource differently but again if we are not implementing as intended and we know we
are not because we've studied qualitative data from people who've come in and coached us and said we are not teaching the correct sets that then address these metrics right over here that we're never going to see a change so again I go back to that 2% we can set it at 10% we can set it at 50% but if we
do nothing to change what's happening in our orange system we'll never meet those metrics can I ask a connecting question then so what um so what and this can be a follow-up question it doesn't have to be answered at the table right now
because I kind of already know the answer um so what are we doing um to help support that The Orange Box so like I had before Sarah had asked her question my thought was how are we
supporting um building Administration as well as teachers or care teams so that they can so they a have time to look at data and then B have good uh professional conversations about instruction because I mean there's not a
lot of time in the world to that's really hard to do so I think that that and um that would been my first like what is the time how are we supporting teachers and administrators but then the other question are there other things
that we're doing to support increasing you know maintain the tier one the curriculum and things like that so something that we're doing um we are looking at the schedules and we are
some information that we received from teachers that there were not enough minutes to really um cover the CCC curriculum and bridges so principles have been charg to look at their schedules to see how it needs to be
adjusted in order to meet that need we're also um building in some collaborative time for teachers to work together really looking at the elementary to work together as a grade level to look at
um their data common assessments um student artifacts to see how they are implementing that tier one so we're having that feedback loop we are developing some OnDemand just in time professional development for them
that whatever gaps that they are noticing we can have that professional development ready for them so that they can um hone up on their skills um they already have monthly data meetings where
they're looking at their data to make those determinations okay where do we need to Monitor and adjust we are doing we're also we are um implementing site implementation teams that will consist of principes APS instructional coaches
um the plts that will help ensure that the initiatives coming from um instruction and learning are actually hitting the classroom and whatever those gaps of needs are it's being informed back up so that we can provide whatever
resource time what have you to ensure that teachers are getting what they need so that they can provide students what they need um am I missing anything I'm looking around the table honing in on our mtss process because I think that that is that is
essential especially when we look at our data our data says that we're not read we're not reaching the 80% so how are we being intentional intention intentional about getting to the each because we're not getting into the
each what we're doing is um we take a false screener and we begin intervening as opposed to to really Hing in on that tier one instruction yeah and I just I also want to just acknowledge that this is the first year with the the reading
curriculum that they're implementing um and just from my own experience this is really hard like it is really hard because you're learning the curriculum and you're you're learning it like maybe at one unit ahead of time and then you try to implement it and I mean like it really takes three years for you to get
any sort of action on it knowing what you're doing so I just want to put that into the space like it is really hard for teachers to like and um Dr Duffy if I recall uh the reading curriculum is not the only new curriculum that our
elementary school teachers have been trying to implement right there's math math and writing and okay so um I I mean I just want to acknowledge that it is really hard and that was where my question was coming from is like where dides that support come in for for
educators and how our principles and um instructional coaches or whatever we call them here like helping I would also add to uh what you're naming we have a lot of Staff members not only un trying to understand the curriculum but they're
also going through training with letters right so we have a large number of Staff members going through letters training which is a two-year process and we also have some that are uh participating in the core for lla for our ml staff and so what you're naming is yeah there's a lot
of learning that is taking place on top of new curriculum and we had a couple of coaches just Shadow teachers classrooms just to see about the time looking at time audits looking at the transitions that are taking place and they're giving them feedback on that so there are a lot
of components that are impacting what we see in the orange compared to the time the instruction and then looking at the standards that are being embedded in in all of that so just trying to make sure the curriculum that they're using does it really match with the standards and where are the gaps with that as well
just another somewhat out of left field question but I'm going to ask it anyway because U we're going to the state capital soon and i' be curious like how what is the impact of our school calendar because you know when I feel
like when my daughter started in kindergarten and she's in 11th grade now there were more days that were that were Di um what is the word that I'm looking for professional development type of days I feel like there are fewer professional development days is that in
I imagining things I mean does maybe I'm imagining things that's fine I was paying for daycare maybe that's fine but like does the calendar impact the time that profession um our teachers can get together and have these professional
conversations I'm seeing Ma I I would say that because a right now teachers are even ging up some of their evening hours to participate like in letters training because it goes beyond their contract hours so there's a dedication with teachers making sure that and and when they have the conversations they're
talking about not only what they've learned but how they're implementing it in the classroom and the impact that they're seeing on some of the students so like we talked about earlier there's a lot of variables that are in place um that's kind of impacted what we're saying we used to do some late starts
and early releases yeah that provided for some more time what I'm remembering I don't know it felt like I paid for a lot of take care I had I had another followup shry um and I guess I want to name um I'm asking questions which I
recognize are hard questions and also like for myself I'll speak for myself but I think like we have accountability too right like we are we are and so when I'm saying that I'm like also saying it about myself like what does it look like for us to be able to support our
district to make those changes and make the progress and part of that is we have brought on you know a leader that I feel really excited about Dr he is doing incredible work here and she's got an incredible team right and so I feel really excited about that but also my
question really is like what can we do right you know what are the way what are the supports that you need from us as leaders in this District to support you know and I assume some of it is what you bring to us and ask us to approve but I think I'll just say for myself I feel
like we have accountability like we're going to sit at this table as a school board director and ask questions about why are we going why are these numbers not what we want and we need to be accountable for it too so just know that is out there if you have something tonight great but if not like I would just encourage you to to think about us
as like what do you need from us to move the style too I think asking the hard questions is the number one thing that you all do very well and I really appreciate that um one of the things that I truly believe and this part of my East Coast training is we can't change any reality
if we don't confront what's in front of us and if we're not honest about what is happening in front of us and what um the data and the research is saying right and so like the passive Minnesota nice doesn't work because the data is never going to change one of the things that I
really want to commend my colleagues in St Louis Park is um compared to many other systems I've worked in I feel like there's a hunger to actually want to look at the data and even if the data is not where we want it to be I believe we have a mindset amongst teachers and staff and colleagues that are like all
right let's roll up our sleeves and let's get to work and so um I think one of the things that I have seen in the last six years now that I've been here is the shift from data's racist Tesa racist everything's racist so let's not talk about it and I it's like no like we
can actually confront hard things and have hard conversations because if we don't do that then we're never going to going to change the trajectory of the data and that starts with the practice and again going back to the orange system and I would add also one of the things that I've noticed in St Louis
Park is the shifting in the student population and I think when we're talking about the students culture Capital assess assessing and the threats and all of that is how are we in our system giving teachers time to really delve into those various cultures and
even when we're talking about multilingual students what does that look like defining the differences between the academic language and then we're talking about State Standards I think having that time for teachers to be able to Grapple with that and what does that mean for me as a classroom
teacher is really important as well because we are seeing a shift in who the students are that are in the district and the various languages that are coming into the space so how do uh we provide that support that's what comes um up for me with when I hear your
question I just think about the changing of students and then we look at the or what do we see around it as far as the cultural competence and the social uh political Consciousness that comes into play when we're working with various student groups what does that look like sound like for me as an individual
working with the various groups of students and what supports do I need and how do I say I need support uh as well and I believe it's the grow mindset that each going back to what Dr Hines have shared each even our special ed
students can learn and we need to believe in them so going back to the orange it is if I know that my student has a 504 or has anything that has to do with special services I need to read it I also need to partner with the special
end teachers because they're the experts in the building and confide in them so that they're aware that what we're doing from the gened class to the sped class to all the other classes it's actually working because that's what we're supposed to do per ID
I'll give a tangible ask which many of you are already participating in but legislative days are really helpful for us I know um director manini shared about like asking questions about the calendar like each of those things has an impact on our students and how we're
able to serve them um and I think the priorities that we have are in direct alignment to the the data that we're exploring today um so advocating for the the needs of our students ask asking those tough questions and helping others on that journey is really helpful for us
too oh I got lots of questions about the red can I can I ask one question then about uh that may be a hard one to answer so one of the thoughts of in current policy is to move towards ACT scores in the 11th grade do would that have an impact on what we're seeing here
too positive negative we don't know I think for our system because we still have a high opt out rate so i' I've heard multiple sides of this debate right like in the Theory it would be wonderful if we had high participation from high school students so we could understand how well we're teaching our
Minnesota state standards in reality especially in a school like St Louis Park public schools where we have AP IB act PSAT and a lot of kids going to college and you know going that route it it becomes taxing in our students and so they choose to opt out for exhaustion
not because they don't want to give us the data right and so I think act does make sense at the for us as does that impact us just in terms of scores or do we think that we'll see like we'll see a different thing cuz it's measuring similar but not precisely the same right because op out still even though we've
made a lot of progress over the last three years at the high school in terms of participation kids who don't participate are still counted in the denominator so they're calculated as does but but also that the stuff that's tested is different It's Kind no it's the same it's so we we were just when we
were just at the capital we were in the educational policy the Senate educational policy here and they were hearing the um Senator Solinski still on um MCA to acts for high school and what the executive
director um Rea from Bloomington testified on was in 2015 2016 they did a a side by side assessment between what was tested or math and I think 100% of the standards were covered in the ACT
Math and 93% of the standards were covered in reading for act so there's a high correlation between our standards and act what's actually tested so we would get a better measurement from as to how
students are really doing and how students are really being prepared at the high school if we move to the act because we have students that are opting out at the high school we really don't have a true depiction of how our how
students really doing at the high school when it comes to MCAS and which is kind of gets back to I think Virginia it's one of her original questions too about like what is some of our 11th grade data showing us right and probably also like it's sort of like and the word that
comes to my mind it's Capstone it's like also we want to know where kids end up right like besides graduation we kind of want to know what's at trajectory and if we don't have any if that data just goes through and and what we've talked about here what you talk about here is system changes and things like so if we don't
know what's happening that final year we can't change and that could happen anywhere in the process and we're not seeing that so we're not we're like guessing right we're doing our best job to kind of guess and see what needs Shoring up um to get there if we can't look at that but
some anyway okay we still I mean like we still have our second cohort for the redact to come up so I had my first training as a they um Middle School teachers aren't being trained right now but we it's coming like and we're
preparing to look at um the state hasn't decided what testing service that they're going to use if it's going to be fast brid and I guess that's another question that I have for director Magnus is like how much does this is like the does the testing cost the school
district like I'd be curious does it cost us nothing like when we Implement like the fast bridge and stuff like that is the state covering that or is it the district covering everybody's laughing it cost I don't know how much
but it costs what's that it it definitely is a cost that we pay for the right so I mean I the it is it is mysterious to me to say it politely why the state legislature would not give us
more money for the react if they really want this to be to make the impact that they wanted to make so it it is it is absolutely beyond my comprehension that they would not want to fully find the re because I always have to get that so I'm
glad you asked about the ACT though because I have been around amsd since like 2018 and I've heard more I think bipartisan support for that this year than I ever have before so I think it's I think it I think it might actually happen so I'm I'm I just if you if this
group feels supportive that is that's helpful helpful for sure car that too all right other comments questions do we do we see this so what are the next so um when we come when We Gather again on for our regular business
meeting we'll just cover the um world's best Workforce component um we won't get into where we are currently this year we'll just satisfy the requirements for reporting for the world spit Workforce and then to we see this again I think um Sarah was
asking we don't see this again we don't see it in the spring or anytime I mean we did spring but we don't see the spring data until we we'll we'll be moving it back to the fall presentation so after the after this Springs data comes out we'll
be presenting on the new comprehensive the world's best Workforce College okay all right good all right then uh let's move on to the next item on here which is 2C and this is um business office team members
director Magnuson and she's got a couple of guests here to help with the stuff talking about our fiscal year 2025 midyear budget update and fiscal year 2026 budget assumptions in preparation for the Schoolboard action I I told director Magnuson this earlier but um
Senator sadinsky was sitting in amsd meeting on Friday presenting to superintendent school board members and a bunch of people and he said I never quite understood how complicated School Finance was and what your Finance directors do and that was a direct
impact from some conversations that our staff including director Magnuson have had and so I think that's really important too that you guys are out there saying this is what we're working in I think the reality just like we say you know sometimes I think we get stuck in these situations not knowing what's
really going on in the classroom because we're talking about these things here in the same way that I think the the some of the state legislators meanwhile but they don't often understand the detail they don't understand when they're putting that impact on you in the in the challenge that is while you're working in three years okay I'm going to get off
my soap box and let you present and then um we can talk more as we're going through here and similar to um other presentations are you okay with interruptions would you like to go through this would you like to get through the first part first or if there's something that we'll get to I'll let you know that we'll get to that
question but okay helpful to and and a couple of you have sent questions already so I can um hopefully I'll get to the questions that you asked okay so good evening um we are here tonight Josiah Neo and I are here tonight to present the midyear budget update and
the budget assumptions so tonight we want to prepare you to take action at the next regular Schoolboard meeting on two things one we want to update the current Year's fiscal year 2025 budget the data in the current budget was
developed about this time a year ago so we've got a we've learned a lot over the last year and then we want to have you start to prepare to um give us marching orders for the fiscal 26 budget assumptions you'll re you'll recognize
them from the finance advisory committee's um presentation and we have just one tweak to those so we'll just go through those briefly with you tonight this is look how far we are through the budget calendar we're all the way down into the approval process of the budget
and so if you look a little bit closer tonight we're getting to the point where we're going to start making approvals of midyear budget update which really helps us to continue to build next year's budget and then the assumptions as we build the final parts of next year's
budget so the first thing we're going to go through is we're still in fiscal year 2025 some updates to that budget so overall we're pretty stable compared to the original budget not much has changed meaning our fund balance is still a
little above 8% there's a lot that's happening under those Waters um and I just want to talk you through those so we're looking at revenue and expenditures so on the revenue side we have a significant
enrollment increase over what we had anticipated at this time last year 150 students about um that are here for the bulk of the school year and we keep adding students now we don't get a full ADM a full student count for them
because as they come throughout the year but it feels a little different right now um we're adding students and if that continues it's you know we're in a different kind of phase of enrollment and that's good on the other side of that increased enrollments come with increased costs we did add some teachers
um in the fall we have an increase in special education Aid and that's in alignment with rising cost of special education including Transportation associated with special education so the aid is only going up because our costs are rising and that
you know the cost as you know rise faster than state aid but we have a significant increase in state aid for special education and we are um asking um we are projecting an increase in some interest earnings in tuition and fees
that we had built into the original Budget on the expenditure side you're going to hear about um updates for salary settlements so things we don't know when we're building the budget now for next year um some staffing to be we're fully staffed and we've got four
year salaries in place um we really dug into utilities and transportation budgets and we're trying to redirect expenses out of the unassigned general fund wherever we can so those are kind of the themes of what we've been doing so as we look at Revenue I just
wanted there's a lot lot of numbers here so for instance if you start with the property taxes line the First Column is just this is the new midyear budget will be asking you to adopt $82 m822 700 that will be the total revenue budget we'll ask you to adopt as
compared to the original budget of 79.9 million that that was adopted in um June of 2025 and so the change in the budget on revenue is 2.78 to7 million and then we just have last
year's actual for reference so keep in mind that last year's actual um was is finalized with the audit and we know a lot more about the budget so we'll take you through the line items on this I think except for property taxes there's not much of a change it's we're only
adjusting it by $25,000 and it has to do with some assumptions about um delinquent and uncollectible taxes that we got a little more data on at um through the audit so I'm not going to talk much about property taxes but we'll go into state
aid Federal and and or actually we're not going to really talk about Federal nothing much Chang there and the other category the big um change in the budget 2.4 million is in three categories of state aid general education Aid is
projected to go up over the budget by $1.1 million and that's 100% has to do with that additional students at $7,200 each um that adds up to some Revenue we added some teachers and there's other
costs that come along with the student with additional students but that's a a that is why enrollment is so important hanging on to students capturing students and really and that's why results are important because good results attract families and our
enrollment will will continue will continue to capture students in in St Louis Park um the other state sources there's $300,000 of additional funding through react um there's about three different new categories of funding and
this is where our work gets complicated so react was implemented which really I know complicates a lot of people's lives in school buildings it complicates our lives in the business office because to chase after three different sources that add up to $300,000 and make sure it's coded
correctly and we have the backup for it and we close it into the right balance sheet account and then get audited it is a lot of work so if I could advocate for just put it in the General Ed funding formula account for it there so so if I understand you
correctly um right now the state is asking us to basically tell them every single dollar amount that's going to the react and what you're advocating for is that it goes into the general education fund and then that way we don't have to
likee everything the amount of work that goes on in the business office and that we ask of staff to keep track of it it's minor compared to hopefully what impact the react will have on student achievement and we'll do what we need to do in the business office but to chase around
$300,000 it would be better off in the funding formula but there's $300,000 new money in the system to pay for professional development letters training there's some some testing and and materials you know by the end of the year and then there's another million
dollars in the special education funding formula I'm trying to remember if I have more here so like if I just sit back and go okay there's $2.4 million that we are saying additional Revenue across all of those categories I feel veryy strongly
that that's going to happen um we'd have to tank our um enrollment between now and the end of the year for that not to happen that is not the trend we're under in fact the trend is that that will continue to rise unless something happens in the in the session with the
you know the current Financial condition of the state is not looking good but I believe that they will leave this year's funding alone so our funding formula should be intact for the current fiscal year special ed is an iffy one um I think this is a fairly conservative
projection of special ed Aid it's PR rated at 95% which means um the state is saying here's the funding formula which isn't a full funding formula anyway but now we're going to crank it down by 5% and
you're only being allocated um 95% of the funding if we get 100% of the funding which everybody is telling us will happen we will have more than a million dollars of additional special education aid but now out of the other
side of folks mouths we're hearing that they will not fund Transportation anymore for special education like that might be one of the things that gets wiped off the map so that will cause special education Aid to be lower than our original budget is that sorry is that state aid or federal aid state
state this is all in the state aid category there are there is federal St State yes so I feel if it were a normal year and the and the world is normal I feel super confident about this I think we've got some risk in special education
Aid so I'm this is a very it's a semiconservative budget I would say at $14 million for next year which is $1 million above the the current Revenue that we have in the budget so there's some risk in that but um I think we've
taken a calculated risk this is a small part of the budget but it's mighty as I've come to say I don't know why but the originally in the areas of tuition fees so like students who are signing up for sports and clubs
at the high school and folks who pay admission to get into all of our students activities and parking fees um all in that fees and admissions area and then interest earnings for everything that Josiah is investing and trying to really maximize our investments and then
we get some gifts so we don't generally budget for tuition we have a $50,000 budget which I think for sure we are going to hit that's for students who are coming to our district from other districts not just through not through
open enrollment because that's taken care of in another way but through through this is like the Melrose program for instance students from other districts who attend the Melrose program that we um we have the teachers for so we the business office sends out an invoice we're very confident we're going to hit 50,000 because they're in our
community these are people who Melrose is a program for U health and particularly I think um treat care and treatment yeah care and treatment and so because they're in this community and they get served by our teachers and students could come to
Melrose from other school districts and open enroll into Melrose and then we that's different than open enrollment yes exactly got it thank you so that's something we feel it's a small amount of money but we feel comfortable that we can start building that budget because we have a really good process in place
for that we believe the budget's going to go up a little bit for fees and Emissions I think I'm 100% sure we will meet that goal um interest earnings have to be shared with other funds so you know all of our cash is co-mingled it's kind of not a great word to use in this
context but Debt Service cash School nutrition cash um Community Education cash at the end of the year we have to allocate it to all the different funds based on how much cash they had relatively over the school year we had originally thought we'd reach 300,000
this year we think it's going to be half a million I think that's a fairly conservative very conservative that's because interest rates have gone up yes but they've also taper it off so last year we had closer to $800,000 in interest earnings I don't
think we'll get we're not going to get there this year and then we have some gifts there's a small number of gifts that we build um revenue and expenses for that's those are budgeted as we receiv received them so in the overall I'm I'm pretty confident in $2.5 million
more of state aid and another half million dollars in these other categories on the expenditures side our total expenditure budget so again if you just concentrate on those first three numbered columns our expenses are going up by $2.3
million so if you look through the categories and I'm going to go through details on most of this stuff mostly in salaries and benefits and then in the other categories there's a net decline um you're going to hear about three different kinds of adjustments one is
it's offsetting because we've just tried to move staff from one category to another like fund them out of the tech Levy versus General operations you're going to hear we made some errors in the way we budgeted things and so there was an erroneous cat C category of funding
so we just missed it so some of them are we're making a decision some of them are we made a dang error and we put it in the wrong spot now we're moving it and the third is it just wasn't in the original budget either we have more information or or we missed it or
there's costs are going up it's that kind of thing so it's you know a lot of Shifting and so the things I highlighted are the things that if I were you this is what I would pay attention to because I think these are the things that are actually changing in in our expenditure
profile so it look if you we decided to break this down in the way that most folks when they're making comparisons to other districts you know if we compare District to District it's the program area so what are we spending in Administration in instruction so we
broke it down in that way you could break it down in a million ways so this appears like we're asking the budget to decline by $223,000 in administration that's not true right we're what we're saying is that the the amount of the budget the
folks that we had budgeted for in the administration category can now be funded out of pup Support Services because that's where the technology Levy is so we're moving some some portion of um staff in the Mars area and staff in
um the communications area and funding portions of Staff out of a different category so it's really just an offsetting adjustment so nothing happening there so it doesn't mean that our costs have gone down in administration it's just an offsetting adjustment down into these other
categories regular instruction is um pretty spoton in our instructional staff were covered the new staff that we hired were covered under our our contingency there's a big increase in special education instruction and we've been trying to dig into this it's not
because we have a bunch of new staff in special education I actually think this is what we are starting to understand is we missed some things in the original budget some of it has to do with being we're fully staffed this year for the
first time in a long time um and so when we built the budget we're learning how to build the budget in our new Finance system when we built the budget at this time last year if there was an open position there wasn't a placeholder in the budget to increase so we took
everybody's that was getting paid got all the FTE and then cranked them up by the amount of a average salary settlement but if the position was open we missed them if I if I knew the new position was coming like the new assistant super intended new assistant
principles we knew we intentionally added those but if a position was sitting vacant we missed it we believe that that's what happened in the budget so we're we're closing all of the doors on the methodologies we're using to budget but we believe that some of that
is what happened we also believe that the the salary settlement last year the teachers contract was paid out in retray at the end of January and then we so we would have built budgets off of salaries from last year
to build next to build this current Year's budget we didn't have all the Retro salaries in the base data so we started off we we built the budget off of of too low of a number and by we we me you know sitting going through every
line out of the budget so I think really we just missed some stuff and we're building better systems and structures now with some really great technology and really great technicians in the business office that um we hope we can close some of those gaps I want you to
understand all of this so um you know that we're aware of it and we can fix some of that stuff some of it was salary settlements were higher than the across the board settlement we placed in the budget so we just you know some of that is Corrections that had to be made we
added some pair of professionals later in the year last year that's in the instructional support area when we we pulled the data they wouldn't have been in the budget and so when we added them they weren't in the base that we built next year's Budget on so we we're just closing the gaps we're spending all day
next Thursday going through every every staff member to make sure that that we're in in good shape um our staff have built some really great structures so just so you know that that's what's happening there in pupil support um we
move staff into this category from the technology Levy this is all the Staffing areas and then in custodial and Facilities this was an error so on the next page I've got the stuff that's not salary and benefits we kept a placeholder for
custodians in a non-salary code so the budget didn't change we just shifted this the the budget into into salaries out of another category and you'll see that in a little bit so we're $2.5 million increase in in the salary budget
and I think this is a good repres representation of where we will be by the end of the year there's perhaps some um some contingency built in because we also have to budget for things we don't know yet like um additional salaries
that folks get paid for doing professional development or they stay late and get extra pay for you know whatever it is that they get assigned to do over time for work that we don't know about so we have some contingency built in for that um so I think that's where there might be some cushion in this
budget but we feel pretty good about this budget outside of salaries and benefits the entire budget is going down by $360,000 um most of these categories these first several categories are just offsetting things that we've moved into the
technology Levy and the the yellow ones are the ones that I want you to pay attention to we have increased our pup Transportation estimates we really ramped down our estimates for pup transportation and they're going up by about $600,000 over what we currently had
budgeted I think we have a fighting chance to hit that Transportation budget but we sat down with Park Adam to try to really make a good estimate on where we will be by the end of the year as we we have our regular routes but we add homeless students and special ed
students at a faster Pace than you might believe and every time we add students um we can't just add them to a regular route because they are all over so the costs increase pretty rapidly I think that I feel pretty good about that budget that David can um work with that
those are customized routes they're custom yeah it's not a regular route vehicle they're not weing the whole bus up to grab 70 people were sending one vehicle or up to to yeah yeah up to Big Lake to pick up a student two times a
day yeah and the other thing about what's different this year is we have worked really hard hard to push all of that work to park adom Transportation instead of hiring other organizations to to do the work and what park Adam has
done for us is tried to streamline it because we pay for a day for a driver to be out and so if the driver is out on a route and if we can feather in another route we haven't increased our costs at all so that's how we're able to sort of
crank down our costs a little bit and if somebody's going up to Big Lake to pick up for s's Park and they're going to H is there things like that I don't know they FEA all that they can okay right so it's not just per District or whatever you can kind of do some of those things um and David Hansen who is new on our
staff this year is doing a really good job of partnering with Park Adam but we do have increased costs there in the custodial and Facilities area there's two things happening this is um this line item would have actually gone down because I moved the custodial staff up
where they need to be but we actually went through all of the energy costs and utility costs and have an increase in that category in here so it's this is a little bit this um increase is larger than it looks like here does that make sense this line item had some staffing
salaries that didn't belong there we moved them up so we have our eye on everything that's happening right now with um conversations about increasing energy costs to the state of Minnesota for energy that comes from Canada um I
haven't built in anything to to account for that but just increasing energy costs are also built into that line atem so in this category we have a budget that decreases by $360,000 so that's sort of the the guts
of it so then if you pull back from all of that this is probably this is my simple straty but it's probably more complicated than it needs to be but what I want you to see is our ending fund balance last year was 5.2 million our
unassigned fund balance 8.27% remember the board's policy is 6% our goal for the budget was 8% and remains 8% um our midyear budget estimate is
that our fund balance will end at $5.6 million 8.2% the original budget was so we've gone up our fund balance is going our projection is going up from 5.4 million to 5.6 million so why in the world would
the fund balance percent go down anyone numerators and denominators so we just had expenses go up by 2.5 million so a little bit higher fund balance is
being divided by a $2 million larger denominator in expenses so our percentage just went went down however um we're still above 8% and I feel fairly confident we'll hit this 88.2% um at the end of the year there
some things we were trying to highlight here there's some assigned fund balances that this is under board control you can unassign these anytime you want so we've got funds assigned for severance there's a million dollars at the end of last year sitting in Severance that we um had
not we have not used um for a year we are planning this year's budget to use $400,000 that hasn't changed we have more than that um spent um that budgeted for in potential Severance payouts but the rest of it is up in the unassigned
fund balance um so so that's one change um in in Severance the other change this year there's lots of conversations about qom atps this has nothing to do with the governor's proposal to eliminate cucon
this has to do with you may have heard me say that Cump is an assigned fund balance it's not restricted at the state that has changed this year so it's not no longer assigned so it's no longer under board control it's restricted so
we have carried a negative fund balance in atps um wanting to keep a placeholder for that a restricted fund balance cannot be negative so the general unrestricted fund balance has to pick up that negative balance so we're in for
that change um so this fund balance is going up but it's you know it's driving the other fund balance down so just FYI this is a prepaid fund balance so last year we paid for some stuff that belonged in this year's budget and and then through the auditing process when
you do that you know we had to pay for some software ahead of time um so when you do that you have to reserve fund balance and so we released that fund balance cuz it's already been paid for so that is a positive impact on the unassigned fund balance and then there's
all these restricted areas and these um Student Activities is one of them we we of course we aren't budgeting for Student Activities that they will be what they are they belong to our students but these areas of capital projects operating capital and long-term
facility maintenance are one of the big factors that are saving our budget and have saved our budget for the last 2 or 3 years we are pushing as many expenses as are allowable under yar's guidelines into the technology Levy into operating
capital and into long-term facility maintenance so some portions of some of our maintenance staff are here operating Capital really doesn't have staff in it at all um but we all of our books all of our software anything that is capital related we're moving copies that might
be curriculum into operating Capital just so we can save the general fund and then in the capital projects Lev you we're stretching as far as we can staff um into the tech Levy to free up so I just want you to be aware of how important those funding categories are
so overall um our midyear fund balance for the entire general fund is going up by $537,000 from where we thought we were going to be by the end of the year this is just a portion of I I gave you the
full fund balance page I just want you to see this is a balanced budget we're going up from a 5 2 million budget to a $5.5 million budget and it is 88.2% so that's what we'll so we'll bring a summarized version of that to
the to next to the budget to the board meeting in two weeks for you to adopt the midyear budget so the Auditors will go what did the board accept what's in your books and how close were you to that budget so we have to have action at the board table for us to use that as our official budget so we'll bring that
data to you in two weeks for acceptance so that's the mid year and then on the assumptions do you want to talk about the Sun that you pull some data on sure so you you'll recognize these
nothing's changed so we can move through them pretty rapidly sure um so these recommendations U mostly came from our finance advisory committee meetings uh first one uh develop an expenditure budget that ensures an unreserve fund balance of at least 8%
um as part of that we want to create a long-term strategy to gradually increase our fund balance to about 12 to 16% to be more in line with um some of our neighboring districts um I did um pass out uh some uh fun balance comparison uh
spreadsheets earlier um because director Davis was asking about comps in the area so just so that you're aware that we are relatively low compared to our peers so some majority of our peers are
20% or above a couple of them are 16% there's nobody as low as 8% at the moment with the exception of Robinsdale but right um and then uh another recommendation is to utilize fund balance to reduce the impact of
potential federal and state revenue reductions the spirit behind that recommendation is we might be coming back to you if something unusual happens at the federal or mostly the federal level and say we
aren't going to make any more budget cuts we've made our budget cuts we're going to dip deeper into fund balance maybe down to the 6% board goal um so that's what we're recommending if you want to say no start planning for another $2 million in case
Federal funding goes away that's a different assumption than we're building this Budget on we're not at this point we haven't built a budget thinking about that next level of cuts that might we might face can we ask questions as we go through these
recomendations only 3 million right we were getting 3 million from little less million yeah million um I've been thinking about this thank you for bringing this comparison um I Wonder as you think
about like what are unassigned fund balances and really mostly this goes to the question around like a two worths two months worth of expenditures I don't feel like I can get into that level of detail with the budget line items that you give us but I
think I was thinking about it from the perspective of okay worst case scenario we need two worth two months worth of operating expenditures but like do all of those expenses actually continue right because at that point you're like in a crisis mode right so are so what
are the line items that could be excluded from that I'm just really thinking about it from a truly practical level right like if you're saying we want we want to have two months worth of operating budget but like what would that like what line items would you say
wouldn't be included in that right are there some supply line items and I know the like the biggest I know that we're like a people organization right like I get that but I'm also mindful that like $500,000 is like .5% or something like
that we've talked about in the past for our fund balance and so I'm just trying to think for myself like what would feel like if we really wanted to get to two two months work are there lines that you would consider excluding or is that just
not a not even a thing to think about um I wouldn't exclude anything I mean just based on our um expenditures um out flows on a monthly basis is very consistent throughout the year so that's
why um the gfoa recommends that um school districts and government entities um keep in reserve two mons of operating expenses and the way I think about it if you if you look at how precarious it is
like we're talking about $6 million it would take a nanc to lose we are so close to being in a really bad case if if if something happen if Federal funding goes away that takes away half of our fund
balance for instance so if we had more of a cushion in the fund balance we wouldn't feel so at risk if Federal funding goes away it's some of that kind of thinking Beyond you know in addition to two months worth of salary like how
at risk do we want to be to the whims of of what happens at the federal and state level or or any kind of disaster that might strike us and you can look at it as our cash burn rate is about $4 million a month in a general
fund so in two months will be WIP up if something was to happen I I hear you I like I understand what you're saying but I'm also saying like we are I mean the reality is we are a state for the most part state funded
to some degree federally funded operation right if that money goes away we don't have it's not like we have it's not like well we've got two months and then we're going to figure this out like it's we can't operate we're a people driven organization and so that's
where what I'm saying is in a moment where we are asking our staff to you know cut budget significantly I'm not suggesting we shouldn't increase our fund balance but I I guess for me if you think about that catastrophic
like the money's gone right like what do we do you know we need to be able to what are the things that you obviously you don't stop paying people but like what are the things you stop paying for at that point right because you're not we're not recovering from I mean let's just be real like we're not coming back
from that right and so what does that that's what I'm asking like what is the actual there's other like financing option like shortterm financing for school districts and government entities to tap into for C cash flow purp for
cashow purposes but um yeah we are said we're dependent on the state and the spirit of this is be aware that we are a significant outlier I would say we're a significant outlier in our low fund balance and I think strong finances are
one of the many markers of a strong school district and fund balance is one of the markers of strong fund balance it might also be a marker that we've used our funds in ways that are really important and as we bought down our fund balance over the last several years we
were cognizant of that we are spending our money on today's kids I think the spirit behind this is we can't keep doing that like we're done so if we have a balanced budget and 85% our salaries and benefits that goes up by 5% easily
every year by just everybody lives till the next year year and gets the salary increases that they deserve if State funding doesn't go up which it does not go up by 5% the only way out of that is a budget cut so we are in Perpetual budget cutting mode because of our fund
balance being at 8% that there's no other way around it unless State funding is going to go up at five or 6% but I I guess I mean maybe this is a theoretical discussion but like if you go up to let's say we get up to 12% so then we have a cou couple years
where we use fund balance to not be in a budget cut mode and then we just like do it over again that's the dance of school district but and we're now at that place where it's the you know it's over the fund balance is gone so we have to
either build back the fund balance over time and it's just a matter of let's be mindful so if this year ends at better than 88.2% let's not turn around and go now let's now we have the authority or the ability to drive it back down let's hold
it and maybe next year we won't have to cut as much so it's a let's tighten our belts as tight as we can so we can as fund balance maybe can grow if enrollment comes back maybe we can begin to control fund balance so I don't think
this is a cut yourself into a 12% fund balance right this is watch every penny and if you can grow fund balance get it done because otherwise I'm exhausted for Budget cutting and we took a year off from last year and we shouldn't have
so can I can I ask a different question maybe just I appreciate all these questions and stuff but how do you get a 40% fund which is that they're a big District yeah they have a really strong financial plan up
there and they want it's yeah it's a really that that comes at some cost too right like like some of the things that we talk about classroom sizes or some things like that too right or I I hear through my friends through teachers in other districts are like you see the salary increase we got you know like in
some of those things so there are trade-offs with that too right like that's people admirable like 40% like you're spending your M but that's what I'm I mean I don't know that's why I'm asking is that an admirable thing or is that're in a moment in time now every District that's on that list is cutting
budgets for next year except for oio oio is not cutting they just had a a referendum I live in that District so got hit um I think it was they got they got a nice well that's
a referendum that we can't do correct we're already at a level higher than they are they they increased the referendum but we were already at the cap they weren't at the cap yet yes okay I mean like maybe this is a stupid question and I feel like I asked I feel
like I asked here but like part of the reason why we how we got here was um we're relatively landlock landlock like we can't grow we can't put in a subdivision or anything like that we don't have a Maple
Grove ex um you know as our as our enrollment decreased our operating costs remain the same or grew they grew right so like in um operating class across the board Bo sort of group right so it's
like it's not just energy but it was also Transportation teacher salary or just salary and benefits of anybody in the district and things like this um and so like the the situation about so if I'm understanding the
discussion um if I'm sort of tracking here is that the reason why we depleted our fund balance from where it was we were closer to % right in 20 was it 2018 that you showed us that yeah eight years
ago or part of that was because we wanted to maintain programs where we wanted to maintain some of our operating things but we had a decrease in enrollment so the decrease in enrollment with the increase of just overall in general cost has brought us to this
moment Y and this is a this conversation plays out at every board table right because this is public school districts we are people it's a competitive Marketplace for staff and our staff deserve to be paid a living wage so
salaries will go up state a does not go up at the same Pace it just doesn't state aid is 70% of 70% of our budget and if that only if 70% of 70% only goes up by 2% or two and
a half or we're jumping for joy over 2.74% we're not making up for the cost increase it just it is the story of school district budgets I think it's also important to the $3 million did you say 3 million
from federal aid MH I think that's a really important number um and I know that there in the and in the conversations about why to dismantle the Department of
Education um the cabinet secary has said that that funding for um special ed and other titled programs won't go away but I don't know if we can necessarily hold on to that um and I think that also just
understanding like the benefit of the Department of Education is more than just special education and title formulas I mean it's also where teachers where we get to be like do research into what are best practices and what are
instructional things that we need so the department of education does a whole lot more than just provide us with this funding um and I and I just think it's would behoove everybody to reach out to our state um excuse me our federal um
folks and just say this is not well this is not a good thing to dismantle the Department of Education because you losing $3 million is going to that's going to hurt that will be a whole different conversation so the the biggest thing here that will give us marching orders is we will build a
basically a balanced budget for next year if using that first bullet point and then our thinking around trying to do everything we can to find strategies to increase our fund balance I don't
know what they are and then um increase enrollment but yeah and don't spend into it yeah and then um utilizing our fund balance if we have so they're kind of in contradiction to each other but here I'm here telling you
we're not cutting budgets in case Federal money goes away we're just not doing that right now and so I'm saying I we'll be back asking for fund balance if that happens so that's recommendation number one mostly it's about having a balanced budget at
8% the second one we used 2.53 because that's our the best data we had but the state came out and announced 2 74% I'm hearing the governor's like I hope we can make that number
so so I'm I don't know you guys it's a strange time at state and federal levels but we are building a budget at 2.74% because that's what mde has announced and that's for fiscal year 2026 so if enrollment goes up and
funding formula goes up that's really great news there's a lot of language here but the gist of this is continue to do things that promote growth in student enrollment and I believe the feedback we're getting and the results we're
getting in student enrollment are the things that we've started this year making sure we're paying attention to each family um and whether they're coming here or not but improving academic outcomes this conversation we had earlier is the number one thing we can do to improve student enrollment
because family shock and and we don't want to give them reason to shop and there and the finance committee themselves students and community members started listing up here's all the great things about our district make sure people know our preschool program is Rock we are this small town in the
city we' got all the benefits of being a city but we're this really small school district we have low Elementary class sizes we have engaged and connected teachers like teachers care about their students the committee couldn't think about enough ways to talk about how great our teachers are we have
modernized schools our Comm our community has invested in our schools and our cafeterias so strong Community Support we have all these great um academic offerings ibap and concurrent College enrollment so those are the things we can do you know all of the
other great things we're doing but to pay attention to student enrollment um we're going to be adding a budget for a technology fee for lost and broken equipment we're going to increase the community ed fee that will come through the community ad advisory
Council no other fees are going to increase and we sat and talked about it you know we could maybe scrape $10,000 out of additional parent fees it won't make a hill of beans difference at this table but to a family who has to cough up 50 more bucks it makes difference so the committee stopped it before it even
started the conversation so we're not going to change any other fees we would encourage I think we're a little bit of an outlier not having a districtwide booster club we have many booster clubs for many different sports but if we had more of a CommunityWide booster club if
there's ways we can connect that might be ways to fund some things differently that might we might be able to offload from the general fund and then focusing on the things that drive our costs and we sit in this very room every month with budget managers and talk about them so we're
looking at Trends we look at substitute teachers and professionals every month who are we getting subs for why are we getting Subs when are we doing professional development why are we pulling people out of classrooms we look at printing you know it all adds up
color printing is three times the cost of a black and white copy um transportation and additional pay Beyond contracted pay which is if it's not on your contract but you get paid to be a um to stay after school for a half hour
to do something with students or a custodian gets paid overtime to come in on the weekends how are we making those decisions to pay more than is in the like I like everybody to get more money and do all kinds of work but what are we doing that's not in the basic contracts
and can we reduce that instead of cutting a position so it's those kinds of things that we're trying to pay attention to and then in everything all of that prioritizes retaining classroom teachers and direct student facing
positions and when we're adding things like an assistant superintendent and assistant principles we're going to help us with that green spot on our instruction to help us have good instructional leadership that we ought to see changes in our student outcomes
as a result so return on investment which is a a term Dr Hines has really driven home for us if you're going to buy that software tell me how it's going to impact student achievement we're going to bring in new Administration tell me how it's going to impact student achievement so every thing we do should
be having better outcomes for the numbers we bring these numbers should have impact on the other numbers or else we're all just dancing so for no reason can I just ask a couple questions about the recommendations for number
five um I am really curious if you can um how much the react as a cost driver and like what that impact is on districts and why um I just want to know what like if you could between now and
the 24th give some numbers that would be great I would like to know what the cost driver how the we Act is impacting us and not just the trainings I mean I think that there are there um I think I have a pretty good grasp of what uh how
trainings worked in um St Louis Park but like just understanding how the trainings are U being implemented on professional development days or staff going out and getting this but also just um in general getting the new curriculum
in place getting fast fo and I mean like I am curious that if that $300,000 that we got the from the 2024 State Legislature really is covering all of the cost of implementing the read act I
don't think it is um and I know that because of my position as a middle school teacher I know that there is more things that we have to do so I'm just um I would love those those numbers we'll have to sit down with the team
and I don't want you to but I would just be if you can somehow give me a general that would be um I would be curious about that um and then I think it's also important like retaining classroom
teachers in direct student facing positions I totally get it I'm a teacher and we do have um particularly low classroom sizes in our elementary compared to the district I teach in for example um I'm just I also want to say
that like if we're listening to um d uh Dr star and Dr Lafayette knowing that administrators need that to be there to support the teachers in order for them to do the work and I appreciate
the information that Dr Hines has shared with us about what is being implemented and I really appreciate the um principles coming in and saying what they're doing are they coming back in at the end of the year to talk about like whether they were they great excellent
um and then the third thing that I am also curious about um and this is like down the road Dr Hines but how we've streamlined and I don't see Tom anymore how we've seen streamlined of our technology so that we're not paying for subscriptions over here and
subscriptions over like I would like to I can't wait to see those numbers too because I think those are cost drivers yep and I know what is it uh April 8 um technology and instruction learning are
getting together to do some auditing of our digital software what's being use how effective is is it how how often are students logging in how long how often teachers logging in is there any duplication of softwares because we
believe that there are some duplications of softwares is there an opport opportunity to condense up some of that so those are all cost saver cost drivers that we can look at um in order to be more efficient yeah right so I'm sitting here
thinking about the conversation we had earlier about MCAS and the state allows it's totally legal for our student to opt out of the MCAS and then school districts get penalized when students do this totally legal thing
opting out of the MCS similarly the state allows open enrollment and then school districts get penalized for open enrollment and then that turns kids into Commodities and I just like I I need to say that and so I'm I'm
looking at this and I'm thinking we're going going to the legislature in a couple weeks before our next meeting I think and I'm thinking about how important us is it is for us our district to tell our story because if Eden Prairie goes to swad zinski and
says we're we're out of money he's going to say you have $28 million you're not out of money buckle up um and we and what we tell the story of St Louis Park who has been well managed we have been cutting we have been balanced our budget
over the past three years like we have done that work and we are in an untenable position we are just we just are and I'm I'm totally with you Sarah I think like if that if the stuff hit the fan like the stuff hits the fan like
that's that's a catastrophe that is that is will be Beyond us right and when um when the legislature gives us all of the authority in the world to spend our money but no more authority to
add income we're capped at ltfm we're our operating Levy is capped we we have no mechanism to bring in more money except to bring in more commodities for just students and that is not in the best interest of of students and
families in the state it just is not so that's my subbox we need to keep telling this story um I think our story is really compelling and I think that um I think so I think it's good that we've already got appointments with not only our legislators but some others from other
places who who need to hear about this who need to hear that like we we are we believe that we are doing what is in the best interest of our students and we are we're not going to make it so that's my soap box I'll be ready to say that on the I
can't wait so here's our next steps next meeting we'll come back for approval on these two areas the midar budget and the budget assumptions um June 10th will'll give you a a preview of the proposed budget
to have you approve it on June 24th there's a chance that we'd come in between March and June and do another tweak to this year's budget if we learn anything more as we're going through the budget if it if it either might go up or down we might I want to just put that
out there as a possibility all right uh other questions comments that we covered a lot it's getting to a later hour but in this we'll see uh we will see in a bridge version of this because we are going to be approving um these budget assumptions
for 2026 and the 2025 budget which you said is an important thing for us to be doing if there's anything that you really have issues with now speak now but you provided with us with a lot of thorough information about how you've gotten to where you're at and what why we're making some of the assumptions so
um I know other comments questions from anybody all right really appreciate it appreciate everybody's time um and uh yeah I think we'll just um call ourselves a Jour there's a couple things going on legislature there's U the ifar
dinner there's a bunch of things like that but we can talk about those after I'm call