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we'll call this meeting to order Joan roll call please director hacker here director Kellenberg here director lower here director Petri here director PB here director cander here CH here great let's stand for the Pledge of
Allegiance I pledge aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indiv visible with libery and justice for all I will go ahead and make a motion to
approve tonight's agenda can I get a second so moved great we'll go with Dr kelzenberg on the second all those in favor of approving the agenda raise your hand and say I I I I agenda approved unanimously moving on to the consent
agenda it's up on the screen for those watching at home items a through e is there a motion to approve tonight's consent great director low with the first and is there a second I'll second okay director hacker all those in favor of approving tonight's consent agenda
raise your hand and say I I consent agenda passes unanimously we are going to move next into um bring Carissa up here to talk about our district handbook need to take action on that this evening
hi good evening good evening I'm Dr Funk board chair Sherman and members of the board um every fall we are required to inform parents about the district policies and required notices as well as the rights and responsibilities of students and Guardians all this information is included in the District student handbook the handbook is
published electronically and can be found on the district's website families are expected to review the handbook each year and complete a signoff form in power school and this year's handbook has been updated to reflect changes in legislation or District policies and the it contains summaries of important
policies with links for families to view um families will be receiving multiple Communications from their child's school as well as in District Communications directing them to the online handbook and required signoff form so at this time I'll just be asking for your approval of the District student
handbook any questions comments any changes that you would like to highlight of note in specifically I guess other than the legislative which we all are aware of here yeah there's really not I mean much of it is just just updating the policies that you've been updating throughout the year so making sure that links are working and that all the
information is up to date um but there haven't been any dramatic changes to this year's handbook so if we change something like cell phone policy at some point during the school year which we're mandated to do by law then will be will that be
reflected in the handbook or will the board have to come and re-approve the handbook or will the policy I imagine would Trump the handbook at that point in time what we have tried to do by having an electronic is that we can do those updates throughout the school year so it's always live in real time um as
far as a policy update if you do approve a policy that's going to obviously be on the books when it's approved um and we would add information then at that time to the handbook great very much you're welcome all right is there a motion to approve the handbook the revised handbook okay Dr
porb is there a second second great Dr petot II all those in favor of approving the updates to the handbook raise your hand and say I hi opposed hand passes thank you for all right under strategic Direction D we have developed strong Partnerships
with the communities we serve and we have a couple different reports the first will be a trans or wait no sorry the new Elementary Bond report good evening chair Sherman members of the board tonight um we're here I have two guests with me here Paul
lakowski and Valerie Peterson from World Architects here we will be talking about the new elementary schools at both Bayport Elementary and Lake ELO Elementary this will be um our third presentation here the first one is when we started core planning core planning just a real refresher was when we kicked
off this process we had um about 20 to 25 stakeholders for each building um of parents teachers um community members um office staff support staff Etc to look at um setting the design criteria
criteria to take a look at tours and other um facilities around the area of of new sites and then set adjacencies to the building kind of where it's a lunchroom close to the cafeteria where are the grade levels um where's the the gym the music room cafeteria Etc then
from that we came and kind of have great a presentation about the adjacencies kind of that bubble map if you remember of kind of where just things landed then we moved into us user groups user groups is where we met with staff um for each of the sites or each of the spaces with within the site so all the different
classroom areas special education Music Room art room um cafeteria receiving custodial kitchen cafeteria Etc just to look at each space and really dig into the details of that what does flooring look like what does lighting look like
where do we want Outlets where's storage where's Cabinetry all those sorts of things um and we had a couple round of rounds of those users groups and then now we're going to um head into our bidding phase so before we start to get into the bidding phase and and really finalize the documents we want to come
here and present um what we have as of now kind of the building adjacencies as well as to see what the exterior as well as some of the Interior renderings are of our new um elementary schools as we go through each one of these phases we also um kind of do a budgeting process
for each one of them to kind of mirror where we are in our design based on um where we're seeing current trends within bidding throughout the metro area so we run through two bidding process wal has a process that they do with their own um Koss Anderson our construction manager does a totally separate one and as we
kind of finish each one of these phases they both do their budgeting um of the building and kind of compare where we're at and see if we're on budget or not ultimately the budget day comes down to bid day so we kind of want to see where we are on track from now but really that big number is what happens on bid day so um the images you're going to see here
tonight are um as we sit here tonight are on track to keep us on budget um so we we keep moving forward with the project we would like your input um with some of the things that you're going to see here this evening so with that I will turn it over to Paul and Val to uh kick us off we'll start with with Bayport Elementary we'll kind of go
through that um facility kind of take questions on Bayport specifically and then we'll jump into Lake Elmo afterwards so please as you as we go along please ask questions and feel free to jump in as you see fit don't need sorry
this button no I don't think you need to do that it's live all right uh well thank you it's an honor to be here and this is always an exciting part of our process is to actually share the design of all of the um data that we've collected and um collected from a number of users along the way so starting with
Bayport just a refresher this is a new Elementary School up to fifth grade it'll have about 600 students um and it's about 96,000 square feet um as Mark alluded to we are ending are wrapping up um getting close to issuing our construction documents to head out for
bidding this fall um and the construction would start early spring I think just as part of the process we do have a NE a phase before we um Can award bids um and that is to get through the city county and Watershed approval so that is a a a
current topic that we're working through in all jurisdictions right now y um so some of our core Planning Group had some thoughts on um to guide us along some of the design so I thought I would uh revisit some of those that the spaces should be bright and transparent
and invite nature into the building um it should be easy to navigate and um it should be very engaging for the students um while they're there um the Gathering spaces should be accessible to the school as well as the Greater Community and the design should be adaptive
flexible and encourage collaboration so to start out with um we thought we would start out with the site plan so this is a kind of an existing analysis of the site so you can see um the school's property on the left side and then the existing city park for Barker's elps over on the right that is
going to remain a park um so the property um that the district has acquired on the left um starts to show Identify some of the topography that I think people are aware of in that area and um just how we had to work around the topography to eventually site this
building um and locate it within this property so here is um a site plan of the building um it has our parking and our parent queuing up in the front so that would be on the North End of the white building that's outlined here we have
our bus parking which will also act as expanded parking for the city park um off to the east um and then the building is kind of nestled um towards the uh existing forest or trees um and the Hills
around that you'll start to see some of the hard surface play playground and even an Outdoor Learning Center on the south end of the building um I just had a a couple of questions here um um down there that
that gray Circle what is that down there at the bottom is that is that a paved pathway or that's not for vehicles is it well it's for emergency vehicles only okay so it would only be utilized for emergency vehicles um to help um get a
fire truck around a building to access the building for in case of emergencies mhm so it's not for um normal vehicle use okay that they need to be go around the whole building and that big kind of volley pop there the circle is for them to turn around a turn around okay so it's not just for everyday traffic but
it's access for emergency vehicles to make sure they have access all the around the site it primarily functions as pedestrian Pathways though 99% of the time that's what I was wondering because the um the Outdoor Learning space that's where you know the People's Church might
want to use that on the weekends and then they can bring wheelchairs along that space there to access that is that correct y that would be an accessible route to that area yep okay um and then the other thing I just noticed that I really like on this design is the the
row of vegetation or trees or shrubs or I don't know what that is in the parking lot um and I think that's just a really nice way to set off the um it looks like the parent drop off space is right there so a comment I
guess so now we will start to get into the floor plan a little bit and this has not changed from our last presentation um we've just added more walls and doors and a little bit more detail to it so the areas in the green are really the classroom learning areas um The Learning
Studios um the blue is the gym so I'll start to walk you in from the main entry that's centered on the North so when you come in from the main entry which would also serve as our parent pickup and drop off area we have our Administration area in the brighter orange the more peachier
brighter Orange um if we were to take a left through those doors and go past the gym uh we have our cafeteria that's indicated there in the purple we have our um kitchen and some of our building uh maintenance area in the gray um our boiler rooms um across from the
cafeteria we have our music and instrumental area and then now going back towards the main entry in the more pumpkiny orange that is our um special education Zone and then the um lighter blue area is our
learning Commons um traditionally that's where our media center classro would be that's where some of the books and some of the very large group learning could also happen um and then the building really divides into the three different wings um for prek-k uh first and second
grade for those different learning Studios and then upstairs we have um our third fourth and fifth grade learning Studios as well as an Arts classroom for specialist upstairs um I'm assuming that you know these the buildings that that get
created these days are more um cognizant of safety and all of that sort of thing can you explain the lockdown lines in these buildings yes and I don't know if that poter works but um so you can start to see the lock down line term that's right between the uh media Commons and
the main entry there's a pair of double doors there um so if there was a an event there was a button at the front desk that could be pushed and those doors would close as well as the doors to all of the different learning Studios so each one of those wings is also
connected um with those doors would close and lock all of them at the same time all of them at the same time yep yep kind of like sometimes fire alarms go off and you see the corridor doors start closing down it behaves very very similar to that okay good thank
you also if I can just piggy back on there in each one of the pods there's there's two ways out so you have the main way out or there's also a back stairway or a back door out to each of the pods as well so there's multiple um exit points for each one of the Pod areas your classroom areas as well do the teach do any of the teachers have a
button that they can push to lock down their own are or is it just that one button um Administration it's just a button now can I go back really quick just um to the drop off the park the front the parking lot area I get some comments
that sometimes our parent drop off is a little tight you know and that some of the lines back up has that has anything we've learned from other projects that we've done been taken into account here um like I know for example Brookview sometimes people will tell me that it can get a little backed up and um so
here's the push of where cities counties want and then where um city councils and parents and neighborhoods so a lot of people close to it want as little pavement or asphalt as possible and then you get to traffic studies and the city and the county want zero stacking on the road and they want all the stacking
within the site so there's no backup within the roads so those are conversations that Paul kind of alluded to now of some of the permitting some of the conversations right now right now is to balance that of kind of where neighborhoods and where families want versus what traffic study city and
county want to get a balance of stacking on site how does that look to In and Out so there's not a magic button or what we learn it's really navigating some of those processes okay um and then the other um area I had in this is kind of
in general when we're looking at the first floor design and kind of some of the sped outlay this is probably more first superintendent um do we every school seems to have like a specialty program maybe that they have in their building maybe it's a sped program or an Autism cluster or something that would
be do we envision or are you envisioning this for any specific cluster and how does that impact the design you got okay so this one is um if you look at that peachy orange that would be the CIP or the autism program that is here so not all of our elementary sites have it um
but there are quite a few that do okay so um but other than that nothing that at this point that's identified but ask the same question for Lake Elmo yeah okay and and so Lake Elmo has the medically complex so that will continue this is a new added program So currently there's the CIP program at ly Lake um
that program has grown the last few years so we're trying to add some Southern presence of that as well so we will keep the lake or the Lily Lake site as well and then add a site to um Anderson perfect okay so this this will be a new site um in addition to the four that we currently have at Stonebridge
Lily Lake Rutherford and Lake Elmo good I appreciate the thought that goes into that so thank you very much another thing I'll point out since we're still on this floor plan is um the stress of the community use building schools are often used a lot by the community that lock down line to the
left of the gym in the um special ed program also allows the right side of the building to be used after hours so that um different activities can utilize the gym or the caeria all right so now we're going to kind of zoom into one of these learning Studios um so we saw we just had a
discussion a little bit on our specialized special ed cluster however um special ed is being served in all of the classrooms so it's indicated here in that orange as well um we have four classrooms um for grades one through five or K through five um and then
within those uh areas in the middle we have flexible learning areas where the classrooms can really break out and teachers can break out and as well as the students can extend their learning and do different activities um essentially we also have
um a shared Locker area towards the front of the Pod um and then staff a staff room for the so the teachers can collaborate together schedule together and do some work together as well there's medium group rooms and small group rooms which can be utilized for
students but it's also a great opportunity for Paras and some additional intervention supports um to actually come to the students without the students having to travel across the building to um go get the services they need so that was a big um um goal of the
group as well is to try to have people more adults come to the students than the students going to an adult a couple other features we should point out um each one of these uh learning Studios has its own locker area which we're terming a mudroom and its own toileting facilities and so it
really is meant to be sort of a self-contained wing for that grade um and we've been using the term Learning Studio it's up to your District to decide if you want to use that but it's an attempt to Rebrand the idea of the classroom pod it's really meant to to be a much more collaborative space um the
idea is that you have the teachers and staff uh teacher staff and students working together in that um and certainly they can be divided into four classrooms if they so choose um but it also provides lot lots of opportunities for um different groupings um co- teing all those kinds of things to happen
within the space and some of that's indicated even with um you can tell that the classrooms kind of look a little bit different um they have diff two of them are paired together so that they have an operable wall between them to really allow a large multiclass learning area um and
all of this was um discussed through core groups as well as user groups about the different types of um functions that teachers would like to be able to do um and deliver their education to the students and trying to really make the space agile for all of
that did you and then we'll go to P um so I see that there's a cal is that like a little green room does does every space have something like that correct y okay all right and there there's actually two in each um Studio there's a
smaller one in the orange this sped breakout area is um me for sort of a deescalation kind of a room and the other one per the core groups instruction was created to be more available to all students okay and then I have a question that's probably either
a Mark or a superintendent question which is you know it looks to me like these classrooms are very different from what the current teachers that Anderson are used to and I'm just kind of wondering how that's going to affect the way they teach and are we going to be
helping them with making a transition to a different way of organizing their classrooms I'm gonna have Mark answer this he's been working with the teachers as part of the user groups and I think depending on what group of teachers he's working with there's different uh um
opinions on their thoughts on this so going back to design is we're building a a a facility that isn't going to open three years from when we even start and so we're not looking to what trends are now we're looking out 30 40 50 years and in the case of these two buildings a 100
years so we want to create um classrooms or learning spaces as flexible as possible so as you look here you kind of take the two rooms at the top there's a sliding glass door in between them so that door can open that door can close where you have an um open classroom and you have two classrooms together and
whether that's team teaching or there's lessons where where we need to work with small groups of students so I may take you know my class and half of the other one while that teacher works at a very small group working on specific skills and you kind of rotate kids through around and I do a a larger project and we kind of move back and forth or
however that looks to have the flexibility to to meet the needs of all of our kids and not just traditional four walls anymore also you're going to notice each one of the classroom has ability to open up into the learning common so they can open up their classroom extend and make it um more um
accessible ible to our student needs we some in the classroom some out of the classroom um and it also helps with supervision or security you're going to Noti their sight lines to All Around um that learning pod or that learning area so these are conversations that we had
in core planning these are conversations we had each one of our user groups and as we talked with staff all of our staff are at a Continuum of kind of where they are in this teaching some um actively embraced this from day one and said we we need to do this now and how can we
we're two years out how can we start to incorporate some of these philosophies in our spaces right now so when we get there two years out we kind of can practice some things and be that much further ahead some staff were a little more resistance that says you know that that they really want their four walls
and work this is my classroom and that's how they work so we really need um from a professional development you kind of hit that on the head from a professional development standpoint that's our job here over the next two years is really work with the Anderson staff as well as the lake staff I'll even go a little bit
further and Oakland As we start to talk about that there's some of these classrooms that they want to have at their space as we look at the alc and how that opened up that's a different way of teaching so there's actually these type of spaces in all of our um classrooms now K through 12 as as these
Bond Pro projects finish up so we need to be intentional I've had conversations with stepen Gordy um around PD and kind of how do we want to set up and have those conversations now so once the year starts in the fall of 26 we have schedules that support this type of learning um to better meet the needs of
all of our kids okay thank you okay so this is a typical classroom and I imagine it' be time six you know for prek will the kindergarten and the fifth grade classrooms be the same and will those be identified before construction
begins so I'll answer are they going to be similar yes are they identified we identify them as is and when they when when a principal gets into a building they have right of assignment to different PODS of area so as we talked in core plan and we talked in User Group you say here's the kindergarten wing and the first grade
wing and the second grade and so forth when the building opens up five six years from now if if a building wants to switch where the second grade one is and the third grade Wing is they have the flexibility to do that we just kind of designated those wings through our design of you know K12 on the first floor for both of them and kind of three
four five upstairs but where there would be different designs knowing it's going to be a Kinder uh I guess you can't do that if if it's GNA switch around so I'm just trying to think if the kindergarten pod is going to look the same as the fifth grade pod they look very similar the
only different one is is prek with some of the needs with our our prek rooms look look a little different than the rest of our um K through five now we do have once you get to Lake Elmo um the number just I'm not going to dig too far in the weeds but when you start to look
at class size ratios are different for K1 than they are for four five so the number of class rooms for the K1 area is more than the 4 five so that probably has to be just with class sizes and the number of classrooms there but in terms of design they're very similar
good so can I go back to the classroom design here so I'm looking kind of um don't know what slide are on it's the one with the two green on yeah so there's that all in the top two there's an all glass wall between those two
classrooms so I'm assuming the sound would be like as if there was a wall but visually they will be able to see the other classroom are we designing these for kind of how the district I guess wants to teach I hope we're not designing
classrooms on what one teacher or one specific teaching team want to do because don't those change we not doing that okay because that's what I I'm just curious and I wasn't involved in the user groups and I trust that this has been you bring up a great point so this came up in all of our actually from the
elementary schools and the middle schools as well is you know my kids are going to be distractive they're looking across the other way so as we went to you know the first building we went to from our our elementary tours was Justice Allen paage and North St Paul they have is it 810 classrooms in a pod
yeah um so we were sitting in a first grade one and again they have the the glass walls into the learning Commons and so we were just standing there in the middle and say okay let's just take a peek middle of instruction middle of the day you know nine o'clock whatever it was how many kids even notied were there you know so you stand and look around and nobody was looking at us you
know we're standing there there's glass walls in between um and they were focused on their learning so that's a conversation that they had is the kids are going to be distracted but once we've G on tours and we're able to visit some of the sites that are currently doing some of these um philosophies they're able to see it in action and and
really kind of say Okay this may not be as distracting as we think it is okay but not every classroom will have that correct wall so there might be two pods where I guess I'm just trying to write my head there'll be a wall in every pod like that okay there will be part of the
but okay so two classrooms will share an all glass wall another classroom will just have like a glass door like the bottom two here right okay again we work very closely with the core group which was primarily teachers to come up with um a kid of parts or a Swiss army knife
of how to make it the most flexible yeah so each one of the pods is very similar but then each classroom within the Pod has slightly different features and that was at their request it was to provide options one of the ways to use this very flexibly flexibly is the option to not
have teachers occupy one room all the time so when you want to team teach there's a room available that can be opened up into double when you want to do a smaller thing you can go into the one more one of the more um regularized classrooms okay um so that was the idea
it very much wasn't around the idea that one teacher wanted a glass wall it's they all wanted a glass wall but it didn't make the sense to put in all of them okay so the idea could be shared which is another culture to build whether or not you choose to do that okay so what is what's the purpose of
the glass wall is it supervision because I mean if if you're separating out the two groups of students you want them to be separate from a instructional standpoint what does the glass as opposed to a different you know an opaque what does the glass contribute um
it's actually um it's something we've used in quite a few schools now and it's really for the technology of the door more so than the glass I would imagine that the the one between the two classrooms will probably have some frosting on it um so that it's not a distraction but you can still see
through there um the doors work incredibly well so we've all seen schools with the big white wall panels that go yes um and those are they're good products and they're designed for a certain purpose they're very hard to open and close and so they end up either
being opened or closed all the time yep um so this product um there's a brand called nanowall um um and we have some options in the specs for bidding but um it's a it's a really robust system it is quite soundproof it's um as good as a a regular insulated sheetrock wall um but
it's incredibly easy to operate um each of the two panels basically is a separate piece so you flip a lever and you can fold it up you can move one panel out of the way you can move all the panels out of the way so it's really that that's the reason that it's glass more so than the the actual
transparency okay thanks yes Andrew so so you kind of mentioned that um the glass walls probably would be wanted by most of the teachers if not all of them I'm assuming it's just not being done in all the classrooms because of the cost is that correct statement or just more
flexibility of having spes I didn't mean to say every teacher want a glass I think the idea is that every teacher might want glass sometimes but not all the times so the really the goal was to make each room be a little bit different and and maybe I should point out some of the features of them so they all have a
fair amount of glass that goes out into the flexx area so the the concept behind that is that you can feel like if you're a teacher in that room that that zone out there is occupiable and supervis piur of that later on don't you um we do have some'll be able to see that yeah so
the the idea is that they all can share in that space out out there they can feel comfortable having a couple kids work out there or a parent volunteer and their student so that's Universal in all the classrooms then the walls between the classrooms in each ones vary a little bit so we've been talking a lot about the full glass wall that
technology can open up completely so you end up with a double siiz classroom in the other two rooms you can see that there's a smaller glass panel kind of towards the back the right side on the aom metric there and that's just a a little glass sliding door so that can be closed it can be acoustically separated
but it also provides you another passageway through there and then they also all have doors um kind of another barn door style glass door that goes out to the flex area so the idea is you can open and close walls in you know unique different ways at any given moment every
pot in the building could have a little bit different configuration and so that's what we're really trying to build with the flexibility is that teachers will have the choice to manipulate it and again we're um recommending these window systems and door systems that are very easy to use so it's not a call to
the custodian to figure out it's time to open the door they could do it and spend 10 minutes in that configuration and then decide to change to a different thing it's really about trying to make the environment flexible for them and even to that point classroom 4 has some different amenities in it it has um
uh heart surface flooring and some additional casework for to support more Hands-On learning too so the classrooms are really designed uniquely um to help support their different type of academic goals okay all right well with that we
will start to um kind of revisit some of the concept that we shared last time so um the uh water and the recreation around the water are pretty big parts to the um to Bayport um the river um in the St Croy
is really part of the bigger Watershed which is where we started from um that Watershed is actually larger than the state of New Jersey just kind of a fun fact um so it really um some of the things that we really started to study and it kind of applied to some of our design is really um how the Watershed
works and really how it starts to weather things erode and eventually break down and and and become deposited somewhere so with that we started to look at different images within the squ Watershed so um it even starts with some of the dals or the Bluffs that um are in
the upper watershed area the upper river area up towards Taylor's fall Taylor's Falls um and then it starts to work its way down so even through that the scales of items start to change we have the huge forms that are a little bit north as it works its way down we have a little bit more Bolder sized things and
then once we actually get to Bayport you start to really get to the lower Watershed or the Lower River and we start to see our Sands and our smaller formations um so we're taking this idea of becoming large form and then um eventually it's being erode eroded um
and then it becomes sediment and how that starts to play out um in our design is um both through the interior and the exterior um couple another uh thing I'll point out is the photo on the right was taken in Bayport
too so um these are local photos so when we start to apply that to the whole building um we start to include um having very tall Bluffs which um is kind of around the perimeter of the building you'll start to see um that kind of coffee darker brown area that's
where our Bluffs start to um present themselves um and then we have our sediment areas which is what's left over the deposition from the erosion that has taken place place um and really what's causing this erosion is um kind of an
antagonist that is known as water in our story um and then from the interior we start to have our tree canopy and really where the vegetation has started and where the Watershed um begins and then we start to have our Bays as well as our sand bars and Bluffs um that are
sprinkled around throughout the building as well from the internal standpoint so this is just a little bit of how those materials start to talk about um those Concepts and those type that type of language um so we'll have a
texturized material to help represent the Bluffs our water is um being very transparent um with some glass and then our sediment is our layers of our brick so here's an example of how the bluff would start to play itself out um
in the large forms and starting to be um the taller type of forms very texturized as well our water again is being transparent yet kind of the quintessential traditional blue color that you would imagine it to be um it's
also showing some motion through it so um the image in the upper right is um kind of the window pattern that would show up in some of our large um glassy areas um to start to represent uh waterfall and really that motion of water that's starts to really create
that erosion um as part of um ultimately getting our sediment then here we are with our sediment which is just layers of different colors of brick um that are um to represent the different layering of sediment over the years and collection
of that we should point out that so that top image is a it's a elevation of a brick wall and there's actually a repeating pattern in there so um that is just used through around the building you see it in the renderings as we go so here's our entry um kind of a
little bit up in the air but looking at our main entry of the building so you start to see the parking lot in the parent drop off area um the blue canopy again is like one of our water point so we kind of enter the building through our water areas so that's where the water is um to the right where we start
to see right of the um flag pole we start to see the sediment area which is um uh one of our Learning Studio wings and we can start to zoom in a little bit here and you start to even see some of the cliffs behind that
sediment as well um so this is the main entry on our left would be the administration to the right of the main entry would be um special education this would be the bus entry um so uh through the these doors we would have our cafeteria on the left left so
you're seeing a little bit of um the kitchen area there on the left and some uh mechanical spaces on the right here is our View kind of you can see the playground a little bit in that foreground there but this is the view from the back um just to the right would
also be the Outdoor Learning Classroom as well um the large curtain wall you see there is the cafeteria area um the large Bluffs are the gymnasium and then to the left there you start to see again another wing of the Learning Studio
area here is a space that is starting to view the learning Commons or the media center and also a access to the outdoors um as kind of part of the sequencing between going to recess and cafeteria um from the learning
areas is that um the cafeteria there the glass wall this one's actually the learning Commons but it's very very similar to the cafeteria which is on the other side so are there are there two of those curtain glass curtain walls yes two of them it's just beautiful thank
you I mean I have to say I mean I just I was going wow this is really something but um but all the glass um is it how safe is it I mean talk to me about the glass I mean there's so okay um so the
glasses from um an economy standpoint it is double glazed so there's two panes of glass it's insulated so it's also thermally broken um it is glass so there is some transparency we are tinting it that's why you start to see some of the
Blues so there's um some blue tint and also like almost like a frosted white glass in there as well um that makes it a little bit more difficult to see through it um and then there's different reflectivity that is placed on um the glass as well um right now I believe um
it hasn't been brought up as a concern so we would probably right now be designing around a lower reflectivity with the glass I think like any I I assume that you're asking about um situations where there's shelter stent sa y um it's
important to have daylight in the building that was a high value of the core groups and the district going forward so so glass is a thing um to accomplish that there are certainly many places in the building that shelter in place is going to be the practice and we talked about some of the security zones
in there bigger spaces like the learning Commons and the cafeteria are probably evacuation spaces um so you'll the district will develop a plan to evacuate students to a nearby room where they can be out of sight uh that's fairly common um in bigger spaces especially ones that
are semiopen to the inside of the building okay and some of those have been even discussed too that the cafeteria can e either go to to the gymnasium or it can go to the uh music an instrumental space and then um even within this Media Center there's
classrooms um that it's all within that space as well as all around it that they can go into does any of this glass get like glazed um I know we some of our our other buildings have glass that has like hardened glass yeah security glass is
the term we check use for yeah so there's certainly strategic points in the building will be hardened with that kind of glass okay not every piece of glass in the building it's fair it's quite expensive okay um but the points of uh highest risk I think is what I would call are okay that kind of glass that's
good here's one to say as as you were describing how the you know how the the design was from the river and and all the different components to it I was like well is there going to have to be like a school interpreter that walks people
through and says here's what this means you don't need one it's really impressive like just visually it really makes sense so it's it's awesome yeah quick comment um I'm also very impressed by the by the design here
um and I'm I'm very much struck by kind of the calming nature of it that you are incorporating so much nature um and the educational piece in that and that when kids start to learn about this stuff it's stuff that be like oh that's what that wall means like there's just so many layers of thought that goes into this um and I'm just kind of curious is
there elements like sensory elements that have gone into the design in terms I mean it seems very visual um but then in terms of other things like noise or actual textures are there any other sensory pieces that are in the design perhaps when we go through the Interiors I'll make a point to some of that stuff
out great is it appropriate to say hold my beer I don't think we can say that okay I'm ahead of myself to the okay all right um just another view so this is kind of a composition that kind of shows all of our elements we have our cliff language we have a a bit of our waterfall language and then we have our
sediment so this is just a corner of our learning Studios from the outside all right so the Interiors um so our palet of Interiors was also drawn from these same exterior um images and uh really getting a sense through that
um so some of the things I'll point out is the blue at the bottom um that is actually a tile that would be used on the wall you can kind of see some waves going through it that's actually raised so that is a tactile item that you can rub your hands along that's down low and
I'll point that out in the views inside um we have also some other areas of um some uh uh tackable surfaces um that are very soft to touch um I'll just keep pointing them out as we go through the wood's a little threedimensional yep and
the wood is also three threedimensional which is that sample on the bottom left so that's actually really layered um pieces of wood too um we have shared these samples with members of the district too so they've so we've seen some real samples of the these items as
well um so the image in the middle um the some of the carpet that you'll see in our learnings learning Commons area is really meant to reflect the water um crashing along the shore taking some of that erosion and those sediments back towards it um so that's actually a
carpet pattern that um we felt like really mimicked that type of um action with the water um and then we'll start to really start getting to the bays and the sandb bars and really that calming and relaxing Sensation that we feel off to the right those are some of the images in colors off to the
right all right so this is uh walking into the main entry so if you remember um our main entry points tend to be um more of that waterfall feature so we've just kind of walked through um our waterfall and that's a little bit or that's what's guiding us into the space
um you start to see some really texturized Stone there on the right so that's another very tactile um sensation um that we are putting a a kind of a visual of a we start to have some moments of a cave so you start to see a little bit of a cave behind it because
that's one of the things that happens underwater um with a lot of that erosion I think I'll off also offer um one of the things that is really changed dramatically in the last decade with schools is the idea of making them a nice place um an aesthetically pleasing
place and I think it's become clear that there's some component of that of Engagement um so designs like this are really meant to spark Joy um which makes it a place that people want to be um which seems ironic that um we actually
have to say out loud loud why shouldn't school be a place that kids want to be um so that's the intent of this and so to sort of delight the senses with some of these things is important I will also point out that we are featuring sort of the the spaces that we're investing um some of the district's money in not
every space looks this Sumptuous um but some of them are really important like when you first come into the school and the impression that you make what's the ceiling what's what's that those are acoustical panels so one of your questions about considering acoustical so those are acoustical panels hanging
there quick question um how do you determine which areas are more Sumptuous there're the areas where um most of the students will be really the the shared areas so obviously we we have our cafeteria areas our our
learning Commons media center spaces and then kind of the centralized flexible learning areas that are within the learning Studios again we we have um you know more vibrant colors and textures and things in the whole building it's just that a little bit more goes into some of the feature spaces are the hallways is
there anything unique about the hallways or is that kind of keep going all right we start turning to the left and we see a hallway um so um this is a hallway that uh starts to go down to the gymnasium so you see a little peak of the entry area to the gymnasium beyond
that is the cafeteria um so when you go down this hallway and you turn to the right into the cafeteria really if we remember from that floor plan this is the start of the Watershed so this is where our vegetation is where the water comes and um where everything starts to um grow so we start to have a little bit of
language around trees some of that textured wood um is showing up here there's acoustical panels that are um helping out the sound it and the reverberation from the ceiling and as well to the left you can start to see one of those green areas is a little bit more textured that's also an acoustical
area our flooring is starting to um indicate some of that water that's going through our building and helping direct our our our flow of uh students as well um you'll see in the corner there there's also a set of doors that's actually ACC um immediately outside from
the playground too so again consideration of that recess e type of flow um this is our learning common so this is where the media center would be um so here's our cliff and our Bluff language um so we have a variation of a very uh
texturized stone at the top as well as a smooth more polished porcelain tile at the bottom um helping to indicate that that area is the wet area um it's been AB roded away from the water going around it um you'll see a little bit on the right side there that's that Blue
textural Wave tile too um so this feeling that we are um within the water and having the bay around us is um what this learning Commons area is it's a media center classroom that is down low within that Cliff area above that Cliff
it's the art classroom that's overlooking another view of that space so you start to see um again how it's really kind of the focal point of the space and it's really trying to create that um presence of the bluff
um what's the material um on the art space is that Granite what is Gran it so it is a stone from um actually within the watershed area that's being um so it is it is local to Minnesota y um and then the other side of our
learning Commons area um so again it's starting to show some of the action and the ripples of the Waves above us um in some of our colors and then again we kind of talked about that blue datam or that blue being the
water all of the tile that's down there um we'll start to work our way towards the Learning Studio we have another example of a cave um just these little moments it's under a stairwell some square footage let's make a a special place for kids kids like those type of
little Corners um so we're starting to put that type of or we're putting that language in there and then as we walk into the learning Studios themselves um to the um this is really the Learning Studio so again some of our inspirational images is this is
the calming the bath The Sandbar um so we start to have a this feeling of a sunset above us um with some of the acoustical clouds or acoustical baffles that are up there um to the left you'll is where the um mudroom uh Locker bays
and bathrooms are um where you see the person standing there and the little boy raising his hand that is one of those medium group rooms um where people can um do some Extended Learning or um again have some volunteers or interventionists or
Specialists come into that area but this is that middle area between all the classrooms where learning can be flexed um into that has supervision so that students can be using the space um a little bit more independently if chosen or they can also just be supervised
um here's a view where you start to see um the classroom this happens to be the classroom with the glass operable wall um but again so that starts to feel a little bit more traditional where you start to see the desks and you know the the sink and the casew work and the
windows um that look out into the exterior and one more right and then last and not least our gymnasium so I'll go back so that wall right there the you can see walk in the classroom but there's a wall there as well yeah it's a little hard to see in the picture
but that's actually a glass wall system and it's shown with the doors in the middle being opened it won't be that transparent in real life the computer just makes it look that way yeah so then the question I have is for the for the regular size not the double classrooms will they have that same wall very similar y yep yep they will have this a
similar sized one to this one here yep you can even see this classroom has a little bit the one to the right with a boy in the red shirt it's a little bit smaller of a glass opening so all of the openings kind of change too okay that's what we had any other so um
I have a question just um in general when you build these new buildings um are there any design features that you put in that make them um easier to maintain um easier to clean you know what what sort of an impact does this
have on janitorial services uh we work closely with Tony and your maintenance department to talk about that um the reality is that to make a building with all these nice things does require some maintenance um so we're working all the time to make
sure we have good materials so um that's why we're using things like porcelain tile and stone so that they're easily cleanable um the the probably the biggest thing so and we do lots of schools um so we understand what ways out and what looks ratty after a little time so we're very careful of that while
still making it a nice looking school um one of the other trends that has changed in construction is it's actually we we used to build schools mostly out of masonry concrete block um and the industry has changed such that it's actually hard to do that there's not Crews big enough to build a whole building in the time that we need so we
do a lot more steel frame with sheetrock um but then to protect it we put tile on the walls which is actually one of the ways that we're able to get such nice colors and finishes is that tile comes in a lot of style options um so again there's a lot of durable materials I
think one of the things we have uh this conversation with each district that chooses to go down this path is the glass is a thing um most walls in a school you don't need to clean very often you know seasonally something like that the glass is something that shows fingerprints and so that does require a
different cleaning schedule and again we've worked through that with Mark and Tony um and they'll they have to be some accommodation for that going forward okay yes that cafeteria with that nice big glass wall which is on the South
Side I just imagine that's great for sunlight coming in but it could also be bad because of sunlight coming in so if it's noon time and you're eating lunch could that just be a bright light that everybody's gonna have to turn their back to if they want to see I mean not be blinded sure um
there is tinting in the glass so we'll modulate that a little a little bit and the other thing that we'll do is in a big system like that we'll look at different films there's different films that help reject infrared heat and things like that okay so for sure uh some people might like to sit there and be warm and some people might like to
sit on the other end of it um so there'll be options within that I I don't foresee it being a sort of an obnoxious problem if it won't be blinding that's really what where it's getting out yeah likely not from south facing okay yeah it'll be bright I it'll be I mean that is part of again this
delighting the senses thing is if you're a person that likes to be in the bright light you can go sit on that side um if you want to be in a more Shadow you can go to the other end of the cafeteria which would be deeper away from that okay and I I think that's one of the things that makes places nice and interesting is that there's some
variety so I noce there are no green spaces on the inside I mean considering the wi's ha green spaces like actual planting that's true we don't have any of those planted or planned right now we could talk about that
I we did talk with Tony about a green wall at one point he wasn't too keen on the maintenance that went with it but we can bring that up with him and see if we can find some opportunities for that that' be great I mean because during the winter the kids would not be able to use a green spaces outside so
sure does the city of Bayport have they are they a part of seeing some of these they saw this last night how what was their reaction I was there for two Paul what were there two hours we were there answering questions like that yep but were they excited about the design I mean we well they they thought it was
yeah they were very impressed with the work that uh that the Architects have done um there were other things that were part of the discussion but um yeah so it was it was the council seemed very support okay it's a very nice facility it's it's
beautiful yeah I think it's beautiful too and and just to piggyback on your question um have you then gone back to um the core groups and the user group groups to show them this and get their feedback to see you know yeah you hit it out of the park in terms of what we
wanted what what is the process there so that's next step so you're the first one to see it once school starts then I'll get I'll go to each of the staff meetings and and meet with the staff again and say okay here's the conversation where we left off here's what we came with get their feedback here the first couple weeks of school but we wanted to show it here first before we um hit the staff when they
come back I would say the process has been unfolding with them so not only the core group but then those exposed a lot of people to the design of the building um and then the core group has seen the concept part of it and bought into the idea of building it around the Watershed
they just haven't seen the final final the final pictures yes the whole concept has been part of the whole process here from very early on so is it still changeable at this point depending on what sort of feedback you get from those from those years yeah I mean really the
the feedback would be just the renderings that you're going to see from the outside to the inside because the other conversations about the glass wall and all those sorts of things that was Core group and the user groups and we had seven meetings with the core group and we had two different rounds of the the user groups so each person that was in the facility last year have seen this
multiple times in terms of the actual design what they haven't seen is what does it look like in tangible you know what color are the walls what color is the carpet those sorts of things but they they've seen the the bubble map or those first couple you know where the this classroom is and that classroom is and what has the glass wall and what
doesn't and they've seen those sorts of images and those user groups included community members and the core planning did the user group was really specific to those areas so the special areas we brought the special education teachers in the music room we brought all music
teachers around the district same thing with fied same thing with art same thing with media because they move around so it wasn't just that person there at that specific time we brought in the specialist districtwide okay when we looked at classrooms we had you know each grade level a kindergarten meeting a first grade meeting a second grade meeting and so forth so we really
Incorporated everybody in the building um that works in those spaces to give their input in terms of things they like and things theyd like to us to to consider moving forward did we did we see the playground for the kids uh the playground is not fully designed we do
have um a image of from the outside where it is uh scheduled to go so the playground is kind of a different phase so we have just a stock photo of it that's not the actual playground there'll be another phase where we actually specifically the furniture that
that you see in there too has not been discussed yet that's the next phase this is really just the walls the carpet the ceilings the next conversations we have is Around furniture around playground um some of those things and then this obviously incorporates I saw soft play so that's
an inclusive play space for all kidos so soft play is really um playground surface hard play is black top Sy Square Scot correct yes we will use that that's happening districtwide it seems like that's ini cool that was the 2015 Bond was to take
the wood chips out and replace those with that rubberized surface it's really going to look this way fingers crossed yeah a little bit better it'll be a little bit more realistic yeah that kind of goes to my question too um I'm hoping that with all your experience and doing other schools
that you've gone through the bidding process with those and you're pretty confident that all those beautiful things that we just saw will be with in the budget or at least close that is a yeah that's great um we hope so um we've done already two rounds of estimat
between as the process that Mark described before um so we have one more of those to do which is an estimating process we'll of course make any adjustments we think we need there um the other thing that is going on that is putting a little pressure on the budget or may put pressure on the budget is
this um regulatory approvals by the cities so there's Road improvements and things and Sewer improvements that need to be made so we have to balance all of that we will get it in um our best guess of being on budget before I go out to bid um and then we'll all cross our fingers and and hope that that works out
so we do have a very good track record um both kuss Anderson and W bid hundreds of projects actually each year um so we have high confidence we'll make it but we can't can't give you a guarantee um what we can guarantee is that we will get you through it and if adjustments need to be made to get on a budget we'll
do all of those things so that was a long way of saying we have a high confidence that we're on track um but we're not quite there yet okay great thanks and then uh kind of piggyback on that question um in terms of getting you mentioned kind of about um working with different uh um government bodies so
sidewalks is that school district is that city is that state I mean is that just a whole mix of um state is state is not in the mix okay um it generally when you go to develop a site like this um most cities and counties look at you as
a developer um and it's a probably most people don't understand that cities are not actually built by cities they're built by developers piece by piece um so there's a whole process where the City Planning Department asks for things infrastructure improvements and they're doing the same thing with you um at
Bayport um obviously we're sort of um connected to the park we're do actually doing improvements in their park um they have not asked for a great deal of other sidewalks but again we're just starting that process I think there the biggest debate is um whether the sidewalk
continues down Fifth Avenue a ways um they have not asked you to fund that yet um but uh you might have seen on our site plan we have the beginning of it shown on the plan so um to be continued I don't think Bayport is going to have a lot of extra infrastructure that needs to be
built great all right so this is Bayport we'll go into Lake Elmo next you're going to see some things that are very similar but some things that are unique as well so not the the same school but there are some things that are going to be transferable between the two well I'll go a little bit quicker
please feel free to ask questions and slow me down if you like to focus on things uh obviously you you know the school programs this building is quite a bit bigger 1100 student capacity um and nearly 150,000 square feet um we are on a very similar schedule however um and
the intent is to have the building open in the um for the fall of 2026 school year um the two core groups as you remember were run completely independently um there were some things that naturally um were common between the two there was a little bit of cross-pollination you know we shared
good ideas between the two and those kinds of things so some of the design principles that we were highlighting there are the idea of having bright and transparent spaces and to invite nature into the building that was a theme there as well um the proximity to the Nature Center or the um the regional park I
should say is um I think a real asset um the a big Focus in this building on the idea that it'd be a place where students can call it their own um so a focus on student um attention in the building um and making it a place that they feel
engaged in um we the idea that we would reflect the community in the building so Lake Elmo is a has its own identity as a city so we've done some of that you'll see that coming up um fun and engaging is similar to what we talked about in the other one but this group again brought that into the mix um and that
focus on nature and then again uh the idea that we'd be FL flexible and adaptable so you'll see that is one of the parts where we cross-pollinated between the groups a little bit so they're they're very similar educational environments even though they're in a different size and configuration in the
buildings um again we have a uh what we call a site forces diagram this shows the site um there's a lot of things going on here um I won't go into great detail but um working with the city and the county on access off of the roads is is still current events there's a lot of
constraints that go with that and there's some improvements that they think they're going to be asking us to participate in some in some way um and then uh there's a lot of topography on the site that's really interesting um essentially you'll see in the next one the the building is kind of in the center right of the plan um and it's
really strategically placed there because that's a kind of a plateau or a high spot in the building in the site and then there's really interesting things on the lower left that Basin it's labeled Basin on the lower left it's actually um a lake that's not a lake um it's a little bit of a mystery because
it's not it doesn't have an overflow but it doesn't hold water so it must percolate a lot of water in there and so some of those things are actually conting creating places that we have to do special things with with the Watershed to make sure we take care of those so there will be a lot of great nature areas left on the site when we're
done too uh and here is the site plan um as it stands today um the primary entrance would be off of 10th Street on the south there um there are requirements by the to stay away from the intersections by a certain amount so that we don't have um
traffic traffic things happening at the busy intersection so that's why the the two drives extend out to the corners of the site um it also conveniently provides maximum stacking space for parents so there's a lot of space before you get to the front door the intent is to kind of wind them around the parking
lot and create space there then we have the main parking lot in the front um there is an interconnect on the right side but we don't anticipate that being open probably be gated for most of the day um so you can get access but it's not meant as a a pass through uh then the receiving area and then you can see
the separate Bus Loop up on the North side of the site um this is one of the current events with the county is whether or not we get a full access off of Lake Elmo Avenue um if we're not able to get that from them that might change the site plan a little bit because we'd have to figure out how to get the buses
um connected to the other main entry um up staying up kind of going counterclockwise we have the hard surface and soft surface play at the back of the the building and then we're anticipating the play Fields kind of going uh north and west off of the building there the floor plan just go back sorry
I just had a couple of questions um so the entrance from 10th Street um is that going to require a special L special Lanes there do we know yet is that part of your discussion upcoming we're working on it uh the we just received um
a draft of the traffic study um and that recommends improvements at that driveway um it is yet to be determined exactly what that will be um it could be as uh a roundabout would be the high side of things um certainly turn Lanes would be
recommended as part of that okay and then sorry may require a traffic signal if it's not a oh okay um and then um it sounds like the you're going to plant trees as a sound barrier can you talk a
little bit more about that the a sound barrier for the gun club oh existing trees there is existing trees that are out there that are part of the the landscape we will be planting new trees we are also um working on the sound
study and U you've you've Incorporated a a sound consultant environmental sound consultant under the and we don't have their advice yet about what to do so that might be a mitigation it might not be necessary NE um I guess to explain that about two
or three weeks ago they had sensors out on the site for about a week to um during one of the gun club's events um their I think their biggest event of the year or the most um most activity during the year they are taking that data um and they're creating a computer model
that helps predict sound penetration into the site and then we'll get some answers to that I see and the new trees are part of the tree replacement ordinance that City of Lake has got it okay all right okay thank you all right then proceeding into the
plan you'll see that um the plan is not not dissimilar from Bayport um in terms of its major organization on the right side we have kind of the public spaces we have that same idea that you can lock that part of the building down um at night or on the weekend to use the gym
and cafeteria so on this plan the main entry is on the south on the bottom of the drawing uh that orange area to the left is the main office and so that will contain the secure vestibule during the school day student or visitors will be forced into the office and screened before being allowed into the building
as we proceed to the right we have the gym in this case with the larger size school and the need for fied delivery um it's a two-station gym so this is about twice the size of the one at Bayport um the gray is the receiving boiler area kitchen um and then again the purple all
the colors are the same as the Bayport plan um it's a cafeteria and that one has a nice view out uh the back of the building there as we go back to the front door I guess we didn't point out music U music in this is on there's one on each floor in this building too
so as we go back to the front door we go in and go to the left um again we walk into the learning Commons here it's not quite in the center of the building it's sort of in the corner there of um so it has its own windows that look outside there that's shown in the light blue and then uh there is three pods on each
floor but they are roughly double the size of the ones at Bayport um one of the really unique parts of the design that we worked on with the program is they identified um as you know um they are kind of half immersion half um Regular Ed there um and they
anticipate becoming in Balance so we really have U four classrooms for each side of that and it was very important for them to be collocated so first grade of immersion and English are in the same pod um but with their help we were able to create this design where there sort
of offset from each other so they have their own little sub Community within the community so first grade is a community but then they each have sort of their half of that and I think another great thing that came out of it is there's that one room that we labeled darker green um that's sort of a common
room um and we're outfitting that more like a lab as as Val pointed out before so that has a little bit more casework and access to water and heart surface floor so that they all can use that as sort of a craft area or a a Project based learning area and then each of the pods has has that same
feature all right uh then this building also has a mix of special ed so part of the special ed is dispersed in the building and you can see the the orange areas in each of the pods just like we saw at Bayport there is also a center based program which is collocated or located right adjacent to the office the
bottom there then when we go upstairs um the plan again repeats um the left side is a two-story plan and then we have the third fourth and fifth grade areas up there there's also in the core there sort of at the center is the art and music rooms are located sort of central
to everybody on that floor then zooming into the the Pod configuration that I talked about um you can see that there's three sort of main classrooms um that are in a block and those blocks repeat themselves so the two sides have similar features there's
one room that can be turned into a double classroom as we talked about before and then one room that has access just to the um the main area and then in the corner you can see there's a little glass wall That's connects those so the three rooms can work together as three
rooms um sort of as a again a kit of parts or they can all be divided into separate rooms so that you have a more traditional classroom set up because of the um what Mark was talking about with the number of sections per grade um some of the Studios have another classroom
and that's labeled classroom eight on this plan up in the corner so that you that varies depending on what grade you're in then a lot of the same feature there's a professional Staff office there's the mudro uh there's the toilet rooms and small group rooms and um Hing
so Paul or Mark talk about the staff office and how that impacts staff in rooms and the philosophy behind that yep and so as we designed these and you saw with the bridge transition you saw with with the
alc very similar here is these aren't you know room one is Mrs Jones and room two is so and so and room three this is kind of this is first grade or this is fifth grade or you pick the grade that it is and the staff has their office so the office out of the staff room it's just each room isn't their own and so
depending on you know what they're doing if they're in a a reading lesson and they want more quiet space they go to the maybe the room that has three of the walls there not the one for sliding room if they have a science or social studies project where they're um have a larger group or kind of more um bigger activity
they can go to some of those larger spaces so this is really um learning space for the entire grade level and this is what I kind of talked about before with the PD or creating schedules in terms of how that instruction looks here over the next couple years so when we go into these new spaces we kind of
have um that philosophy down but the the thought is is teachers don't own their own rooms the whole Community owns the whole space and so they use different rooms depending on um kind of what lesson or what they're doing and there's a couple different philosophies around how to structure
that from a schedule perspective and those are things that we're going to talk through it we've started to talk with the staff I've kind of laid out a couple different areas and philosophies which way we could go now we're going to start to say okay we've talked and kind of brainstorm which one we want to pick and kind of narrow down so once we get more of that information we can bring
that back to you with more concrete details that that way of thinking is what allows some things to happen as we talked about with vport that the rooms can be differentiated um it also is what allows them to have a room that's more geared to be a lab that room is somebody's home room it's a capacity
room so for morning meetings somebody's going to be in that room um but they don't have to have the room with the hard surface floor where everybody else has carpet except for that when you need to have everybody in a room and this is absolutely not about
the design so I don't want to deviate from like the design of the building but I'm just thinking to myself like we know transitions with kids are hard so I'm just trying to visualize have I never seen something like this function if you start out morning meeting in one room and you want to go to science in another
room is that a point of transition that will be that the district is going to you know I mean we just oh we spend a lot of time talking about in other aspects how we want to minimize some of that hallway transition time and so I don't know how often these rooms will be switched or so that's a great question
so that changes by by grade level so K1 we're probably talking beginning of the year classroom one is my room classroom two is his room classroom three and so forth so you kind of come in you have your space and and the year goes so as the younger kids you have your more traditional space as the year goes you
start to to look and kind of flex and move around a little bit as you get older third fourth fifth you can do that more um easily and more quickly but also there's a lot of departmentation happening in third fourth and fifth grade as so as kids are moving around already in terms of if there's three
fourth grade teachers I do math he does reading she does science social studies whatever that looks like there's already that moving around the other part of transitions that was very intentional in here is the use of the learning Commons as well as the use of the small group and median group spaces so as we look as
our interventions currently in a lot of our schools our kids leave their classroom walk down the hall go to a speech classroom go to a special ed classroom go to intervention go to Here There and wherever the philosophy here is the kids stay in the Commons this is their home this is their house this is
is their living room the staff comes to them so when it's their speech or when it's their intervention kids aren't leaving staff comes to them and they can work in the learning commment they can work in the mediumsized group room in the small group room kind of depending on the size there's spaces in there so we come to the kids to minimize those
transitions that you just talked about and they'll still have that um because I know you talk a lot about that dignity that piece there and we talk a lot about Open Glass and all they'll still be if they're getting Services if they're getting interventions they'll have that private built into these correct because
the way it is right now it the only people that go into these areas are kids that need to go into these areas right now in the hallway there's kids going to lunch there's kids going to fied there's kids going to music and you have kids of all grade levels walking through the hallway as kids are getting their services here everybody's there and in
the learning comments it's just not going to be somebody working with a parent volunteer or somewhere there there's gonna be kids there working on a whole bunch of different things and it's not going to be um it's just going to be what kids need and director sh I want to honor your question because this is actually a big topic during Core group
was the Transitions and and having students walk or um work their way from one area to another area one of the goals is that this really feels like there this entire Learning Studio that we're calling it really feels like a classroom the entire space is their
learning area and they're just call if you want to call it stations moving from this station to that station and it's supposed to be less of a transition a less of a feeling versus what they are going through now between like elmone Anderson of actively going down a hallway perhaps crossing a
classroom or two that is going to lunch or to fiad and stuff like that um that this is really their whole neighborhood and their whole experience is this bigger space right but thank you for that the reality is I think that you teach them all of those things yeah and
that this could offer a more natural way to exist I think the idea that the teachers are a family um and they all it's not about my kids and in your kid kids it's about our kids as a different philosophy I do want to emphasize that um this is
meant to be flexible it has a lot of different options some of these things are are what you're going to be exploring over the next few years but in the subsequent years it can be something different um one of the choices that was made in your district is all of the classrooms have four walls and doors so there's no reason you couldn't Tre teach
in a traditional format in this building if that's what you decide in the future to do so it's really meant to be flexible I think you might have answered by question because I think currently a teacher has their classroom they do what they want with it now if you have seven or eight teachers in this space who's in
charge of it um of those seven or eight is there a team lead or that that's not your question maybe but uh I I building level discussion okay y I'll just also offer that um this is not brand new it's a fairly New Concept
um it has roots um going back decades but there's been several other other districts in Minnesota that have done similar things and that is part of what got your teachers to be comfortable with this is going and visiting some of the other schools that are operating in this format all right should we design uh Del delve into the concept A little bit I
think you've seen some of these slides last time so again I'll go over them pretty quick but we did sort of dive deep into the history of Lake Elmo and understand some of its history as a resort Town um fascinating that it was a major crey for a long time and would ship ship dairy products into the Twin
Cities um it also interesting that that was a fairly short part of its history it was only about a decade but it was a resort Community uh until the railroad went past it out to the St Croy and people didn't stop there as much anymore apparently so but it's got a fascinating and and deep history um our concept
really gravitated towards the idea of nature again that was part of the direction of the core group and with the adjacent Park Reserve there um we've really picked up on the idea of the Prairie landscape as as the theme for the building um and you can see some of the great elements that come with that there's there's some trees in the
distance there's the grasses and there's the flowers there's the sky all of those things um and um got really excited about the idea of kids occupying that space um and so this this slide and a few others have been really pivotal in
helping to develop the idea that um kids um within the scale of the Prairie they sort of exist within it on some points and so we're really playing that up in the design of the building again some more shots Trails um grasses trees and all the uh wonderful
colors and textures that come with that uh and this slide talks about some of the components that we incorporated into the design so we have the sky um trying to figure out um or play up and make present The Horizon um the clouds and the textures that that provides over the
over the occupants uh the horizon line and uh the grass plants students and then some of the animals and um flowers also have played into the design so you can see again just more inspirational images that we found of all the different wonderful colors and shapes that you can see in the
prairie uh and then this is a similar diagram that shows you kind of how we're applying some of those Concepts within the building so um in this case the the whole building is kind of the Prairie um we have trees which are sort of the brown circle so there's places where we feature sort of an element um that
provides some contrast to the Prairie um in wooded elements uh and then um trails and grasses as you can see in the um through the Middle with the arrows and then uh we also bring in some of the sky um so the cafeteria has quite a dramatic
um Cloud theme to it as well and then um some accents each of the pods has uh sort of different insects and flowers that they're themed around again a similar shot that shows some of the exterior materials that we're contemplating um on the exterior of the building we're also um proposing
the use of some colored glass um to give it just a pop of color again some of those wonderful flowers and insect colors that happen in the prairie and here's a sample elevation of that building so again you can see that we're using a rich brick texture um to
play that up um and then throughout the building we do things where we sort of super siize things um so those white elements on the building are meant to be super sized Blades of grass that sit in the foreground and then the the Brick pattern is sort of the receding horizon line in the background um here's an example of this
is the front entry canopy um so the idea is that we've taken a a tree basically and scaled it up and burrowed a hole in it so we're using lighting elements colors and textures to help it feel like you're walking in through underneath the tree as you go in and that actually will be metal panel again it's a durable long
longterm material it's doesn't require much maintenance um this is an example of how we're doing some of the um the taller volumes so this is a elevation of the gymnasium um and I I don't know if we mentioned it on Bayport but both of the buildings will have a tornado shelter
that is part of the Minnesota State Building Code now so the gyms will be that um it is um convenient to build those out of pre-cast concrete um it's a great material for that and we're able to mold things into the pre-cast concrete so we're um proposing that we mold in kind of these Cloud shapes
throughout there so it's really meant to be the sky with clouds the middle it's a little hard to see but the middle picture in the top there is an example of a computer rendering of what it would look like so it's a in the elevation it looks pretty like dark lines but it's really a much more subtle texture on the
elevation then this steps back and looks at the main entry so on the left side you can see the Prairie views and on the right side you can see that Open Sky area and in the center um is that main entry the the tree shape piece then we're also taking that tree material we
put it on sort of strategic points on the outside of the building so uh those that end classroom on the um pot also gets those materials to accent it uh then as we go around the building this is um one of the classroom Wings on
classroom on either side another view of that main entry with some of the Landscaping that we would like to do out front another view this one of the actually the back side that's so that's the recess door view over another side of the building
there and then this is the current corner by the Learning Commons or the Media Center then stepping inside um again we're seeking inspiration from the the nature of the Prairie um we've got some great colors again um part of the idea is to immerse um students and kids in
the experience so a lot of Rich vibrant colors that surround them in certain points and also sort of releases into um sky in more Open Spaces as we go um some of the fun things I'll point out um we have uh the carpet on the left side which is used to texture the ground um
in the middle is actually a wallpaper it's like kind of a super siiz wallpaper of I I think that they're probably um Fern frons something like that and then some of that same kind of wood paneling that we talked about before that has some tactile qualities to
it so this is the view we've just walked in through the front door um and we have this fun kind of seating Gathering area here and then to the left um we go into the cafeteria on that side right that's the cafeteria learning commment on that side sorry that's the door that's the
security door that separates the two sides um this is a view in that learning Commons or Media Center um so again trying to immerse kids in the environment um we have lots of um applique pieces that we're putting on the wall a lot of this is paint by the
way um like the Green Hills and things are paint the green down below is a tile um to help protect the wall and then um there's some things uh they're not not rendered quite literally but those red shapes on the ceiling are um actually a a tree kind of a tree sculpture thing
that it's just off-the-shelf product that you can buy to hang up there another view looking the other way so again we also introduced some of the elements of the tree so this um has a corner where you can go through the cutout in the tree and have a little reading Nook inside there and then this is the cafeteria
space so this is the sky space meant to feel like you're in a metal looking up at the sky and we're looking back at that c area that we talked about before may I um point out something to director del you mentioned um being able
to learn what the building's about you can even see here there's some images where we're actually kind of treating it as an interpretive area um that we start giving some facts around a monarch butterfly next to that butterfly image and even some of the flowers um to start
experiencing some of the learning around a prity um and then um we've chosen color and animal and um plant inspiration for each of the pods so that plays out in the theme across the building um here's uh one of the pods so
again a little bit more subdued environment in here but still Rich um and one of the features we're talking about is um that ceiling element there that changes so this one is a flower um and that's made again out of off-the-shelf sort of um acoustic elements that we would
have them cut into that shape and hung up there and this one you can see the the flower and the stem coming at us here then you can see the classroom environment around it um very similar to what you saw at Bayport but a very different color palette to give it a
whole different feel um and then this would be the butterfly so you can see the butterfly sculpture up at the top but again this the layout between the pods is very similar and then another one of view one of those classrooms with that wall open in the middle so that's what a double classroom
could look like U as Mark pointed out the furniture is all placeholder Furniture that's a future decision exactly how you'll do that that shows the wall being closed and then a shot of the gym here so we're using some um acoustic elements
on the walls to help bring some of that theme in there this um is a double gym by the way too so that will have an operable wall that closes down in the middle how many courts does this happen it's two regulation basketball courts
and then um a lot of striping to allow different fet activities to happen you see that Browner kind of peach striped down the middle that's kind of the the door that would separate the two gyms so Anderson has one gym the size of has too so it's two size of like where's the pickle ball strip is it the white one that's on
there actually it is everywhere the answer is everywhere uh that's the light bloom all right that was the end of that I have a quick question um I don't see any Skylight here um I don't think we have any
Skylight shown we have a large amount of windows in the building um to bring daylight in all around um part of the um if I go all the way back to the plan part of the reason the plan is got Wings on it is that allows more access to Daylight from the walls um skylights are
a fairly expensive proposition and um I I know a facilities guy from a long time ago that said there's two kinds of skylights one that leaks and one that's going to leak they they typically are a bit of a maintenance problem so we we don't tend to do them unless we really need them to light a space and I think in the case of
both buildings we've got pretty good access to Daylight all around the building I mean I see I mean it's great it's great um just looking at the colors as well um I don't know about all of you but it just kind of feels a bit dull for
me um the colors okay so in which spaces is I the classrooms are a little bit more neutral than the central part is that what you're reacting to all of them all the colors okay I mean it's just a combin it's the
building is great it's just the combination of the colors I me you can see all of us staring at at the Kore it's got great you know interiors and all that but it's I don't know the colors for me just something I'm thinking of the kids when they're
walk into the building is beautiful but what is that thing that really catches their eye um I just feel something is missing okay we'll take a look at that are you talking specifically Lake Elmo yeah Lake Elmo specifically and um it's got a lot lot of walls too and so that's
the reason why I asked about this kind of light coming in um it feels a bit dark I'm just talking about it from the picture that's shown I'm not sure maybe a bit a bit different but uh the colors don't help as well that's my perspective
okay we'll take a look at that um I um I really love the outside and the the um the vertical elements that you have which I know you're thinking of them as Blades of grass or
you know wheat or whatever they look like birch trees to me in this rendering but I'm sure that you know by the time I see it in person it's going to look more but that I just love the verticality of that I just think it's a it's just a brilliant design element I love how
interesting it is um I mean again I mean I think that this is just a a beautiful design the color scheme does not I think that what we're missing in this color scheme is the blue of the water and so perhaps it just and these are these are
intended to be more Earth Tones right because that's essentially where you're getting the inspiration from um I mean I'm not bothered by it I just think the spaces are so inviting um I mean you've got some purple in here you know actually it's more like lilac um but I
mean I think there are some bright colors in here um so I'm not it doesn't bother I mean I think it's consistent I think the whole design is consistent the color scheme and you know everything you've done on the outside I think it's beautiful good
job um going on the color thing I'm trying to analyze like what are you feeling with this Annie you're not um I'm not necessarily getting the same Vibe of I'm I like it but I'm also noticing the the Bay View pictures seem to have more contrast in the colors like they're just more difference between
darks and lights and this one's more pastely um just in general but it it's very calming to me so I don't mind it um but my question was um the Lake Elmo Building definitely seems to have a lot of like pretty decorative Parts like the the flower on the ceiling and the the
appliques on the walls um how much of those and I think you alluded to it a little bit with at least that flower being acoustic um but how much of those are purely atmospheric versus doubling as another functional element um I would say in this building
there's certainly some that are functional like the steps for kids to sit on and things like that um but the flowers on the walls and things like are really decorative okay I mean they can be interpretive too but they're not performing some particular function okay
not well with the flower You' mentioned that they they were made out of the acoustic so okay and and there's lighting incorporated into those two so there are those kinds of things okay I guess that was more the function piece of is it doing something other than just being sure yeah I'm thinking of like in
the learning Commons oops um most of that is decorative and there's some lighting up there but most of it is applied okay and then I know the programming here is the medically fragile is that is there anything different or unique being
done in that area obviously it's just driven by medical need I'm assuming and you know complex and more advanced nursing is there anything to highlight in that or it is it has been designed really um I would say with a lot of um input um
customized might be too strong a word but definitely they have a special group of um needs that where the building needs to respond uniquely to them so we've been working with that um it was actually really important to the group that um to the Core group that they felt
like a kind of a pod in a way too and it wasn't just a wing in a building so they are actually identified as their own color in that color scheme image where they're a blue so that they have their own flower as well being represented in their space too so they will have a
flower element in their ceiling as well um just so that it they feel um like the other uh learning Studios do yeah great what is the unique um I know the other one has the the caves you know that place where the kids can just go
there an attractive fature there and you know most kids like that but what is unique hair that kids can also have like the other school had what is what is that yeah I think the two big feature elements are you can see them in the foreground of this slide there's these seating elements they're called learning
stairs in some settings and then in the background there you can see with the tree elements we often have a cutout in the tree that you can go into it's kind of like a a habitat hole I think there's a couple another one a couple back so even there you can start to see a couple
of them um just kind of and then with the inspirational image on the left of the squirrel peeking its head out through the tree trunk kind of like that type of uh a wildlife uh space too and I missed this upfront is there
an outdoor learning area there oops there we go so it's immediately outside of the so that is designed to be the outside okay yep right outside of the media center space okay yes um so yeah I think both designs
are beautiful and it's been a really great way of incorporating the different Landscapes um in the various communities I think um director prob Benny I think maybe what maybe caught my eye with the Bayport School versus Lake Elmo is probably the windows was it had all the blue integration which gets a nice
little pop both inside and outside whereas this you know with the one picture you at we looking in you had like a high white wall and you had like a glass so just kind of seemed a little bit more mundane than maybe the the blue did um but also just probably is the I'm assuming also with the Bay Port if I
remember you walk in and it's you know High ceilings because you're only using half of the second floor whereas from a sides we have to use both the first and second floor entirely so you lose some of that high ceilings you know is that
kind of a Accurate Way of this that just kind of stood out to me of what was a big difference of as you we did kind of the visual walk through um through the pictures yeah I think we could get that same height at Lake Elmo I'm again sometimes the renderings don't show the
whole story there but if that's a concern I think we could figure out how to make it feel more similar that way yeah and I would say a concern I again it's beautiful but just looking at what really stood out to me in some of the different pictures um but yeah overall like I said well done so thank you and
are those colored accent windows are those consistent all the way around the building correct yep so all of the the classrooms have a little popup colored glass they're a little hard to see from the outside from the inside they look
quite any other questions or comments and as we process this we can provide feedback to both Mark and and Mike um you know after sitting on it you have any additional thoughts great thank you so much this is a wonderful thank you so much fun to
show you it's very exciting than it almost starts to feel real I know I mean it's an it's so exciting yeah great um I'm assuming there's no other questions for Mark and if not we're going to move on to our
next and um which is our transportation update we'll turn it over to you again all right um good evening so it's that time of the year we're getting ready for the the start of next school year so just want to provide you kind of where we're at Transportation wise I know once school starts typical the last year we'll do a kind of Summer construction
update so here we just want to chat a little bit about uh Transportation so as you recall last spring we had a priority based budgeting conversation um where we looked at a lot of as uh aspects of our um school system and made reductions in in different ones one of the areas was
Transportation um where was decided we'd make reductions in two areas one is to um create Hub transportation for our gate students as well as moving to a two mile um boundary for our secondary students while taking in um or
considerations for our hazardous roads um as we move forward with implementing that um our transportation department is moving to a new um route Ting software so typically we've used versat trans for the last 20 plus years um it's an older
platform and older system so we're moving over to um traversa which is a newer um kind of 20th century platform which integrates our um routing software with our student information system Power School um last spring and into the summer we've had some issues in terms of
importing some of the data from our student information system into traversa um so we've been working very uh diligently this summer to make sure that those nightly data polls from our student information system over to our transportation system are working smoothly so I know we briefly talked
about the the changes last spring with our priority based budget conversations we originally had planned to get that information to those impacted families out in mid July um unfortunately because of some of the the in the issues we've had with our Imports um we didn't get
that information out until last week so last week we were able to um connect with all the families there's about 200 um impacted um about a 100 um with both each at the middle school and at the secondary at the high school level so about 200 families for that two- mile
walk Zone um that we were able to connect with last week so the good news is we're starting to um to to mitigate those issues and getting the the daily Imports um running smoothly so this shouldn't affect our routing process come the fall um we're planning to send
routing information to families on Friday August 16th which is typically what we do now as a board you're probably going to go wait a second school's starting in a week that's really late we intentionally do it as late as possible the reason we do it as late as possible is because we want to get the most accurate information to our
families as we can so we could send information out now but in August especially beginning August is a busy enrollment time so as people enroll and they need Transportation if somebody enrolls and there's not a stop originally kind of where they live we have to add a stop if that person that
we add is stop number two we just affected every stop after that so we could have told you your pickup time was 8:15 but someone just enrolled three days later their stop to now your 8:15 stop now becomes 8:22 or whatever that looks like so we want to wait till as late in the year as possible still
giving families time to you know adjust to whatever their bus schedules are but typically we send it the week before school starts so we'll send it out Friday um August 16th school doesn't start for secondary until that following Monday August 26th um and then Elementary actually doesn't start till
after Labor so there's a couple week Gap in between that um so they'll get their information um at that point and then we can they can contact the transportation department if they have a change of address or something comes up with the information that we send out so just want to kind of update you where we are
from our perspective and and open up to any questions or comments that you may have yeah sure um Versa trans to traversa so last year parents could log into some system and see where their bus is at and then just go out when the bus
is going to be there um I sense that a lot of people didn't use that uh but will that system still be similar in traversa and can we get people to use it yep that's part of the instructions we s all that information next week that's part of it is how to log into that um app for their it's a different app than
Versa trans head one is a different app but there will be login information for them to do the exact thing you're talking about is their pickup time is whatever it is but they can see where the bus is so they know where their kid um needs to go out to the bus down it just to add to to that the reason
because I think they might get that information at the beginning of the year their bus is on time but then substitute driver whatever things change and now their bus might be five minutes late and but they haven't been
they haven't been reminding themselves to check that bus one one it's coming and um I think if we could remind them throughout the year somehow hey just remember use the system follow your bus we canally in the winter yeah we can follow up with our school newsletters and just keep that information out for the first couple months to make sure
families get logged in we generally do that especially as it comes into winter time we send out reminders letting people know that okay thanks Dr La I guess PEB backing off that I guess I have two things along those lines because I felt like last year my then ninth grader was
was hopping on the bus and the pickup time changed several times 10 times maybe over the course from the beginning until whenever it at some point I think it it it evened out but it
wasn't just you know the first two weeks it was the first couple months and we weren't you know we weren't in the habit of looking right you know so he was like well your your pickup time is 7:05 okay great and so then it was well you know I
think it you know it was never really I think he missed it once because it moved in he didn't look and so I guess what we were you know we were like well it would have been nice if there was maybe a way to go Bing your time changed an email goes out saying hey you you're impacted
that's part of this new software that we're trying to do is to be able to as we change that to get that notification here that's next step to what you're talking about time changes automatic email goes out to the families to say you got moved from 819 to 822 or whatever it is going to be to keep that up front so um hopefully that'll be a
lot smoother this year the plan is so let me talk to this all right so last year start of the school year for a number of our families in this District it was an unmitigated disaster okay that's bottom line all
right so what was going on is we were trying to route and because of the Antiquated system we were using we would update and it would update it like midnight and families would not be told they could be told
because of the system we were using that changes were happening and so they'd show up and uh get their kid out for the bus stop and bus would either be 10 minutes early or 10 minutes late and we're not able to communicate because of the system we were using all right Mark
mentioned it was old okay so then this year or later in the year we decided over spring break okay we're going to transition to this new modern system and so we did and of course you
know it didn't work as it should have over the spring break and people who were on using GPS watching their kids suddenly couldn't watch them anymore um part of the issue as Mark mentioned is the compatibility with power school and how we're inputting
data into power school so over the last few months we have been working with what consultant are we on with traversa now number three we've worked with three different Consultants with the bus transportation um system to try to
get it to work with our unique power school system that we have for student information so we're on to the third guy he's supposedly their best person um but our transportation folks are pulling their hair out because they're putting
inputs into the system and the system is changing the input so we'll identify kid as special ed next day don't they're not special anymore they're on a different so um we still have not cracked the code on fixing this moving forward but um I
think between uh Mark and Eric Simmons our our Tech director uh they're putting together a plan for looking at how we're inputting data into the system um and so um again I own the fact that yet the communication strategy was we were going
to let folks know in mid July that um you know if if we're impact their lives by the reduction of routes and that didn't happen um but again I I think my frustration is we have these systems we're using that are working with these
vendors and for whatever reason they are not working with our internal systems that we utilize and people's lives are being impacted by it and so we have to fix it we're going to fix it um and you
know I think they're they're um thinking that the third time is the charm with the consultant we're using here but they're still meeting how many times a week couple times a week for meeting every day yeah sometimes for 20 minutes and sometimes for four hours and and I I really want to give a shout out to Lisa
sigri is our transportation supervisor she created a Band-Aid from spring break to the end of the year so families didn't know that this issue was going on to say hey she found out a way to get us just through end of the school year and then this summer we could really just start to peel back the onion okay what's
the real issue and that's we've been really digging into June July you know now here the beginning of August so yeah no we literally every single day have a meeting with um this person here to dig in I'll say here's the issues yesterday fixed this but then it opens up well now X Y and Z came up okay now how do we fix
this one and once that's fixed then the next issue come on comes down the line and in my experience as a superintendent I have never seen this is it a systems compatibility issue both sides or I I think it's partially compatibility issue it's partially how we're inputting data
into the system so we're on it so I this is probably a stupid question um and it probably goes to the technology you know problems that you've run into with these systems but you know and this is something that I picked up
from some of the things that I saw online because there are parents who now you know four weeks or three weeks before school starts they don't have transportation for their student because they're within the two mile radius I mean why is it that we couldn't identify
those folks I mean can't we just draw a circle around a two mile circle around the school and then and then say okay you're not in the you're not in this you know the area anymore so you I mean they're getting you know they've just gotten the notice so late correct um for
the most part yes but if we wanted to make sure that we get everybody who was affected to get the email it took us time to make sure our Imports were correct because coming a few weeks ago they were not coming over to make sure we had the exact data and we wanted to make sure that we didn't tell families that didn't need it or exclude families
that actually needed to get it I mean I mean and you know this isn't like something okay we're just not GNA you know we have had thoughtful discussions throughout the summer on this and part of the discussion we had with Communications in
early July was okay you know the push we were feeling was we need to let families know okay well do we know what families are going to be impacted yet we no not exactly so then the the tension internal tension on
the decision making was all right do we let families know that okay this is coming and then okay well is it going to impact me and we're going to how do I know and we'll let you know in a few weeks um or do we just you know
hold status quo until we knew exactly who was going to be impacted so and again it's this is I my I am probably more frustrated with this issue than than anything that I've been part of this District um this is not this should not be rocket science
I've never seen this in my career and it happened at the start of last school year with a different system it's happening with the new system this year um and there's no excuse for it none and and again you're you're right families should have been known they should have been told 3 weeks ago 100% it's it's not
as simple as drawing a 2- mile radius because it's not as the crow flies it's actually from front of door to driveway of house so the the Two Mile Line isn't just a circle around it kind of goes depending where the roads go it kind of squiggles its way around so to make sure
we had the most accurate information that's what we had to to navigate so like Dr Funk said it's not acceptable and and moving forward we will make sure that doesn't happen again but unfortunately we weren't able to make sure we had a true list until last
week go ahead so um so the consequence of fewer people getting busing is more people driving to school more parents dropping off is there I I don't know is is that enough of a an impact at the schools that that are going to have more
including the the gate parents that you know maybe aren't getting that aren't utilizing the M uh all having to drive now as far as stacking of cars I mid you know at the you know at the middle school it's still water middle I mean that's already
nightmarish you know at pickup time anyway Ian what were I mean the consequences of more Vehicles been taken into account is there uh a way to deal with that and change the way that drop off happens or pickup happens um in
terms of stor or middle there's really that the circle that you have to drop off because the other entrance is is the buses and we don't want to mix cars with buses in terms of kids walking through so it's really just using that utilizing that drop off Circle Mark so the short answer is no no the at least the 4 five
gate has a separate entrance too um I just know that because we lost our busing when we were in fourth grade so all the parents from the South had to drive so we we definitely had a different it's not the same so that is actually St one but the six seven eth gay parents we'll have to deal with that
so yeah there is a separate one at least it's still water middle I would imagine there's a variance in the in the drop off capacity I mean we're not how many families were impacted about 100 at each school or 100 about 100 each school
yeah um do we know when we made the transportation decision and this might be more of a a um a Carissa question did families get an email when we made the decision like in a newsletter because usually major decisions we do we do yes
there was some communication not much there was I think one article that after okay I just think and I know that you're doing this but just evaluating the communications process I think that's a you know one of the things that
that we discussed was um if we're not going to send a blast out to family saying this might be coming can we do it as part of a newsletter and I think the newslet it already hit the deadline and and so um but yeah that was part of the
communication discussion yeah it's it's so hard because I know as a parent you're hit with so much information and no matter how many times I think that we probably would have communicated it short of getting that letter that says your address your home is being impacted
I don't I don't know that it would registered fully um I mean certainly there's Improvement I think in the process from Communications to operations and technology and how it's how it's operating and to those families
I mean obviously we apologize um because it wasn't the intention just looking forward to because I remember that it was a little bit it was a lot hectic at the beginning of of the last school year with Transportation are we anticipating a
repeat of that once Transportation does start are we thinking it's going to we're going to see an improvement from where we were last year yes we we anticipate Improvement we just we had summer school that just ended where we had summer school not only for us for St CR prep for 9916 for white bear we we transport everybody that is
in our district so we don't don't just work on our schedule we work on the 916 schedule we work on the White Bear schedule all the different entities and and we've did very smoothly here um for summer school so there's always the beginning of the year we transport about 8,000 kids you know so there's always
going to be you know we moved or you know my daycare now now we're going to this daycare versus there's always those things that come up but in terms of um the volume of issues we don't anticipate it to be anywhere near where it was last year and I think with the newer system we're able to update um so families if
we do have to update they will know or they should be able to know um as opposed to the the old one we've been utilizing okay so we don't anticipate if there are technology changes after you and Eric work together with the superintendent I'm assuming we'll find
out about those at the board if something needs to be changed or you should see something in the updates yeah okay we should we should be fine I think we've cross our fingers we've crossed the we've crossed the the threshold now that we're moving in the right direction now for about the last since last since
early last week okay and if families I know the one option that is available to them and you hate to have like a flood of phone calls but if there was a stop closer to the house and there was a room on that bus Which sometimes there is what is the process for families to look
into that how contact the transportation department after school starts so about two weeks after school starts so we have to get everybody routed um get school year up and running and then if spots are available um not only spots available but also if there's go students so for instance right now somebody may be enrolled because
families are quick to enroll they're not very quick to De enroll so we move to Rochester we move somewhere else and I moved to Rochester I'm going to enroll and make sure my kids there I may not tell my previous school I'm not coming but so they're in our system we route them then we'll run the first two weeks and then if a student isn't there the
first two weeks then we'll start to do audits of our rout to say who's getting picked up who's not and if student continually isn't there we'll make a phone call to say hey are you here or not or they may leave the system because now we pull them out because we got the records released for Rochester schools or Etc so space opens up so we'll route
to who we know now and then once the school year starts as that starts to even itself out then families can contact us and say yep we got spots here or nope at do spot there but we do six blocks down the road at this spot here if you'd like to to join that area so we'll work with families from there and
I know we say this all the time um at least since I've been on the board I feel like we've repeated this but if a family de enrolls or doesn't or decides they don't need it they don't have to sign up for transportation as a safety net correct right they can if a need
exists or like after a month into school and they all of a sudden their ride share didn't work out for them they can sign up then that at any point in time during the November February you pick the date whenever you need it give us three to five days and you'll have a stop and so from your perspective it's
if you're not going to use the bus please don't sign up because it impacts other people's abilities to um Access Transportation or have space on routes so I just think it's a community effort to know that you're actually could be
harming other people if you're not using it correct so and I know that was new to me too when I was on because I was one of those parents that just signed up sometimes so great well I appreciate you coming to the board and explaining to us I I know
it doesn't make it better for the community members that were impacted but we do apologize and I know this is a main focus um that the superintendent has talked about in terms of implementation of decisions that get made and so I I'm looking forward to those um
improvements great thank you very much expect more yeah all right so with that um we will move into close session the next two oh I'm sorry I wanted to say one I'm sorry
this is I it's probably in my head that I don't want to acknowledge this okay so for the community we have we have a change on the school board coming um our beloved Dr poor Benny is um having some
changes in her life and so she is going to um explain some of those to and we would just like to give her a moment here to update the community on some things going on with her and I would like to I guess formally say that you have given us your notice that you will
be serving until the last day in August so the end of this month um and then she will be moving on and so I'll turn it over to you to have a few final words thank you chair Sherman and uh thanks to my colleagues here as well and to Dr fun
the administrative team staff um it's been almost four years and um I think I've had a great honor of working with all of you everyone present here uh it wasn't easy at first um but I think we
made it through um uh unfortunately or fortunately not sure which one it is um my family my husband and the kids moved out of town last year I decided to stay put because
I wanted to complete my you know four years and make sure I'm working with my colleagues here um but I the travels have been a bit too hectic and the last thing I want to do is to miss board meetings and I think I owe it to all of
you to be here to serve to continue to serve considering the fact that that's what the community um you know voted for me for um so I had to my husband and I sat down together we talked about it um
and I felt the best thing would be to respect everyone who got me into this position to respect my colleagues here as well our students uh community and also staff uh to put in my resignation um so um the end of the month will be um
the last time I'll be here um it's really difficult I thought I could you know hang on I've been the only on here the last one year um here in Minnesota while the family's been out of town in Georgia
actually um but um I am truly grateful and to all those who made it possible for me to be uh we came together um I remember Allison Katie uh Pete the first
time there um including Tina that is no longer with us um that these were some of our best moments uh the differences that we had um actually brought us to where we are today so I want to acknowledge all of the past board
members that I've served with and all the current board members that are here as well and um I know we've worked together we've made some really really great decisions and also some really difficult decisions um but um I think one of the best things we've also done is bringing
uh Dr fun in here that I will uh collectively as a group I think will be really proud of uh those were moments that were really difficult for us uh as a as a district um but I think um I want to say God did see us
through uh because we were always in the media we um there was always something going on our students um student governments all of the support um I cannot thank the community enough um for all those who made it
possible for us to continue to serve day in day out um thank you were parents as well U members of our community parents that were here to uh provide guidance for us and uh lead us through some difficult times um it's also some of the
best times that we've had uh so to the members of our community I want to say big thank you to you uh for all your support all your encouragements all your advice um it's been the best thing I've ever done you know and I think uh the past four
years has actually shown I'm not going to [Laughter] cry um I really want to thank our community uh there the reason why we come back here every day and also to
thank our students um staff um I said I'm not going to cry um Woodberry has been my home for the past 22
years and the district has been our home for the past 22 years and the district um I would say our kids spend more time here at the district much more than they spend at
home the success of our children that was speak for mine um most of it has been because because we've been in this district and I could never my husband and I would never forget what this district has done for us and I truly
want to thank you all for that I want to thank you um for all the values and for what we stand for I know that change initially was hard a lot of uh a lot of people in our community with
parents and everyone were a part of the change so I want to a big thank you again to our students uh for sticking with us actually and for helping us to make some of the decisions that we've made um I will never forget this District we will never forget this
District it's a part of our lives uh it's a huge part of my children's lives and um we where we at today because of this District so and to un to all of you and so for that I want to say thank you uh thanks to all those who
stood by me when I was trying to make the decision I wasn't sure um I still remember Allison and I saying should we should we not I can't believe that it's been almost four years uh staff thank you you guys have
supported me um you have been there um you have worked with us to make the change that we see today couldn't have had you know a better group of people so thank you to all of
you um you always ask about my children and so I sincerely appreciate that and that's when you know that you're truly in a place where people to really do care uh so thank you Dr Funk thank you for coming to us um thank you for being
here it's one of our most difficult times but you chose to come here thanks to my colleagues chair Sherman my former chair P thank you it was a it was wonderful serving with you really
appreciate your leadership and I also want to acknowledge your leadership here you are a huge strength and I really want to to recognize that today uh you you're something else let's put it that way about
you I know but um this is just an appreciation of the leadership of the group that I've worked with um Katie um you're a rock I know you always say you're quiet but uh you have been incredible Pete the second time
sometimes a charm here you are and I really appreciate you I got to know you in the first you know when we first ran together I'm very proud and very happy that you could make it the second time so it's been really wonderful working
with you as well thank you Andrew Chris the newbies I really appreciate both of you I saw Andrew the first time on LinkedIn and I wonder who is this uh but I didn't realize that he was going to be running I really appreciate that connection that
contact UM and since then we've been uh friends much more than just being board members and so I really appreciate and chce I appreciate everything about you got to know your true actually Bev you know because we asked some questions when you were running as well and I
think since being with you here I've gotten to know you a bit more as well and appreciate your Insight a great deal um so to all of you thank you [Laughter] Joan Mark so these are the older ones
here with me I really want to thank you guys um it's been four years um I knew you guys before I ran um so but I want to say big thank you to you for all your support I called you on always um so thank you Mark thank you
for all the work and you as a principal at BR view uh before your appointment and so I want to thank you also uh for all the support over the years and of course we have our accountant there Marie we have our executive director of
Human Resources uh we have our new group that not you're not new right yeah I know I know then we have our depy there as well um but really you've all the new ones actually you're in the right place
um it's the right time the right place um we've got everything I mean look at we talked about making sure our board um participation is boring and I think we succeeded in doing that because we're doing our work actually that was a campaign slogan that we
had because we to do work and work we did um so we really appreciate you guys coming to our district and want to be a part of this we see the work you've done the work you've been doing and so I'd like to say thank you to all of you as
well well Annie I I know that there's I think there's some people I see them making notes that they might want to say something back to you so does anyone have any comments I saw Katie had something to say I'm gonna end it here thank you all jez Annie
um oh no I should not have gone first um first of all I just wanted to acknowledge a sacrifice that you've made the last year like your family moved away a year ago and you've been flying on the weekends to go see your family I mean that is an incredible sacrifice that you've had to make in order to
continue to serve this District so um thank you for lasting this long and I totally respect your decision to um to be with them finally after a long year um and just serving with you your grace
and attitude and just your gratitude that you've just demonstrated for all of us for all of us um is just case in point for your character and you've brought so much to this board your um your respect and your thoughtful points
that you make all the time that are just so insightful I really appreciate that and we will all miss that um so thank you for serving with us we'll miss you a lot yes so we first filed together right
in Jon's office and when we're leaving the building Eric Anderson was there he took a picture of us holding up our um our filings and that picture constantly comes up in my camera roll on my Alexa on my desk and just reminds me of what you've done and what we've done together
and then outside of the formality of these meetings we've had a lot of nice talks in the parking lot everybody's gone we're still there for half an hour talking about what's going on here there four of you or just two of you two just two so you're in these parking lots at Lake Elmo family night
we've had some just great conversations so I've really gotten to know you then and I really appreciate that we've had a lot of laughs together and I've also gotten to know your kids through my bus driving activities they got to know your kids from driving routes and driving their uh their games and they they could
motivate anybody just looking at what they accomplish and the GD and determination they have so you've done well by them you've done well by us and thank you for being here that's yeah Annie I
I Katie stealing my words like thoughtful and insight I mean it's just it's amazing uh the there there's a a quiet passion for the community for the education for our children and you know
you said you know they ask you about your children you always ask me about mine and that means so much you're right that really shows like that you're in a you're you're you're in the right place and and you're here for us and I I really do appreciate that and the sacrifice you know being away from your
family I can't imagine how you've done that and you know and still manage to you know function so um you've earned your your your fin flight uh so uh yeah congratulations and thank
you well Annie so um it was about four years ago now that um you and I and three other people um ran for school board um
and it was it was an it was an interesting election um and we we all five of us were elected and it was kind of a trial by fire um because you know if we remember back that was the
pandemic and it was all about masking and it was you know students working uh you know going to school from home it was it was pretty wild there for a while and one of the things that I remember is
just how you were always able to bring a different point point of view that I had not really considered and I doubt that anybody else at the board table had considered and you were you were constantly trying to get
everybody to find that that the the center of the VIN diagram the consensus and and I think it's actually one of your best strengths is that is that you're always working to find that
middle ground and you have been just absolutely integral to the our efforts to sort of make this a professional school board and we are going to miss
you dly um so Annie uh thank you uh it's been so great to get to know you the last year and a half you know you see people on the on the um you know school board meetings be watching them or you see them in person but it's just been such a pleasure to get to know you
you're just a a fantastic smart thoughtful person and um as as beev mentioned I mean just the perspective VI abroad has been um just eye openening and we've been so lucky as a district to
have you um you have helped put us in a much more stable place and what a cool Legacy that you get to look back on as Still Water continues to do great things and it can be a source of Pride for you because you know you had a a very big part of that so thank you for your selfless and your thoughtful and your
caring service because you know it just is who you are at your core and I'm excited you get to be um reunited with your family and um I'm excited for what these new Endeavors might look like and uh but we are even more excited to have you back and especially when we open
these brand new beautiful schools we got to look at tonight so um so thank you and miss you and hope um we get to see you still soon I love these things you know um so I I'll share this with you Annie
you know this was probably a couple years ago and it was one of our my early meetings with with the board and we were talking about an issue and I think Vivian was talking and I think you were talking and you were both speaking about some things in the system that weren't
necessarily the best things that we did in the system and how they impacted the lives of your children and I really listened to that and then as I got to know you better one
of the things that I think is at your core and is consistent with one of my real values is is it best for kids is what we are doing best for kids and so when I am bringing issues to the
board that may not be the most popular issues the in The Wider Community um I've always had exceptional value for your perspective because you are looking at at a lens as is this best for kids and
you're and I couldn't have asked for a more supportive director on the board so and I've had a lot of directors that I've worked with over the years so just want to thank you for that Annie and thank you for your sacrifice and uh wish you the best of luck getting back
getting back together with your family in Georgia Thank you thank you and Annie I mean I've known you for so long and your kids and Francis your husband and I mean I I really feel like we need to thank your son the one that is left at
home and Francis for kind of letting the district have you a little bit longer and this is way long overdue I mean you have been so kind to stay a part of this and it does speak to your passion and I always think you're just kind of such an interesting person because you have such
a just a such a cool person I mean I really I don't even think of you as like a director it's just I've known you for so long you're just a cool human being you're just are you just have cool insight into I mean you've brought that happiness and that gratitude and that
Joy here and you're so smart and you're just so I don't know I just your kids are such a reflection of both you and your husband and um The District's been lucky to have you and we've been lucky to get to know you and um I just you're
just equal parts really strong but just really kind and it's just such an interesting Dynamic with you just as a person so just thank you for being you and for bringing that insight and that kindness and that Joy to the board table and we've appreciated your sacrifice and
I know that you're appreciative of everyone in the community and around this table and so the feeling is mutual so we wish you well we hope you come back and visit often and Georgia is lucky to have you so I hope they know how lucky they are um and so thank you
so much so with that we're now going to move to closed so thank you very much Annie for taking the time to to do that with us tonight and um and now we're gonna move to closed and the next two items on the agenda are Clos session the
first e did you say we were doing two close sessions I know it said two it's one e e e e