Welcome this evening. Joan, roll call, please. Dr. here. Dr. Hawker here. Dr. here. Here. Dr. Parker. Here. Sherman here. Great. Let's stand
for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and
justice for all. Right. Moving on to our next item, the approval of tonight's agenda. I'll go ahead and make a motion to approve tonight's agenda. Can I get a second? Second. Director Theelander with the second. All those in favor raise your
hand and say I. I. I. Opposed. Motion passes. Sorry with my voice tonight. All right, we move on to the consent agenda which is up on the screen. Items A through F. Is there a motion to approve? I'll move to approve.
Great. Director Hawker with the motion to approve. Second. Great. Director Theelander with the second. All those in favor of approving tonight's consent agenda, raise your hand and say I. I. I. Opposed. Motion passes six to zero. And
our first item tonight under the strategic direction of develop strong partnerships with the communities we serve. We are going to have a report for a proposed site and preservation and historical marker. And we have a speaker,
Bob Cronin. Thank you. Welcome, Bob. Thanks for coming out tonight. Thank you. Um, so, uh, I guess, as you said, my name is Bob Croning and, um, while I'm currently not a resident of Still Water, uh, my family has been for
a very long time, especially on my mom's side. Um, joining me to my right here is Aaron Issacs, who is the executive director of the Minnesota Street Car Museum, and he's been very helpful along with Brent Peterson, who couldn't be here tonight, from the Washington County Historical Society. Had a lot of help in
putting together uh what you're going to see here, and what you may have already taken a look at. Um, just a little background u before I get into Outlot H, which is kind of an exciting name for the for this parcel of land. Um, uh, last summer, um, I reached out to Mike
Pina and, uh, mentioned that the family had a long-standing interest in, uh, donating, um, some property, uh, kind of the last of what remains of the of the farm, uh, to a, um, uh, a nonprofit. Uh
it's currently designated as green space and um uh the family would really like to make sure that it is maintained as that in perpetuity. Right? So that's kind of the inspiration. So, I re reached out to Mike and talked to him about this idea of a historical site
preservation and marker idea and we talked a couple times and um after some conversations he suggested that I meet with the council, the city council, which I did and I presented a variation of what we're going to look at here tonight to the council and got a lot of
good feedback. But in general they were very um excited about the uh opportunity and so they said you know keep us posted on on further conversations. So further conversations we did have um Mike again kind of has been serving as kind of my
quarterback and giving me direction as to what to do next. And so shortly after that, uh later in the fall, I spoke with Wayne Sandberg um from the county and talked to him and another member of his staff about the idea. Since you'll see when we go to the one of the early
slides here, the the property is um adjacent to both the Washington County uh bike and walk path and uh the Rutherford Elementary School. So had some conversations with Wayne and his team and got some good feedback uh from
from Wayne. Then just before the holidays, we talked about the opportunity to reach out to Dr. Funk and again thank you for the invitation to come tonight. Appreciate it. And um we spoke for a while this back in January or February I think I forget. And uh again we had a good conversation and u
it was Dr. Funk's suggestion to come and speak with all of you. So that's why I'm here today. So sorry for the long introduction. Um, the reason I'm here is this piece of property which is um, again, as I said, adjacent to the Rutherford Elementary School, but if you look at the map in the lower right hand
corner, you'll see the other sides of it. Uh, on the north side, uh, which is Highway 12, you've got the county and bike path. Then in what's the west side, you have Rutherford Road, and there's a we'll get to the reason why it's called Rutherford Road in a minute. And then, uh, Rutherford Elementary School, right?
So, it's like this little wedge shaped thing. And that gray shaded thick line is the uh old um St. Paul Stillwater street car line that ran uh from back in the day you could go from all the way from Still Water to Excelsier. It was
quite the thing. Uh and they added that line I think in 1899 and was used until 1932. So that's the location and the the why is we the family has always felt um and others I've talked to here recently have
felt there is an opportunity to preserve uh and to um share history. Right. First of all the historic Ruford neighborhood. I've got a copy of the book uh right here uh about the neighborhood and then this Twin City street car line. Right.
So, it has an opportunity to introduce uh some information to people in an unexpected way as they're walking or biking along that path. Right? So, I mentioned the historic Rutherford neighborhood. Uh back in 1969, my grandmother, my mom's mom,
wrote this book about Rutherford neighborhood. And um Brent Peterson was nice back in 2021 to do a little he does the uh on page two of the Gazette, he does a little history uh blurb uh periodically and he did one in 2021
about my grandmother and her book and back in ' 69. She did a lot of research about the families uh that homesteaded in this area and we'll get to a map that specifically focuses on it uh back in the 1840s and 1850s. So, the book contains a lot of information about the
families uh and the homes that were built there. It really was a neighborhood in a real special sense. So, this is a map uh taken from a 1901 platbook. And so, I kind of pieced
together two images. The images on the right uh is uh what would represent the city of Stillwater and then Stillwater Township. That's a orange shaded area. And then the left is what would be uh called Grant Township. And right in the middle is Manning Avenue. And then you'd
see going from left to right is Highway 12. And where the intersect there, right, that's not too far from a commercial corner. And then you can see I've got other markers there that would point out uh where the current Rutherford Elementary School is, Botwell Road, and then the street car line right
where it went. It uh cut right through the middle of the Rutherford neighborhood as it made its way into um Stillwater. Number of families that I've got listed there. There's others I couldn't fit on there, but those are some of the families that in the 1840s and 1850s primarily moved from New
England here to uh this part of the country and homesteaded and uh they kind of moved together as a group, right? So they knew they were their families were friends and so on back in like places like Weld, Maine and things like that. Here's another image uh that focuses in
on a couple other interesting points. So um as the as the community started to settle in uh the Rutherford family of which there were at least two separate families or brothers um donated some land and they donated land for two
important things. One was a school which is located on what is Brow Road today on the north side of that. After you take a if you're going north on Manning Avenue, you take a right. It would be about five six hundred yards on your left. Uh
that's where district number seven, the Rutherford school was built and I want to say 18 56 something like that and was an operating school until 1912. The cemetery again the land was donated again by another Rutherford was also
started then um and is still being used today. You can see it as you go right up Manning Avenue. Right. The school uh was the original school was the inspiration for uh a lot of things about Rutherford Elementary. First of all, the name originally back
in 1997. They were going to call the school Browns Creek Elementary. Uh but a lot of uh local citizens kind of petitioned and they revoted uh on the name and they changed it to Rutherford Elementary. Another thing that my parents shared
with me is they met with the architects of the school. And so when they shared some information about uh the original schoolhouse, they really found that interesting and they incorporated that into the design of the building, right? So literally the students of today walk
through the past and come into the future on the other side, right? Is kind of the thinking. They just were really into that. I remember my mom was really proud about that. So the street car line um that map down at the bottom I think it's 1914 is that that's about 1912. So, uh, this was like
at the peak, uh, of the street car system, right? It was before the Model T's kind of took over the world and people were either they either had to go on a horse or they could ride one of these fancy street cars, right? And it was a pretty amazing thing that you could go from Still Water all the way to Excelsier and the fun and Lake Mitaka
and all that. And the street car system was extended from St. Paul to Stillwater in 1899. And the area I've got circled there is kind of hones in on on the Rutherford area. Here are some things that many of you already probably know, but it's this
system serves Stillwater. And these are some images that I I took from some postcards I had. Right. It goes by the the public library there down downtown on Main Street and then stopped one of the stops was right there at the at the old train station and the line traveled right
through the middle of the Rutherford neighborhood. That's what that eggshaped circle is there in the middle. The image up on the right, if you is right there, just before what was referred to as parent siding, there were two stops that served the Rutherford neighborhood. One
was Parent Siding, just before you would go past MCHus's Lake, right? And then the other one, which was the primary one that served uh the area was a lot of the locals called it Masterman's Crossing. It's referred to in other places as Masterman's Station. But all these
locations, especially as you went from like Wildwood Park all the way to the city, they were named after the people that owned the land. Their farm was like right there. So, let's just call this Masterman's Crossing, right? Elvin Masterman lived about 200 yards from that street car stop. I found a couple of photographs
depicting what it was like at these street car stations, right? So, first of all, there was like no trees, right? I mean, hardly any trees. I That's the first thing that is is kind of hard to realize. like no trees because it was all either farmland or the lake, right? So, parent siding would be really close
to where it would intersect with Botwell Road today. And you do see a clearing. You got to kind of look for it where it's like looks like a a walk path or something. And that's where it was. And the siding, if if I got this uh right, Aaron, was a place where the cars went
into still water and out of still water, right? So to keep them from running into each other, the the system had a siding that you'd pull into and then that what looks like a telephone booth is you'd go into that, if I got that right, and you'd say, "Hey, I'm I'm coming into then there's is there a street car
coming this way that I need to wait to pass before I come into town." And so this these photographs were taken, I was say, was it n March of 1917? Huge snowstorm. There's uh John Runk, a famous Stillwater photographer, took a lot of
photographs of the snowstorm, but he also went out to uh this um place in the street car line to take these photographs in part because the newspaper advertised where my red arrow is that these cars were probably going to get stuck out there. And so he went
out there, these were taken on the 18th of March and the snowstorm came through on the 16th and 17th. So when he got there, the car was buried and they dug this thing out. So, it just gives you an idea of, you know, uh, what they had to do to keep the street car lines operating. Bet they had school back
then, though. Yeah, they had school. Yeah, there were there were no there were no laptops at home to work from. Um, then the other photographs I have are of Masterman's Crossing. And so, the top two photographs, what's unique about them, and this was in a family album
that I came across, they are opposing views of each other. So, the one on the left was taken up by the barn. So, the barn would be uh today kind of uh at the peak of where Liberty on the Lake is where there's a couple of really
distinctive old oak trees. Those oak trees that are there are in that photograph to the right of the barn. And so, the one the photo on the right was taken from that vantage point. And then uh the one on the right is if you see where I' I've got the arrow the points
where the street car is heading out uh to St. Paul. You can see where there's some tall grass and stuff growing up because everything else they wouldn't have cut the grass up by the the street car bed and so it's kind of they're standing on the street car line looking
back at the barn. Right. Yeah. Then just some interesting information about the um uh events they've held there. They had a barn. and they raised about $500 for the World War II Museum. So, as far as the pres preservation of the site and the historical marker,
again, focusing on uh the Rutherford neighborhood and the historic site. Uh there's an opportunity to make that link that more solidly with the school. The school, by the way, has the original we donated the the school marm bell somewhere in their position at the bell. And then I took that photograph of what
the street car bed looks like today. And you can see the cow pass on the right. Here's uh again to orient reorient ourselves. Here's kind of a map of where everything's at and uh a summation if you will in the lower right hand corner of what we're recommending. The family
would like to donate outlot H to the school district as a nonprofit so that it could qualify for um grants and other funding to preserve the site and market. Right. I've been blessed, as I
mentioned, with Aaron's uh expertise and Brian Peterson or Brent Peterson rather, both are interested in assisting and providing their expertise on how to do all this and do it well. And then I've got time to to help uh uh with the paperwork because there's usually a lot of paperwork, grants, and so on. So, I'm
happy to volunteer my time. So, I think that's the the last slide. It is. So, sorry to ramble on. appreciate your patience with all that. But um and again, Dr. Funk, thank you for the opportunity to speak, but I'd be happy to answer any questions that anybody has. Okay. Well, we'll see how my voice
is going, but this was really cool to hear the history behind this. So, thank you for the background and the perspective there. Um are there any questions or maybe Dr. Funk, I don't know if you I don't know what we would have to do. Um some pretty high taxes
there. We'd be inherited. Yeah, I was debating, but then I go, I think that's a good sound bite. So, so basically what what we would have to do is um we would have to accept a donation of this property to the school
district and then Bob and his team and Brent would go out and uh kind of do the fundraising and and basically I think you guys are looking at a historical marker, maybe a bench there. Sure. Um, you know, I think something along those lines. I don't know what the street car
side of it would look like there, but uh, well, uh, the the the idea is to have more than just a sign. The idea is to go and show people that what was there. And what we would do, uh, it's up on a bit of a fill. And so the idea would be to go and, you know, clean the
trees off that had grown up on top of the fill. Um, and lay down maybe 100, maybe 200 feet of track. um and put up either four or six overhead wire poles and string a little overhead wire. So, it is very obvious that this is what it was. That's a
pretty affordable 10 $15,000 kind of a project and it would be extremely durable, almost completely no maintenance at all. Uh but but you would look at it and then you'd also have the signage with photos and that kind of stuff and and that's what you would see
when you were there. So obviously the signage would cover the school, would cover the street car and and the neighborhood. Um, and then you'd have this track with the overhead wire and then the cattle pass exposed underneath and there you go. So what we would basically have to do is accept the
property as a school district and then work with legal on whatever the the uh contract would look like for that and then your team would really lead the fundraising efforts to do uh these other pieces of it. So I think it's a You
know, when Bob talked to us about it a couple months ago, great when we talk about community partners and and working with our local community and really the tiein with the historic neighborhood here. I I thought it was just a yeah, great idea and that's that's why we're here today. I
mean, it's it was really cool to hear about the history. Are there any questions or comments? Yes. The the track that you were just talking about, would that be accessible from the current trail? Would people walk on that as part of the path or just see it as they go by? Well, I think anybody it
should be directly adjacent to it. So, you know, I'm assuming people would just pull off. The signage would be there. They can certainly go walking back along it. Um, it's, you know, because it was a single track. It's really the width of a walking path, only it'll be, you know, rails and ties and they can certainly go
walking along it. No reason they can't. And I'm also assuming those street cars that were there didn't dump any toxic sludge or anything that that we're going to be uh adopting. Right. Oh, no. No. These were the original clean electric vehicles. All right. Great. Good question. Great.
Thank you for the presentation and thank you both for the work that you're doing and yeah, it seems really exciting. uh obviously right near uh the elementary school and uh appreciate uh Bob all the work that you and your family have done uh in the area. So um yeah, I would say uh it's it seems like a really cool and
neat idea and I always never knew what the little looked like a sewer passage look like, but the cow pass, but we'll have to maybe change it to pony pass, you know. So yeah, there there were there are about three of those that are still existing there and west uh west of there cow paths passes that are still
there. So just lastly, I first I appreciate your time and and interest and enthusiasm uh and uh you know kind of to get to your question. You know what I would think is once you got past the the paperwork, right? Um that the team um
and maybe there'd be one or two representatives from this group here that would participate with Brent and Aaron and so on and we would come to this group and say here's what more specifically we would propose. Have plenty of time to write. That seems like that would be the logical thing to do.
Sounds great. You may leave before this meeting's over, but I want to talk my own property where I live right now is the site of an old schoolhouse, too. And I have a nice collection of old artifacts that I've been finding there over the years. So, I want to talk to you sometime about that as well. Very good. Very good. Anybody else any
questions? Can I ask a quick one? Um, it sounds Well, first of all, this was so cool learning about farm or the homesteading and everything in this area. really cool local history and all the cool plat maps. Really awesome. I was a history major, so this is my
jam. Um anyway, um my my question was it looks like you guys are going to be doing some fundraising um for for the actual materials. Is that what I'm hearing correctly? Or am I or is it the school district's responsib We're asking for zero dollars from the school
district. This is all all the funding is on us and we're going to go out to foundations. Um probably you know there are foundations especially through Anderson Window and such that specialize in the St. Croy Valley. This strikes me I've done a fair number of grants and this strikes me as just the sort of
thing that would attract their attention and so we'll we'd start that effort and hopefully in a year or so do something. Awesome. And it sounds like it'll be pretty low maintenance so I'm guessing long term. Well that's the idea. You have to have something that's just durable and you don't have to mess with all the time. It'll be quite an
installment. I'm excited to see it. And and back in the day when the street car was there, it was low maintenance. I mean, there was natural grass. So, you try to restore some of that natural uh foliage that doesn't require cutting, right? Because it never they weren't cutting that street car bed back in 1999. So, you'd want it to look a lot
like that. Great. Thank you so much. and great to hear about. I never understood like the design of the Rutherford the white part that house part. So it's really cool to have that come back. So thank you very much for all of it. Very interesting. So we look forward to
pursuing. All right. So our next report is Bellwin Environmental Education Partnership. Welcome Mark. Good evening, Chair Sherman, members of the board. Um, I'm here just kind of a brief update about the Bellwin
partnership that we have talked about. So, I know in our priority based budgeting, we talked about one of the things we're going to add for next year and in the future is a Bellwin partnership with all of our elementary students to enhance the environmental education learning for all of our kids K through six and all of our elementary
schools. Um, Bellwin is located in our district. For those who don't know, it's in the it's in Afton in the southern part. Um, it's been around for many years and they've had a partnership with St. Paul public schools and for years we've had conversations about can we join or not, but we didn't really have the space to accommodate us. Um, over
the last year year and a half or so they're building a brand new building and part of that new building is there's two classrooms and I'm not just talking a school classroom, but it can house about 50 75 people. Big open spaces and in that building that let's call those classrooms. It's two sides. One side
will be for St. Paul public schools to continue the partnership that they have. The other side is they want to open it up and begin a partnership very very similar to what they have for all of our Stillwater students. So what we want to talk about here tonight is just kind of what that partnership looks like from a educational standpoint as well as just
kind of some of the quick images of the building um and the facility of kind of the things that we've toured. So Caitlyn Willis and I have spent um the last five six months meeting with representatives of Bellwin both there on site and they've come here. We've walked the land, got seen the building many times,
talked about a lot of different options about kind of what programming looks like. We've kind of run the whole gamut of how that looks um how St. Paul does it, what would work best for us. Um from a Still Water side, what we would look at is kind of to start with is looking at like field trips for all of our kids.
So Bellwin would um employ two naturalists and we'd take one classroom at a time that would go to Bellwin. we'd split the class in half to kind of maximize student engagement and then work through our science standards um for our students to get a programming option out at Bellwin. Right now, St.
Paul Public Schools has all of their third and fifth grade students that go out and have um an experience at Bellwin. They can't do all K6 just because of the size and the number of schools and the number of classrooms they have. For us, we would have that opportunity. So, when we originally
looked at this, of the 170 days that we have, we um Caitlyn Willis and her team put together a schedule of 157 of them of all of our kids would be going out to Bellwin once throughout the course of the year and Bellwin is really excited about that. As we had conversations and
it's May and so we're looking at logistically how we going to pull this off. They have not hired anybody next year. At the last meeting, they talked about is there a way to kind of scale that back a little bit for the first year? Eventually, we're going to get to all K6, but a whale to way to scale that back so we can hire the naturalist, work
out some of the kinks of having a new partnership, but also now that we're having science specialists come on to our scene, create a partnership between the two naturalists that are hired as well as our seven uh science specialists, they can really integrate the programming that's there into what
our science curriculum is here in Still Water. And so what we've come up with is for next year we're going to have all third, fourth, and fifth grade students. We'll have an experience out at Bellwin. We'll use the the St. Paul public schools curriculum right off the bat because it's already established to to
state standards. And we'll use that extra time for our naturalists to come to our schools for pre-teaching visits. So they'll come meet me visit with each classroom before they go on site to talk about here's what to look for, here's what the day is and do some pre-teaching before they get out to Bellwin as well
as make partnerships with the schools as well as the science specialists as well. So in looking at the the um kind of the calendar for next year, we're going to kind of let the week or the school kind of get up and running. So we're going to begin those pre-teaching visits with our
naturalists here on site the week of September 22nd. Then the following week will be our site visits. We're going to start with either third or fifth grade um just because that's already established. And then as let's just say we start with third grade. If we do all third grade, so then each day, you know, let's just alphabetically start at
Afton. So the first day first class third grade classroom at Afton goes on Monday. On Tuesday, the next third grade classroom at Afton goes. On Wednesday, the next third grade classroom goes. And there's three sections. Then the following day, you go to Anderson. First Anderson goes on Thursday. And then the second so forth. We'll go through a
whole grade level where everybody goes. Then we'll have a gap in between in that 2 three week gap. We're still working out the schedule. We're still having some of these conversations. It hasn't been flushed out yet. But that'll be time for us to kind of look at the curriculum coming up. What modifications do we need to make for us? And then also
plan those pre-teaching visits for that following year or that following grade level to come out. And then that way it'll buy time for us to kind of really build a strong program there at Bellwin and then able throughout those pre-teing and that planning to develop really a comprehensive K through six, excuse me,
K through five um alignment for all all of our elementary kids starting the fall of 26. So basically when you open up the new buildings, this Bellwind programming is going to be for all our K5 kids as well. So the next part of it is just real brief. The building's not even done yet, but I just want to kind of give you a sense of what the building looks like.
So this is the front entryway. This is a big open space. Probably hundred people could fit in this. And so the left side would be for the St. Paul public schools. The right side would be for our Stillwater kiddos. And then inside the classroom, you can see it's a a full This is kind of half the size of the classroom is kind of on the right. Just
kind of looks like a standard room. The other half is windows and then with um I'm going skip ahead with doors heading to the outside with an outdoor classroom teaching space there before you head into nature and whatever that learning experience for this is for the kids. You know, obviously it's different going to be a fall experience is different than a
winter experience, which is different than the spring experience. And then also within each classroom, they have um a calm room. They have an area for extra winter clothes. So if kids loses or forgets, hats, boots, mittens, as well as an adult-siz electric changing table
um for those students that may need that as well. So, I just wanted to take a couple minutes and I know we've talked Bowwin at a real high level, but just to kind of see the talks that we've been in with Bellwin and get your feedback before we solidify what that programming is going to look like for our kiddos, not only next year, but in the future
years. Great. Questions or Yes. The teacher, the science teacher, will that be a Stillwater teacher going out there or one of theirs that just takes over our class for that time? So, they will hire two naturalists that will be Bellwin
employees. So, think of a field trip. So, I'm a third grade teacher. I'm going to bring my class of 25 kids. We're going to go out to Bellwin. We're going to split my C class in half. Half of it are going to be with naturalist A. The other one is going to be with naturalist B and go through that same sort of experience. So, we will pay Bellwin for
the naturalists um that are we're going to be utilizing when we go on site. Okay. Is this like all day or is it like just an afternoon? Nope. It's an all day field trip. Yep. Cool. Yep. So the they'll bring lunch with them kind of similar to what they do the areas to
eat. You can see there's a microwave there. There's kind of a little kitchenet around the corner um if kids need that. But basically a full day field trip, a full day experience out at on site and in nature right here in our district, which is really cool because there's hundreds of acres that have been
historically untapped for our kids. And really to enhance that environmental education is really a unique opportunity that most school districts don't have. Yeah. I know I'm uh really excited about this partnership. I mean, what a great opportunity to to be able to take part in this really great uh outdoor space.
So, yeah, appreciate the work that's being done and really excited and I and um and I also just a shameless plug. I know with the partnership plan party, which is tomorrow night, there's a silent auction and there is a bison buggy uh that you can actually uh you
know um make a bid for. So, which is really great that they donated that uh for fun fundraising for the benefits of our students. But um a question I had as if I recall this was obviously part of the the priority based budgeting and as part of the expanding or increasing that
relationship. So, it's all being planned for and um should be a pretty hopeful seamless integration I would imagine. Y and so if you look at the original just budget-wise real high level, it was 125,000. That was if we went brought everybody all day every day. Now that we're not doing that, that includes transportation cost as well as the cost
of the naturalist being out there. So with a scaledback program and kind of number of days, that number will be less. We haven't solidified the schedule, so I don't have the full budget number, but it will be less than what was brought to the board here a couple weeks ago. Great. Director Hawker, thanks. Um, thanks for this, Mark. This is really cool. Um, looks
like beautiful facility, too. I'm excited to see how this all comes together. Um, my question is about um, our special programs with Gate and um, Amigos. They include it in Yep. field trip opportunity. Every third, every fourth, every fifth grade. It doesn't matter what building you're at. If you're a third, fourth, fifth
grader, you will be out here next year. Okay. Great. Thanks. So, so one of the things that Bellwin is really interested in is getting the school district leadership down to Bellwin. And so, they would like us to
have the admin team come down. I would think that at some point it might be um great for the board to do a retreat or a study session um at the center down in Bellwin and then they can give you an overview of the different programming they do with the kids. That would be
great. That would be awesome. Yes. Um just uh for the two um Bellwin resources, so they're not employed by the district. We just have access to them. They're Bellman employ Bellman employees that that we utilize when
we're there. Got it. And that's part of scaling back is they haven't hired them yet, you know, and there's not really naturalists on the bench. So if somebody if it doesn't work out or if somebody gets sick or something, there's not the subs there. So it's kind of build them time to build up their resources as well too as well as us developing some curriculum on our end. So Got it. Okay.
Thank you. is my only question is is it possible to survey students and um families after the fact like just to include that feedback from the students what they liked, what they wish they had more time for is I don't I know that they get it gets to be cumbersome, but I
think that student voice if we're going to use this as kind of a pilot to go to the next stage, I know that the board really appreciates hearing from families and and students. So that would be my only comment if it's something that can be easily done. Absolutely. This this is really exciting. I'm really
thankful that you're bringing this to us, Superintendent Funk, and to your team for exploring this opportunity. So, thank you, Mark. And it fits right in line with everything we're doing on our strategic plan. So, and Caitlyn Willis and her team has spent a lot of time doing this as well. So, thank you. Lot of kudos to them, too. Yeah. Thank you.
Everyone involved. So, great. All right. Well, with that, we'll move on to our next agenda item, and we're welcoming Eric for a technology department program update. Hey there. Has it been a year yet for
you being here or is it has not about 11 months. Okay. 11 months. Nobody's comments. Yes. Well, good evening, uh, Chair Sherman, members of the board, Dr. Funk. I am here to provide a a program update and a fairly broad program update uh around our technology department and
some of the work we are doing. So uh this update aligns with our strategic direction A and strategic direction C. So what I wanted to do was start fairly high level and just talk generally about our department structure. um talk about some of the larger projects that we've worked on
over the last year and things we have coming up and then maybe get get into the weeds and talk a little bit more detail about some of the other projects we are working on. So like one of the uh bigger public facing projects that we support is our universal access onetoone device program which is uh in thanks to
our community supported 2021 technology levy. Um, and that levy provides that shared access to our students in grades K1 and then that individual device for learning for students grades to 12. So I threw some technology stats there on the side which I I know sometimes people
think of school technology teams as being kind of kind of small. We support a lot of enterprise systems. Uh, if you look at we do have more than 30,000 active accounts between staff, students, and family accounts. um that number like 21,000 devices connected to our wireless
every week includes you know all of you in this room uh people who are at events as well and uh we have over 13,000 district own connected devices that we support which you will recognize that's more than students and staff that we have in our buildings um and that
includes things like the TV we are looking at right now we have a just about everything especially when we look at new construction everything has some sort of internet connection where it's plugged into the wall so uh we really rely he on on making our network work. So we do have our department split
into those are kind of the four main areas that our department supports. I did just I wanted to talk through our u our organizational structure as well. So we have a if you look in the middle there we were structured around December of this year
and so we have a technology operations manager who really supports uh you know our IT project coordinator um our field techs or IT support technicians. Uh on the right side there we have an information systems and security manager and that covers uh that silo or that
bucket covers our network and systems engineer um our desktop support all of kind of that level three support and then on the left side uh we have our learning team as well as you can see that one role in red there is our contracted uh VCSO or our virtual chief
information security officer. Uh we have on contract a VCSO up to four hours a week. Um and we we use him extensively. Uh that is a contracted service that we've had in place for this is our third year um but are really our first year
ramping up the amount of hours that we've had that person on staff. So to talk about our infrastructure and support projects, um some of the bigger projects that we worked on, our wireless network was replaced last summer. Again, that's in thanks to our technology levy. Uh that was a very large project and covered all
of our buildings. Then over winter break uh we had all of our copers and printers replaced and that's a five-year lease and we talked a little bit about that back in December and I think we had about 150 devices touched over five days and shuffled around the district. So it was
a lot of movement and coming up we are working on right now all the technology for the new elementary schools like the fiber the technology. So a lot of that is uh in thanks to our 2023 bond and right now we are in the planning stages for this network switch project that's coming up. So our network switches right
now I think a lot of them are getting pretty close to 15 years of age which is which is fairly old for network hardware. So I do want to recognize that that antiquated I think is the term. Yes. Yes. So that we do recognize that that work that we do today, I mean that
that impacts not just students of next year, but it's students into the foreseeable future as well. Um and we are uh making that the switch upgrades there so that we can support the safety and security upgrades that were a part of the bond. And then our phone system uh Dr.
Funk mentioned antiquated. Our phone system is no longer supported. We own our phone system uh outright. We don't lease our phone system. Our phone system is uh fairly outdated. um like features like transcribe voicemails are not a thing with the system that we have right now. And so we are um focusing on the
network switch replacement this summer so that we are ready to go for a phone system replacement next summer. And explain why we're waiting on the phone system replacement. Good question. So we originally had anticipated trying to replace those phones this summer. Um as we looked at
it, it really started to make a lot of sense to us for us to um we're going through and rewiring a lot of those data closets. There's wires, looks like a bowl of spaghetti in some of our network closets. Um, we're rewiring all those so it'll be nice and tidy and clean. And our network switches right now will not
support the phones that we need to bring in as well. So it really that was a shift that we made. Um, we we were fairly thoughtful and strategic about making that shift as well. Another project that we are getting into right now is our device life cycle and repair. So because we
have one to one student devices, uh we are doing a few things new this year and one of those is this is our third year having uh that one to1 or universal device access program. So something we're doing new this year is we are collecting those devices from eighth graders before they take off for summer.
Um and then we will we will be reissuing nth graders new devices, the devices that we um talked about in our previous board meeting as well. And that's all again thanks to our 2021 technology levy funding. We have had some challenges
around repair for devices. And so our current reality is that we've been using a third party. So a student breaks a screen which um happens on occasion but not with you guys. Of course not. Yes. A screen or uh something happens with one of our devices physically. Most often
often it's a screen uh cracked. uh we've been outsourcing that to a third party uh and that has gotten fairly costly and there's a number of challenges around it. Um the primary third party we're using was in St. Paul. Um they wanted us to drop devices off and so on. So explain to the board what we have to do
for right now for repair. Yes. So right what we what we have been doing for repair right now is we've uh been loading devices into our some of our IT support techs have been taking them down to their office in St. Paul and driving their cars. So we're paying mileage driving cars down to St. And then the turnaround time has been
about two weeks to we ran into last summer about a few months or more. Uh which is really challenging when we have students in in our schools that need devices that work. And so we started looking at what could we do differently. So on the right side there I have a
couple of the things that we're doing right now around our device repair strategy. But we've um been piloting a student intern program at Stillwater Area High School. So, we have one student right now, uh, Colby, who's been an amazing, uh, helper, and we have him, um, supporting device repair, and it's
given us an opportunity to flush out what that program might look like to build a little bit more self-sustaining studentled device repair program at the high school. Then we also, as a reduction for us, we're adding an IT support technician to bring those repairs inhouse for the So, how's that a reduction? uh what we are paying for
repair right now is greater than what it would cost for us to hire that IT support technician with benefits right now and that also allows us to up our level of service as well on the support side. So excited about that. We have that posting out there right now. So, if you know of anyone that's live and then
we're also implementing a new help desk system. Right now, our our help desk system is um a little antiquated, maybe not as antiquated as like our phone system is, but our help desk system uh we have a new help desk system we're trying to put in place that will just allow us to
better serve staff quicker. And really looking forward to getting that off the ground. And cyber security and data protection is also a big topic for us this year. And maybe to talk through like probably the the bigger thing that
we've uh dealt with this year is the uh power school the third party power school student information system breach that we were part of and I do just to run through the timeline again. We on January 7th in the afternoon we got an email uh that there
was a a cyber incident with P school SIS. we were involved. Uh we mobilized our incident response team at that time um which includes a lot of things like a conversation with Dr. Funk, like a conversation with Christ to start
prepping our communication side as well. So it was it was January 7th we got that email in the afternoon. It was somewhere around like 1:30 or 2 a.m. we had uh the logs and a really good understanding of what data was involved uh on still letters in like of our student data and
staff and student staff and parent data. And we spent the 8th, January 8th, uh, evaluating that, going through our forensics on our end. Um, you know, a lot of things happened in that time. We heard a lot from Power School. U, we engaged our external cyber security firm
as well. And on the morning of January 9th, so that's about a day and a half later, we pulled our uh stakeholder team together and walked through um everything we knew at the time and communicated to families later that morning, early that afternoon, somewhere
in there. So, uh incident response planning and improvement is something that we are always focusing on when something happens, what do we do? And that power school breach was not our breach, not our systems. It was our data. And so we are you know we are still need to continue to be stewards of
that data. So as a part of that right now we do a lot of um ongoing review of our technical controls. We have a group of eight people that meet every other week um to walk through all the minutia of you know how often are we pushing updates out to devices and all all of that fun work. At the district level
we're u starting to focus on business continuity and communications. So we have, you know, Chris and I have been working together on building some templates for communication. So, you know, if something happens, we're we're ready to communicate as quick as we can.
And I look at that staff awareness and training. I did I brought some props that I had laid out ahead of time and I think overall when we talk staff awareness and training like we are in the we are in the people business and the like just to talk some data of the 195 K12 districts that reported breaches
last year almost all of those involve some sort of fishing email some sort of people clicking on something they shouldn't have. And so our focus right now is really to build that culture around safety and security where like yes, we do really want to encourage you to to let us know if you, you know, you might have accidentally clicked on
something or if you see a fishing email. And so what I dropped off at your table there, the um Swedish fish or the little puppet, we're starting to try to do some fun things to let people know we appreciate hearing about those emails even though they come in every day. And just to continue to build that culture
where that's an okay thing to talk about. And then we are um continuing to use that external. We have a cyber security firm on contract that we use that actually leads that uh work every other week as well. Yes. Should I wait or can I ask a quick
question now? Two just two quick questions. Um um for the fishing emails um is there any use right now of like um fishing campaigns? Yes, good question. So, we do have uh we
have two tools in place right now, but we are doing a number of ongoing fishing campaigns that include those reminders. So, we some sometimes it's not a real fishing email. It's, you know, like, hey, are you actually pig fishing us? Which we appreciate as well, but we do have Yeah, we have a We're getting pretty sophisticated. Um the other one
um I was just curious um with the expanded use of um uh AI by staff is that going to be sort of in is the training and awareness piece going to sort of encompass kind of
appropriate use of that and in terms of mainly data protection working with AI and the tool brisk we had and that was one of the first questions we had from a staff member was around um you know how how do I ensure safety of the data data I'm plugging into this. And so when we talk guidelines for staff around how
we're using AI, that's a big key piece of that around ensuring we're all clear on what data we are okay plugging in there and what data we are not okay plugging in there. Great. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. I also want to talk systems improvement of powers school.
So we have done a lot of work around uh power school and around building internal capacity to support power school in new ways. So we uh we've continued to do things like um
we're meeting at least monthly which started late August to improve the transportation and power school workflow data flow. Um, we are identifying new owners of products within P school. When we said powers school, like powers school encompasses a
lot of different pieces of our organization. And I when I explain student information system to people outside of K12, I explain it as like our my chart or health charting system. Like there are pieces of it that you might interface with as a parent or as a teacher and it might be a a really small
piece of what we do in that entire system. And so what we've been doing is really just support focusing on uh our implementation of that and supporting it into the future. And so a lot of that is around internal redundancy for roles and processes and then reviewing those processes.
Um large part of that as well is our parent facing tools. And I know I talk I talk with parents on a regular basis especially if they send in emails um loving or not liking our online platforms just to get a better understanding of what that looks like as well. We are launching a new um it's a tool
that will help us analyze data for all of our all of our systems all the different softwares use across the system as well. Do you have any questions for me on this? Is this where is this where we talked about like the data management of you know at the beginning of the year we had
a lot of issues. Are we staying does this mean we're kind of gonna stay on the path of power school and see if we can make it better instead of going outside and looking at other systems? Yes, that's a really good question. We've started to go through an entire business uh business process or business
systems review of all of our kind of all of our workflows within P school like and what we're identifying is that the platform is not the issue. It's our implementation of it. Okay. Um, I've heard consistently from a lot of folks across the district that the tool is is really doing exactly what we're telling
it to be, which is might not be what we need it to be doing. Okay. And so we're really focusing on building those workflows and building redundancy on our support staff so that we can help within all those aspects of P school. Okay. In the future,
great. But we haven't decided long term whether power school is going to be the continued option for us. I mean, we're we're trying to make the best of it right now. Okay. To determine, okay, is this is this the tool we need, right?
Um, and so I think the challenge we've, as as Eric just alluded to, we've had this nice big system with all these features, but we really either a have not known what these what to do
with these features or b maybe we've been telling these features to do things for us that we don't need to be doing and we've been doing something else with them. So I just think that's that's where we're at. But it is a as he stated a very
comprehensive program, but it's also very expensive. Okay. So I think the ultimate jury's out on, you know, where we are long term with power school. Okay. I mean, just to echo that along with that, I I do think it's important to
hear like we're not sticking with it just because we're like locked in. We're sticking with it, right? Because we believe we can stabilize and build those processes. and wanted to see how that works. Yeah. Yes. Just kind of to follow up on the same thing. Um are is powers school partnering with us in terms of
helping us better understand like where was the disconnect between getting this wonderful system and then not using it properly? Are we getting support? Yes, we are getting support. I think when it a lot of what you're asking may be around transportation as well and
last fall I I mean I can speak to that a little bit. I know we are doing a full transportation briefing at in two weeks at our board meeting here later in May as well. So we are getting support from Power School. We've had um a lot of leadership calls with Power School as well and had a lot of real honest
conversations around like we we need help to make this work for Still Water for this to be viable in the future and they've been responsive. Okay. Okay. That's good to hear. Thank you. The other piece we are continuing to work on is our parent experience. And I
I think one of the first things I want to recognize is that this Google single sign on for families uh it's a sometimes a new process for for folks. Um but understanding that Google single sign on like what we provide to families is a Google account and we haven't been as
forward with that in the past or um we found ways that we could communicate better with that. So, as we look at like onboarding new families, um our communications team, we've had a lot of stuff working on updating the support that we provide to families. We've been doing a lot of community engagement nights on site to help people get logged
in, help them navigate the parent portal. Um we're continuing to improve those workflows. I know we made some adjustments to like the icon and landing pages. And I think part of our reality is we do a lot to make things feel like they're one tool within Power Schools umbrella, but they may be like three or
four or five different tools within that. Like our fee payment systems, we use a lot of different fee payment systems, whether it's for activities, whether it's for field trips. And so we we bring those into powers school and um some of those are maybe not what we need
long term. And that's what we're trying to do right now is assess what tools what would it take to move those tools if there is something else out there. So share your concern with the single sign on for families. What does that mean? What explain that to the board. So we have like we provide families one Google
Google account so they can log into all of their Stillwater things. Uh if you a lot of other districts uh we would provide you maybe eight 10 or 12 different usernames or passwords as a parent. And so uh Still Water has done a lot of work to simplify that. And I I do
believe that that I hear from parents that that adds some complex complexity because they you know you log into a Google account and it takes over your Chrome browser. And I don't know that we that we um we fully have that flushed out in a
way that we could we could serve all the tools to families on a clean dashboard right now without bringing them into that Google account. So everything we have right now is tied to a Google account to make it easy for families to log in. And then I talk with parents and they say, "Well, this is actually kind of harder to log in." So, so if you're logged in using
the district's Google single sign on, okay, you can log into district platforms. But what if you want to check your Gmail or go to your Google Docs? Yes, if you try to go to Gmail from there, it will say Gmail is not
available because we don't provide Gmail to families. And so that's like like Dr. funk mentioned some of the complexity that we're working to navigate. So, we're solving a problem by isolating you from the rest of the Google world. Okay. Got it. That's what I' that's what I
wanted the board to hear. Yes. I wanted to talk as well around collaboration community partners as a whole. So, uh, we've been working with our career tech and career pathways staff at the high school to flush out an IT pathway. One small outcome of that is
our student technology helper that we're piloting right now. Doing a lot of work right now to partner with local Washington County generally get to know people around here. Just had lunch last week with our Washington County technology lead, city still water technology lead. uh as a leadership team
with our technology department. We also participate and have hosted a statewide technology leaders collaboration and we also have been working a lot with uh MNIT or Minute which is the division of IT services at the state and we've been working with them on mostly cyber and so
they have a K12 cyber navigator and they provide support. So, uh, Power School breach, they came in afterwards and hosted like three meetings a week for three or four weeks to meet with all the districts impacted, um, help us work together. And so, we've been leaning a
lot on Minute as well as an external, uh, party to provide us cyber security guidance. And then finally, I wanted to talk a little bit about artificial intelligence, AI. And so this these two slides that I have on AI are a review for you, but I want did want to revisit
that right now we are um we're in process and we are looking to um look at the positive ways we can use AI for good. So we know that there are some ways that can save us time. It can automate processes. Uh we just had I mentioned we just had that first workshop yesterday uh with we
had about 36 staff total on that uh for an hour working through our initial pilot of a tool called Brisk that we are um piloting this year. And so as a part of that for both staff and students we want to develop some guidance and expectations around how we could use AI formally as a district and then provide
to professional development and training to staff. And our timeline on that is uh this spring we're piloting that tool brisk. Uh this summer we will be working on developing kind of some temp sample guidance or template for guidance and then during back to school workshop week
we will have our initial first all staff intro to AI and then we'll be providing another update to you I'm guessing this fall around where that's at and the fun work that we're doing. Can I ask um will students be involved in that
like how to develop for students? Sorry. Like we're gonna ask the AI. Yeah. Well, I mean because it would be nice to have that student voice as a part of that process like how would they like to use AI? How do they maybe use it now that um
we don't or do know about? And then you know how can we kind of work with them? I know we attended an AMSD presentation and it sounded like they really did engage students in that process. So um yeah just a plug to I would love to know to have their involvement in that. Yes,
I know we do plan to include students as a part of that. Um for our initial pilot we are giving staff some intro to kind of what is AI so we can all have a level understanding of some of the basic you know AI prompting skills and then we will have a team of people that get together next year school year to
develop that the expectations and guidance that includes students. That's exciting. Yeah. A lot of tech information. Can you scroll back to your earlier slide, the organizational chart one, and then I just got a few questions that kind of
So, under the director of technology, that's yourself. Um, and you got all these spots below you, is that a person each one of those, are there seven media technicians as well as six? Is that like one at every school or are these all
full individual full-time people? Good question. So, our media technicians are dedicated to our elementary media schools. So they are full-time. That was a move made this June, I believe, to move them from roughly six hours to about seven and a half hours. So they
would be full-time. Okay. And then our IT support technicians are our field staff. So uh media support technicians are the staff who are running our media centers at the elementary level. So we don't have media paras at that level. We have the media technicians. And then our IT support technicians are uh a lot
different role that focuses on technology support. So at the elementary level we would have like one that covers our IT support tech that covers Oak Park also covers Aptton Lakeland and Anderson Elementary. And are those people busy
all day you know with the tech issues as well as the family help desk one? Is that person busy all day every day? Yes. Okay. Some days I mean I could imagine. Yeah. Okay. So then moving along as I wrote my questions down, uh I might look like an
idiot here. Um you say our phone system is antiquated. Is are we talking the phone system or is there something more to that? I mean do people even use phones anymore as part of a wired system? Yes. Very good question. So we are talking phones like the corded phone
you pick up from the wall. Um in K12 we like having a physical phone in the classroom is something that uh we believe will be consistent into the future from a safety security standpoint. We do use phones and radios between the phones and radios. Like that's how life communicates across the
school building. And so our phone system right now is it's a a fairly old phone system. We can't I'll share we like we can't source new phones right now. Um we are sourcing used handsets anywhere we can because we can't buy replacement
handsets when they die. We're doing a lot of work right now to keep our phone system alive and we and we will into this. And is that something we need to keep alive? A wired system? We need it alive until we can replace it. So, and so they're looking
at you want to I mean voice over internet you I mean talk you can talk through what you're looking at potential new systems. Yes. I I think what you're getting as is a valid question. Do we still need phones in the classroom? And so as we've looked at like how do our classrooms operate when it comes to
substitutes being in in our buildings every day that phone is still the primary way that we communicate with most of our classrooms whether it's an emergency whether we need to track down a student. Uh we do still need phones. That said all of our new phone systems come with a soft phone feature as well. So every like handset or number we have
has a like a new age or normal uh soft phone where you can make calls from your computer or an app on your phone or that sort of thing. And then um when a student breaks their screen on the phone and it's sent out for two weeks, do we can we just switch
switch them out? I mean I imagine we might have extras that just get switched out and the old one gets fixed and goes to the next person or Yes, that is the model that we have had where we like if your Chromebook is broken, you go down to a media center, we will check out a new one to you temporarily a loner. Uh,
I think what the challenge is when we have that many devices out, let's say it's a month or two of repairs, that gets to be a pretty large number of devices that we now need to have on hand and be replacing into the future, like a few hundred devices in order for us to be able to check out
moners that entire time. So, uh, I think bringing bringing repairs in house will allow us to do that a lot more effectively. Sometimes same day, sometime next sometimes next day. It's a lot quicker and more cost effective for us to do that. All right. And then AI, which was at the end of your presentation. Is AI something that's
going to I may have asked a similar question previously. Uh is AI something that's going to cost us money or is it something that's going to save us money as we put it all together? Both. Uh so AI tools are not free by any means. Uh
AI will give us the ability though to be a lot more efficient in in what we do. uh whether it's a lot of our administrative tasks um analyzing data and AI can help us do a lot of different things that we spend people time doing not that it will replace them but it will allow us to spend a lot less time
in some of those mundane tasks that we have as a start I think on the learning side there's a lot of opportunity as well for us to explore ideas you know explain ideas differently but even just from like an operational day-to-day help me explain this in a different way or change the reading level of this AI can
help us do a lot of those things and and there's the cost. Okay. Thanks. Any other questions? Yeah. Um, Chair Sherman kind of mentioned about the bringing in student voice, which I think would also be great. Um, I think also just from a
parent education standpoint, you know, making sure that, you know, that digital citizenship is being reinforced at home. So, I think as we have these opportunities around sleep education and cell phone, you know, having maybe some AI type of education for parents, um, I think would be really helpful as well.
Um, so maybe something just to keep in mind, but um, I guess as you, you know, a lot of really good information in the presentation as you look at this next fiscal year, what, uh, what maybe excites you most from the technology and what maybe, you know, keeps you up at night that worries you?
Good question. I think what excites me most is, you know, I have our organizational chart up here right now. Like I do have the opportunity to work with a very skilled, very exceptional technology team. um in the way they work. They're responsive. They are incredibly resourceful and curious
people. I'm very excited about that and also excited uh about our network switch project. I mean, it's very hopeful to me that like these messy spaghetti bowl network closets and network wires everywhere, everyone seems bothered by that. That's a good thing uh because we want those neat and tidy and I'm very
excited as uh for that project. I think what keeps me up at night is um it's you know our cyber cyber security outside outside threats. I think we have a lot of a lot of pieces in place. We do a lot of work around um incident response and I think it's something we will need to continue to do into the future as well
because it K12 still is seen as kind of that low hanging fruit so to speak or traditionally hasn't had as much like compared to a healthcare like we have not had the cyber resources that a lot of other industries have. So um like the segment or the share of cyber threats
K12 still seems really big to me and so that's what keeps me up at night. Yeah. Thank you. Anyone else? Can I just make one more comment? Um the cyber security piece, that was my question for you. Um first of all, thank you for the information about our cyber
security and for how well you guys handled the power school breach and really kept us um updated both as a board and as a parent. I got all the parent emails, too. So um it was really helpful to to see and hear exactly what was going on. Um and I felt like it was a very transparent process. So thank you
for that. Um, and kind of my question on that, now that we've gone through this, are there any kind of key learnings or things that you are doing either differently or highlighting how we can better protect ourselves in the future? It's a really good
question. Immediate, I think there was some short-term and some long-term. short term where we had a number of people on our internal technology team who were super helpful in the forensics and data gathering side of things that were not on that initial response team because their role was not technical but they maybe happened to be a teacher that
knew a lot about spreadsheets and were were able to be really really helpful in the long term that has turned into um I mentioned some of this work coming up at a district level like we um are starting to talk through these tabletop exercises where we walk through like here's what an event looks like we will have that
facilitated by our VCSO as well for us to better experience and just talk through like what what are we going to do? Let's look at our plan. Does our plan have everything it needs to have and um just continue to improve that because it's it's definitely I think when you talk about it's not a not if
it's a when and so we know that we need to be really on our response. Great. Thanks. Stay humble I guess would be the long term approach to that is to just continue to improve our instant response plan. Any other
questions? My Sorry, guys. Great. Thank you, Eric. I appreciate it. All right. Um, next is our second read for policy 606.5. Paul, please take it away. I got
I gotcha. I gotcha. All right. So, we So, we're here uh and good evening. Uh we're here to um to do the second reading of three um of the um policy 606.5 library materials. And as a
reminder, this is uh this will be a new policy to our board policies and it's mandatory. Um also just as a kind of framing a little bit uh you know the purpose of this policy is to provide direction regarding the initial selection of library materials and the
review of library materials when removal has been requested. Um, I'd just like to highlight there's one change um from the first reading uh language change and you'll find that in section three
um subp part D and it has to do with the donations component. Um so the the previous um policy in the first reading read no donations the district will not accept donated materials for inclusion
in its libraries. We are presenting tonight a change to that language as outcome of the discussion from the last board meeting. And so it now reads, "No donations. The district will not accept donated materials for inclusion in its libraries
unless the material materials are already part of the existing library collection. So that's the only language change uh in the policy. Um there were a couple during the the last board meeting as some feedback. Um
and I thought I'd just take a moment um and and share those with you if in case there's questions or things that you would like to have the um policy committee review further. Um the policy committee is meeting on Thursday, so there's an opportunity between now and
the third reading um for the committee to to look at anything that might need attention. Uh the first question came up uh regarding in the definition section um section two um and it's part D in the
definitions where there's a definition included for the term obscene um and so the question was why like some of the other LUID and um some of the other components weren't included. So, I did have an opportunity to
um talk with Mick Wsberger, our attorney and the author of this um the basics of this uh policy. Um and he shared and I'll just read it. He said, "I defined obscene because that term has been the subject of a significant amount of
litigation. To avoid litigation and controversy, the definition I used tracks the US Supreme Court's definition of obscene." He went on to say,"I did not define vulgar or leuid because those terms tend
to have a more common accepted meaning." Um he said that if there was if the board did want to add those two as definitions, he would say he shared that um you could definitely define them if you thought it would be helpful. And then he thought we could just define
those terms using a dictionary definition. there's nothing um you know as specific um for that. So um I would say I would re I my position would be that there's not a need to do that. Um but certainly having an
understanding of why he did include obscene um is helpful. Um the the second uh question came up um has to do with section 4 um section uh subsection
H and um that has to do with the review criteria when the review committee is is looking at deciding if a removal of a specific library material is uh required or or suggested. Um, and it was the last component of that which states under
three that the material is objectively inaccurate as a whole. And I think there's a question around the historical context of information. Um, and so I I think my recommendation or our recommendation um would be that um that
really I think that I I think that statement is fine the way it's written. I I think it does imply an analysis of a historical context um just the plain reading of that language. So um I think that's where that is certainly could be reconsidered if if anyone felt um they
would want that. And the third component was looking at um potentially at the at the completion of the review committee, you know, should there be some kind of a timeline um indicated within the policy? And I think looking at the policy closely, it you know it indicates that
there are nine we we put a limit of nine reviews per year which kind of coincides with about one a month. I think again it's applied that you know to keep on that schedule about a month period would be the expected time. I think there might be depending on what's going on and what the material is there could be
a little flex that they could be done quicker or maybe a little bit longer. Um but I think that does kind of give a basics of a timeline uh for a year's amount of work. So, um, not sure if that's really required to add language regarding
that. Um, so with that, I think that kind of concludes the review for the second reading. Anyone have questions or comments? Yes. Yeah. Well, thank you to the policy committee for your continued work. So, I
know another busy meeting probably this week. Um, and Paul, thank you. So, um, and I apologize for not setting this uh beforehand. Um but in regards to uh was that 4E just the appointment of review
committee. Um my takeaway from you know having kind of a a more open-ended committee um representation is based on probably availability and staying within that probably a timely review process. Is that kind of an accurate reason for
that? you know, if you're doing one a month and obviously you can't get everyone in. You I guess, you know, from a from my standpoint, just making sure a consistent process is always followed, you know, if it's, you know, if there's only, you know, two people versus having four or five, you know, just making sure that it's sustainable and repeatable and
just making sure from an exposure standpoint for the district that it's being met. Yeah. So, um, but I would guess that would my understanding is probably just based on being timely and but it's still as prudent as possible. Mhm. And just providing that flexibility.
But I guess that would just be my only feedback. So um nothing I don't think has to change, but I just wanted to make it make note of that. Absolutely. Um and this will be one of those policies I think that has some procedural documents linked into it much like our um some of
our other policies that are really community facing. So we kind of talked about that in policy a little bit. Great. Any other questions? Thank you, Paul. Thank you. Okay, we have one more action item
tonight. I apologize, you guys. It's been a long day and wow. Um, okay. So, welcome, Chris. I'm going to set this up as painfree as possible. The board knows I I made the decision to
pull this item simply because as Chris is going to talk about today, we had several MOAs related to the special meeting that we had on the 17th. Um, as a result of those special meetings, we had established deadlines
and we the ones that were on the consent agenda fell within that process. This one fell outside that deadline process. So myself and Andrew felt it was only fair to bring this to the full board because we might have questions about
why it deviated from the process um and because it just didn't feel fall within that time frame of that established deadline that we may as a board just want to have a little bit of a conversation. So I will turn it over to Chris for some detailed information and
then we can have a discussion. All right. Um thank you um board members. Nice to see you again tonight. Um so we um after we had our insurance committee meeting on um a special meeting, well let me go back one more
day. So Wednesday uh the 16th of April, we had an insurance committee meeting where we shared survey results um with the actual insurance committee. Um and then um we um convened a special meeting for the board um and you were all present for that to um um review the
renewal material and the survey information and then the board took action. Um the following Monday um we Marie and I had a meeting with Tony um and we shared the MOA um with the SCA and answer questions, talked about the
rates and the percentages and all of that um and shared the deadline um for that. we talked about what would happen um I don't know that we talked about what would happen if the if the deadline wasn't met at that meeting but we did share that information and then later in that evening um at negotiations with the
Perez we shared uh the MOA with them as well and talked through it um then on Tuesday the 22nd in the morning I shared the um MOA with the custodial group principles and nutrition services
um on Wednesday Um, I sent reminder emails to the, um, SCPA, um, answered questions for the nutrition folks, um, and also answered, um, a number of questions from the custodial unit. So, uh, he and I went back and forth quite a
bit. Um, he had some questions about a particular paragraph. I even talked to Trevor about it, our council. Um so then um later that day on Wednesday I did receive acknowledgement um from the local 70 the custodians that they would
be signing the agreement. I also received a signed uh agreement from the principal's unit that day. Um so Thursday, um I had sent emails to both nutrition
and to the paras um and we talked about um they um nutrition was was looking at getting me an answer on Friday. So then I started to explain why we need the answer on Thursday and so if they were going to delay um what that impact would
be for their group. Um and so um by later in the evening on Thursday then I received uh confirmation email confirmation. So no no signed agreements but just the confirmation that we had asked for that that both the par union
and the nutrition services folks were going to sign the MOA. Um, so at about um 8 o'clock at night um I emailed uh Tony or texted Tony um looking for an update, let him know the
other groups had signed. Um and he said he would have an answer to me at 7:40 on Friday morning, which is again past the deadline. Um at points throughout this uh these days, Tony had stopped in. We had talked about what the um outcome
would be if um the SCEA didn't sign and didn't sign in time and that meant that we would load the rates um for the insurance based on what their current contract terms say. So that means that they would see when they logged into the plan source system that their premium
was going to be $649 a month instead of $498. Um, so when they didn't make the deadline, we loaded the information, um, as we had said we would, um, and then sent out an email to notify folks that,
you know, this is what happened. This is what you're going to see. Um, we also informed folks that if the if we didn't get the change in in time, it didn't mean that there could never be a change. It just meant that all of open enrollment then would have incorrect
rates because we can't change them once open enrollment starts. Okay. Um then um on Friday later in the day um Tony stopped by. He said he did not have an answer yet. He thought he they were close but um his team had not um come to
agreement yet. And then on Wednesday, April 30th um Tony stopped by my office to sign the MOA. Okay. And so that's with the knowledge then that the rates were locked in. Okay. So those rates are that's not changing. It's not changing in plan source during
open enrollment. Okay. Thank you. Okay. So that just kind of walks through the process for the board's knowledge as to um as just as to the process. So your recommendation is to approve. My recommendation is to approve. Um I you
know I I'm not sure what you know what the specific holdup was. I think there are some folks that are on the negotiations committee that perhaps don't have as deep of an understanding of the insurance process as perhaps others. Um but I also would not want to
um risk putting you know 600 teachers um at such a high rate of insurance when they had the option um and when you know they eventually agreed to it. I I don't want to mess that up for 600 teachers. Right. Yes. Dr. Funk,
I concur. I think uh you know the recommendation from the administration is to approve um allowing the uh u MOA this evening. Uh the concern I have from a organizational perspective
is this. All right, we have a number of bargaining units in this district. every other bargaining unit met the deadline. And you know, a deadline is supposed to be a deadline. And my concern is is twofold. One, we have a
group that didn't meet the deadline. And two, now the rates for that group are being loaded in and they are being loaded in at a different rate than what these people are going to end up paying. And that creates not only confusion
within the membership but also creates challenges internally for our payroll system. Suddenly we have okay we're loading into our insurance program
two different rates and now we're going to have to adjust and go back and figure that out after the fact. So there's there's a method to why we called you in and at a special board meeting and made, you know, asked the board to show up at
7:30 in the morning so that we could get these processes in place so that we could meet the needs of our staff. And um I think that it's important that uh
um you know you have an HR director and I who I support here who who wants to do the right thing and uh um you know work with our teachers and and all of our employees um to uh to meet their needs
in this tough um insurance environment that we live in. Uh but we have processes that we utilize. And maybe we haven't always followed through on those processes here in Still Water, but under this administration, this is what we're our expectation is. So, I recommend
approval. Okay. Yes. Um, let's if you have any additional questions. So, Director Theelander. Um, so yeah, U Chris, thank you for your work and with all the bargaining units. So, I know it's a lot of time and effort. So, many thanks to you and your your team. Uh,
just two questions. um any financial exposure to the district from this? And then B uh are you feeling confident that um you know the teachers will in in the uh will have a good idea of like this is the real rate um and nothing's going to
be lost in translation. Yeah. So first to your first question, no there isn't a financial impact. Um we when we talked when we met before we we did have to pay more to get our open enrollment to run on the 5th, but that didn't have anything to do with the MOA. Um so it doesn't have anything to do
with you know the dealing with different rates. Um there wasn't an additional charge for that. Um um and then as far as the um any confusion um you know part of the um part of the conversation that that I had with Tony is what happens if
you don't make it? And so he knew going in that if we didn't make the deadline that he was going to get a lot of questions because people are going to see different rates and all of that. And so I mean that's part of the natural consequence of not having met this particular deadline is you know questions that came to us were
redirected to you know why is my rate this and why is my rate that and you know we sent those um to the leadership team to help answer those questions. Um, so I think since then, I know the SEA has sent out at least two different emails, um, explaining first of all,
what's what's the increase in percentages and then more recently, you know, what are the rates really going to look like? We just haven't sent out anything official until all of you okay have um so there's no there's no understanding
that like the district is responsible for for the increase that they were because they were communicated that in a email all staff email that the board also got and so I just don't want it to be coming across to staff that we
made we singled out a bargaining unit with increased costs. So that to your knowledge that's not the understanding. Okay. That's not the understanding. Not to my knowledge. Okay. Any other questions? Yes. So we're going
to be voting on this and it has been signed by the teachers or the teachers representatives and you're recommending it. Yes. Okay. George, thank you. Um thank you for that timeline. That was super helpful. Um,
one piece that I still am a little bit unclear on, was there any attempt um to request an extension or an acknowledgement of why more time was needed for this particular bargaining unit to get this done because it looks like there's a good I don't know four or
five day maybe six day lag between when it was due and when it was actually signed. So, how was the communication in during that time and how can we improve things maybe going forward if there wasn't much? Um, so Tony does pop in from time to time and so like I said
when he popped in on Friday, he let me know that, you know, he was meeting with his team that he thought it was going to go through that morning and it didn't. Um, he was a little bit s he seemed a little bit surprised. Um, but after that conversation, um, we did not connect
again until Wednesday when he came by to sign it. I didn't Nobody asked for an extension. That wasn't part of the conversation. Okay. No explanation for needing more time other than just needing more time. People just needed to review. Yeah, that was needed more time. Okay. Okay. I mean, I guess I'm a little
frustrated that it took so much extra time. Um, and especially since the board was called for an urgent meeting early in the morning. Um, so I felt like that urgency was well established um for us to show up and and get this done. And the other bargaining agreements went
through. I mean, you definitely did a good job communicating with them as well. So, I just I'm not I'm having trouble understanding why that urgency was not um followed by one particular bar bargaining group. Yeah. I'm and I don't expect you to have an answer for that, but or just my own
frustration. Thank you. Okay. Two questions. Um um and this will probably be knowledge I gain over time. Were there weren't were there there weren't differences between the different bargaining units? So it was kind of all the same. Okay. So that
that um and then this is a pretty kind of a typical turnaround expectation to pro provide the MOA on it's a little bit unusual. Um no doubt um you know we called the special meeting of the board. I mean everything was on an accelerated
timeline and so when I sent the MOA you know I said look this is a really tight turnaround and apologized for that but you know it was a reality and it was it was well explained when we passed it out. That's a great question. I thought
that was you know to give you my life experience this typically typically bargaining agreements have language in within the agreement which happens for what we call year three.
Okay. So year one and two are named in the contract. Year three is an unknown. Year three is the next contract in the future. And so most of the time bargaining units have language that says
something similar to our MOA, which okay, if there is an insurance increase, the district will contribute X amount towards the increase. So you're not having to you're not having to sit down and create a new MOA every two years
when you've got this year three on the horizon. Um so that's unique about uh the Still Water situation. We had this something similar happen two years ago and again it was very similar to what we're we're talking about right now. Um,
we actually didn't understand, Marie and I did not understand that they had a system in place where the district would just automatically increase the contribution to 8515. Um, and so we actually had to go
in and create MOAS so that we had some documentation to allow us to do that. Um so it's it's unique about Still Water and our hope is um when we sit down and collaboratively work with our bargaining units that we will be able to uh um
insert some sort of language like this so we won't have to rely on these anymore. And I think in that in that instance, you know, two years ago, obviously I wasn't here then either, but you know, there was a whole lot of money that had to be moved back and forth because, you know, teachers and all
staff ended up paying a much higher premium until that MOA was set. And then, you know, we had to, you know, refund money back and it was kind of a it was it was a big mess. And people really got very excited about, you know, what they were seeing taken out of their
paychecks. And the the other thing that has delayed the uh um the insurance approval at the board level this time is this whole discussion around GLPS. And so again, we wanted to
to do our due diligence, survey the staff, and that that slowed um the timeline down a little bit, too. Um so that's why we had this acceleration at the end of it. Yes. I don't really have a question as
much as a comment. I would I would want to approve this because I wouldn't want teachers to to suffer any ill consequences. Um but I don't like the idea of setting precedents like this where we're saying, "Oh, okay. Sorry." Because as we move
forward with negotiations negotiations this year and moving forward, you know, it it's politics and it's power and it's it's not good for relationships with between, you
know, the district and and the bargaining units. I don't like it. So it it it you know we're we're trying to operate you know we we came for a special meeting operating in you know good faith trying to make sure that we can we can accommodate everybody and
then and do what's best for for the district and for for the for the the staff and and then you know to have this happen you know we're now we're making exceptions. I don't love that, but I wouldn't have
it any other way either. Thank you. Any other Sorry, guys. Any other comments or um I I feel similarly um I'm gonna make a motion to approve this and um when I
make this motion I think that it's with um I want to state that I have a lot of gratitude for the bargaining units that were able to um meet the deadline. I understand that um the process kind of deviated. It was quite a discussion around the
GLP1s. Um and so um hopefully this is something that we can not I I share your concerns on the president. Um and so hopefully we can move forward figure out a way to improve the process so that we can um be all responsive because right
now thankfully this doesn't have a cost um or a implication on paychecks but it could have very easily gone a different direction. So, um I think that we want to move into this negotiation process with our bargaining units that are up
for this um spring in really good faith and with um a desire to partner. So, with that, I'm going to make the motion to approve this. And I appreciate the discussion because I do think it just needed to understand there were questions at the board level as to what happened. So, I I appreciate your cander
here today, Chris, and just coming and making the recommendation that you and the your team have made. And thank you to your team because I'm sure there was extra pro like work involved and so I just want to thank your team and others and payroll and elsewhere that maybe were impacted by this. Um and we'll just
do better moving forward. So thank you. Um is there a second? Okay. Director Lowour with the second. All those in favor of approving approving the SCEA MOA raise your hand and say I I opposed. Great. It passes. Thank you. Um, we're
gonna move into close session. Can I have somebody else? Yeah. Can I have Katie read this? I don't There's not a problem, right? It's even less painful to listen to. All right. Um, to pursue or pursuant of Minnesota statute 13D.03b, 03B. The
governing body of a political employer may by a vote of majority in a public meeting decide to hold a closed meeting to consider strategy for labor negotiations, including negotiation strategies or developments or discussions um and review of labor labor
negotiation proposals conducted pursuant to uh sections 173A.01 to 170 oh sorry 179A.01 to 9 179A.2 25. So, can I get a motion to adjurnn to
close session? Great. And I'll second. Thank you for reading that. Yep. Okay. All in favor? And then all in favor? I I Any opposed? No. Thank you. Opposed. All right. Motion carries. Tell your mom
I I have seen her like you start.