Good evening and welcome everyone. The time is now 7:01. The Visetta Public Schools Board of Education regular meeting for Monday, September 8th, 2025 will please come to order. Will the clerk please call the role? Heidi Kedar
here. Sheila Prior here. Sarah Johansson here. Harris Bend here. Valentina Ays here. Dan Janestra here. Milan Sahony present. Chase Anderson
here. Thank you. We have a quorum. Please rise for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance 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. Thank you and welcome everyone on a beautiful, beautiful fall evening. I hope it it stays like this through the winter. Okay. If you wish to speak during the
audience opportunity to address the board, please fill out a form placed at the back of the room and hand it over to our district admin assistant, Amy, sitting to my right in the far right corner there. The first item on our agenda is the approval of the agenda and
the consent agenda items. Consent agenda items are considered routine in nature and will be enacted by one motion. There will be no separate discussion of these items unless a board member or a citizen so request in which event the
item will be removed as a consent agenda item and addressed. The consent agenda items are listed in the materials. The recommended action is to approve the agenda and the consent agenda items. Is there a motion? I so move.
Is there a second? Second. Moved and seconded. Will the PL clerk please take a roll call vote? Sheila Prior, yes. Heidi Kedar, yes. Valentina Ays, yes. Dan Janestra, yes. Sarah Johansson,
yes. Harris Bend, yes. Milan Sahony, yes. We have an agenda. Thank you. Right. The next item on our agenda is reports from organizations. And I would like to invite Rachel Lynn, student council vice president from
Visetta High School to please come forward. Congratulations, Rachel, on being elected vice president. Welcome. Hello. Okay. Good evening, Superintendent Anderson, members of the board, and everybody else gathered here
tonight. I hope you're all having a great start to your week. Let me start by briefly introducing myself. My name is Rachel Yen and as a student body vice president, I will be providing monthly reports to the school board on the Weisetta High School experience. I will keep these reports brief as I know the
board has wonderful work to get to. With the school year kicking off, our wonderful link crew spent the first day of school welcoming roughly a thousand freshmen to our high school, bringing our total student enrollment count to around 4,000. 130ish link leaders gave the freshman
guided tours around the high school to help them acclimate to the building. With homecoming a month away, our student council is busy grappling with weighty tasks like orchestrating the school dance, gathering concessions for our block party, raising donations for tackle cancer, and determining which
pack of balloons give us the best value for our book, and it's always the Amazon one. In addition, I am honored to announce that I will be serving as the Minnesota State Representative to the National Student Council, and I'm excited to bring the incredible work and advocacy that we do locally to the
national stage. Other organizations are in eager preparation for the year ahead as well. Wisetta Theater has eagerly begun assembling their musicals, Anything Goes, and The Visit. Pre-professional clubs like DECA, BPA, and HOSA are soon
to host informational meetings for prospective members. Our marching band and showstoppers performed at JJ Hill Days. Our National Honor Society is in the process of organizing a blood drive and the Trojan Tribune, our high school newspaper, has just launched their back-
to school issue. It's always amazing to to hear how actively engaged our student body is within its own community. Lastly, we can't forget about sports. The girls cross country team dominated at their St. Olaf meet, winning first place by 100 points. Girls JV and
varsity tennis are currently undefeated. And boys varsity soccer just defeated Hopkins 2. While our school year involves, students have an incredible number of ways to gain support and get involved within our school community. Thank you. Have a great evening and I can't wait to share
more updates next month. Thank you, Rachel. And congrat Hang, hang on, hang on, hang on once. Hang on. Rachel, Rachel, can you please Thank you. I was going to
congratulate you on being elected or n I don't know, appointed something, but you are on the national students council as a Minnesota representative. So, congratulations on that. So, now I'm going to ask my board colleagues if they have any comments or
questions for you. Yes, Sarah, I do. Congrats. We um have a history with Natsuko and it's super fun and so congrats to that. Um and then my question for you is tell us about the Trojan Tribune. And so last year I think
they said order for like outside the high school that there was maybe a QR code to do. How do we how do can people outside the high school read it and if so how? Yes. So, I believe the Children Tribune isn't exactly affiliated with the high school, but they do provide um seasonal
reports on happenings within our school district. You can access it through their Instagram. I know they provide QR code um QR codes to their issues and so I highly recommend Yeah. everybody read it. I'm not exactly sure what their Instagram um account is, but I know it
is accessible through there. Okay. Thank you. Yes. Anyone else? All right. Now, now you may go. Thank you, Rachel. Again, thank you. Hopefully, we'll see you again next month. Yes. Thanks a lot. Okay. The next item on the agenda is
recognitions. Hold on. Jeez, I'm to read the Are you going to read the MSBA thing? Good evening, everybody, and welcome to our school board meeting. I think you might be present on the night when we've set an all-time new record for attendance. uh in this facilities for
board meeting. So great to see all of you and welcome and thanks for joining us. Um it's always my honor at our regular school board meetings to convene the recognitions portion of the of the meeting. And tonight we are recognizing our very own school board. And while I
read the script, perhaps I'll just invite them to feel free to sit right where they're at. And then after I read the script, we'll come down here, take a photo, and then uh provide an opportunity for uh our chair or any others to uh share a few thoughts if
they would like to do so. Probably out of the sake of convenience, feel free after the photo to make your way back to your uh seat if you would. So, I'd like to share the following with you in regard to our school board. September is Minnesota School Board Recognition Month, a time to honor the dedicated men
and women who serve as the guiding light for student success in our public schools throughout the state. And right here in Weisetta, school board members serve countless hours to ensure our students have access to highquality learning, extracurricular opportunities, and a public education system that helps
them thrive. These public servants are chosen by their communities to govern local schools, manage multi-million dollar budgets, and make decisions that directly impact the future of our students and families. School board members don't seek the spotlight, but they play a critical civic role. They
help set the vision for our schools, shape educational priorities, and make tough decisions, often after extensive deliberation and study. Their leadership touches every corner of our school system. Their efforts can often go unseen, but their impact is felt in
every classroom, every program, and every student success story. This month and every month, we encourage our community to say thank you to these dedicated individuals. Their service makes local control of public education possible, and their leadership helps
shape the future of our schools and communities. We proudly recognize the members of the Weisetta School Board for their service and commitment. And I'll list their names and years of service. Sarah Johansson, 12 years. Milan Sahony,
four years. Heidi Kedar, four years. Sheila Prior, three years. Paris Bendy, two years. Valentina Ayes, two years. And Dan Janestra, two years. Would you please join me in a round of applause for
[Applause] And just a moment off script, if I may, I would just like to also uh say thanks to uh the seven of you for uh your dedicated efforts, for uh all of the
work that you put in, not only in preparing for each of our two school board meetings, but they also serve on several committees and are involved in our strategic partner uh groups such as uh district 287 and um others which are
very critical and important to uh the overriding success of our school district. So uh it's not everybody that gets seven bosses but superintendants too. So anyway, I appreciate all that you do and uh if you would please uh come forward, we'll take a photo and
then I'll invite you to come back and if you would like to make a few comments then you can do that. We do the photo first or the comments first. We can do it either way. Let's do the comment first and then do the picture and then we'll go through the retirey recognition. Sure.
But I just want to say happy Minnesota schoolboard recognition month everyone. Uh please make any comments if you feel feel you know feel so. Yes B. Yeah I just wanted to take this opportunity and thank you all. Um it is
an honor to be sitting here amongst you know my peers as well as the community members. um last year and a half uh the school board meeting when the schools, teachers, students when they come and present that is really the spotlight and
that actually shows you know the work the efforts that you all put in. Uh yes we are here uh but again thank you for all your help and support who actually make it happen on the ground. So again thank you all. Yes, I'll second that really from the bottom of my heart personally. Thank you so
much for all your dedication to our students um your colleagues and our community as a whole. you know, Soffman said that when we, you know, made the decision to run for the school board, um, there was maybe some um, you know, uncertainty as how do you, you know, navigate this? But I think what we've
found is that we campaign in poetry, but we govern in pros. That was said once and, um, to see the dedication of our students, our teachers, our staff is so remarkable and to be part of a community. I've lived in Wisetta schools nearly my whole life and it's such a wonderful place to be. So to everyone
who has made our district's story possible, thank you. and um we look forward to no doubt countless years of future success. Thank you so much. Okay. So, I just want to just say just one one thing. I I feel very very honored and
privileged that the community uh put me in this seat in the service of students. This is the best job I've ever had by far. So, thank you everyone. All right, let's go to the side there by
the podium. If you could please join me for a photograph. working with you. Well, you even got a certificate there. The certificate from is from Minnesota school board. Is it from Yeah, it is from the Minnesota School Board
Association which um which is the kind of the parent organization that has about 330 plus districts as board as members of the association. So this certificate is from them in the recognition of school board month.
U Sarah would you mind joining Chase for the next part of the recognition? I think I should turn the microphone on. We only have one additional uh recognition this evening and it's also our tradition at our regular school board meetings to announce the names of
those who have indicated their intent to retire since the previous board meeting that we had. And uh we have one who has uh uh indicated such and that is Sarah Stack, special education supervisor at Weisetta High School for three years. I've not spotted Sarah here, but Sarah,
if you're here, feel free to come forward and be recognized. Probably tuned in via YouTube tonight hearing her name. Let's give her a round of applause. [Applause]
All right. Uh, congratulations to the retiree and thank you Sarah and Dr. Anderson. Okay. Moving on to the next item, the district spotlight presentation by Dr. Anderson. Good evening, Mr. Chair, members of the board, and all in attendance tonight,
and our staff that are here with us this evening. Thank you for giving me an opportunity to do the annual back to school update. Um this has been a tradition for uh I think time the time prior to my beginning this work uh at the September meeting just to kind of
give a quick overview. So what I've put done is put together in tandem with uh several of our staff members just a quick fly over of uh some of the duties and responsibilities of the different departmental areas that uh work to help get ready for the school year. It's an
opportunity to say thank you to a number of folks for their hard work and uh to just share a few of the things that are on the radar for the coming year. So, I appreciate a great deal uh having this opportunity to share with you tonight and hopefully my technology will work
and it did. Here are a few photos uh from around the uh school district and uh from the first day and obviously school buses are a big part of that first day. Welcoming students into the building and helping to ensure that uh
they get off to a a great start is really important. And I did a little bit of math the other day and uh was reminded that this is my 18th first day or Tuesday was my 18th first day of
school in Weisetta. My 43rd first day of school since I began as a first year teacher. And I hate to admit it's my 61st consecutive year of having a first day of school since I started kindergarten. So that's a pretty good
run. And uh six decades of uh first days of school is pretty good. And while that might be an indicator I'm getting old, uh the first day of school never does. It's always a fantastic uh first day and I just appreciate all the work that everybody put in to help get us launched
and airborne and uh soon to be at cruising altitude. I'm sure maybe we're not fully there yet, but uh we'll get there. And I just appreciate the efforts of everybody and those uh that group is pretty comprehensive. The list is here. I won't spend a lot of time on each
line, but do want to acknowledge and thank our teachers, many of whom are here this evening, our Weisette Education Association, all the support staff and the principles for their dedicated efforts to help get everything ready for uh school. Having uh been a
teacher and having served a number of years as an assistant principal and principal, I know there are a number of moving parts and a lot of things that have to be dealt with intended to uh to help ensure a really solid uh first day of school to make sure the kids get off to a great start. Also, our departments
of human resources, teaching and learning, finance and operations, and I'll hit on each one of these a little bit as uh we move uh through the the slides this evening, all contribute to uh help make sure that we're ready to go on that first day of school. Uh also including our equity and inclusion
department, community ed, who uh I always kind of debate about community ed because I don't know that their uh season uh really ever starts and finishes. is kind of continuous all summer and uh into the uh school year as well. So, they had a lot of summer
programming as did our special services staff, technology services, our communications and community engagement department, um all of our district administrative staff for making sure that all of the materials and supplies for the school year were ready and and
just a whole long list of others. It's a great team effort. everybody has to pitch in and and help make sure that a lot of things come together in high quality fashion so that we can help ensure that we get our students off to a great start. Um, as a reminder, we have
three executive directors, Dave Luds, Dana Miller, and Trevor Peterson uh for HR, teaching and learning, and also finance and operations. And uh these uh individuals are also part of our strategy leadership team which is a superintendent cabinet and includ
includes Jenny Eert in community edit equity and inclusion. Jenny Nyas in special services Amy Parnell in communications. Wade Phillips in technology and Rachel Falcowski is our WA president who also attends our uh SLT
meetings uh on a weekly basis. Uh first a few of the highlights for the human resources department. Uh Dave Lootz again is our executive director in that role and uh you can see all of the uh different areas that our department
of human resources is responsible for recruitment and hiring. And I'll share a little bit in a moment the numbers of uh new staff members that we've welcomed into the school district this year uh and aligned with which uh areas or departments that they're connected to.
all of the benefits administration negotiations of contracts and ensuring that uh uh those are maintained throughout the year. Uh FMLA uh leaves ADA accommodations, title 9 requirements and uh uh employee support
and collaboratively working through issues. So those are a handful of high level duties that our uh HR department works on. uh you can see that we hired 164 new uh people this year and that means not 164 interviews but probably
three four or five times that number in order to go through a long list of candidates and on board and bring in new uh individuals into the school district. So uh we put a lot of time and effort into our hiring. It's uh among the most important things that we do and making
sure that we bring in talented uh highquality people that complement those that uh have been with us for a number of years and it's always a a fun opportunity to u meet the new staff and have an opportunity to welcome them uh
into the district. This is a pie chart of uh how the different positions uh break out within the the school district. And you can see with that number at top, we're a little over 1500 total staff members uh throughout the the school
district in a variety of different positions. And again, I'm just always really proud about how this team of individuals comes together and regardless of what their specific role is, um they all contribute to uh the creation of the conditions that uh make
for a great place to work and a great place for our students to learn. So we appreciate uh each and every uh group on that pie chart for all the work that they do for us. Teaching and learning department has a pretty comprehensive list of priorities for the coming year
and u in the event that you might have any questions. I've got my team here ready to respond to some of those. But um I thought for the sake of efficiency we would work through uh these uh with me sharing the the high level uh overview and then uh creating
opportunities for you to ask any questions that you might have. I'm sure a lot of the people in the room see these terms and they're uh well suited to speak in much more depth and uh detail than than I can with them. But the key headers are uh the curriculum
implementation and standards uh for both elementary and secondary. You can see the departmental areas that are uh currently under review and that will be uh priorities for the current year. the ongoing work with our literacy and read act which I know uh all of you were
involved along the way hearing about the uh professional development the different things that we were doing around the district and generally I have heard positive reviews in regard to the quality of training although it was intense and and uh time consuming and a
lot of work um I've I've heard good reviews on uh much of what was done and that it was very helpful student system supports um including our enrichment program um our MTSS uh program uh and you'll notice a a term
there Aubé ABR that's the name of a software package that uh we're going to be piloting this year and a number of folks that have become familiar with that are very excited about what that is going to be able to do for us in regard to data tracking of our students and it
should really give us uh a lot of access to information to um help get a better understanding about how to be even more responsive to the unique needs of our students. And uh we're excited about being able to um implement that here in
the coming year as well. And restorative practices, uh professional learning and new staff development. You can see there's a few statistics about the number of hours of professional learning. Uh this summer, 650 hours are listed there. uh academy for Weisetta
educators as part of our uh QC comp or altco comp uh program. Uh that also creates opportunities for our own staff to uh create and deliver and uh lead uh book studies or other types of studies
that um have a a team of individuals with common interest. And then of course new teacher orientation and mentorship programs. As you saw on the list, there are 86 new teachers that uh were onboarding this year. That does not necessarily mean that they have not had
teaching experience in other districts, but uh we do our best to help ensure that they have opportunities to learn about the curriculum and and unique uh aspects of our school district. Uh technology and uh innovation. Again,
lots of software packages there and things that our teachers use to help ensure that uh students have online access uh and uh are able to uh have ease of access to uh all of the
curriculum materials that are being delivered in the classroom. And then finally, student achievement, continuous improvement. that's always an ongoing focus for our teaching and learning department and really all of our departments is it's always a a focus area to continuously improve and help
ensure that we continue to make uh progress moving forward. And we're fortunate that we have uh teachers that are learners and want to continue to improve their practice and and work really hard in teams and in their PLC's and uh several in each building on the
built teams or the building instructional leadership teams which is connected to that center for educational leadership CEL program that you've heard a lot about in a number of board meetings uh over the past several years. So, I think that we're really working hard to try to seek better alignment and
helping to ensure that um we have a really clear pathway forward to help ensure that we deliver on that mission for our students of excellence for each and every student. In the finance and operations department, uh we have a new executive
director in that role, Trevor Peterson to my left. And uh there's a you know really I could probably have just had the bottom bullet point on that first uh column of all things finance and operations related pretty much summarizes everything else on the page. But uh you're all apprised of our annual
budgets and that process by law that public school districts in Minnesota need to have a budget approved by no later than June 30th uh of the fiscal of the day before the start of a new fiscal year. um working collaboratively with our auditors. Uh public school districts
go through an annual audit. So there's a careful review with a number of auditors to help ensure that uh all the practices are being followed and and uh dollars are being utilized in ways with which they're intended. Managing capital budgets and projects and LTFM, which is
long-term facilities maintenance. Uh, as you're aware, we approve uh work every year uh to uh implement with our LTFM. And uh I would say every year when I've done PTA meetings, I've been able to share with the parents that I meet with that our buildings have never been
better than they are this year. And I think it's true because we've uh either built new buildings, built on new additions to many of them, and uh we've also done a lot of upgrading to mechanical systems and air ventilation systems and all of the things that uh
help keep our facilities really in in top-notch shape. Our finance department works closely with our HR department and uh there's a lot of complexities of administering employee benefits plans and programs and those two departments uh work closely to help ensure that um
that that those are uh implemented well and that staff have opportunities to uh gain a clear understanding about their benefits packages. overseeing our OPED fund which stands for other postemployment benefits which is uh a
trust that was established about 17 years ago I think uh and has done a a great job of meeting the needs of our postemployment obligations for employee benefits and that was great foresight from uh the school boards at that time
to establish that. Um, a lot of districts uh need to uh utilize general ed fund for many of those uh benefits for uh retired employees. So, that's been a wonderful thing for us. And then over on the far right, uh the finance
and operations department working in tandem as the bottom bullet point indicates with our district welcome center really track all the enrollment projections uh determining attendance areas which we all just went through that the past year. I'm glad to announce we will not be going through that again
this year. Um tracking our school age students that are within the district, managing open enrollment. Um intrad district transfers, which is essentially that process of moving from one building to another. Uh on rare occasions, uh we do accommodate some of those requests,
monitoring special education placements, uh managing the homeschool requests. We do have some uh families who choose to homeschool their students and there's paperwork uh that's associated with that that's required by the state uh to be on file with the uh school district of
attendance. So, we work with that and also fostering non-public school relationships and monitoring students choosing other educational placements. So, even though they might make a choice to go to a private school, they're uh still uh connected to us in in some
forms and and fashion. So a lot of diverse different types of uh aspects of uh of the finance and operations department. This is a summary document for this year's enrollment when compared to last year. So this year's uh this is
as of about September 1st. I think that's the date that I pulled these data uh to put this chart together. But um I've highlighted a few numbers. So, for the first time in our school district's history, our high school has surpassed that 4,000 9 through grade 9 through 12
student mark. For the first time in the history of our district, uh we've surpassed 13,000 K12 students. When I started here in this role in July 1 of 2008, I think we had 9,500 students K12. So, we've added uh about 3,500 students
in grades K12 in that time period. So that's why we've been building new schools and adding on and uh continuing to update and refurbish. For the first time ever, we're over an average of a thousand students per grade level. Um if you add up elementary, middle school,
and high school. And uh when compared to last year, we're up about 201. So we did grow um we did not grow by as much as our projection models were suggesting. So we're monitoring that. uh the projection models and as you know we
went through a couple iterations of that in the past year actually three or four of them and the average was kind of indicating 350 to 400 students and I think we're still in that postcoavid era where we're trying to uh hit a good equilibrium again and get on a good
trajectory line. It's been difficult um since that time because you might recall that in the 202021 school year we were down 200 students from what we were the year before and we didn't grow by the 250 that had been
projected all related to the pandemic and that really altered our ability to use historical attendance and enrollment data to make projections out into the future. So, we're still trying to uh equalize that and and establish new
trend lines and uh you know, so that we can be sure that we can do the best job that we can of of projecting. You'll notice that in elementary we actually have 32 fewer students on September one than we had a year ago. Um that's usually contingent upon the the
kindergarten size and we were lower in kindergarten this year. our so-called capture rate. Uh it's probably not the nicest term, but the uh rate of attendance within the public school uh for the students that uh reside within our school district, the kindergarten
students um uh has been a little bit lower and I think other uh schools, school districts are experiencing a little bit of that, too. So, we're trying to figure out what are the new kindergarten trend lines going to be. Middle school went up 142 students. That's probably a function of a larger
sixth grade and a relatively smaller eighth grade to make up some of those. Although middle school is a common transition time for students who may have gone to a private elementary school and then who make their way into the middle school. And we're up about 91 students at the high school. Again, some
of that is related to the fact that we had a probably a smaller graduating class last year than we had in a larger nth grade class uh coming in. So that in addition to just more families moving into the school district um is uh continuing to help us with this uh
increased growth rate. This is a document that uh I put together to show what we use for elementary class size ratios. I know the school board's always interested in seeing where we're at. So if you look at that far left shaded box, that indicates our staffing number that
we utilize for class sizes. That next shaded box under the header that says previous year was the last year's average class size. Um, and I can't remember where I pulled that data from, if it was September one or if it was at the end of the year. And then if you
follow the arrows over to the right, that first column and kind of the peach shaded uh area indicates where we were at September one. So in general, you can kind of read across there to see where the trend lines are. In most cases, with the exception of fourth grade, I think
we've dropped. And if you look at the very bottom line in those two columns, K5 for last year was at 24.6 average, and on September one was 23.8. Um, so that just kind of gives you a little bit of a feel where we're at with
uh grade level enrollment and and average class sizes. You're pretty well acquainted with our facilities. Um I don't know at some point in the future this uh slide might look a little bit different if uh we end up building another elementary school which would be number 10 and uh perhaps a fourth middle
school. But we do have one early learning school, as you're aware, connected on to Oakwood Elementary School, nine elementaryaries, three middle schools, one high school, and uh our one transition school, which continues to grow and accommodate more students uh that are their our 18 to 22
year olds that continue with their public education following um a more traditional senior year of high school. um some of the projects that we're working on. I won't go through all of these again uh line item by line item, but we're doing a quite a lot of uh roof
replacements with our long-term facility maintenance during the summer months. Parking lots, a lot of the things that we do with our long-term facilities maintenance aren't necessarily all that exciting like roofs and new sidewalks and parking lots and those types of things, but they're all necessary just
like with our own homes. And we're fortunate that the state of Minnesota has a good long-term facilities maintenance plan and and program for public education and public schools that we have been able to utilize a lot of uh resources over the last several years to
uh upgrade our buildings and uh get them and keep them in good working order. Um some other work, Oakwood is uh getting a new kitchen oven. I hope that works well for the kids. um West Middle School locker room renovation
where we had about 13,000 square feet in West Middle School that is being converted into three new music rooms. So that ability for us to be able to do that, as you might recall, was the reason we were able to uh take three feeder schools at West, which really
helped alleviate some of the crowding at Central and uh allowed us to go back to a two feeder school system at East Middle School as well, which really East can accommodate two elementaryaries comfortably. Three not. Um, and while
Central probably can accommodate five elementary schools, we have to wrestle with do we want middle schools of 1,800 to 2500 students. And uh, and West now with this modification should be in a pretty good place to be to be able to
accommodate uh, those three elementary schools. Uh, couple quick facts and buildings and grounds. We have about 2 million square ft of uh building space uh placed upon about 500 acres of land and we have about 90 custodians that uh
help keep our facilities in uh great shape and and conducive uh environments to learning. We have about 85 buses. They run 495 routes. Uh we have 45 special education buses in addition that run 172 routes. Our buses drive about
10,000 miles a day, which is uh two and a half trips around uh the Earth's equator uh each week. So, that's that's pretty good. Um I'm not sure that data is right. Yeah, I think it I have to redo that. I think might be two trips
around there's equator, but it's still a lot of driving. It's kind of a fun stat. Even had a parent the other day at a meeting I was at uh that recalled it or no, it was a a city council meeting. I think a parent who's on the council said, "Oh, I remember that stat." And uh
anyway, it's a lot of driving and uh a lot of lot of safe deliveries. Thankfully, we're 95% staff. That does not mean we have 5% of our buses cruising around without a driver. It just means we have to scramble to fill those empty driver seats uh uh with uh
long-term subs and using drivers literally. I think a number of them have been brought in from California uh to drive for a while. I think they had back before the snow flies. Uh, which probably we would all want to do. Um, and then our food service. I've
often joked, I was just talking about transportation. Um, we run the largest Uber service in town and we also run the largest uh restaurant in town. Last year we served it looks like about a million and a half million 600,000 lunches and
just shy of 400,000 breakfast. So, you can see that we have a pretty big uh food service program and I have to compliment Michelle and and all those that work with her uh to uh deliver that that program to our students. That's a that's a big deal. Um our community ed
department, Jenny Eert, is our director of community ed and they exist to help our E12 students and families uh thrive and be successful. Uh community ed continues to grow. It evolves. it uh encompasses uh each and every of our 75,000 students within the footprint of
the school district. I oftenimes share that I like to think that our school district is really uh owned and uh is part of all 75,000 of those uh residents whether they were born last week or if they just had their 100th birthday. um they are part of us and we want the
school district to be theirs as well and to serve their needs and and for them to have educational opportunities and for uh the school district to be a source of pride and something that uh they are happy to brag about as well. They're good messengers for us and and we're
very fortunate to be in a supportive community. Um, community ed is about 300 full and part-time staff uh in the department and uh it's embedded within all the school buildings whether it's before after school uh care andor uh utilizing facilities and and providing
uh other types of of uh learning opportunities. Uh this is always one of my favorite schematics because it shows the complexity of community ed. Um, you might recall, I don't know how many years ago now it was, I I actually spent one year uh being a community ed
director here and superintendent dual duty. Um, it was in a transition period where uh we did a review of the program in advance of when we sought to hire our full-time new replacement, which at the time was Jenny Eert. So, uh, Annie Dodie had the great idea for me to go back to
the University of Minnesota and get my community ed license so that, uh, the year after she retired from HR duties, she could, uh, work in partnership with me. I would have the license and she would do kind of a program review. And I think it was really a good thing for us
to have done because it, uh, created an opportunity for us to take a good look at uh, our programming and what are some of the changes or modifications we might want to make. And I would like to think and hope that Jenny would say that it was helpful that we had uh a lot of good data for her to get launched into the
work with. But uh you can just see the diverse set of things that uh community ed the before and after schooletta kids program which serves about 1500 students right now. Elementary um and probably some middle school but I
think mostly elementary school students. our volunteer club. Um I think we've typically had well it says there are just about 1,976 high school students that are involved in volunteer club formerly called uh yeses I think at the high school. We
went through some rebranding with this a few years back to try to name things that sort of made sense as to what it is actually that these groups do. And uh it's been a real popular program and and u um yeah, we're we're just fortunate. Um you see our students around all over
the place and it's it's fun to run into them. Um early learning school, we provide a lot of prek programming at our uh at our site, our early learning school, as well at the elementary schools. We do our best to maintain at least one classroom in each elementary school to accommodate
uh prek learners uh for children that will most likely be attending elementary in that building. We have a lot of great strategic partnerships. And I think I might have mentioned briefly that uh community ed is also responsible for overseeing facilities and for uh
managing those spaces and and uh all of the agreements and arrangements for leasing our facilities. Special services includes not only our special education programming, but our mental health and colllocated partnerships, multilingual learning,
health services, and our 504 plans. And uh Jenny shared these two goals which are pretty consistent with our built teams across the district of focusing on an academic goal, our academic goals and also a student experience goal along
with all of the other standard work that is done in buildings through the leadership teams and and PLC's and and across the whole school building itself. But again, this is uh somewhat tied to our CEL program and uh uh a lot of cross
departmental work occurs with this too through our uh uh MTSS and that's a Minnesota help me Dana MTSS. Thank you. I always think I'm going to know that and remember it and then I
draw a blank when I try to pull it out. But anyway, those are some of the special services team uh focus areas, technology. Um we're so appreciative to Wade Phillips and uh all of his tech team members. Um a few of the things that they focus on are listed here.
Personalizing uh experiences, accessibility and adaptability for students. Um updating access to educational resources. uh upgrading classroom technology, replacing student devices, replacing staff devices, uh
providing safety, security and privacy protections, uh providing infrastructure to meet evolving needs and maintaining uh essential technology supports. These are some of the goals for our technology department for the coming year. Uh excellent service and support. I think
most anybody you talk to in regard to the technology level of service would say it's off the charts and top-notch and uh we have to compliment Wade and his team for uh the work that they do and if you envision which I know you have uh all of the different moving parts in our technology department all
the tools and all the systems and the software and our thing lately has been the wireless internet's been acting up and creating issues and so it's a sort of a daily adventure for Wade and his team but they just manage it uh uh seemingly with ease and help make sure
that everything is continuing to work well for us. Digital literacy and citizenship ensuring that we have a a good um platform and a good opportunity for students to understand you know the all the appropriate ways to utilize technology and to understand uh all the
operational mechanisms with it. Professional development. We have a number of tech support folks that help our staff learn more about software and hardware and uh security and privacy is a big deal. We work with a cyber security firm that does I think an
annual audit and uh puts together a really nice scorecard and set of metrics and uh we often uh well we always score very high with that and uh I know that that's a very high priority for Wade and his team uh developing our infrastructure and uh also future
readiness uh just with that whole culture of innovation and and uh adopting and emerging technologies as you know those change quickly and and a lot of things uh occur uh in a relatively short period of time and all of that is accelerating. These
are some of the the outcomes for 2526. I texted or emailed Wade today and just asked are these uh completed or are they underway and he said most of them are done. Um but just that ongoing instructional support um technology upgrades to 170 classrooms. I think this
that was primarily summer work. uh certified staff uh got their uh laptop upgrades this year. I know a lot of people were coming through the district service center getting their new computers and getting those uh ready to go. Uh exchange of about 3,500 iPads for students. Uh the Aubrey system that I
mentioned before is something that our technology department will be supporting. Um internet and firewall upgrades and protections. Uh network switching refresh. Don't ask me what that is. I have absolutely no idea. But it's a good thing Wade and his team know and I'm sure it's important. I'm glad
they did it because I'm sure it's going to make a nice difference. I'll have to ask him what that one is, I guess. But and then just campus physical security upgrades that's uh always on everyone's mind. The cyber security I mentioned before and uh the ever evolving AI uh
whatever that will become for us in regard to operational components and and curriculum areas as well. So a few things on the radar for 25 26. Sorry for the size of that. It's a little bit hard to read. But uh as I mentioned, onboarding a lot of new teachers, um
facility studies, as you know, we've kind of been involved in facilities for I don't know all the the whole time I've been here. I think I remember when I was interviewing and uh engaging with some folks about the anticipated growth in the district. I forget who it was, but
it I think it was a little bit of a miss and that um I remember hearing, well, we don't really anticipate there's going to be much growth and there shouldn't be a lot of construction in our future. And I think I've had a hard hat on uh nearly every uh every week or every year uh during the time that I've been here. So,
we continue to grow. We continue to have a lot of new facilities that are going to be needed. uh continued development of the district roadmap that's been in place since 2011 and updated several times and that's always uh our one of our guiding uh documents just monitoring
our current budget and also considering future budget years and that's so small I can uh hardly see it myself but monitoring enrollment projections as you know we get our funding based primarily on number of students uh enrolled in the district and our voter approved levies
that complement the um state aid that comes to us as well as categorical aids for special education and and other title programs etc. So those are the sources of funding uh for our school district. There was uh some reduction in some of the categorical state funding
for 2526. You've heard me speak about this before at other meetings where two years ago they'd allocated a three-year roll out for additional student support services money to hire counselors or other support staff. And we were to have gotten an additional $300,000
uh in those revenues for the 2526 school year. And uh during the process the legislative process they ended up cutting that. So, um, we, as you know, the session ends in June and we hired the counselors in March and April. So, uh, we're fortunate that we have
counselors this year for the first time ever in all of our schools. We're happy we were able to move forward and do that. And we also had a reduction, kind of a similar type of story with some of our reimbursements for special education transportation. So, collectively, those two things are about $500 to $600,000.
So I share that just because you know there's a couple other points here about the uncertainty with school funding whether it's from the state or from the federal government. I mean it's just a it's a challenging business model in that we really only control expenditures
and we don't really have a lot of uh opportunity to uh I don't know to use the the private sector uh terminology increase the prices of our products and services. we just can't do that to help balance uh things. So, we're reliant
upon state funding uh that comes our way. And there's also a task force, which you're probably aware of, where uh they're assembling to take a look at special education costs in the state of Minnesota. And I think the goal is to find a way to reduce by $250 million
statewide special education funding uh for uh the next bianium. And in the event that they're not able to come up with that, then they'll I think the plan is to dole that out to individual school districts to figure out how to uh help ensure that um they can make the budget
because there is a forecast for the next bianium of uh significant um uncertainties again and and uh deficit. So we're kind of heading out of this time when there were some resources and funds to a time when it might be uh getting a little more challenging in
that next bianium. So anyway, those are things that we have to take a look at not only for the current budget year but also for future and ensuring that we can continue to be positioned as well as we can. And the last couple of things uh before I think I hit my last slide. This
is probably it here. I'll start I think next week meeting with PTA groups and other groups around the district. I'll probably make a second round of PTAs this year. Um, in the event that we move forward and determine that we're going to uh go to the voters in the spring for facilities, I'll probably make another
round in January and February to all the PTA groups and uh provide an update and a presentation then. And uh my final point that I make there is we just have a whole lot of standard work that we do and a lot of uh wonderful things happening in our district. And again,
while a number of our teachers are here, I would like to say thank you to all of you for your great work. My own daughter started her kindergarten uh teaching last week in another district in the metro area and she's excited and it's been so fun to meet her kids and she's off to a great start as well. So I get
to hear the dad stories too and all the fun that happens within classrooms. I think we have our back to school video that maybe some of you have seen. We're going to pull that up and I'll let that be my closer and then we'll turn it over for any questions that you might have.
Gall Dr. G from Greenwood and we are so glad you're coming because let's face it, school is a lot more fun when you're here. So come. Hi everyone. We are super excited to welcome you to Northwoods Elementary School. One thing that we're looking
forward to this year is our new inclusive playground. Have a great year. Let's howl it out. Hello, I'm Marian Boyd, principal of Central Middle School. On behalf of the staff, I warmly welcome you to Central
Middle School where we are building community, every student, every opportunity, every day. Hello, my name is Scott Gingler. I'm the principal here at Weisetta High School. Uh, want to wish everyone a wonderful start to the 2526 school year here at Weisetta. We are going to welcome over
4,000 students for the first time in the history of Weisetta Public Schools. Um, on behalf of everyone here in the Weisetta High School community, we wish you all a wonderful start to the school year. Hi everyone, my name is Ryan Carlson. I'm the principal at West Middle School. We are super excited for
the 2526 school year. Behind me, you'll see just some of the construction we have going on here at West. We got new windows through much of the building, some new smart panels, and our locker room has started the process of being converted to an unbelievable music suite.
Hi, Dr. Krie Wearman here, proud principal of Kimberly Lane Elementary, welcoming you back for the 2025 2026 school year. We've had a lot of construction this summer and a lot of big changes. Also, we have a lot of new friends coming our way. About a third of
our building could be new students. So excited to meet all of you and to welcome back all the other coyotes that are coming back. See you soon. Hi, I'm Mrs. Magazy, principal at Gleon Lake Elementary. I can't wait to have all our gators back at school. Looking forward to seeing you soon. Hey, it's
Michelle welcoming back our new and returning students for the early learning school. Parents, if you want to get involved, join our advisory council. Hi, I'm Ross Williams, principal here at Sunset Hill. We cannot wait to get the year started. We're looking forward to a
great year of learning and making new friends. See you soon. Hello, I'm Sarah Beth and I am the principal at Oakwood Elementary and I'm excited this year to find out new things that we can learn together. See you soon. Hey Panthers, the teachers are inside getting ready for you and these
folks are outside getting the playground ready for you. We can't wait to see you soon. Hi, I'm Alana Walsh and I'm the Wisetta transition supervisor. I'm here to say I'm jumping for joy to start this school year. Hi East Middle School students and families. Miss Bennett here, principal
at East Middle School. We are so excited for the start of the school year. See you soon. Helloana. This is Ashley Farington and I'm the principal at Bertview Elementary. And there's a lot of exciting things happening at Brew this summer. We have 100 new kids in grades 1 through 5. We help 90 kindergarteners,
which is our biggest class of kindergarten in such a long time. And we have 13 new staff members. And this year we're really going to focus on that theme of at BB you matter so that every new person and every returning person can know how much they matter at our school. See you soon.
What's new at Meadow Ridge this year? I am. And it's going to be the best year ever because we are 10 years old. [Music]
And now you can see why I saved that for last. Mr. Chair, I'll turn it back over to you and if you have any questions, my team or I will do our best to answer. All right. Thank you, Dr. Anderson for that presentation. I just have a quick comment first before I move around with the colleagues for questions. So you
mentioned cruising altitude, airborne. Are you thinking of becoming Captain Anderson in your next career? Well, yeah. I suppose it is a little bit like being a pilot, although I've Yes, but you you have piloted the district well though in the 18 years. Thank you for that. Thank you.
Good colleagues. Any questions, comments? I have a quick question. Yeah. Well, welcome back to 2526. It's been a great start in my house. Um and uh I have a quick question on teaching and learning. So there was a a one of the
focus areas is around fidelity checks for interventions and I'm wondering what that if you can tell me a little bit more about what that means and I'm guessing that aligns with PLC work maybe. Yeah, correct. So, our coaches and um our teaching and learning literacy team,
Julie and an um we look at that data and then we also are in the classrooms with our coaches and just taking a look to see are we following doing spot checks um on how that instruction is going in those spaces comparative to our data performance. So,
just a followup. So is that it's a it's an increased look at the so you're doing we've always been doing fertility checks are part of the focus it's a focus on it thank you anyone else okay I have one quick question for you a clarification Dr.
Anderson. Uh maybe director Luds can answer this, but I noticed that you had a slide where it said you are 95% staffed. Is that typical of our district or if we have let's say we had 100% staff would how would that affect the class sizes? Would
it make any dent or I'm just trying to understand put my that specific data point was for transportation. Oh. So, it was yeah, we have 95% of our buses with a full-time assigned bus driver and the other 5% are filled with
uh substitutes or uh individuals that as I'd indicated were actually brought to Minnesota from California to help fill that void a little bit. That's what I was supposed I was nervous with that question. Okay. Sorry. I'm
not. Every classroom has a teacher and uh my bad. support helps in the in the building as well. So, but we are we are usually 100% staffed, right? Yeah, we're 100%. Yes. Okay. Thank you. That's all that's the question only question I had. Anyone else?
Okay. No. Thank you. Appreciate. Thank you. All right. Next, we have the audience opportunity to address the board. Amy, do we have anyone? Nobody uh is has shown an interest in speaking this this evening. So we'll move on to the next
item which is administrative reports and recommendation. Again Dr. Anderson, you will be presenting three policies for approvals. Mr. chair and members of the board. Uh before you there are three policies that
are included um and I'll read the uh narrative outlining these policies as you're aware and uh for the benefit of others uh in the audience. There's um a policy committee that meets monthly uh includes three school board members who
review policies and make edits and modifications, recommendations for changes. And these policies and regulations were uh reviewed as part of their regular review cycle using the Minnesota School Board Association model policy were available or applicable by
district administration and other district stakeholders where necessary. The final review was completed by the policy committee of the school board and there are three policies tonight. Uh policy number 503 compulsory attendance, 602, acceleration retention and
enrichment program designed for students and 609 commercial media use. And the recommended action is listed for you to uh read for your colleagues. Thank you Dr. Anderson. So colleagues, the recommended action is to approve the policies as presented. Is there a
motion? I move. Do you wave the second reading? And I wave the second reading. Thank you, Sheila. Is there a second? Second. Moved and seconded. Is there a discussion? I I mean, I don't know, Valentina or
Paris, did you uh I wanted to just say that there wasn't a whole lot of changes for these policies. They were mainly just um terminology, I believe. Um, so I I'm going to be voting to approve them. I didn't know if anybody else wanted to comment or Okay.
All right. Okay. Thank you so much. So again, the recommended action is to approve the policies as presented. This is a roll call vote. Valentina Ays, yes. Dan Janestra, yes. Sarah Johansson,
yes. Harris Bendy, yes. Sheila Prior, yes. Heidi Kedar. Yes. Milan Sahonyi. Yes. The motion passes. I want to thank the policy committee for all your efforts. Okay. So, most of you know that this
year there is an election for the Visetta School Board on November 4th. District election clerk Amy G will recommend a resolution for the appointment of an absentee ballot board. Amy, good evening. Superintendent and school
board directors. Um, as Dr. Sahony mentioned there is a November 4th election. Um absentee voting does start on September 19th for our listening audience. Um that will be held at the district service center at 1330512th
Avenue North um both myself and our three absentee um judges will be there ready for you to vote. So feel free to vote early um or on November 4th. Um the first item before you for elections, the school board's required to officially
appoint the qualified absentee ballot board judges for the um school board general election. Um they are listed in the resolution that follows. Um and the recommended action is before you.
Okay. Thank you Amy. So the recommended action is to adopt as presented the resolution appointing absentee ballot board election judges for the general election on November 4th, 2025. Is there a motion to approve? Right. So move and ask that we wave the
reading of the resolution. Is there a second? Second. Is there a discussion? I do have a question, Amy. Uh this is because I I I you usually during
an election I try to get my absentee ballot from the secretary of state mail to me and then I mail it back. I found out that that cannot be done in this case. Right. Is that is that true? That is not true. But it said I have to go and pick it up from the city office.
You are able to um now still receive your ballot via mail. You can go online and request that. It can be mailed to you and you will mail it back to the county and the county will collect those, okay, on our behalf. Um, and the directions are there. You can also have it mailed to you and come in and return it. Okay.
Um, and we'll spoil that ballot and um, give you a new one. Okay. Good. Thank you. Thank you for that clarification. Okay. again. So the recommended action is to adopt as presented the resolution appointing absentee board ballot
absentee ballot board election judges for the general election on November 4th, 2025. Uh this is again a roll call vote. Dan Janestra, yes. Sarah Johansson, yes. Paris Bendy, yes.
Sheila Prior, yes. Heidi Kedar, yes. Valentina Ays, yes. Milan Sahony, yes. Um, the motion passes. Thank you. Next, Amy will now recommend a resolution for the hourly pay rate for election judges.
Yes, this is not a resolution, just a vote. Um, the uh hourly pay rate is before you for election judges. We since I'm the only qualified election judge in our district, um we do employ absentee ballot um election judges to help out
within in the office. Um we also employ judges for election day. So we do pay a slightly higher rate than the city of Plymouth because we do hold our elections in odd years and it is challenging to recruit during that time. Um, but we have three stellar absentee
judges that have worked for us in the past that have agreed to come back on. Um, but those rates are before you. Thank you, Amy. So, the recommended action is to approve the 2025 hourly rate for election judges. Is there a motion to approve?
I move. There a second. Second. All right. Is there a discussion? Hearing none. I Well, I would like to just ask a question because it says um head judges $20 per hour, technical judges 18 per
hour, and judges 15 per hour. Where are those amounts? I mean, like how do you decide those amounts? Is it just standard? The amounts that are offered are in line with 2023. We did not raise the rates. Um and we had raised them from the 2021
election. um I believe a dollar for at the 2023, but these are the same rates that we offered in 2023. It's about a$150 more than they're offered from the city of Plymouth. And this is, you know, if once we start
having um even elections, we will no longer have to we will pay zero pay zero for the judges. Okay. Yes. Thank you. For the judges. For the judges. Okay. Any other questions or comments? Hearing none. Again, again, the
recommended action is to approve the 2025 hourly rate for election judges. This is also a roll call vote. Paris Bende, yes. Sheila Prior, yes. Heidi Kedar, yes. Valentina Ays, yes.
Dan Janestra, yes. Sarah Johansson, yes. Milan Sahony, yes. The motion passes. Thank you, Sheila. All right, there is no teaching and learning report this evening. And now we have the finance reports executive
director of finance and operations Trevor Peterson will present the combined financial report for the month ending July 31, 202. Trevor, yes, Chairperson Sahony, Dr. Anderson, members of the board, good evening. Um, in your packet, you will find the
combined financial reports for the month of July 2025. Um, as you might expect, um, with July being the first month of the fiscal year, it's kind of a boring report. Um, so we'll zip through it pretty quickly, but, um, the first statement, um, includes a statement of revenues. Um,
you can see that there's there's only one line item on there, and that would be the the miscellaneous local revenue, um, within the general fund, which, um, represents one thing. Uh, res represents uh, the interest earnings that we received on our cash balance um, for the month of July, and that was the only
revenue included. Um and as you can see from the the comparison to fiscal years that is uh similar to what we have seen um in the prior two years. Um in the other funds um similarly the food service fund and debt service fund um that does include the interest earnings
on the cash balance. Uh the construction fund is the interest that was earned on our abatement bonds uh that we currently have held with a fiscal agent. Um and then community service fund did have a fair amount of revenue just because their uh programming continues throughout the year and and throughout
the summer. Uh moving on to the statement of expenditures. Um salaries and benefits continue to be the the number one expenditure of the school district. Um you might say that why isn't it 112th? Um a lot of um our staff
including the majority of those who are in the room today do not get paid in July or August. Um so you will see that um the the majority of our staff that do not get paid then lowers that percentage um as the year-to-ate expenditures for July and August. Um otherwise um
everything else um appears to be quite in line with uh what we have seen in previous years. Uh some of the outliers especially in the capital expenditures you'll see two years ago we had 28% of our budget spent uh already after the first month. That's really a timing
thing of based on when uh certain projects are done. we did have a significant project um or a couple significant projects that year that happened to be finished in July. Uh so that's when the payments were way were made. So that's just a timing thing uh for some of those. Uh otherwise all of
that um is certainly in line with what we would expect at this time of the year. Um the final then is looking at our cash balances. Uh we do have about $60 million um in our general fund investments and then we have about $2.3 million that's held uh for those
abatements bond that I referred to earlier. So um in total about $62 million. Uh we are paying attention. Uh we do expect the yield rates or the interest rates to be dropping a little bit. It's kind of been the noise the last few months. It it hasn't yet. Um um
but we are monitoring that as um if that can if that does drop as we expect it could. Um we'll continue to monitor our budget as we do have interest earnings as a pretty significant revenue source for the district. So uh with that uh again the the recommended action is
before you and um I we did have an opportunity to look at this as a finance committee of the board last month or last week um in a little greater detail. Um otherwise I would um certainly ask for the recommendation as put forth in the packet.
Thank you Trevor. Uh is there recommended action? I don't know if No, these are just routine in nature. No recommended action. Okay. I scratched that then. No action. It's just routine in nature. Yes. Uh thank you. Uh any any questions,
comments? I'll just say thanks to our finance team and uh it's it's just fun to have you here. And Trevor, welcome on board. I think that was your first full one that you gave the report that you gave to us. Yeah. And I messed up on it. Well, no. My gosh. But you're talking
historical. You know, we're only going up. So, thank you so much. Anyone else? Valentina. Yeah. I think that maybe you discussed at financial committee but I since I'm not there I'm curious uh uh
why there is a difference between expenditures and revenues I mean over 8 million. Yeah that's just the timing of um how the state meters um all of the revenue that comes forward to the district. So typically what you'll see is um not a
lot comes in the month of July um for state aids um just because we're going through the process of cleaning up what our final enrollment was from 2425 um and once that gets finalized then you see that catch up a little bit but um this is it's very typical. It's just how
everything is metered in in state aids. Um federal resources sometimes, especially back with in the CO years there uh we did have ESSER funds. Um so if we had expenditures that were from ESSER, we'd have to draw those at a certain time. Um with that being done,
we don't have as much federal revenue anymore. So you might not see um that for a few months either. But again, that's just um the metering of of when the state uh makes their state aid payments to districts. Thank you.
Anyone else? Okay. All right. If there are no other questions, thank you, Trevor. Okay. I don't think there are any human resources uh services report today. No other board action. And for board reports, I did not get any any request
to have board reports. Anybody want to say anything now? So, no board reports either. All right. We are zipping through. So, the next board work session is on Monday, September 22nd at 5:00 p.m. Please note the change in the start
time. It's not at 4:00, it's at 5:00 p.m. And it's going to be the case also in October. Thank you, Amy, for reminding me of that. All right. So, this concludes the Visetta Public Schools regular board meeting. Is there a motion to adjurnn? So moved. Any second?
Second. All right. Moved and seconded. All in favor say I. I. I. Oppose. Nay. The time is now 8:15. The Visetta Public Schools Board of Education regular meeting for Monday,
September 8, 2025 is adjourned.