microphone test why is that a school board meeting april 14th 2025 good evening the time is now 7:00 the Visetta Public Schools Board of Education regular bo board meeting for April 14 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 uh rise to recite the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it
stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you um if you wish to speak during the audience opportunity to address the board please fill out a form placed in the back at the back of the room and
hand it over to our district admin assistant Amy sitting to my right in the back 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 requests 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 i second moved and seconded will the clerk please take a roll call vote dan Janestra yes sarah
Johansson yes harris Bendy yes sheila Prior yes heidi Kedar yes valentina Ays yes milan Sahony yes we have an agenda thank you the next item on our agenda is reports from organizations and I believe
Payton Mel the vice president of the student council will is is here for from Visetta High School to present that report so Payton would you please come forward welcome Payton hello um I wasn't expecting this crowd
this is this is exciting um so good evening everyone i had the amazing opportunity to have a meeting with you this afternoon or with some of you um with our annual brunch with the board even though this brunch was in one of our auditoriums and not like a restaurant it was an absolute pre
privilege nonetheless um so I'll try to keep this quick because there's a a lot of people here um but here's some rundowns of what will be coming up this month so later this month our student council will be hosting our newly it's quite uh new
spring event the drive-in um the committee is currently working with uh NAMI the National Alliance on Mental Health to provide uh direct donations to the organization from the the fundraiser um in midMay student council will be
hosting prom at the Rollston Square in Minneapolis this is a new venue for us and the theme is a night around the world um which will be accompani a company I can't pronounce this stuff um with global foods food dishes and decor
um and then late last month we had peace was held at the high school um for eighth grade students within the district to ease their transition into a larger uh new school and it was extremely successful um and mostly
because of the organization and the productivity of the committee Um March Madness uh just wrapped up a few weeks ago um with a large participation from our staff and students um including our Senate House members i know some I think it was Mr
angler won for the the staff portion of the competition um and then we have this is Marcus wanted me to mention this uh the Wisetta Student Council won the Gold Council of Excellence this year um from
the National Council of Student Councils um and we previously won it in 2023 but we did not win it last year so we're extremely lucky to be selected out of the hundreds of schools um in Minnesota um okay I have a few more sorry guys uh
Wisetta Theater will be hosting our last uh production of the year it's our spring play called Space Girl and it's going to be directed by our drama and theater uh director uh Justin Spooner um
and then Weisetta Speech had 40 members at their sections with 25 finalists and 15 state qualifiers after the event one of our own um student council members Owen uh got first place in the storytelling event which was in uh very
impressive um and then Weisetta DECA will be sending selected individ individuals to Orlando for their internationals and same goes for Wisetta BPA um they will be sending selected individ individuals to Orlando for their
nationals and lastly we have sports so uh we have an emerging sport at the high school which is boys volleyball it started up I think two years ago in 2023 um and it's been very successful and a lot of participation from students
coming in um to the games both JV and varsity and then boys basketball competed in the class 4A state championships and defeated cr I can't pronounce this school um Durham how do you say it they lost that's Yeah okay
yeah 80 80 to 55 which was incredible um I was there and it was it was awesome and then lastly boys and girls track lacrosse golf baseball and softball um are continuing their spring seasons and they're excelling at their races and
games and competitions um and then funny enough girls JV and varsity lacrosse actually have an away game tonight at Orno so we're we're missing that but it's for the it's for this so it's important um so thank you so much for having me
and thank you yeah thank you Payton i was fortunate enough to be at the meeting this afternoon the lunch meeting uh which was in an in the auditorium not at a restaurant like you said but thank you for the opportunity and it was very impressive how your Senate uh members
from the student council uh you know asked us very very pertinent questions and answered our questions as well so thank you for that colleagues Abby any comments questions no thank you again for hosting us and for the opportunity it was really great experience and hope
u we find more ways to connect with student council i'll second that by saying thank you so much for having us it was really a joy connecting and planning the uh program you know it's a once a year opportunity for us to engage with you all and we take a lot with us and you know lived
experiences and what you all have to say answering our questions and you know you folks being able to ask us questions so thank you so much for having us i'll I'll ditto the thanks and thanks to student council and just remind you that Synchro also is in season oh shoot darn
it okay my bad yeah go ahead thanks for coming tonight thanks for coming all these nights with us um I just wanted to say that I heard a lot about peace days and how successful they were eighth graders are super excited for the upcoming year i
heard a lot about how it really does help to get into the school multiple times so there was like that orientation night with parents and peace days and then um there students are going to be able to be in the building one day ahead of everybody else and so all of those pieces really like I think the eighth
graders are feeling pretty solid thank you for that okay i just want to mention something that I I heard you say that you won the uh gold award this year for the student council and you said you were lucky
no I I I don't think so i think you I I just mean it was like a privilege for us lucky once maybe in 2023 although I'm sure it was not luck but uh to be lucky twice is difficult but so congratulations and let's give them a round of applause here
[Applause] so thank you Payton hopefully we'll see you next month thank you all right next on item on the agenda is recognitions and I will join Dr anderson at the podium this evening good evening everybody my name is Chase
Anderson i'm the superintendent for the school district and it's always my privilege to convene the part of the meeting where we do uh recognitions at our monthly regular school board meeting so we have uh several of those tonight uh that involves uh several of our
students and uh staff and we're happy to see all of you here and and appreciate that you came out tonight to uh recognize a couple of our state champion teams and employees of the month and uh and uh just greatly appreciate that you've joined us so at this time I would
like to invite our Weisetta High School boys Nordic ski team to please come forward and assemble with coaches and I'm going to share a few things and then I'll turn it over to uh our coach Andrew Hansen who's here with the team or at
least some members of the team tonight thank you for being here congratulations maybe we'll give you a round of applause on the front end and the back end of the presentation [Applause] so I would like to share the following before I turn it over to Coach Hansen to
introduce his athletes that are here tonight and uh to share a little bit more about the team the Weisetta High School Nordic ski team has once again reached the pinnacle of Minnesota high school competition securing the title of boys Nordic skiing state champions at
the Minnesota State High School League Championships held at Giants Ridge on February 12th and 13th 2025 this impressive victory marks the third state championship in boys Nordic ski racing for Weisetta a testament to the program's consistent dedication and
talent the team success was a collective effort highlighted by Hudson McMillan's strong fifth place finish in the individual pursuit and the valuable fourth place performance of James Kaine and Connor Vera in the sprint relay this
state championship is a well-deserved recognition of the hard work rigorous training and exceptional coaching that define the Weisetta Nordic program the outstanding performances of Hudson McMillan James Kaine Connor Vieira Charlie Gundelle and the entire team
culminated in a decisive victory with 370 points bring immense pride to the Weisetta school community we extend our sincere congratulations to the coaches and each member of the Weisetta Nordic ski team on this remarkable achievement at this time I'll turn it over to Coach
Hansen to uh take it from here congratulations thank you yeah thank you um I want to start off by uh thanking Superintendent Anderson and the school board for having us here tonight um in a sport that oftentimes doesn't get a lot of recognition we
appreciate the commitment of the school board to recognize uh all uh sports here so thank you for that i'd also like to thank our athletic director Megan Potter and our assistant athletic director Barb Biscy uh also Principal Gangler for their support and the necessary re
resources we need to have a successful program like we do i'd also like to thank my assistant coaches we had six uh varsity or uh high school assistant coaches this year uh it was the best coaching staff I've ever had and I just cross my fingers every day that they
come back next year uh so we can have another great season um some accomplishments that these boys had this season we were conference champions section champions and obviously state champions as well um going into the state championship meet um this is the
second year in a row where we won it was also the second year in a row where we were the underdogs going into the state meet so it was pretty fun um proving some people wrong and having some tremendous performances uh and winning the state championship uh another thing that was fun at the state meet um it
actually had to get condensed because it was so cold out uh the morning of the first race an assistant coach and I were uh testing waxes early in the morning before these guys were even up and we felt a little chilly and we looked at the temperature it was - 32 degrees uh
outside while we were uh testing um and we were able to the boys were able to race in a balmy 1 degree above zero uh and they weathered the elements very well obviously uh and performed exceptionally well um noting some of our
athletes we had five allstate athletes so if I call her name if you can step forward for a second here uh Hudson McMillan was fifth place uh Charlie Gund who wasn't isn't able to be here tonight was 15th matthew Jenny finished 21st and then our sprint relay team Connor Vieira
and James Kane placed fourth as a team uh our other finishers at the state meet Ian Hol was 51st Owen Horsley was 82nd and Aiden Cuchu and Justin Galloway were our two alternates up at the state meet
uh finally our team also won the academic all-state team gold award which is the highest academic award we could win as a team and then we also had five individual academic all-state individuals hudson McMillan James Kaine
Ian Holst and Justin Galloway uh thank you again for having us here and I think I know the answer but if anyone wants to say a word here no all right thanks again
[Applause] [Applause] congratulations ations again and thank you so much for being here tonight um at this time I'd like to invite our Weisetta High School boys basketball
team and the coaches that are present tonight to please come forward and assemble over here if you would congratulations [Applause] so they're here tonight to uh celebrate and to be recognized for another
incredible accomplishment by one of our uh high school athletic teams our Weisetta High School boys basketball team who were crowned state champions and at this time I would like to uh share the uh information about the team and then turn it over to coach Brian
Schnetler who will introduce his uh athletes and speak a little bit about the season it's interesting to see you guys up this close after watching you from afar and all the arenas it's really fun to have you here tonight so thank you the Weisetta High School boys basketball team delivered a stunning
performance to claim the Minnesota class 4A state championship defeating top-seated Cretton Durham Hall with an emphatic 80- 55 victory at Williams Arena on Saturday March 22nd in a day of upsets the second seated Trojans left no
doubt overwhelming the Raiders with a brilliant display of power speed and sharp shooting this dominant win secures Weisetta's third big school state title in the past five seasons junior guards Nolan Anderson who scored 24 points and Christian Wiggins with 21 points led the
offensive charge for the Trojans their stellar backcourt play combined with a tenacious defense that stifled Cret and Durham Hall's key players propelled Weisetta to a decisive victory the team's ability to control the game from the outset maintain a significant lead
for over 34 minutes and execute timely three-pointers proved to be the difference the Weisetta School community proudly celebrates this outstanding achievement and congratulates the players and coaches on their remarkable state championship congratulations to
all of you at this time I'll turn it over to Coach Brian Schnetler coach congratulations well thank you for allowing us to be here tonight to celebrate these guys we have a few guys at baseball um one guy's injured and then we got a couple other guys having AU practice so a lot of our
guys have already started on getting ready for the next season um I want to say congrats to the Nordic ski team on winning state i remember talking to you Saturday morning in probably late January and you weren't sure and I don't I think you were fibbing a little bit you probably a little better than you
thought james where's James james helped us put together the basketball rack the new rack we got last spring so thank you you had a part in this too but um our guys have been awesome and they got a lot better throughout the year and I think the thing that was the coolest to
see is just how close they became at the end of the year and you can see it in that picture at the end and when our guys were interviewed i think Wyatt was interviewed after the state semi-finals and Nolan was interviewed after the state championship and they all just went around each other and it says a lot about um how they did it as a group and
it wasn't just a one person thing we have very talented kids uh we beat a lot of good teams to get to this point but it was done together and it was done u with guys that worked hard and they connected with each other and um it took a lot of people to get this it's not just these guys i mean a lot of credit
goes to them but we have great coaches we got a couple coaches in our gym right now working with our seventh and eighth graders where is where I'm headed after this and um thanks to uh superintendent I I saw you the last two mornings on my way to basketball as he's walking his dog so um this weekend and uh principal
Gangler uh is very supportive and uh loves watching these guys play in our athletic office and parents and fans and it was fun to see the students come out especially in the last couple games there was a lot of blue well what was this theme theme night American theme come on Smitty i
know you know what it was usa yeah USA thank you uh was it tropical uh regardless on championship night it was fun to see all the blue and gold and the Wisetta colors in the gym and it was um really fun to have the support we had from the community from our youth
players and from our fans and students all alike but these guys had an awesome year and um our seniors uh we're we're excited to see what they do moving forward uh one of them is going to talk yeah wyatt McBth actually just committed to play basketball at the University of Minnesota Duth so we're going to have
Wyatt come talk uh in honor of these [Applause] guys so I'm Wy McBth for those you who don't know me I was a senior captain on the team and I just wanted to say uh thank you to the Wisetta community for the support it was nice to see our gyms
filled throughout the season and the student support was great i'll just say thanks to the parents and uh all of our teammates our team managers uh the coaches really have the best coaches in the state and really shows the how good our program has become i think we've got
a six straight state championships and that's that's not that normal to see if you look across the uh state so it's just really nice to see that and then just thank you for the support and uh yeah let's keep the keep the wise out of support going thank you we've actually only gone to five
straight you're kind of jumping the gun a little bit there uh last time last time Wyatt talked was at our banquet the day after the state championship and uh two of other senior captains talked where's Nick Hind nick raise your hand okay and u Ryan man talked as well and
not a lot of dry eyes including mine okay and not just because it was the day after an emotional state championship win because how much we care about them how much they care about each other and I think it truly shows how special this group is our program is how much you can
just see the emotion that these guys showed that night okay and then the next day at the banquet so once again thank you for allowing us to be here tonight and honoring these guys and um we're going to take a picture but I think take it up front okay thank you
[Applause] thank you one two [Applause] three again congratulations to both of our state champion teams and thanks for
being here tonight uh well done on all accounts our next uh recognitions are for two employees of the month and I would like to ask Kelly Kaine to please come on down come forward [Applause]
i'm going to read a script of some very nice things and give give Kelly an opportunity to uh say a few words herself weisetta High School proudly recognizes Kelly Kaine as one of the Weisetta Public Schools April 2025 employees of the month kelly embodies
dedication compassion and leadership in all that she does with over 30 years in education Kelly began teaching in 1994 and has been a valued member of Weisetta Public Schools since 2004 as a special education teacher she wears more hats than we can count
sometimes even a hairet when she's working alongside students in the cafeteria i was wondering if that was true and I you just you've just affirmed that so thank you kelly seamlessly coordinates daily activities for 25 pair
of professionals ensuring smooth operations and meaningful student engagement she leads the Lakers Breakfast Nook a beloved workplace skill development program known for its fresh muffins and hands-on learning she also manages the in-building employment program where students gain experience
in the cafe laundry services mail delivery and more on top of that she supervises the practical assessment exploration system helping students develop essential life and job skills her impact doesn't stop there kelly serves as Weisetta High School's special
education department chair and also overseas teacher lensure and continuing education approvals ensuring educators maintain their credentials she's an active voice for her colleagues as a Weisetta Education Association building rep always advocating for staff and
students and beyond Weisetta she has been sharing her expertise for over a decade as an adjunct instructor at Concordia University where she teaches special education and differentiated instruction kelly's colleagues perfectly summed up her influence by saying the
following kelly is highly regarded by both her colleagues and the students she serves within the Weisetta High School community she consistently meets the diverse educational and prof professional needs of the school through a variety of roles from overseeing the Lakers breakfast nook and managing the
complex Paris schedule to facilitating department meetings and advocating for special education kelly is the force that keeps everything running juggling countless responsibilities with ease fostering strong relationships and bridging departments when a crisis
arises or someone needs support she is un she is the unwavering constant always there always ready to help with her approachable demeanor and problem-solving mindset Kelly is truly irreplaceable and Weisetta Public Schools is fortunate to have her as a
valued member of the team kelly's tireless commitment to students colleagues and the entire Weisetta community is extraordinary her energy heart and innovation make Weisetta High School a remarkable place congratulations Kelly on this welldeserved recognition thank you the
mic is yours [Laughter] [Applause] thank you school board and Dr anderson um I'd like to start out by thanking the guy I dated all through high school and
college because at the age of 19 when I was deciding between medicine and education as a major he politely suggested that having two doctors in the family would be too many although I should have questioned why I would base my life's career decision and choice on
another 19-year-old's ridiculous opinion at the time I'm very thankful that I chose the way that I did 31 years later the education major stuck the relationship not so much admittedly I'm not very good at
receiving accolades personal accolades because I know I am just a small part of an enormously talented and dedicated team my 20 years in Wisetta public schools have allowed me to work with an incredible group of people from the custodial and paraprofessional staffs to
administrators and teachers in both the general and special education settings i've met some of my best friends and I've been inspired by their tireless commitment to our collective student body additionally I've trusted this district with my own children and I'm
proud that the academic challenges their teachers presented to them prepared them so well for life after elementary and high school i'd like to personally thank the administrative staff particularly Amy Valindorf and Tyler Shepard for the very nice write up and Scott Gangler and
Sarah Stack for allowing me to keep my job and expand the work program to best benefit the everchanging needs of our students thanks to my students for showing me that the human spirit is stronger than any physical or cognitive disability will ever be
also my day-to-day interactions with them give me endless entertaining stories that make me a hit at dinner parties thanks to my friend and fellow teacher Michelle Hull for inspiring me to present the very best version of myself every day and her husband too
thanks to my family particularly my son Max who is here tonight and will soon be the fourth generation of teachers from our family once he finishes his degree in elementary education i tell people every day that I literally have the best job in the district because I do
sorry i'm very honored to be recognized here tonight and thankful to be part of the team thank you [Applause] thanks again and congratulations Kelly our next employee of the month is Jean Parsons i would like to invite Jean to
please come forward jean congratulations [Applause] weisetta High School is honored to recognize someone who has been nothing short of extraordinary our second employee of the month Gan Parsons gan joined our district in 2015 and began
serving as our district-wide school nurse supervisor overseeing eight school nurses and 13 health paraprofessionals across 15 sites which this all began in 2022 but as impressive as that is Gan has gone above and beyond in helping launch Weisetta High School's inaugural
certified nursing assistant known as CNA program gene wears a truly unique hat one that makes this program possible her long-term care experience a requirement of the Minnesota Department of Health has been a critical piece in getting this initiative off the ground she has
worked tirelessly alongside Rachel Click Hannah Kim Stephanie Eert Scott Torter Tyler Shepard and Deb Musard not to mention our external clinical partners to make the this incredible opportunity a reality for the 120 students who have enrolled in the CNA program this school
year not only has Gan played a key role in developing the program but she also tests students on nursing skills and supervises them in clinical settings all while maintaining her full-time role as district nursing supervisor jean's colleagues shared the following gan is a
passionate and dedicated leader who consistently puts students and colleagues first with a wealth of knowledge and collaborative spirit she is a driving force behind the success of the CNA program at Weisetta High School her calm and encouraging presence especially on skills testing days
reassures and inspires students beyond her role as testing RN Gan actively advocates for resources fosters connections and supports both students and staff she leads with positivity valuing the input of others and ensuring
her team feels heard and supported her unwavering commitment problem-solving mindset and let's make this work attitude make her an invaluable asset and a true inspiration jean is simply fantastic gan thank you for your leadership your commitment and your
unwavering support of students and staff you are a gem and we are so grateful for all that you do please join me in congratulating Jean Parsons well thank you everybody thank you my my goodness wow i am just honored and I'm just quite I'm humbled to be standing
here today i am incredibly grateful for this recognition when I first heard of this news I was genuinely surprised i you know I come to work each day you know being focused on health and well-being of our students i never really expected to be singled out for
this award so thank you so much now I truly believe that any success I've had is the direct result of the incredible team that I'm a part of i'm supported by Jenny Nigh Nihus and the entire health staff we have great partnerships and excellent health
support for our district our district nurses and health staff go well above and beyond every day and offer just excellent and the best care to our district i marvel and I I'm grateful for their dedication so in addition to being with
health services I'm also a part of the career technical program as Dr anderson said um and you know my my participation in the CTE program came by kind of accidentally i was in the right place at the right time really i saw the program
um coordinator at the time Steph Eert she was in the hallway and we were just kind of casually talking and she was talking about the possibility of a CNA program coming to Weisetta High School and I said "Oh hey that's awesome that's great just let me know if I can help with anything." Well the next thing you know we're off and running and so I just
jumped into this adventure because I really did want to ensure that we have a solid foundation for our CNA program i really wanted to make sure that we just produce the best CNAs out there so um you know what it really has been a lot of fun i've never been a classroom
teacher of course and so oh my goodness working with the high school students in the CNA lab and in the clinical setting has has just been a joy it's just been fun so you know alongside with the high school staff administration starting this program has been a huge learning
experience for me the program would really not be possible without um our principal Scott Gangler Tyler Shepard and Scott Torter they have given me valuable guidance and a lot of advice along the way so on a day-to-day b on a
day-to-day basis I do have the pleasure of working alongside Rachel Click and Hannah Kim now Rachel is our classroom teacher and Hannah is the nurse who is tasked with teaching the some of the skills to the students and you know and
I couldn't ask for two more professional and skilled individuals to work with i'm thankful every day for their expertise and their willingness to go way and well above and beyond for our students they just work
tirelessly and I would like to thank my family um they are they support me all the time and they are my biggest cheerleaders my husband Scott and my three children are right there and they are all Weisetta grads so yay
so you know I'm just so very proud to be a part of the Weisetta public schools and and I just want to thank you again thank you again from the bottom of my heart i am on I'm just truly honored and I'm inspired and I do look forward to continuing my service to our school district thank you
[Applause] have to make sure I've covered all of our recognitions tonight i have only one left uh it's our tradition that uh each regular school board meeting we announce the names of individuals that have uh
indicated their intent to retire and I have three individuals on that list this evening first Stacy Boss executive director of human resources uh eight years of service gail Thingvold Weisetta Cafes East Middle School 20 years and
Carolyn Narvisen in Memoriam Weisetta Cafes East Middle School who served us for 23 years we thank these individuals for their contributions to the district and um thank them for for all that they uh have
done that concludes our recognitions uh for this evening um thank you so much for u your attendance tonight and for being a part of um our board meeting it's nice to have you here thank you
all right congratulations to the honores and thank you Dr anderson moving on we hi we have the highlight of our of our regular meetings the school spotlight presentation tonight we are joined by Visetta High School and uh I'm
right here oh there you are executive director of teaching and learning Dana will make the introductions thank you Dana you bet thank you um Chair Sahony Dr anderson members of the board it's super exciting tonight to have um assistant principal Sheepard here along
with many from the high school to share um about our experiential learning at Weisetta High School specifically everything going on with CTE programming which was perfectly timing for our honores tonight as well and meeting the needs of each and every learner continues to be a commitment that
Weisetta High School strives to meet both through academic excellence as well as student experience as reflected in their Weisetta portrait of a high school graduate tonight's focus is to shine that spotlight on the experiential learning experiences at Weisetta High School and how these programs provide
meaningful relevant and equitable learning experience to all of our students both in and out of the classroom it's been a great privilege this year to visit all these programs and to learn a great deal more and excited about some future ideas they have i know uh Assistant Principal
Shepard likes to dream big here so we're going to hear a lot about it and I'm super excited for that and with that I'll turn it over to Tyler Shepard all right thank you for the introduction just to get us started I'd like to review our two building goals that we have as a high school uh the first goal
is specific to uh the ACT uh we look to uh have a minimum uh ACT score of 21 uh which prepares based on the Minsk benchmark for acceptance for college uh as you know all of our students that are juniors take the ACT each year and our
goal is that students get 21 or above um and we're striving to go from 71.5% to 78.6% this year uh the ACT has rescheduled so we're going to try doing that again on April 22nd but what's important to recognize
here is that that score of a 21 and the 71.5% is really a snapshot in time of the juniors that take that assessment when they're juniors many of our students take the ACT assessment multiple times which in turn uh results
in our average ACT score as a building being 25.3 so again while we strive for that Minsq benchmark for acceptance of 21 many of our students are are quite a bit above that with an average over 25 as a building we have a sub goal when it
relates to the ACT and that's look at some of our underserved populations uh to bring that gap up in terms of those that are ready based on that Minsk score our second building goal as a whole is entirely based on student
experience we want students to have meaningful relevant and equitable experiences in all of their classes and that's really going to be the root of our presentation today we survey students each year using a district survey uh and we ask them to gauge with
uh using all teachers or often and always sorry often or sometimes teachers uh in terms of their health and well-being their concern for each and every personalized student learning and achievement you'll see that some of
these percentages are on the 50% and that's because we're striving to have the answer of most or all of my teachers and recognizing that some students have four times four so 16 teachers a year and some have even more if they're every
other day again we're focusing this result on the all teachers or often or always almost always scores so with that uh we're going to focus today entirely on our experientialbased learning and I'm going to pass it over to the reason
why we do what we do uh to the students so to start us off today I'm going to introduce you to Matthew Adams hi everyone my name is Matthew Adams and I'm a senior at High School this year next uh fall I'm going to attend the University of Wisconsin
lacrosse where I'm going to study biology and run track and field today with highlighting experiential based learning me and my fellow presenters are going to aim to specifically highlight what opportunities are available at the high school for this experiential based
learning then we also want to present you with what our plans for the future are and as we go through these if any questions arise or any clarifications are necessary please let me and my fellow presenters know we'd be more than happy
to before we jump into experiential based learning I want to highlight the portrait of Oata graduate which states that all students will graduate ready for post-secary success regardless of race class gender or ability the portrait of a graduate
mainly focuses on seven values some of which being embracing collaboration communicating effectively focusing on personal growth and I know personally throughout my time in multiple CT courses I have been exposed to opportunities that have allowed me to
further my journey in the portrait of Wise graduate and really grow in all of these areas through working with my peers and also working with people who are outside of the high school i'd like to pass it off to Ryan
Oswald and Ram Aurora thank you Matthew um good evening board members my name is Rahm Aurora i'm a senior at the high school and in the fall I'll be attending the University of Minnesota Twin Cities studying psychology and I'm Ryan Oswald um I am also a senior and I will be studying secondary
education at Gus Davis Adulus College so the both of us are here today to talk about academic mentoring it's a class that juniors and seniors can take which allows them to enter the classroom helping the teacher with their lesson plans and teaching students uh me myself I was a part of an English as a second language class where I help students who
are learning English as a second language with uh lessons plans you know learning about calendar timing and all of the different language that comes with that at the start of the course mentors learn a bunch of essential skills to help be a better mentor these one of these skills I found most useful
is asking good questions this means that when a student asks you a question you don't just give them the answer but you provoke questions to lead them to their own answer this is really helpful when you're in these classrooms and it's it's skills like these that really make
mentors that much better personally I have been able to um deepen my love for teaching through the mentor experience and that's why I want to become a secondary education yeah so um looking to the for looking to the future one of the things we hope to engage more with is civic engagement
specifically with the younger schools looking at the elementary and middle schools having elementary schools TAS and having it all merge into one program and in this past year we had around 600 students that were registered for mentors they served classrooms both at the high school and the middle schools and the elementary schools and along
with the um being in the classroom helping student help helping teachers we also had students do separate programs that continue to support students firstly one of them was the writing exploration center also known as the wet which is where students could come in and they could submit their writing whether it was papers projects speeches
to get a second uh opinion i know personally I wasn't the best at English so it helped me a lot uh in fact I actually turned in my college applications there my college essays and happy to say it worked so very grateful in addition there is the math exploration center this is where uh
mentors who are skilled in math come into uh classrooms where teachers need their support this might be for studying before a test or a final and this is really impactful for the students because they're able to have a second or third pair of hands besides the teacher to help support them prior to these
large assessments in addition we also have the tutoring center this is where students can get one-on-one support with the subject that they need most the tutoring center focuses on students who need some help with interpersonal skills or might need confidence in their subject that they need help in um this
tutoring center is during win time which is a personal intervention time and it helps the students um outside of the classroom while not interfering with classroom time but still during the school day so they're able to get this support without going outside of the classroom going to a private tutor paying extra money or doing something
like that and the tutoring center i've been able to see students that I have helped throughout an entire quarter grow in their own skills with math but also in their interpersonal skills and with their confidence and those test scores and grades have risen yeah one of the biggest things that both Ryan and I have
seen is the um improvement in their confidence and their ability to ask for help i think even going beyond both the just like the math and the ability to do math the ability to ask for help is one of the biggest skills that we need all right we now like to invite Matthew back up thanks Rahman ryan I would like to
highlight one of the biggest experiential learning programs at the high school which is career and technical education this was a rebrand from teched family and consumer science and business courses all under one umbrella program that encompasses all of
those and this mainly focuses on workforce skills while also teaching academic content and students in these courses are able to learn some of the intangibles that come with working outside of the high school and being in
these more real world courses that are teaching things that could be relevant to them later on in life if they are going to study something that may be in that course's field and even if they're not looking to study that particular subject it may offer them an opportunity
to realize what they would like to study or it could give them um more chances to further their journey in the portrait as a graduate learning those intangible skills even if it may not be the thing they're truly truly passionate about it can help them to develop and grow as a
person we have some pamphlets that we will hand to you and you can take a look at in a second and I believe you have it on your screen as well and this showcases all the 11 career spheres
and 70 plus courses that career and technical education offers not only at the high school but also at the middle school and this is a great opportunity for students to be able to look at this find the career sphere that they might be currently interested in see all the
course offerings without having to read through a large paragraph that describes the course so they can kind of find a few options and then when they are deciding between courses to choose they have the opportunity to look at a larger pamphlet with that paragraph that
describes the course in more detail to see if it's really something that they want would like to pursue all right I'd like to pass it off for unique programs hi my name is Avery Klein and I'm a junior at Wisetta High School i'm currently in the career and teched
internship program cte is a program that helps students explore their career interests within the community a few of the categories that we could choose from are construction business health services human um health science human services and
many more students usually participate for one semester and leave for one or two blocks a day ct adviserss support finding interns meaningful placements in their field of interest and a little bit about my experience is while most students only
participate for one semester I've enjoyed my placement so much that I've decided to stay for the remainder of the year i was originally interviewing to work at St davis Center for Child and Family Development but due to being an athlete the hours they requested didn't
work for me so my teacher immediately placed me at Wislet Kids at Plymouth Creek while my future plan is to work in the area of pediatric nursing this experience gives me the opportunity to continue to build my skills in the areas of working with children communication
collaboration problem solving and time management adding this information to my college application will demonstrate my passion for working with children and showcase my well-rounded education i feel benefits for the Cine
program include hands-on opportunities the ability to earn credits while receiving training and the bonus of getting paid for the work that you are doing i would highly recommend the Wisetta SCT internship program advisers are extremely helpful in supporting students with finding valuable
experiences in their area of interest and I am very grateful for my time in the program and for the support of my instructors hi I'm Nika Finar i'm a senior this year and um this fall I'm going to Minnesota State Mano and I'm going to be majoring in biochemistry um
my name is Nicole Britz i'm also a senior and next year I plan to attend Winona State University for nursing um so the certified nurse aid program is a course that prepares students for becoming a nursing assistant um the
course entail it prepares students through coursework and hands-on experiences um you learn things like how to identify certain diseases or injuries you may see see on residents you also learn how to do skills like taking pulse
and respirations and just anything that would be helpful in um a nursing home or care facility setting um this year was the first year running the program and 117 students joined and in the first semester 44 students successfully passed
the Minnesota CNA exam and that allowed them to get jobs locally um and allowed them to participate in the CTE internship program that was covered earlier um and as for next year over um at least 140 students are um going to
enroll and so another part of the course is um clinicals um basically you get to go to a nursing home or another care facility and you get to basically um practice all the skills you've been learning um and we
partner with Amamira Burches and Parks Place uh personally speaking this program has been really beneficial to me because it's taught me empathy for people in situations different to mine and it's definitely taught me to um uh treat people with respect
especially the residents going in to healthcare and I definitely think that providing dignity and compassion is one thing that is really hit on in this course obviously you're doing some stuff that could make a resident uncomfortable and
it can be difficult to navigate that so trying to provide dignity and make it as easy as possible make sure everyone's comfortable it's been super crucial like I know I was really nervous about it going in and now I feel like I've learned a lot in that regard and even if you aren't going into nursing there's so
many valuable people skills you learn it's really just a critical or well it's a really beneficial next step for the future and I am going into nursing and one really cool thing is that my school requires a CNA and now I'm getting it
done so I'll be able to work as a CNA before the program and I'll get paid i am saving up for college where many other people are going to have to do the CNA on their own time in the summer so I really feel like this is preparing me
for my future hi I'm Jane Strider and I'm a senior at Weisetta High School i will be going to the University of Missouri next fall where I will be studying elementary education hi my name is Veron Shaiff i'm currently a sophomore at the University of Minnesota studying management
information systems and business analytics um aspiring to go into management consulting hi my name is Nabil Abdulahi i'm also a student currently at the University of Minnesota and a Wisetta alum class of 2024 and I am studying finance and
management information systems hi again Matthew Adams and I am still a senior um a unique program we like to highlight with experiential learning is the compass program and this is a program that is co-curricular and team taught
and it offers opportunities in applied graphics and communications um business and economics and then applied math and cyber security one of the most beneficial things I got from my compass experience I took apply graphics uh was my one-on-one connection
with a mentor who is operating in the business world he runs a industrial real estate company and he was mainly focusing on some of the communication aspects within his company and it was
really cool to be able to see not only how the communications worked but also just how he operated on a day-to-day basis and it was really helpful for me to see that and understand what aspects of his company which I didn't even know
existed before I was his mentee and what aspects I would appreciate and really enjoy doing myself another great thing with Compass is that you partner with local businesses in charter projects so you're able to get this experience
outside of high school working with other businesses and people not um unlike your peers one of the other great benefits is college credits since 2017 Compass students have earned 237 college credits which equates to a
lot of money saved i was in the same class as Matthew so they applied graphics and communications and one of the things that I really enjoyed about the class was that is it felt like a team and it was very handson i learn hands-on i don't learn from a slideshow and so it's really great to be
able to go out and learn from the companies themselves i remember one specific we went to Target like the headquarters and we were able to actually learn about their marketing strategies learn from them instead of just learning about marketing in general in at school um and then we also were
able to do charter projects which you work in a team so it's really cool because you're able to learn with your peers with a community partner as well so we were with Midtown Global Market where we worked with them to create new merchandise for their store which there was some ups and downs during all of
that but we figured it out in the end and we learned from it yeah so I'm here to speak a little bit more on like particularly the business management economics um program how it's kind of applied after um being in the program i felt real passionate about the
matter so I end up writing more of like a speech so if you guys don't mind um so you know the three main things Compass gave me that I still carry every single day number one is exposure compass exposed me to industries I didn't even know existed and opened up like a real curiosity about how the world works you
know it showed me the behind-the-scenes operation of things that we often overlooks like like how you know train tracks stay functional you know visiting Lam and seeing how they make train grinders there like in real life um also how you know playgrounds are built and how they've evolved over time to become
more safe you know everything from like even the shade of color has to be chemically tested so you know really seeing that really was eye opening and showed me that business truly is everywhere the second thing it gave me was ownership of my development and the hustle to you know get up um compass
beyond just like business management and you know the actual textbook it taught me to take ownership of my growth you know whether it was leading my charter project or learning from my mentors i was constantly being stretched and challenged um learning from so many learning from so many speakers showed me
that you know business is truly hustle hustle is what moves the needle um a lot of business is about going two steps further where others stop um example of how that how I've taken that lesson this semester I got denied from a competitive startup internship program at the U i'd
applied back in fall got denied applied for the spring got denied again um but this time I sent a follow-up message expressing continued interest and asking you know how I could improve this is something I learned back in Compass and funnily enough somebody actually dropped out of the position and I ended up
getting in the program and now that internship is turning into my full-time position for the summer um so Compass truly showed me that you can't just wait for things to fall into your lap you really got to go out and create your own opportunities and the last thing is it gave me confidence you know between all the site visits all the speakers the
mini project I just went through so many experiences that I have no choice but to be confident um I remember at the start of the semester site visits used to really intimidate me you know I would get anxious before raising my hand but you know over time I became the one asking the most questions and you know
preparing properly for site visits you know it got to the point where some of my classmates were definitely sick of me um and that translated perfectly earlier this semester when I studied abroad uh at the U and we visited companies like Goldman Sachs and Google and I was surrounded by upper classmen in my class
yet I was the one who was the most comfortable there asking the best questions um and also you know leading that charter project you know being completely honest in the end we had great deliverables but it was a real roller coaster of a project but you know I think that was the best part it
allowed me to you know make mistakes and learn from them um and since then I've led eight successful business projects and every time I carry those early compass lessons with me you know knowing the worst that has already happened has really allowed me to take risks speak up and lead with experience you know so in
the end I'm incredibly grateful for what Compass gave me and I'll always remember it as the spark that lit the fire of business and then a lot of what I'll say will echo uh all what everything that my speakers up here as well said but just
going into college being as prepared as I am going through that Compass experience was something that was probably the most valuable experience I would speak on throughout my entire high school career from like I'd get questions from my fellow classmates and my peers all
the time how do I have this many connections on LinkedIn yet oh it was from Compass how do I have my resume already built oh it was from Compass by preparing me for those types of moments and by preparing me to go into my college career and my professional career after that point by connecting me with my mentors by going through all
those professional development sessions by going on site visits by listening to guest speakers it genuinely was an experience that I believe every student should have the opportunity to go through and like I said everybody up here wouldn't have the same experience
as me but I fortunately went through Compass without by being able to have no regrets through the entire process i truly enjoyed every part of it and it's the reason why I was so passionate about it and why I am as proud to wear this badge as I am so that's all I have to
say so another class that we have is intro to education which I was in last semester um in this course students earn three college credits um just like Compass but through Minnesota State Mano and you explore careers in education and
human services so in my class that I took last semester we had people in kindergarten preschool personally I was in fifth grade we had people also at the high school in an art class a math course they really put you wherever you want and where would they see best fit there's currently 49 students enrolled
in the semester course and it is where you go off-site and get field experience two times a week and what is really cool for me was I was in a fifth grade classroom who was my third grade teacher and my fifth grade teacher and instead of being on the side of the students learning like all the students I was
able to learn like the teacher and I was able to see more what the teacher does how she works with behavioral issues how she teaches um you were also given the opportunity to teach a mini lesson which is super cool as someone going into education it was really cool to see what
my future could be like in the teaching so I taught a little mini writing lesson um and there's also a future educator ceremony in May which I will be at so you guys are all welcome to come so I was in a fourth grade classroom and
it was so crazy to be back at my old elementary school like all the stairs I was like wait like I remember this i It was very crazy but what was crazier was all the connections I built with all the students i'll see them outside of school on occasion walking down the street and
they'll stop me and be like "Nicole oh my gosh like I'm so happy to see you." And that just makes my day like I'll be at the hockey rink and one of the fourth graders will come and watch my game and it was just so sweet like even though I'm not going into education it was such
a fun experience and I feel like I learned so much as James said it's not it's very interesting to see how a classroom is taught not just being the student so it was really interesting to help with the help them with math and
writing and just the different areas of education so and I'll also be talking about ChildSight too because I love kids so I obviously took every opportunity I could at the high school and I'm so grateful for the Trojan Tots because it was
probably my favorite class I've ever taken it is run through part of child psychology too and it served 20 families this year 21 tots or preschoolers aged three to five there's a couple younger ones but 160 high school students took
the class it's open to 10th graders through 12th graders and we see the tots three days a week the other two we get to plan lessons i remember being very excited when I was planning my lessons because I knew that they were going to just be
fascinated by merging colors together and guessing what it makes and making inquiries and doing sensory tables like it was um we got to plan a lot of different stuff around that there's a lot of different learning areas we're
having them dance and movement and some of them don't know how to jump yet so you're teaching them how to jump and just early childhood education is so important and so it was really interesting and some kids don't have any background with
um younger kids so I guess I should say some students don't have any opportunities to interact they don't have younger siblings they don't babysit and so watching them get the opportunity to interact with these little kids was so cool and now I um from that class I
ended up deciding to work at a daycare which I never would have considered and I do that almost every day after school and I would would not have thought of to do that and someone in my class is like you should work at the daycare I'm working at like I think you'd really like it and so I I honestly I academic
mentored this class because it was so fun and I think you can learn a lot from it thank you Nicole uh clearly some great opportunities that experiential learning at the high school provides and I'd like to highlight one more it's the CT showcase which is where local vendors
will come to the back gyms and they will set up booths that highlight what they do within the community and this includes technical careers community colleges and overall they're exhibiting how to be successful in their area in
their career and this year there's going to be 90 vendors and 3,000 plus students will attend this event it's throughout the school day and it offers students a great opportunity to similar to the pamphlet to experience lots of different
opportunities in the workforce all at once and they're able to see more than just a page they're able to see what actually they do and most of these vendors will bring uh demonstrations kind of like the one you can see on screen and they'll have something that
pertains to their area of expertise and this is just a great opportunity for 9th through 12th graders to really get a a jump start on what experiential learning is as we look towards the future the academic mentor program plans to expand
especially with these one-on-one opportunities that we mentioned through the math exploration center the writing exploration center and the tutoring center to provide more opportunities to give this individualized support and give the extra benefits that are needed we also expand or we also plan to
continue to expand to preschool uh classes and um encourage more mentors to go into these elementary and middle school settings uh with career technical education we aim to have a greater alignment between middle school and high school programs
so that students can have more of a seamless transition if they would like to continue down a path that they found enjoyable or they would just like to continue taking these courses uh from middle school to high school on top of this we would like to update curriculum
and career sphere offerings to match the industry demand that is continuously increasing um looking toward sorry looking towards the future uh we hope to establish a community based advisory board where we get more professionals for example nurses helping in a CNA room and that
kind of thing where we have people from the community that help students to gain a further understanding and get more hands-on experience and I think above all else I think you've all heard today how we all have had it's been this programs have had a major impact on us we've learned a lot more be having the ability to be hands-on to have that
experience and we hope to expand that to everyone at the high school and beyond both at the elementary and middle school level but to do to do that we do need the resources available and you know I hope you learn something learn something from our stories because we truly have learned a lot [Applause]
thank you all and if you can just stay where you are right now tyler if you want to come forward maybe maybe my colleagues might have a question for question or two for you as well so I tried to remember names until I realized that it was too much to
keep track of i thought there were only three or four students so I remembered Tyler then I remembered uh see there I forget again Matthew and then was Ram and Ryan and then I started remembering the first initial of the first name after that I gave up i I just cannot
even remember that but thank you for the presentation uh any questions comments from colleagues sheila um I don't have any questions just um some comments um thank you all for sharing i did learn a lot um I have a high I have two high
schoolers and I didn't know this much and I hope I hope my ninth grader will take advantage of some of these programs um it's been really great to see all of you here tonight i mean it's just to have people from college coming back too
it's just a testament to this program um and you know it's it's really a win-win situation having you know having you guys help out in classrooms and help with tutoring and this program or all of these programs combined with your hard
work and your motivation really has created something wonderful and I thank you for sharing that with us tonight well thank you so much for being here i had one quick question um and then I'll you know give you guys some accolades question for Mr sheepard um you talked
at the very beginning about raising the percentage for the um ACT proficiency and I wanted to understand better kind of what in what went into the 78% uh final uh number uh we just look for
small gains uh so we take our our composite score from last year and we look to see what's a reasonable uh gain based on what our district data department recommends for us um and then we build many of our professional development and our curriculum opportunities for teachers around some
of those skills uh that students uh can pick up before the ACT to be better prepared for it thank you so much so really I mean to pass along my best wishes those of you who are attending college in the fall those of you who are sticking with the program um you know going into next year
and perhaps beyond you know any kind of experiential learning or training we can give you guys it appears you know very very effective and really helps you balance your future um you know work life balance we talk about that a lot certainly you've all spoken to the plethora of programming opportunities we
have with nursing you know uh primary education secondary education and so on and so forth so thank you to coming for coming to us there's no way we could really size up everything you've told us but we will certainly take it home with us and you know it will inform our decision- making and to support these
programs so thank you so much first of all wow i only wish if I would have had these opportunities and these programs so I was taking notes and again there is just too much all I'll say is uh we met
with student council earlier today and we were super proud of you know their leadership and on the same day we are meeting yet another panel of leaders so kudos to you i'll go back to that first slide where we showed what Weisetta
stands for and we've been part of Weisetta community for last 18 years so the resiliency the value making you better citizen uh not just academic excellence those were some of the things that you know we look forward for and
why we came to YZA and you literally proved that i mean each one of you so thank you for making us proud i'm sure you all are proud of yourself but again this is awesome um I wanted to share few examples again CD Compass I've had
firsthand experience through my daughter through some of our friends um one thing I want to share is again I think with Ram and Ryan you shared about the academic mentoring program um talking to some of the mentors um I also experience
or I also notice what they learned so you could be good at certain things but when you start working with others who need help the compassion empathy that comes with it I could see them relating to that and as they were trying to
mentor other kids um in my conversations they talked about how they changed their approach um you know certain students weren't following the standard approach and how they change it but it kind of connected them and I don't know if you guys felt it so that's a learning for
you as you enter in workforce and professional life so yes you have helped other students but I'm sure in that course you have learned a lot and that is something definitely going to help building your character um I have one question and again we
we met earlier with student council and that question came up um and like I said I wish I would have had this program so as I was looking at the catalog I couldn't make up my mind i looked at business and entrepreneurship then I jumped into finance and accounting then
I jumped into engineering and design right so what are we doing to make sure that the entire student population knows about these opportunities and not just the ones who are again I'm using the
word smart just for this context but sometimes people have background they get coach you know through their mentors to their parents and they already know what all things to try but we also heard today um from some of the student
council members that not everybody Everybody knows not everybody has that background some students they switch colleges when they come in here they get overwhelmed right so do you guys have any idea or have you done something to kind of make this program
options known to everyone um just to even mentor right some of you who are seniors even what to pick I mean like I said I know most of these programs but I couldn't put finger on one of them I switched through three different program just on the slide so is there anything
you guys are thinking about are you already doing to make sure everybody understands what it is how they can make use of you know these opportunities and sort of help them select the right one with um that's a great point and with my
compass class we had a charter project and mine specifically was actually working with the CTE program at the high school to increase the uh enrollment within these programs and Um particularly we made um some graphics
and there were probably six foot tall poster boards that are displayed out in the hallway currently outside of um one of the classrooms right by the main entrance so it's a very hightraic
area and these are also displayed at um the try to think of the career fair and um the curriculum fair and so students are able
to get a quick snapshot of these ideas and kind of get drawn in and then we can explain more and then on the topic of um picking things at least personally it was a lot of word of mouth and what did I think I wanted to do and I would go
ask people who I knew who were even just one grade above me and they would have options for me yeah and adding on to that uh looking at the academic mentoring aspect which me Ryan and I talked about uh we um recently a few weeks ago talked to the eighth graders when they came for their visits we had
spoke to them about what academic academic mentoring was how does it work what classes can you participate in that kind of thing so doing things like that to help share and adding on to like how to choose for me it was always like write everything down you could possibly imagine and then start crossing things off that you don't want to do and also with word of mouth especially I know um
the seniors for me last year were a great help for that okay great well thank you again um great job you all make us proud um thank you very much oh we're not done yet thank you all for coming thanks to our
alums for coming back um and thank you students so I do have a series of questions too the first is kind of easy um first are there going to be like the big trucks and machines at the CTE fair this year because last year it was rainy and we couldn't get out to them so there are yay okay good now we need a good day
so we can get out and play on them and that would be fantastic actually testing the limit of the concrete oh I love it that's fun cool well that's a good learning experience too probably right um so and then my second question
that I have is um it's kind of a two-part question because you talked about big ideas right or things and we like big ideas and we like learning so my first question is are there areas that you can see I think of a college that needed a a CNA degree and then I
know some other colleges like that look for EMTs right they look for campus EMTs and there are ways to do that and so my so my first question I'll ask them in separate parts my first question is are there specific courses or areas of study that you as students have seen or heard or are college alums that would be
helpful to be adding into this process us or your admin what you dream of i have a lot of dreams um but that's part of why we are uh starting to engage in curriculum review to really look at that and work with our advisory boards on developing a more concrete plan of what we need to do to expand to really
meet those industry needs uh we have many many many partners hundreds of partners um in fact at the CTE showcase uh that's coming up pretty soon all of the participants in that have a lunch with our teachers in their sphere areas
or their areas of focus to give us that feedback on what we need to do to improve our curriculum but also what new courses we need to offer nice okay my second question students did you get to your spaces by driving yourself
and how were our facilities and so tell me how what are the areas that you have around maybe transportation or facilities access that could enhance your learning experience um one thing I will say about Intro to
Ed is I had my own car and thankfully Meadow Ridge is right down the road but I know some students really would like to be at the elementary schools but they couldn't and so while there are placements they were able to push into other classrooms like I know students
that like helped ninth graders and it was like an awesome experience obviously but I know that that was definitely one thing that could be improved with the intro to education program um you talked about one way of improving it and I actually got the opportunity to
go see the Minnesota program and they have bus routes that drive around and so in order to get more people the opportunity to go to any of these classes a bus route could be very beneficial obviously you'd have to have some restraints of where they could go
so they have enough time where they are but the bus route seem to run really smoothly there so so is that like a commuter bus that maybe has a parameter in the city and that would go around and that could cover our elementary schools or some of our child care sites or some of our the numbers of businesses that
are in Plymouth and such like that and the timing of the course schedules could make those routes yep okay all right thank you jess I just want to share a couple real quick things uh first of all you had referenced the education class a couple
of times and uh my wife and I have two Wisetta High School alums and our daughter's currently a kindergarten teacher and even though both of her parents are teachers uh I think that taking that sequence of education classes really made a a difference for her and helped uh encourage her to go
into the the field so I appreciate that we offer that and the second thing is I was at a conference last week Thursday and Friday and the opening keynote speaker happened to be a Weisetta mom and afterward she came up and chatted with me and of all the hundreds of things that she might have been able to
share with me about her two kids' experiences she focused on her daughter who's a student at the high school and she shared with me she said one day her daughter came up to her they must have a sheetrocked wall or something in their garage or something she said "You know Mom I could tape and mud that wall for
you if you want me to." So um and my response was she must have had Kyle Swenson's construction class so anyway um words out there that there's some great programming at the high school and I thought that was kind of a fun story to share given the the topic tonight so
well done thanks everybody okay I I have a comment first for is it Vira or Vanch biranch um it looks like you're a very inquisitive person so you keep asking questions don't stop don't stop i am
very very notorious in my family for asking a lot of questions and my wife always keeps telling me keep stop asking questions and I know I just cannot stop so don't don't stop ask keep asking questions all of you that's how we learn right so that's that's great that you
you do that and don't pay attention to those who say you're you ask too many questions um I have a question for Tyler if you can come up front here and slide three please amy the goals one and two this one yes um actually the one the
first previous one the goal number one there you go so so goal number one a uh Help me understand this college and career ready is when the student gets an ACT score of
21 or higher is that correct correct based on the Minscu benchmark okay so what I'm reading from this is that you are hoping to increase that number from 71.5 to 78.6 don't get me wrong on this one i have been wondering about this for the
last three years and I think it is it has to do with the state requirements md requires certain number of credits from students for them to graduate there is no specific requirement of what courses they have to do what kind of grades they
should get etc and therefore that 78.6 actually ends up being 97% for high school graduation i still haven't figured out what I'm missing uh I know that in elementary school and maybe even middle school there are lots of kids at least
about 20% of our kids that cannot read or do math at grade level they're still struggling so is that difference between 78.6 and 97 which turns out to be 20% is that from those students that are
not proficient in English or math or both and but they're still graduating from high school i think it's a state issue because it happens all around the state the reading proficiency and the math proficiency in other school districts is much much much worse than
ours we are much better off than other districts and they still have an average of 87 plus% of high school graduation around the state i I do do you have any any thoughts on that or Well my the first thing that
comes to mind is just that there's a lot of different factors in terms of what students do after high school um we have students that are on IEPs with certain plans we have students that are on 504s we have students going into college we have students going to the military into the careers and I think that um there's
a lot built into those course requirements that we as a district require on top of uh what the state requires to really create that rigorous experience the ACT is just one measure um of skills related to those four core areas that are assessed plus the writing
on the ACT um so I can see your question and where they where there's some confusion there um but I but it is measuring I think one point in time in comparison to a variety of electives and many other courses that we require as a
district and as a state you know I I don't know if there's an answer to this question you know do we follow these kids in college and wonder whether you know all of them continue in college or even in I've heard argument that you know when when kids go after high school they do not go to college but go to
vortex school or something like that you you need math there you need English right it's not like you do not need those things there and if you are not proficient at grade level even those courses are going to be difficult for you and you know an electrician or a plumber who does not know how to measure
things right in terms of math they're not going to be able to make it so do we have an idea of how many kids that graduate from high school actually make it through the entire four-year college degree or two-year associates degree so we do I don't know the number off the
top of my head but we do track the number of students that complete their college experience in the predicted time whether it's four or five years um how many go for one year and then um take a year off we do have that data in our report card uh that we do track just to see if we are preparing students to be
successful after okay and you found that almost all of them do well in college and graduate and do well the the feedback that I get is that students from Wisetta are very well prepared for college but would you guys agree
as graduates okay all right okay thank you um and then slide 10 if you can open that uh final question I promise is that okay i don't know the one where you have those different programs
not this one actually is that number 10 so basically do we have an do we have an idea of the demographics that take all these courses so CTE okay how many of the marginalized kids for example those that do not do
well in English or math they to take those courses and then also mentorship program are all kids involved in that or is it only a certain section that that are focused in that so we are tracking that data pretty closely to make sure that our school representation is taking
advantage of these programs uh whether it be in these career spheres uh we also look at articulated credits concurrence enrollment uh PSO opportunities and then AP courses uh based on demographic but also based on our entire population uh
we have some classes in this that are required for students to take uh we're excited that personal finance will soon be required for the current freshmen uh once they become sophomores um but we're looking really closely to see what percentage overall take at least one of
these courses and it's well over 80% it's quite a bit higher um and then there's a uh a very high number I can't think of it off the top of my head that take more than one okay um unfortunately or fortunately um our Compass program um which is a a pretty
amazing capstone experience we're just very limited due to um funding and the way that the model is with co-eing that we can only have a certain number of students participate in that uh but a part of our vision and kind of what this the goal of this document is is to
really allow students to explore these opportunities with the new electives that they have in the element or uh middle schools uh to really expose them to CTE and an intro to CTE uh to explore those pathways and then really come to the high school and develop their four-year plan with their uh counselor
to really choose what that pathway is that they want to follow and then just keep tracking which students are taking which courses to make sure that those opport opportunities are there it's our goal in the end or I should say my future vision one of them um is that all students would have an experiential
learning opportunity almost required um by the time that they graduate given the number of different opportunities we have uh we're not telling them they have to do one but you have many to choose from to really get that experience yes thank you that's a great idea and I really
appreciate all of you coming here and presenting all the information like my colleagues some of my colleagues said a lot of that went over my head a lot of did not stick in my head but we will we'll make an attempt to go back and learn I will definitely attend CTE uh on
uh April 25th I believe I did that last year and I was so impressed that actually was some was in some respects better than some of the exhibits uh exhibition all presentations that we have seen in bigger conferences and
bigger trade events so I think I think it's a marvelous thing that you have there so thank you and congratulations again i'd just like to give a couple of props for the uh the teachers that are here with us tonight um we have Don Johnson Scott Torter and Paul Kimler who
are all um compass teachers in our program um and we have Emily Hul um who is the sole individual that places uh our 600 academic mentors into their sites uh this school year and um trains
them for that and then provides them with the the feedback throughout the program so we could not do it without the teachers that are involved in this program without the support of you as a a school board and without our administration thank you so much D give
them a round of applause as well director Mahoney if we might for just one second hold on to those just want to clarify one piece so we're for sure when we are talking about college ready in those questions that you had um and we say post-secary ready in NYA schools we
do mean um students who go on to any type of vocation or any type of schooling and so when we talk about our vocational schools or our four-year universities or an apprenticeship all of those are things that we strive um very strongly to make sure that that's part of our portrait of a graduate and um
post-secary ready and so these programs are preparing students for a great success um in whichever pathway they choose to be successful and from wherever they come from on that path so again I just want to thank this team for coming out tonight and for all the great work at the high school so thank you
yeah thank you Dina [Applause] all right we uh next is the audience opportunity to address the board amy do we have anybody okay okay so this section of the agenda
provides an opportunity for members of the community to address the school board speakers who wish to provide input to the school board must complete the signup sheet and return it to our administrative assistant uh Amy uh who is sitting at the table to the right
please note that you will need to complete a request form to be included on the speaker request list when when you are invited to the podium please identify the subject and or agenda items to which your comments
pertain priority will be given to students and families with students currently enrolled in the district first the school board practice is not to engage in a discussion or debate with the speaker but rather allow the speaker time to express their thoughts please
present your comments in a respectful and professional manner this evening each speaker will be invited up to the podium to speak for three minutes and we have a number of request uh requested speakers so I ask that you keep your
comments brief and definitely within the three minute time period um Amy will help us keep track of the time by holding up a red card uh Sheila has one here okay at the 3 minute mark please end your comments when you see the red card
if you have already shared your thoughts with the school board please consider letting someone new address the board if a community member shares a message similar to yours please consider shortening your message or presenting as a group first are there any students
tonight who want to speak not see any so I'm going to go ahead and start with the first name on the list and the topic is solar panels dr greg Leaden hi thanks for the opportunity to talk um
Dr anderson and Hony and the rest of the school board i'm talking about solar panels and using solar solar panels to develop energy sources in the school um I'm a semi-retired academic i actually now tutor students in ACT and SAT so we
can maybe help with that later um I'm a scientist who study long-term effects of climate change i advise and I'm an activist and an adviser for environmental groups and candidates and electro elected officials to help shape energy transition related policy um and
I am a parent of a Weisetta uh kid i volunteer for everything in the school um and uh so I'm I'm very active in the community weisetta I've heard it called the Harvard of the local school districts and it is in a way because when Weisetta does something when you
develop something here other school districts look and say "If only we could do that." And it leads in many ways but in solar energy Wisetta actually lags significantly we are an island of no solar this district surrounded by districts that have solar some kind and
many of them have taken advantage of the solar in schools program provided by the state um and during previous attempts I could just talk to people about this and learn like why is there resistance or or just not interested in it i learned there's a lot of counterpoints people make against solar energy develop
developing a solar system in the schools i'm told the ROI the return on investment solar isn't good enough but it's hard to understand why when there are state programs and federal programs that will pay for it so it isn't it is a good deal i'm told the techn is not ready a lot of people say that but it is
been it has been ready for years it hasn't you haven't seen major advances in this technology since there recent kind of a peak now it's very ready i'm told it's too expensive but it's known to be the cheapest way to make electricity that there's available i'm told that some of the schools can't
handle the solar panels but solar panels weigh less than an inch of snow and we have a lot more than inch of snow under a snowstorm so we can our our our buildings can handle it um and I'm told that because of the way school district budgeting works because of regulations provided by the state you can't move
money around and pay for or maintain solar panels on a school building but again all of your surrounding districts have them so they've solved that problem somehow or another um the in fact Representative Carol I think is in the room uh has been he's on the he's on the
energy committee that and has been a signator to the um updated versions of the solar in the schools program and uh we have a program in the state that will help the schools get it i know I was with Chase Anderson at an event at the
Bachan Museum a while back and they talked about amazing programs it isn't just making electricity from so from something other than coal or oil these are also educational programs and they're ways that students can be proud of their own school sort of leading the way in terms of uh in this important
upgrade to technology so that's all I have thanks okay next we have Anna Lemon uh topic uh she's going to talk about is the middle school model anna Sorry good evening my name is Anna Lemon and I teach sixth grade language arts at
Central Middle School my husband also teaches us at Central as a special education resource teacher and our three boys are students at Greek as educators parents and taxpayers we are deeply invested in the success of our schools i'm here tonight to share my concerns about the new middle school block
schedule the lack of authentic teacher input and overall decision-making and ongoing staffing issues at Central the shift to a block schedule has posed daily challenges in our classrooms students are sitting through extended class periods with science and social studies meeting every other day leading to learning gaps reduced retention and
fewer opportunities to build strong teacher relationships staff are repeating the lowest grades they have seen in decades increased student anxiety and overloaded lesson plans research from the National Association of Secondary School Principles and the Institute of Education Sciences supports traditional schedules with shorter
consistent periods and daily teacher interaction all of which this model abandons the schedule is also impacting our students social and emotional well-being in elementary school all students thrive with a single teacher who fosters routine and connection each day at the last board meeting Northwood staff highlighted the importance of
classroom and grade level community and overall emotional support however this consistency is then lost with the new schedule as they transition to middle school as true teaming is no longer possible despite assurances that it would remain intact when we met moved to block next year language arts will move
from one to two separate courses having two teachers and classes for language arts adds even more complexity to students already full schedules and overwhelm we've been told that this change was made to simplify scheduling and cost containment not because it's what's best for kids while teachers were
asked for input initially the options presented weren't in students best interest and we had to choose what was most manageable for us teacher input in the district and building decisions is also concerning surveys which have been the main form of feedback for us limit and don't reflect the reality of our
concerns for example last spring the WA in collaboration with district leadership and educators thriving sent a survey to assess the current state of our well-being of our staff and determine where support is needed the survey indicated that central needed improvement in administrator to staff communication transparent
decision-making and the overall culture of the building as a result a solutions committee was formed at central to address these areas i was a member of this team and after just two meetings with no solutions the committee was dissolved this left many of us feeling overlooked and unheard which goes
against the purpose in connection over the last four years Central's experienced significant turnover with over 100 educators leaving while the reasons are multiaceted this turnover rate is alarmingly high and I urge you to compare these numbers with other schools in our district and work with staff to better understand the
implications and causes high turnover not only affects the remaining educators but most importantly our students i asked the board to prioritize decisions that reflect the best interests of students and staff we need leadership that values teacher input fosters a supportive culture and builds
consistency within our schools for our kids wisetta has the potential to be exceptional but we must face these challenges directly with honesty curiosity and collaboration thank you for your time thank you Anna all right next we have Liz Bumgardner
who is going to talk about policy 413r good evening my name is Liz Bombgartner and I currently serve as the sixth grade counselor at Central Middle School this is my 11th year as a counselor and my third year in the district i'm a licensed mental health professional with a K12 principal license throughout my
time at Central I've consistently received strong performance evaluations and this year I was the only returning member on the counseling and social work team supporting three new colleagues as they transitioned into their roles in additional in addition to my professional qualifications I've built strong collaborative relationships with
staff student and families that enhance the support I'm able to provide our school community i signed up to speak tonight because one month ago HR informed me of my reassignment to East for the 2526 school year i have significant concerns with the district's broad use of board policy 413R which
outlines the regulations for prof for professional staff assignments and transfers weisetta's schoolboard mission is to act in the best interest of the entire district balancing the needs of students families and staff and yet administrators decisions about staffing
which directly impact student outcomes are being made in ways that contradict the very policies you've designed to ensure a fair equitable and transparent process my transfer for example was unexpected i am not being moved due to staffing needs or poor performance but
rather in direct response to my ongoing professional advocacy clarification of my contractual rights and insistence on clear consistent expectations while all staff transitions are disruptive the impact is particularly significant when it comes to moving counselors research from the
American School Counseling Association shows that continuity in counseling relationships leads to improved academic performance social skills and mental health for students since 2022 Central has lost six mental health professionals and if we as a district are truly committed to student- centered
decision-making we must acknowledge that another disruption in their support system without cause and without due process is not what's best for students and we must do better i urge the board to take the following actions first review policy 413R in full specifically
examining how involuntary transfers are handled in order to determine whether the intended purpose of the policy is being upheld in practice second ensure that decisions around staffing realignments are data-informed transparent and fair with written rationale provided and affected staff
offered opportunities to meaningfully participate in the process and finally center students and all decisions by acknowledging that relationships and continuity matter unexplained staff move moves undermine student support systems and break trust i believe these actions are vital
to ensuring the future staff transfers are supportive compassionate and clear thank you for your attention to this matter and your ongoing commitment to the success of Weisetta [Applause] last one we have is
Sally Dittenbach okay did I say that right okay and it's on uh valuing teacher feedback yes thank you uh good evening my name is Sally Dietbach and I teach language arts and social studies at East Middle School i'm
speaking you tonight to you tonight because I'm concerned that Weisetta administrators are not fully utilizing one of their greatest you resources for feedback and solutions their teaching staff our Weisetta teachers are the ones who are in classrooms with students every day and know the realities of both
student learning and Weisetta student experience however district and building administrators often overlook our opinions and our feedback for example last month I spoke at this board meeting uh at the March meeting about our need to bring teameming back to the middle
schools while I felt that I brought up some excellent points in the three minutes that I was allowed to speak I was disappointed when not a single Weisetta administrator or board member reached out to me since the meeting to discuss the issue further ask for clarifications or share any updates on
whether there's a plan to bring teameing back to the middle schools to be honest it really just made me feel like nobody at Weisetta Public Schools cared at all about what I had to say i'd also like to encourage the board to review the processes that Weisetta School District
uses to evaluate its principles minnesota State Statute 123B47 states that all school districts must develop and implement a performance-based system for annually evaluating school principles in subdivision 3 the statute also states
that the evaluation must quote allow surveys to help identify a principal's effectiveness leadership skills and processes strengths and weaknesses in exercising leadership in pursuit of school success i do not believe that our school district is currently in
compliance with the statute in our our middle schools students are surveyed every year and teachers are expected to implement changes to their teaching based on this feedback if the district truly believes that survey data is an important part of the improvement process why aren't we surveying teachers
every year and requiring principles to make changes based on that feedback aren't principles supposed to lead by example in their buildings lastly teachers need to be able to share their feedback with district administrators in a respectful constructive way without fear of
retaliation many Wiseetta teachers do not speak up even when we have concerns that student learning and experiences are at risk because we are worried about how the school district might respond as I'm speaking to you right now um you probably noticed that I'm very nervous
and very worried about what might happen to me as a result of my sharing my feelings at this meeting tonight i'm hopeful but not confident that I won't place disciplinary action a less favorable teaching assignment or any other negative consequences in retaliation for my comments tonight i
have great students i have great colleagues i have great family support in this district i should love my job but I don't i used to but I don't anymore and we can't fix any of these problems if the Weisetta school district
is not willing to listen i mean really listen to their teachers thank you thank you Sally all right i don't think we have any more so moving on to the next uh item on the agenda administrative
reports and recommendations and the first item is policy approvals there are two policies tonight and uh Dr anderson will present those uh Mr chair members of the board as indicated we have two policies tonight
uh the first policy is 506 student clothing and appearance and uh the second one a new policy actually um driven by uh recent legislative action uh personal electronic communications devices uh as a reminder uh not so much
for the board but for those listening we do have a policy committee that reviews policies and uh makes uh edits and recommendations to bring forward and uh they meet uh about monthly and uh serve
as our primary uh initial review and then it comes to the board for first and second reading so there are uh two policies uh before you tonight uh for board approval the recommended action is to approve the above policies as
presented in the attachments and uh uh Mr chair I'll turn it back over to you to u call for a motion on the Thank you Dr anderson so board colleagues the recommended action is to approve the board policies as presented uh just
remember that uh one of them we are doing a second reading by 24.5 and the other one is the first reading uh so keep that in mind and uh so do do I have a motion to approve so moved
and do you wave the second reading of one of them sir I wave uh second reading okay and which policy would that be excuse me um of 506 student clothing and appearance okay thank you Dan Is there a second
second moved and seconded is there a discussion mr chair if Mike could I just offer a couple of additional comments about 524.5 so I know there's some uh interest in learning more about this particular policy as we've had conversations in
committee and other venues in regard to consistency across uh our building so for example um the nine elementary schools have been in alignment and um have consistent policies and and
regulations or protocols and how they manage cell phones particularly but electronic devices within the school um the high school is relatively easy uh for consistency given we only have one high school um there has been just to uh
kind of uh uh put out what I know is a a point of conversation within the community about the three middle schools and I just wanted to share that even though the board's approving a policy tonight which is really what the board does approve um the regulations and the
specifics about each building's approach to uh electronic devices tends to get developed in the summer months because right now they don't uh spend a lot of time on handbook development for next fall so because this particular policy
is a new one um and given that there have been protocols that have been written at the different levels and implemented across the buildings um we will be taking another look at this and I just wanted to share with the board and with the community that uh it's the
intent of our three middle schools to be aligned in the fall uh with the same approach um that uh I don't know the way it's been presented to us east and west had a more restrictive policy be a little bit u uh different at Central for
the current year and uh Central East and West are going to be all pretty much on the same page with what East and West have done this year if that makes sense and I share it that way because that's how it's been communicated and I think people resonate with that who have been
in communication with me about it yes yes uh thank you Dr anderson and you're you're spot on i think uh I I'm not on the policy committee valentina chairs the committee and Parus and Sheila are on the committee but Paris could not attend the last one so I I substituted
for him and the discussion was with regard to the difference in central middle school policy and it is not a bell-to-bell policy right now and so our concern was to have it consistent with East and West Middle School and we
were assured that it will it will happen that will happen when one school starts in the fall for next year and so that is that is great i think that will keep the make the community happy there were a lot of u that was a lot of feedback from
the community so as Dr and Anderson mentioned earlier the it's the vetting of the policy is a three is vetted by three three uh bodies one is of course the policy committee of the board the staff vets that and as well as we have a
lot of policies which say that we will have community feedback and that is one of the ways to vet our policies as well to get community feed giving feedback to us as far as what what they think about the policy and what we should be doing in their opinion
So thank you for that i I'm hoping that the board is happy with uh the the result and uh if you have any other questions you may ask now you know you want this is a this is a time for discussion so thank you Dr and on that um we had
our district laser committee last week and again um some of the representatives they brought up the same aspect um that they wanted consistency and generally they liked what east and west has done and they would like to see the same
protocols if you will for central so that that is really good news so thank you Dr anderson so I want to start by recognizing that We had a policy in place as as Weisadow public schools at the start of the school year even though we didn't need
to have a policy in place until March so I want to recognize our principles for stepping up and putting something forth to start the school year with as we've talked about middle school alignment in many different directions I think this is one place that it's a good place to
have alignment because every one of our students should walk into a school no matter what building you're in and have a Wisetta experience and the wise that I experience should be similar from building to building even though you know we know every building has a little bit of a different feel and a little bit of a different vibe but those rules and
structures should be in place so thank you to all the middle schools for aligning on so many things over the past year when it comes to the models when it comes to changing you know ways that we're doing business in our middle
schools to try to improve things for our middle school students when it comes to this there have been a lot of things that we have asked our middle schools to do and so I highly highly appreciate the effort and the time that it takes to be intentional with those changes um
there's another piece that I would be remiss if I didn't talk to this piece i know that there are a lot of families that reached out to us as a board and we heard about kind of one side of it that everybody wants the restrictions in place to be off and away all day pretty much right that's how we kind of hear
about it um I also heard from teachers who are concerned about having to be the cell phone police and so it's not that they don't want this in place but it's one more thing to have to do and so as
with everything in public education it's all about partnership and so as parents you know whenever there's a policy that's rolling out like this it's not going to be perfect it's going to take some time it's going to take some getting used to it's going to take some effort not just on teachers and
principles parts but on parents parts so if we can all partner on this support your teachers through this support your principles through this um we will get there we're we're fighting an uphill battle with electronics and we all know it as parents um but it's it's really
important for us to remember that it's not just on school it's also on parents and families so that when our students walk into our buildings they understand what the expectations are of them so again thank you to everybody thank you to the policy committee for putting this together thank you to our administrators
for having the tough conversations about aligning our middle school um and I am I'm happy with where we landed thank you Heidi yes Valentina go ahead i would like though to be honest that uh yes some teachers might uh disagree and
think that there is a uh additional thing to do i'm surprised that teachers are taking it if anything I would say aligning it it makes maybe us as a bad guy so that it's uh removes uh the burden from teachers second I think that
what will be appreciative if it's uh administration will help them out so it shouldn't be a teacher's job and the dis uh description is uh typically written what will happen after first offense what will happen after second offense what will happen after third offense it
will make yes at the beginning it'll be very difficult because everybody are glued into screens everybody got used to it'll be painful but uh at the end of the day I think that many teachers would appreciate that finally they can see
that kids are looking into teachers eyes that they are there so to speak they are not just physically there they are mentally with teachers and they also will communicate with with their peers uh with people who are right close to
you not somewhere on Facebook not somewhere on just people who are right close to you that's the most the best relationship you can create uh the best relationship actually I have in my life is relationship which I created in my
childhood so I think that at the end of the day it work out and I would like to say thank you very much uh Dr anderson for working for that and that uh hopefully by next school year all middle schools are going to be aligned and uh
we we will work for that thank you very much all right so thank you everyone so I'm going to read the the recommendation again um the recommended action is to approve the board policies as presented
uh and this is a voice vote so all in favor say I i i i oppose say no the motion passes thank you so much next item on the agenda for admin reports is teaching and learning uh actually there there are no teaching and learning
reports this evening so we'll go skip that next one is we have financial reports presented by executive director of finance and operations Scott Lass scott will first present the combined financial report ending on February 28th 2025 scott perfect thank you board chair
Sony board members and Dr anderson i will be very brief um but just going over this these are the normal monthly reports that we um come to the board with just to keep you up to date so this is through February 28th or the first eight months of the current fiscal year
um things are generally in alignment with expectations at this point and will be even more in alignment once the revised budget amounts are updated on the report that the board approved la uh last month on March 10th um so just starting if we want to shift over to page two which are already there perfect
um just kind of I don't have anything real big to point out um property taxes state aids that's obviously line share of our revenues um they're right on par with expectations um federal aids as the board has heard me talk on several occasions um they are very variable due
to the co dollars over the past um I would assume um especially following this fiscal year things will normalize significantly and we'll get back to consistent draws um there just was lots of wide wild variability you heard um Jen Wal talk last month that we turned
in our survey which should hopefully be the end of this um and we were grateful for those funds but I think it'll be um good to have those behind us um food service fund is right on par um also community service fund which Jenny will be presenting her budget following this
um is right online and then debt service fund that's the one I always joke i hope that one's on par otherwise we got big problems um turning to the next page all right um one we pay attention to uh significantly here just because it's the majority of our expenditures
are the salaries and benefits you can see salaries are right on par um benefits are close in line but they will be um very spot-on once the revised numbers are updated in next month's report um finance director David Daskkovich would be very excited about that he takes a lot of pride in that as
you guys probably got on at some of the meetings um but we're right in alignment with a lot of uh a lot of these areas and um the ones that might look like there's variability there's explanations for them which we brought to the board in the past um and finance director
Dascovich and his team monitor those um heavily because they're always watching cash flow as well um nothing really else to point out on these ones if we go to the final page uh this is more of just basically cash we have in the bank at that point of
February uh the only thing I'll point out is um coming up in May and June if the board recalls that's when we get the first payments for next fiscal year from Henipin County so we'll get about 20 million in May and then about 25 million in June um so uh we'll be in a good cash
flow position for that but then we also have the payouts uh contract payouts at the end of June where we make multiple um payrolls at one time so those dollars are very much needed so with that I'll turn it over for any questions thank you Scott uh board board both board
colleagues any questions comments for Scott no I have one quick question i'm sorry I I should have you know I I did not notice this when I went through all the slides yesterday but I just noticed something uh if you go to the middle one
the one with the revenues look at the federal aids 2,714,000 and and change if you would take that as a ratio of the total general fund revenue of 217,454,000 that comes to a little less
than one and a one and a quarter% i thought the federal aid was typically 3% of our revenues uh I think it can vary significantly from district to district because it's based on like the makeup of the student body so but our district is typically 3% right because on in that
pie chart that you always present um it can vary but it can depend obviously the co funds really kind of wre havoc in those percentages i think generally speaking um we're right in that ballpark and then we've also done some things like I mentioned with the board what you don't see on here is that if you add a
million5 to that that's more in line with what it would be but we shifted those funds over to pay um state tuition billing okay so Yep yep it was a shift we did to be able to create more revenue for the district thank you for that yes absolutely there
are no other questions thank you Scott um you will come back again for something else right so next we have director of community ed Jenny Eert who will present the revised budget for the community ed fund 04 for the fiscal year
2025 jenny good evening thank you for having me here tonight to talk about my revised budget for fiscal year 25 um I'm going to make this fairly brief because I had the great opportunity to be with you all just a few weeks ago and have my staff talk about the great work that we're
doing so on the next slide is just a quick reminder of where community falls we're in fund four which is the community services fund separate and different from the general fund a good reminder of all the work that we do here in community ed is highlighted in the wheel again I went
into great detail on this just a few weeks ago but we do a lot of work that really focuses on how do we help our whole community um thrive and learn so our revised budget for fiscal year 25 is really um fairly similar to what we proposed at the start of the year you'll see the net change is around
$81,000 um we did see some um variances in the amount of money that we expected from fee revenue as well as in some of our expenditures which I'll go into in future slides but just want to note that this budget is created in partnership with my leadership team which is
Michelle Bador our executive our director of early learning Hillary Dish our out of school time coordinator and Zach Nelson our communications and engagement manager as well as Penny Blankenship our finance specialist so we go to the next
slide you'll see our revenue is broken down into um three categories primarily the bulk of it is fee service as I've shared we are a service-based industry what we do is uh is in service to our community and we do that through a fee generation um that's generally 75 to 80%
of our total revenue every year and we're on track for that again for this year our state aid and tax levies cover things such as ECF and school readiness as well as adult basic ed and there's some funding in there as well for non-public uh
reimbursements on the next slide is a summary of where we've been for our revenues uh I'm very grateful for the work that our team does and for the support of our community and this board our revenue has grown um by anywhere from 5 to 8% over the last four years
and continues to grow as we project into the end of this budget year our revenue is tied closely to our program areas we're seeing continued growth in that and that's reflected here as well why kids childcare is our biggest area it's about $6 million of our total revenue
every year preschool is next at three and a half million and our youth classes and camps come in at 1 million we're also seeing growth in our facility rentals as well as in middle school programming uh a small part of our revenue oops go back one just a little bit is our is grant funding um we do
receive uh funds through programs like partners for healthy kids we do this to try and balance some of our non-revenue generating work and really focus on how do we serve and listen to our community in different ways so that are things like our partnerships with relate counseling where we do camp emoji in the
summertime which is prek through middle school aged um Jumpst start to Kay which is something you heard about from our Northwoods colleagues a few weeks ago is something that we funded through partners for healthy kids as well our expenditures um are primarily salaries and benefits again we are about
service so that is funding staff who do the great programming that we we offer through community ed the majority is um is staffing but we do have some purchase services which is also actually paying for staff in our our youth camps and classes we contract with vendors and
businesses and offer wonderful uh opportunities for dance and cooking and STEM and you name it a lot of a variety of programs that we have businesses we contract with to do that so that's that 20% of that wedge really falls under that um a little less than 1% is our
capital and technology spending uh where we saw differences in our expenditures this year salary and benefits are actually a little bit lower than we had projected um we had hoped to have more people hired at the start of the year unfortunately that did not happen especially for our childare
program we did contract with uh talent uh recruitment company starting in November and we saw those um staffing hires increase significantly starting in January so we have caught up we just didn't hire those people as soon as we had anticipated so there's a difference in our budget because they didn't start
on July 1 they started closer to January 1 we also had a medical leave on our leadership team that's reflected in those differences um we had increases in purchase services when our programs expand we also have an expanded need for supplies and whatnot as well as with our
contracted vendors uh and lastly I just want to note a little bit on the capital and technology we did increase spending here i mentioned when I uh presented with you all a few weeks ago that the work that we do in community ed is really all about collaboration and so this is a way
that we can continue to collaborate with our school buildings we are um supporting fund things like carpet replacement at the high school to in changes in or improvements in technology to working with our middle or elementary schools to see what kind of um fied
materials or equipment that we can share and replace together so looking at where are those different ways that community can really help to support programming uh throughout the K12 system as well as within community ed the last thing I want to share is just a summary of our community fund
balance um we have a fund balance separate from the general fund this is our um our general community fund balance we do have some smaller fund balances in ECF and school readiness as well um you'll see we've had some hard times in our fund balance when we
experienced the pandemic as um our programming was is tied to fee generation and when we were not able to provide programming we weren't a able to generate uh revenue thankfully we've built out of that um quite substantially over the last couple years we are at a point now where we are not looking to
rebuild our fund balance we are feeling confident in the amount that we're at and really looking at creating a budget that's really closer to even for this for this year and for the coming year so this is a reflection of where that's at so with that at 911 do you have any
questions thank you Jenny um any questions comments yeah just have one quick comment so I know community ed is a program which not just caters to students but the broader community right um and in our district
leazison committee on Friday you and Julie Monk you guys talked about uh parenting education with community aid um great success and obviously um the group voted for continued funding into
2025 and 2026 so thank you so much great job both you Julie and team so just wanted to congratulate you and make sure everybody's aware uh so great work thank you thank you Paris yeah we have a close partnership with our district leaison committee where they um coordinate funds
with the PTA PTO's to provide parent and caregiver classes at uh free or reduced cost for our families and partner with other organizations to do that as well we actually partner that with some grant funding through partners for healthy kids to really provide a robust year-long opportunity
uh I I have a question i wanted to find out what what you would think of this um I know there is a bill or there was a bill in the legislature that was introduced at the beginning of session i don't know where it stands right now but that bill basically was going to
say that districts would be allowed to transfer fund balances from one fund to another fund so for example you know if we have a lot of fund balance in community ed and we are hurting in the general fund
area then I think they're they were thinking of leaving it to local control individual school districts can decide whether to do that or not how would you feel about that uh I I think that last slide where you saw the big dip in what happened to community ed is a reason why
it's really important to have a sizable fund balance within community ed because we are so tied to the economy so if the economy were to change significantly one year from now and we drain our fund balance back down to zero or negative a million like we were in 2021 if we hadn't been able to build out of that it
would have been the fund or the general fund's responsibility to fill that gap and fill that balance so having community ed with a fund balance actually protects the general fund from the shifts and the changes that happen in our economy yeah and that fund balance of 4 million plus is about what
25% of the operating expenses correct that's pretty good that's pretty high i would just say to bring you some peace of mind I would support the separation of that as well because of the factors that you indicated there is a you know it's a
higher risk because you don't know what might impact those revenues so you don't have that continuity of funding like the general fund does so I just couldn't let the evening pass without sharing that with you while you were here i appreciate that and I do try and be proactive in the work that we do in community ed to provide funding where
it's needed in the moment so we've um taken on the auditorium manager position in the last couple of years we taken on a welcome center specialist position um there are other pieces throughout the district where we've increased the amount of utility chargebacks that we pay in community ed so instead of um
going towards the fund balance and and shifting funds there we really want to be proactive on the front end to say where can community ed be supportive to the whole um system there was one more piece that I wanted to kind of clarify or remind me of when
we saw that dip that happened because of COVID you mentioned it was because you're fee based really and so when you were unable to provide services you weren't getting those fees but if I remember correctly during COVID you were also providing child care for free to
essential workers and their families and so that is and we never got reimbursed for that and so a huge thank you to community ed for continuing that and making sure that we had you know our essential workers where they needed to be and that their kids were well cared
for but just a reminder that that's another one of those pieces that you know eats away at that general fund yes that's correct thank you for sharing that um we were we had basically all the costs with none of the revenue and so we dipped faster because of that but it was for the right reasons we wanted to
retain our staff we felt that was really important and we wanted to be able to provide that really important service um it actually set us up in a good place where we had more staff as we rebounded where other school districts had um they had farther to go to restaff than we did so we were able to continue with our
services and kind of pull out of that faster because of it all right no more questions thank you Jenny appreciate that okay uh finally we have so I believe that the I have an action u request of the board to approve then my revised budget for this year oh
there is an action the recommended action to approve the revised budget for fund for fiscal year ending June 30th 2025 okay I'm sorry I missed that um okay so the recommended action is to approve the revised budget for 2425
i so move i second any discussion hearing none um this will be a roll call vote please sheila Prior yes heidi Kedar yes valentina Ays yes dan Janestra yes sarah
Johansson yes harris Bendy yes milan Sahony yes thank you and the motion passes thank you thank you again Jenny all right finally Scott will recommend the approval of the fiscal year 202526 operating capital revenue and
expenditure budget scott perfect thank you again Bar Chair Sony board members Superintendent Anderson um I won't be super long on this one either uh we reviewed this in detail at the finance committee of the board last Thursday um this is something um at that
meeting we also had kind of the subject matter experts that are impacted heavily by this budget so you had technology director Wade Phillips um on the call to describe um you had David Daskovich and um facilities director John Deutsch also there so um executive director Dana
Miller was also consulted pretty heavily in this as well um but this is something that comes to the board on an annual basis you might say why does this come right now and don't we approve the budget in June for next year um the reason we do this is as you know um we
have kind of a short time period to get things ordered ahead of next year and um we're not the only school district that does that so um the reason why we come to this is um we do it before the subsequent fiscal year um and we do that to accommodate significant lead times
required to order and receive materials um in time so um the district's capital committee um which kind of since the pandemic um in all honesty they used to meet uh I think when I first started it was kind of a very small subgroup and
it's gotten a little smaller with us being in cost containment coming out of the um pandemic uh we haven't met as as thoroughly as I think they used to um these dollars are also very spoken for so I know it seems like it's a large amount of money but in the big picture
those dollars are eaten up pretty quick or if they're not eaten up um they are restricted and reserved accounts that um sit on our fund balance too um just a reminder if you look back just a four few uh a few short fiscal years ago in
FY21 our capital um fund balance was zero so um we worked really hard to get it built back up there's roughly just under 3.6 6 million in there um a lot of that is has some carryover in it obviously from what we didn't think we would spend or we didn't get to or was
planned spending um I know like Dana has um dollars set aside that she'll be using for curriculum um and technology related to curriculum because that usually comes in kind of a big lump sum so um I'm digressing a little bit but just giving you a little bit of a backstory um so uh the district's like I
mentioned capital committee prioritizes the requests and proposes capital expenditures to the administration um and then the enclosed document that is in your board packet um kind of goes through what those expenditures are i'll talk about a few of the differences um as you recall just
recently um exciting that we were able to uh utilize funds inside of here to do the much needed um construction coming up at West Middle School so we'll be able to utilize these capital facility or capital outlay dollars to pay down the principal and interest um on that
upcoming project um so that will be part of this another key thing um when you look at it not a whole lot changed um a few things to point out the allotted to building projects went up from 350,000 to 450,000 um this really kind of builds
off of our enrollment so we've had a ton of changes our facilities team in a lot of different areas um including the principal special services um when we have to do something usually it's because we have to do it right now um and so these are dollars that John
Deutsch's team is able to um utilize to put up walls to um change classrooms to do kind of everything that's needed um another thing that to point out um was just classroom furniture that also increased um roughly 50,000 and that is
again for um growing enrollment and then I think one last thing I'll point out um is the uh annual piano purchase there had been a question on this so Dana I don't know if you quickly wanted to mention that one i know it's a small dollar amount but it has a big impact in
our elementary schools yeah so one of the things that we had been asked just recently from well actually over the last few years since I've been here from our elementaryaries is how to maintain their musical instruments and so forth so we have set aside if you notice in the budget for 612 music but we do not have a set aside for our
elementarymentaries and with the change in schedule at our elementaryaries and some of our schools being able to hold music more frequently as well we're just seeing a higher need for those instruments growth in buildings and they do take some wear and tear as well and typically we have our
elementarymentaries um when they get curriculum or things are purchased for them it's up to their budgets to maintain that um and in talking with Scott it that just seems like a very big ask of our elementarymentaries and so um we've been dipping into that piano fund
and that predates both Scott and I but I think it was just titled that for that reason and so um that's the money I've been using to try and help some of our um elementaryaries and would like to just note that and with nine
elementaryaries a one a year is a long time to ask them to wait so that is why we've put a few more dollars in there so that we could get on a replacement update cycle of two to three years and not be relying heavily on our PTOs for that because this is a basic um curriculum need and it really feels like
something that we as a district should be supporting so that was the ask and I appreciate Scott working with us and teaching and learning to make that happen perfect thank you Dana um one last thing to note is just obviously contingency uh that's just kind of the leftover dollars
obviously like I said obviously we have been building up a fund balance that's been carried over from things where if John waits on some of those purchases if he knows he's going to have a big purchase coming up I think at on Thursday at our meeting he talked about just some of the dump like a dump truck that we would need those are north of
200k um just big expenditures and the same with Dana's team um if she doesn't utilize that full 550,000 along with the other areas those dollars are it's kind of just in the background that she has availability to that fund balance to do that so um but as you can see these are
critical dollars for schools um they go very quickly uh and so it's something that we do uh look at seriously and like I said um next year I think especially hopefully coming out of cost containment and getting more into normalized times and growing enrollment uh that committee
will come back together i don't know how much things will change on here um because it is kind of hard to shift the dollars around just because the needs really don't change um but it's a good thing to go through so um with that uh you can see here uh the district's
administration proposed operating capital budget for FY2526 so we're projecting roughly just over $3.2 million and we're projecting that we would spend those dollars and then if we don't obviously those would go over to a restricted fund balance so
um before I'd go to the recommended action I would just ask questions for the board okay thank you Scott uh okay okay so the recommended action is to approve the district administration's recommended fiscal year 202526 operating capital revenue and
expenditure budget is there a motion i so moved i second moved and seconded is there a discussion oh Valentina sorry just a comment i sent some questions and I appreciate that you clarified via email and you clarify it
even more right now so uh it it makes easy even to vote uh if you don't know some items uh I appreciate it absolutely anytime thank you oh yes heidi I just wanted to say thank you to teaching and learning and um finance for looking
through those improvements that need to be made at each school i have sat in on many a grant PTA grant committee meeting and it's always really difficult when those those especially the music the musical instruments come up and it's part of curriculum and so thank you for
doing that because it really was a heavy lift for some of the PTAs and as we talk again uh about aligning our experiences through all of our schools this is a really important one so thank you all right thank you Heidi okay again uh the recommended action is to approve the
district administration's recommended fiscal year 202526 operating capital revenue and expenditure budget uh this is a roll call vote sarah Johansson yes harris Bend yes sheila Prior yes heidi Kedar
yes valentina Ays yes dan Janestra yes milan Sahony yes the motion passes thank you thank you Scott again yes go ahead so we can all Thank you yeah before we
conclude I just wanted to mention that uh as the board's aware uh tonight will be Scott Sage's uh final official school board uh meeting with us uh he's going to be moving on and uh we just want to say thank you i want to say thank you
for the work that you've done for the school district and the time that you've been here and uh clarification and budgets and presentations made the depth of knowledge and information i know I speak I know for all the board members here as well that they've appreciated
that so uh thanks for all your hard work we wish you well and uh we'll be uh staying in touch in regard to transition opportunities and activities as you know and uh we appreciate that as well so with that I'll turn it back over to you all right thank you Dr anderson i think
I I can speak on behalf of the board uh and appreciate what you have done uh for the district and we'll miss you for sure and uh everything that you brought to the finance committee to the the board during finance you know the budgets and
all those things and good luck to you in the future yeah Bill if I may make just one quick comment so Scott again um one thing I want to call out in all finance meetings uh two things that you have consistently done one is show that
collaboration with other teams whether it is teaching and learning or HR or other any other like facilities and then you have always put your team in front of us so um thank you for that succession plan if you will we know we are in good hands so again you did
really great job in terms of not just managing your roles and responsibilities but to give us view into how you're collaborating with rest of the teams and how strong your team on the ground is so thank you i wanted to second that just for a moment and say I've had the really great
opportunity of being on the facilities committee and the finance committee these last two years and one of the pluses of that is that I get kind of a double dose of Scott so um it's really been special learning from you um you've been very approachable um very much so a resource as I think all of us board
members you know search to better understand our schools and the systems and how they all function so I appreciate your approachability your easygoing demeanor and um being an all-around funny guy so thanks so much we'll miss you i just want to say that um I appreciate
you trying to make finance funny um I will miss your jokes yeah well then I'm going to say nobody can clear a room like you you are going to be you're truly
going to be missed thank you for everything it's been great learning alongside you and growing alongside you and um I know you've got great things ahead of you i was going to say also we will miss your jokes obviously and at the same time thank you very much for your
patience you navigated you navigated our district through a lot um and uh and it's been an incredible um number of years and you know Dr anderson will often say you know you don't want to have to be awake late at night wondering about your finances
and so thank you for instilling trust and confidence and you did all of that while having lunch with the high schoolers at the cafeteria so not only are you really smart funny and super good at clearing out a room you also really care about kids in education and
for that we're really fortunate so thank you all right so thank you Scott uh no human resources report tonight and next uh and also no board action tonight so final item item on the agenda is board reports
anybody have a board report to present all right if we not if we don't we will move on to the conclusion this concludes the Wisetta Public Schools regular board meeting is there a motion to adjurnn so moved is there a second
second nobody wants to go home I guess huh all in favor say I i oppose nay okay the time is now 9:30 and the Wisetta Public Schools Board of Education regular meeting for Monday
April 14 2025 is adjourned