Good evening. The time is now 7:00. The Visetta Public Schools Board of Education regular meeting for Monday, April 20th, 2026 will please come to order. Will the clerk please call the role? >> Colleagues, Heidi Kar
>> here. Sheila Prior >> here. >> Alicia Little >> here. >> Paris Bendy >> here. >> Valentina Ays >> here. >> Dan Chanestra. Dan Chanestra is present. Milan Sahony
>> present. >> And Chase Anderson >> here. Thank you. We have a quorum. Please rise if you are able to recite the pledge of allegiance. algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic
for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Thank you for joining us tonight. And we have a a special guest here tonight. I want to acknowledge our incoming
superintendent Rob, Dr. Rob Virgin from Eden Prairie. He's here sitting in the back. So, welcome Rob and thank you for your time. I'm going to make a brief statement here about the recent referendum that we had before we get on with the agenda.
We are glad you could join us this evening if you wish. Oh, before that I have to announce uh audience participation as well. So, we are glad you could join us this evening if you wish to speak during the audience opportunity to address the board. Please fill out a form placed in the back of
the of the room and hand it over to our district admin assistant Amy Guy sitting to my right. Okay. Now, I'm going to go ahead and read my brief statement for the referendum. So, before we proceed with approval of tonight's agenda, I'd like to take a moment to acknowledge the
results of last week's bond referendum. The successful passage of this referendum reflects the trust our community has placed in the district's vision and in our shared commitment to providing highquality learning environments for all students. We are
grateful to our community for their engagement throughout this process and to the voters who took time to participate. We recognize that there were differing perspectives in our community throughout this process. We respect those perspectives and we remain
committed to serving all students and families as we move forward. I also want to recognize the district leadership team including our finance and communication staff along with the broader community members who contributed to this effort. This
outcome reflects thoughtful planning, strong engagement and a willingness to listen. I will be failing in my duties if I do not acknowledge Amy G, the district's election clerk, who spent several hours making sure that the dis the elections were run very smoothly.
Thank you, Amy. With the with this support comes responsibility. As a board, we are committed to being careful stewards of the resources entrusted to us and to en ensuring these projects are carried out with
transparency and accountability. We look forward to the work ahead and the positive lasting impact this will have on our students and our community. All right, 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 in by one motion. There will be no separate discussion of these items unless a board member so requests in which event the item will be removed as a consent agenda item and
addressed. This is also true of me of the meeting agenda as well. The consent agenda and the meeting 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. >> Second. Moved and seconded. Is there a discussion? >> I would like to propose an amendment to the agenda. Um I would like to remove uh the approval of policy 2011 and the sun
setting of policy 2011. That's um agenda item 8 A 1 I and 8 A2 I. >> Thank you Sheila. Is there a second? Anybody want to second that motion for the amendment? Second
>> moved and seconded. So that basically there is a request for an amendment to the original motion for to approve the agenda. And is there a discussion on the amendment itself? >> Uh if you're wondering why um so I'm the
policy committee chair and we did go over these policies in our last committee meeting. Since that time, we've had some questions from board members and um I just wanted to slow down a little and have some opportunity to discuss things um with board members rather than moving forward. So, uh yeah,
I'm asking that we not bring those up on tonight's agenda. >> Thank you for that explanation. >> Anybody else? >> I have a question. Could we from a procedural standpoint, could we consider this a first reading? It's up to from the one moving the making the motion.
>> So we move as a as a first reading or I think >> I personally would like it to be clean, you know, clean it up at the at the committee level maybe. Is that what you're thinking? Bringing it up at the committee. >> Well, yeah, we'll bring it back to the committee >> for discussion
>> and then come back and see if we can approve that. If not, we can have a second reading on that one as well. There may be no changes but I there there should be further discussion on it. So we would need to have another first reading if we made changes.
>> Any other comments? Any questions? So it's going to be discussed at committee meeting and if some other board members would like to discuss uh will we be able to discuss it during work session >> since typically discussion happen during
work session? >> Um yeah if we need to discuss it as a full board then we'll have to discuss it as a full board during a work session but that may not be necessary. Yeah, that option is this. Yeah, >> let's call the vote.
>> Okay, so if there are there's no other discussion, this is an amendment to the motion and the amendment asks for the two items from the agenda for the policy approval and policy sun suns setitting to be removed from the agenda for tonight and discussed at the committee
level and taken up again at a future meeting. Um, this is a roll call vote. >> Thank you, colleagues. Uh, Dan Schnestra. Dan Schnestra votes yes. Alicia Little, >> yes. >> Paris Bendy, >> yes. >> Sheila Prior,
>> yes. >> Heidi Kedar, >> yes. >> Valentina Ays, >> yes. >> Milan Sahony, >> yes. The motion carries. Thank you. So, we go back now to the the approval of the agenda minus these two items and the
consent agenda. So, is there a discussion on that? If not, oh Eddie, you have no if not let's this is also a roll call vote for the for the approval of the consent agenda and meeting agenda. >> Thank you colleagues. Paris Bendy
>> yes. >> Shayla Prior >> yes. >> Heidi Kedar >> yes. >> Valentina Ays >> yes. >> Danestra Danestra votes yes. Alicia Little >> yes. Milan Zahony. >> Yes, we have an agenda. Thank you, Dan.
We have a packed agenda this evening. So, let's get going. Um, first we have reports from organizations. This section of the agenda provides an opportunity for a Visetta High School students council representative to report
onformational and events information and events at Visetta High School. I would now like to invite Owen Powowski uh junior VP from Visetta High School to please come forward. Welcome Owen. Did I
say your last name right? Okay. Thank you. Okay. Uh good evening, Superintendent Anderson, members of the board, and everyone else here gathered tonight. My name is Owen Pikowski, the Wise High School junior vice president. You might have seen me in the past few meetings shadowing Rachel, but as she cannot make
it tonight, I get to talk. Um, as we're all waiting on the May flowers, here is April's monthly support report. Okay. Students have just come back from a muchneeded student break uh spring break and fourthterm festivities are all in full swing. This Friday, the student council is holding its drive-in movie
where they will be showing how to lose a guy in 10 days. There will be food trucks and games with both parking and picnic areas open to the community. All proceeds will go to NAMI or the National Alliance on Mental Illness, a group we started working with a few years ago. The Wisetta student council is also sending representatives to the Henipin
division conference tomorrow where multiple senators will be representing Wisetta and running for county level positions. But the student council is not the only group succeeding and sending students to high level positions. I'm proud to announce that recently at the model United Nations conference, we had two Wise students to
receive the highest elected positions at the conference which they will hold going into next year. At the Skills USA competition, we also had multiple people multiple people qualify for nationals. The Wazetta speech team has been having one of its most successful years yet, sending 18 students with at least one
student per category to the state cate uh tournament this Friday. Lastly, our 56 DECA qualifiers have all been working hard in preparation for their international career development conference starting this Saturday in Atlanta, Georgia. Wisetta High School has also been maintaining its title as a
AAA school, remaining dominant in academics, arts, and athletics. Spring sports have started off with a blast. Both the Wisetta baseball team and boys volleyball team have both started their seasons undefeated. Wisetta boys track has also had a successful lake conference winning relays. Lastly, the
golf season is now underway with their first tournament just happening earlier today. In regards to arts, the Wisetta spring play, A Midsummer Night's Dream, will open this Friday and play for two weekends in the auditorium 2 at the high school. The story follows multiple lovers, a group of mechanicals, and
fairies through Athens in what is widely considered one of Shakespeare's best comedies. As fourth term begins and students enter into the exhilarating times of APs and end of year's festivities, let's keep the momentum and finish this year strong. Thank you for your time tonight and I hope you all have a wonderful rest of your evening.
I'm now open to any questions. Thank you. Uh colleagues, you have any questions or comments? I do know that uh one of my fellow board members were was at the model United Nations conference I guess. Yeah. So congratulations to everybody that won in all the different
areas and thank them for keeping the YZ flag flying high. >> Yes. Thank you. >> Yeah. I want to say congratulations to everyone who participated as well and um good luck on all your exams as they come up in the end of the year. I know it can
be a little bit stressful, but you guys do a great job every year. So, good luck. >> Okay. All right. Thank you. And we we'll pro we might see you or we might see Rachel next month, right? >> Yes. >> Okay. Thank you so much.
Next item on the agenda is recognitions and I will join Dr. Anderson at the podium. >> Good evening everybody and welcome to our school board meeting on this beautiful April evening. Uh so happy that you're here with us this evening. My name is Chase Anderson. I'm the
superintendent for the school district and it's always my honor to convene the recognitions portion of uh each of our regular school board meetings on a monthly basis and we have a number of recognitions this evening and I'd like to thank all of those who are being recognized for being here their uh
colleagues and and family members and anyone else who's here to to celebrate with us tonight. Uh first I'd like to invite two individuals forward and then I'll read uh the recognition and uh share a bit of a script and then offer one or both an opportunity to to speak.
Uh at this time I would welcome Laya Gllum forward and coach Andrew Hansen. Please come on down. Congratulations. And you might be wondering, what are we congratulating Laya for? And I'll share with you the following. We're proud to
recognize Weisetta High School student athlete Laya Gallum for her outstanding achievement. Laya won the Nordic Individual State title at the 2026 Minnesota State High School League Nordic Skiing State Tournament with a
combined time of 31 minutes 38.3 seconds. Her dedication and hard work represent the spirit of excellence we strive for in Weisetta public schools. We congratulate Laya on this historic win and celebrate her commitment to her sport and to our school community.
Congratulations. And I don't know who wants to speak. Maybe both. Uh thank you for having us here tonight and having Y Laya and recognizing her. Um for a sport that oftentimes kind of goes unseen, we really appreciate uh the
the board and Dr. Anderson recognizing Laya tonight. Um I also want to thank the athletic department at the high school. Uh they put in a lot of work uh behind the scenes to make sure the season uh goes smoothly. Uh, I'd also like to thank all the assistant coaches
and the high school staff. Uh, we worked really really really hard this year to get Laya uh the things that she needed to um have the success that she had this this year. And then also uh mostly I'd like to thank Jordan and Chris, Laya's
parents, for uh supporting Laya and helping her achieve her goals. Um, just a couple things about Laya. She's hands down one of the most successful athletes that have ever come through the high school program. Just to list off some stats, she's a three-time conference champion, two-time section champion,
three times all state. Two years in a row, she was third place at state, and then obviously this year she was state champion. Um, this year kind of her her biggest goal throughout the entire season was for the state meet. It was to
be state champion and that was her main goal throughout the entire season. And it's so cool to think about that goal that you had in mind for the entire season and and for previous seasons looking forward to your senior year that you were able to achieve that goal. It was amazing. Um going into the state
meet, we had obviously high expectations for Laya. She had high expectations for herself. And after that first race, like Dr. Anderson said, it's it's a two race day. And you know, going into that first race, I think we all kind of thought Laya would have a big gap on the field after that first race, but she ended up
being third after that first race, and it was a little bit of a shock and it was a little bit of a a challenge to think about what the afternoon race was going to look like, but Laya was able to get in the right mindset. Um, and starting in third place in the afternoon, she made her way to first
place. And coming into that finish was definitely a highlight of my coaching career. Um, and then to top it all off, we found out that the next we found the ne found out the next week that Laya had pneumonia during the state meet. So, she
was able to win the state championship with pneumonia. It was incredible. Um, after the high school season, Laya represented the Midwest Junior National Team where she was a threetime or where she's been a fourtime all-American at the junior national level, too. And next
year, Llaya is going to be competing at the University of New Hampshire, a D1 program, uh, one of the top ski programs in the nation, not only cross country skiing, but also in cross country running and track and field. So, very well-rounded athlete. Um, finally, I just want to say Laya has had an
incredible impact on our team. She's a two-time captain. That's not common at all. We've only had two athletes in the last 10 years that I've coached who's been uh captain two years in a row. and she's really shown the younger athletes on the team with the dedication, hard
work, um, and commitment to the program and to skiing what it can do for you and what it can do for the team. Um, Llaya is going to have a a very longlasting impact on our on our team and on our team culture. So, thank you Laya and congratulations.
Um, I just want to thank all of our coaches and staff at the high school. Nordic is kind of a tricky sport. We battle hard snow conditions and Hansen does a really good job of allowing us to um shift our training to be best fit that. Um, obviously every year the snow
gets worse and we spend a lot of time on roller skis or running and around and doing strength training and it's definitely hard to get everybody into the spirit of it, but every day I wake up and I just want to go to practice and it's the my favorite part of the day honestly. And this past year I spent
over 500 hours training and going to physical therapy and just doing everything I can to be the best athlete. And um obviously when I was a seventh grader I went to the state meet and I saw those girls winning and I never thought that would be me and um it means a lot that it happened to me my senior
year. Congratulations again, Laya. I tried to get you a couple snow days this year to get out and practice, but the weather just didn't cooperate. But well done. Our next recognition this evening is for our Weisetta High School chess team,
state champions. And I would like to invite those that are here representing that team tonight. And Coach James Titus, come on down. and uh make yourself at home up here in the front of the the board meeting room and I'll
share a brief script and then turn it over to uh Coach Titus to share a few thoughts about the team andor whoever he may wish to designate uh uh to speak on your behalf. We are proud to recognize the Weisetta High School chess team for winning the
2026 Minnesota State Chess Championship. The team secured first place in the K12 team standings at the state tournament in March. With more than 380 competitors in the tournament, our students showed incredible skill and determination to reclaim the state title for the first
time since 2022. We congratulate the team on this impressive achievement and for representing Weisetta Public Schools with excellence. Congratulations Yeah, it's a it's a great honor to win the championship this year after 3 years
of break. Um the last three years we worked really hard. Every year when we go to the championship it was um very close. Um and this year was really tough. uh teams like Edan Priy and
couple of other schools were really tough on us but um with our hard work and all all the kids worked really hard this year so I really appreciate all the work they did. Um you want to say anything like or one of the captains can
say something um first of all I'd like to thank Andrew Titus and Mr. Titus for helping us during the year. They've coached us uh help us train, practice, and just make our stream stronger. It's been three
years since we didn't win the state championship. It's been tough. It's been rough. We put in a lot of work, but we just couldn't get there. But this year, we have gather our best players, did our best efforts individually, and we managed to get the win. So, yeah. Uh
thank you and thank you for the recognition. This is feel free. I love the t-shirt. Congratulations again and really great job. Our next recognition this evening is for
our middle school uh students being recognized for state and national math achievements. I would like to invite uh coach Katie Jebbery forward and uh any students that are here to be recognized tonight for the Minnesota Math Counts
State Competition, please come forward. Congratulations. I'll share a brief script here before I turn it over to Coach Jebry. We are proud to recognize several middle school students for their outstanding performances at the 2026 Minnesota Math
Counts State Competition. Arnav Higher Math, an eighth grade student from Weisetta Central Middle School, earned second place at the state level. This is an incredible achievement for Arnav, especially as this is his first year participating in the program. Brandon
Chow, an eighth grader from Weisetta East Middle School, placed fourth at the state level. This is the second year in a row that Brandon has placed on the in the top four in the state. Both Arnav and Brandon have qualified for the national competition. They will represent Minnesota this May in Orlando,
Florida alongside students from Edina and Rochester. At this time, I'll turn it over to Coach Jebrey. Congratulations. I just wanted to take a quick moment to recognize all the hard work that these boys have put in. Um the hours and hours
of practice that they've put in and the mentoring to the the younger students and the other kids that weren't part of the team that actually competed at Math Counts. They have been great role models to the rest of their team um and have just truly been a blessing to work with.
We have Ruth Catheretti Arnav Brandon Chow Dave Nila Gama Leila Dave Nila Dave Nila Magam and Sean Zoo. They were
truly a blessing to work with this year and all the previous years too. Thanks. Hold up. And our next recognition for this evening is for our two employees of the
month. And I would like to invite Greg Meyer and Tina Sheldon forward from Greenwood Elementary School. Congratulations. I'd like to share the following script and then I'll give them an opportunity to share a few thoughts if they would like to do so. Wisetta Public Schools is proud to honor Greg Meyer and Tina
Sheldon as our April employees of the month. Mr. Meyer and Mrs. Sheldon are first grade teachers at Greenwood Elementary School. We recognize them for their teamwork and commitment to helping each student succeed. Together, they bring decades of dedication to our
schools. Greg and Tina are a joy to work with. They pair high expectations with support, grace, and humor. Their work as team teachers creates a classroom where students feel cared for and challenged. One colleague shared, "You have to see it in action to understand the artistry
they bring to their craft." Greg and Tina are also part of a first grade team that celebrates growth and supports learners in real time. Their team shows that shows that a professional learning community is a way of being. This connects to how we respond to student
needs every day. colleagues highlight several qualities to make Tina and Greg exceptional. Instructional expertise, effective collaboration, thoughtful leadership, lifelong passion for learning, and lasting relationships. One
colleague summed it up best. You can't find a more complete team than these two first grade teachers. Congratulations to Greg Meyer and Tina Sheldon for being named the April employees of the month. We're grateful for their dedication to our students and the entire Greenwood
community. Congratulations. >> Uh I'm just going to take one for the team here. Uh Tina Tina didn't want to really come up and she has lots to say usually, but uh usually not in front of big groups. But I just want to thank our entire Greenwood um community, including
Dr. Gustiffson, our principal, who is here tonight. Um we feel very honored to be part of the Greenwood team and accept this award for the month of April. And thank you to the board, and thank you to Dr. Anderson for all you do for Weisetta
Schools. So, thank you. Congratulations Again, Greg and Tina, I have to say that their classroom is welcoming not only to their first grade students, but also to superintendents who find themselves sauntering down uh the first grade wing at Greenwood Elementary. The welcome mat is always uh
uh wide and plush, and I've just always appreciated being welcomed into your classrooms and being introduced to the kids and watching you do your magic in the classroom. Well done to both of you. Our next and I think our final recognition this evening is uh to read
the names of individuals who have uh indicated their intent to retire since the last school board meeting. And I haven't spotted any of these folks here tonight, but I'll read their name and uh we'll uh hold our applause until all four names are read. Deborah Huff,
Weisetta Cafes, Weisetta High School, seven years. Greg Crochek, head custodian, East Middle School, 13 years of service. Cheryl Molen, paraprofessional. Kimberly Lane, 19 years. And Ken Pashina, teacher at the
high school, uh, serving the district for 14 years. If you could join me in a round of applause for these individuals, please. This concludes our recognition portion of the school board meeting. Thanks again so much for being here tonight. And uh I believe our next agenda item is
uh going to be the school spotlight presentation and I'll introduce Dana Miller to uh come forward and she'll make the initial introduction. Thanks so much for being here tonight. The light is better. I think she turned something on.
Congratulations to the honores and thank you Dr. Anderson. Moving on to the school spotlight presentation. Tonight the spotlight is on Greenwood Elementary and I will turn it over to executive director of teaching and learning Diana Miller for the introductions.
>> Good evening. Thank you members of the board, Dr. Anderson. Um it is my pleasure every time to get to come up here and introduce one of our favorite times each month and that is our school spotlight. And so tonight we have with us Dr. Brad Anderson from Greenwood
Elementary, our principal. and he is going to talk about taking the vision of Greenwood Elementary to the student experience through some of the work he him and his team have been leading around some of the district initiatives as far as strong PLC's um implementing
our center for educational leadership's 5D plus rubric working on anchor standards and success criteria as well as data informed instruction. So with that I'm going to turn it over to Dr. G and we'll move forward. Thanks, Dr. Guffs.
>> Thank you so much, Dr. Miller, Dr. Anderson, Chair Sony, distinguished members of the board. It's my pleasure and excitement to be able to share a snapshot of the work our team has been engaged with this evening. And uh spoiler alert, in the short amount of
time we have here, we won't be able to feature every single student and every single team and department, but the couple that we picked um represent us really well, just just like the whole team does. So, uh we will start with a video. It is 5 minutes long, so this is
kind of the main event. So, we hope you enjoy it, but it really features the voices, the authentic voices of our kids. and we thought what better way to start a presentation on how we're connecting our vision to the student experience and hearing some um off-the-cuff anecdotes from our
students. So, >> have you seen this before? Something like that? >> Yeah, I seen it at the doctor. >> Okay, perfect. >> Me, too. >> Good, good, good, good. What is Greenwood's vision? smartness. >> It's a very special day today. Emily, do
you know what today is? >> My birthday. >> Okay. I was thinking it's a day we're talking about our school vision. Hello people. I need a volunteer for some vision testing. Yeah. >> Oh, yeah. >> Okay. Awesome. >> Four or five. Okay. You volunteered for
a vision test. Do we know what vision is? >> Yeah. that we include people in our games and uh if they need help, we help them. Somebody doesn't have a partner in like the class, you can go to them and ask if they want to be your partner. >> Thinking of the word that describes our school and what we care about, you try
to guess it. >> It It's >> kind. >> Hey guys, guys, guys, hold on one sec. Quick question. Second grade, right? Guessing game. What's a word that you think we care about at Greenwood? >> What? kindness.
>> Say it a little louder. Kindness. How about you, buddy? >> Um, cleaning up trash in the bathroom. >> Can I see it? >> I'm going to zoom in. >> That's perfect. All right, we're taking the show on the road. Connect with kids about our school vision and how they're
experiencing it. Who wants to be in the video? >> All right, >> COME ON. COME ON. HERE WE GO. What helps me learn in my classrooms is nice people because I feel less pressure when I raise my hand to get something right.
>> Thank you. Thank you. What helps you learn? What helps you belong? >> Something that helps me learn is playing m is playing music at home while I'm studying. It helps me just concentrate a bit more on the stuff that I'm doing. >> Any music recommendations for us?
>> I mean, I usually just go to my queen. >> Anyone else? Last call. >> Yes. Something that makes me LEARN IS POSITIVITY. >> LET'S HEAR IT for positivity. >> Excuse Excuse me. >> Quick question. Can I ask you a question
on video? >> Yeah. >> If you could have one word to describe our school, what would it be? >> Amazing. And >> thank you. That's all I needed. Have a great day. >> You too. >> Very serious conversation, right? So, I appreciate your serious help with this.
What do you think myself and all your teachers care about most? >> Being belonging. >> Being safe and having fun. >> Safe. Belonging. Fun. >> Okay. What you want to read that? >> Belonging. >> Belonging. Yeah. Have you heard of this
thing before? >> Is it's good. >> It's good. Is that Ninja Turtles? >> Uh, yeah. >> Nice. >> All right. Here we go. Who is your teacher? What helps you learn and belong at Greenwood? Who wants to go? >> Me.
>> Working together. >> How do you learn and belong at Greenwood? >> Like having fun, like doing some games. >> Nice. How is the How are the tacos? >> Good. Good. >> Okay. What does belonging mean to you? >> I think it means uh having your friends include you,
making friends, and like fitting in with other people. that I get to participate in a lot of things kind of like this and stuff like that. >> How does your teacher help you feel like you belong? >> Uh by taking care of me.
>> Thank you. >> Because Miss Lunz helps me learn and read. >> Thank you. >> Word ensures me. >> That's tricky, isn't it? >> Yeah, I think so, too.
Uh that it like makes it >> you did it. >> That's it. It makes it like a synonym I might say would be guarantees but same
as makes. >> Our vision is vision is to to ensure >> our vision is to ensure >> all students learn and belong. >> All right. Here we go. This is so
Whoa. Which one? You got to read it. >> Love. >> Why? Love. Why'd you pick that one? >> Because it's love. >> Yeah. >> And >> what's going on here, Skye?
What are we missing here, man? >> Okay. Yeah. Can I just tell tell so love is um really nice. It's really nice to be in school cuz love is this school. >> All right. Should we run that one back
again? I think I'm ready for tomorrow. So, we thought it'd be really cool just to capture the essence of what's happening. So, when we talk about connecting our vision to the student experience, you get to hear through kids what they think we're doing and what what they think we care about. So, our
vision, as you heard, hopefully at some point in that video, you heard, we want to be a school that ensures all kids learn and belong. We're not hoping, we're not hoping that some. We're working really hard to create systems that ensure every student that walks
through our doors really in every school. I know my colleagues join me in this across in across the district that they are learning at a high level in a future ready manner and feeling a deep sense of belonging. So that's what this
snapshot is about tonight. That's right. I've been trained on the clicker. I just forgot to pick it up. Thank you, Amy. So before before I continue, just want to share a really quick story. Um not necessarily to ground this. I just thought it was insightful. So several years I was in a
cafeteria. It actually was not at Greenwood, but I was talking to some educators and we were just comparing the work that we get to do um just to some coming up with analogies basically. And one educator stood up and as she started to share her analogy for the work we're
doing, there's a little bit of a quiver in her voice and the I don't know the room kind of sensed it and was quiet and she shared sometimes it feels like education is an escalator except the treads are crashing down at us or they're working against us and you
know we all heard it and felt it and like I said that wasn't um wasn't at Greenwood but I I felt it too. There are times where this work is really really hard and we love it and and there's hope here. Um what we get to do in every
space but but also in spaces like this is just think about how can we how can we flip the switch and have the escalator feel like it's working and connecting everything. And um and we're seeing that happen and it takes intention. And I know the team at Greenwood is involved in co-creating
those systems that are flipping the escalator for for our kids and for ourselves. So I'll connect that to a more forward thinking kind of where I feel like we're at right now. And I know I've I've shared this before and I just can't it's a memory that haunts me in a
really good way, but I was on a webinar with MDE like five years ago or so. It was an MTSS webinar and you know it was good because I'm talking you know I was I'm citing an MDE webinar. Think about that. I'm citing it, you know, but the
presenter said, "Pockets of excellence will not ensure each and every student learns. Systems will." And that I never I never forgot that from that webinar. And that really connects to tonight when we're sharing on behalf of Greenwood
like what we're doing to help each and every student feel like they learn and belong. We're trying to create a system that works together. And that does take a lot of intention and hopefully you'll see that reflected in a couple of the snapshots from the teams tonight. It's
it's systemic work. It's aligned. We're in it together and we're really focused on it because we believe it matters. That's right. Amy also said to turn it on. Sorry, Amy. By the end of this thing, I'll have this figured out. So, like what does that system what does
that what does that even mean? The escalator thing and how do we flip the switch? Well, across our school district, we've been engaged in professional learning community work where we're creating systems that ensure all kids learn. And there are four
guiding questions that we reference as a as a school, but also in team meetings over the cadence of the school year. And you know, the questions are up there in front of us all, but they start with like what what do we want to ensure all kids learn? And part of that is the
essential standards or anchor standards. Then we have conversations and consistently check in on well how will we know when they have it? How are we going to respond if they don't have it yet? And then what are we going to do to help all kids learn? Because some kids um pick up on it uh even quicker than we
might imagine or in some cases come to us with those prerequisite skills and the skills themselves. So go to the next slide. here. Here's a way that we connect and make this happen. So, this will connect to guiding question to like what do we
want them to learn? One of the things we've been focused on as a district. I know administrators have been trained by the center of educational leadership and 5D plus rubric over the past several years and it's been just monumental learning on my part. I've grown so much
as an instructional leader and our team this year. uh instead of learning and memorizing all six rubrics and every space on them, we've focused primarily on P5. So that's a purpose rubric and it's a lower one and I zoomed in on it
for us. So it's just success criteria. So if you think of that thread of the standard connected to a learning target connected to well so we you know we identified the target that we want kids to learn but what does success look like for them? Because to to circle back to
the escalator analogy, sometimes kids need different size steps to get to the next step. Um, sometimes kids are, you know, when I was younger, I used to skip steps going up. You know, I can't do that anymore. It's hard to get up one step at a time. But for some kids, it works for them. We really have to
scaffold and break down just to make incremental progress. And that's one thing that success criteria can do. So, I'll share an example of that. We'll zoom in on what does that look like in a first grade classroom? What does that look like in a fifth grade classroom? So to zoom in, our teams uh in the
summer and then beginning the school year, they identify a goal that's aligned to our school growth plan and which also is aligned to our district mission and vision. This happens to be first grade's goal on the right. And you'll see that it's actually segmented
into several different kind of subsklls because they were kids grow a lot over the year based on just great practice and instruction and responsive teaching. So um the standard that they reference the um at the bottom of their goal is to
the left just for for reference. But um to put that goal in action or kind of make it visual just go to the next slide. Amy, thank you for bailing me out of the clicker thing. I gave up on it. So this is success criteria and they success criteria can look like a lot of
things. It can be a teacher who's verbally talking and just naming you know what it looks like or co-creating that with kids and inviting them into that. In some cases, we are using ladders that clearly articulate a progression for kids, a skill
progression, so that no matter where a first grade learner and reader is with a skill, they can sometimes with guidance, sometimes on their own, which is pretty exciting and cool, too, cuz that's one of, you know, one of Hadtie's power influences self evaluation and kids
being able to reflect and name where they are and then even talk about their next steps. But that's what the ladders and success criteria can help us do. So in this case case I think it's connected to consonant vowel consonant well silent e or magic e or you know all the things we do to help kids learn and remember
and apply it. But that's an example what it looks like. And then there's a video of a teacher another just organic video and you can see her asking one of our students about her learning experience. >> How have you grown as a reader this year? by reading site words and reading
long vowel words and reading long words by looking for the syllables. >> And when we're looking at success criteria, how have our learning letters helped us? >> It tells us what our goal is and it
makes us know what we have to learn. >> Yeah, I think that's actually pretty profound. It tells us what our goal is. It helps us know what we're going to learn. And that's also, you know, an empowering practice where the teacher and the principal in the school isn't that the gatekeeper of learning, but
kids can be aware and then their curiosity can be focused on their next step and where they are. I think that's pretty empowering. Here's a snapshot of lots of different data and, you know, just in full recognition here, me sharing for a couple minutes about the work of our
teams. it it um is barely a drop in the bucket for the work they do day in and day out and over the course of this school year, but it is kind it's kind of nice to give us an idea. We are I'm really inspired by what they're doing and the difference they make. But you can see the baseline. This happens to be
just from one of the um well there's three different benchmarks and then we're moving on of course over the course of the year, but you can just see the growth from the intention and the followup our first grade team is doing with that focus and with the success criteria. how we're helping kids move
and we're ensuring ensuring that they're learning and that's that connection to the vision and that is also I suppose evidence of a system. Now we're going to fast forward through the grades and we're going to go and
zoom out to fifth grade for this one and we'll also connect this one to our mission because all of this connects and there's alignment um alignment to it. So I'm going to take a second to read it. Our core purpose to ensure a world-class education that prepares each and every
student to thrive today and excel tomorrow in an everchanging global society. Emphasis on everchanging global society. So uh one of our fifth grade teachers working with her teams um prepared a quick snapshot. So I'm going
to read it because some of it's very technical but it's also very inspiring. So hopefully you'll join me in geeking out over this. So this is a snapshot of fifth graders using success criteria as well because it's a schoolwide focus to conduct biographical analysis. During
this unit, students engaged in a rigorous study of biographies. Rather than simply memorizing facts, students acted as biographical detectives using success criteria to strengthen their analytical skills while exploring the lives of influential people. Students
completed two projects that integrated research, writing, and digital literacy. They selected an explorer to investigate and gathered notes on their explorers's motivations, and legacy, eventually synthesizing this information in a comparative writing piece. To share
their findings, students used digital tools to create infographics that visually communicated the research in a format relevant to them. I I I do want to point out the merger of
just what's relevant to kids with standards and engagement, cognitive engagement. There's just lots of complicated things at play and it's really cool. I teachers work very hard to do this in teams to ensure all kids get it. But there's a really beautiful thing when it comes out looking like
that. So, and thanks for providing us a chance just to share a little snapshot of some of the intention behind it. We'll take this a step further because the standards take a long time to teach and master. So I'll go to the next slide and similarly I'll just read a short
descriptor and obviously the success the success criteria is developmentally appropriate. So it's a little bit different in fifth grade. Uh their second project is fifth graders engaged them in gathering evidence from a variety of primary and secondary sources. Guided by a specific su success
criteria, they produced a structured multi paragraph narrative to build transferable future ready skills. Students use Canvas's AI image generation tools to design custom book covers by developing detailed prompts and obviously learning how to do that
with guidance from their teacher. They generated meaningful visual representations of their chosen figure. And this blended historical understanding with applied technology skills. Take it home here, Amy. We'll go to
almost the last slide. And while this was just a snapshot, this was one way that our school, our team, our schoolwide PLC is connecting district vision, school vision to the everyday lived experience of our kids, factoring
in belonging, you know, a genuine excitement for learning and having kids learn at a high level. One one thing I will mention and based on a lot of the great questions you always ask, you might have even asked about this, but um I was in a recent PLC meeting and this
one happened to me in first grade and the team was developing some a response to an assessment for kids that had mastered this skill and standards. So they were extending the curriculum and it was just really cool to see the intention and and and that's hard to do
and that takes time but just looking at every single learner in our system based on their skills and trying to factor that in so that based on the team's work they could go back to their classrooms and also have some exciting stuff that really stretched kids that have the CVC
silent e uh and things like that. So, with that said, I'll just end by um going for the last time back to kind of the elev or escalator connection. Um our team in partnership with our school district and other elementaryaries across the district. We are working hard
to build a system and it's not built yet, but it is it is coming along and it's really exciting. It's making a difference. Our teachers are working really hard. Um, and also balancing the importance of relationships and connection and belonging and having it
feel good while creating a system that just is responsive to where kids are. So, very pleased to be able to present on their behalf and we would welcome any questions that you might have. >> Thank you, Dr. G. Um, any questions,
comments for Principal Gustoson? Yes, Lisa. Iorf comments. Yeah. >> Um that was really great. Thank you. I first of all after being right up the road at Kimberly Lane for many years. I know we often were trying to get Dr. Wearman to do some of the antics that we knew you were doing over there for motivating the students. So thank you
for bringing the energy to Greenwood and keeping us in competition with you guys. >> Yeah. >> Um and also want to put on record that I want to make sure you get some bookshelves because I'm not sure if you heard from the media specialists, but shoving those books at the beginning of the video last week was probably making some of us anxious. So, we need to make
sure referendum can cover a couple of extra bookshelves over >> Thank you for everything you're doing. The kids feel your energy and it obviously shows. >> Yeah. Well, we get it from the kids and each other. Thanks. >> Yeah. >> Thanks for coming. I always look forward
to your presentation. Um, and I just the video is telling to me because first of all, the way that your students engage with you as a principal is really unique. Um, and they seem like they're at home, which which is really great
because it is their second home, right? Like they're spending so much time with you. And I I can just I can tell that. So for me, our equity commitment isn't just a commitment. It's a equity and belonging really go hand in hand. And
you can't have one without the other. And so just seeing that sense of ease and comfort and their ability to articulate themselves really carefully and thoughtfully. Um the work is being done. It's really obvious to me. Also
your numbers show amazing things. So even in those red blocks there is growth that's happening and that's really huge. So thank you. >> Thank you. If I may uh respond. Thanks. Um, thanks for noticing the video. And I
will say if you think that is special, you know, when you're in classrooms, kids are even more comfortable and more safe. And it's really, really special. It's a privilege. It's a privilege to see. I also want to point out, thank you for mentioning our equity commitment and just the importance of this is about all
of us and all of them and every single each student. And I don't know if you picked up on it, but just different kids experience belonging differently and they have different needs and it's not up to us to assume what they are, but listening to them and um one of the kid
I thought it was also cool. One of the they they all said something different in that video and it was impromptu, but one of the one of our youngest learners said like, "How does your teacher take care of you? She teaches me to read." And when you think about equity, ensuring each and every student learns
how to read and wants to read, that is one of the most one one of the most important things we can do. >> Okay. Well, I I just have one comment. Uh Dr. G. Um I will not name the name of the organization but there is an
organization in the education field that has done a lot of research and they talk about three things that are really really necessary for development of younger ch children especially in the elementary grades. Uh and I remember
that as BCC belonging is number one. They have to understand the culture. The system has to understand the culture. The staff has to understand the culture that they belong to and then most importantly these things have to be consistent.
>> So you mentioned consistency where you actually work with other elementary schools in the district. Where are you at that at that at about with consistency? How where at what stage are you at? Do you think we are consistent across the the district for the systems
or we still have a long ways to go? Yeah, I guess I would answer probably everything we're doing in our district as a journey and it's just a really exciting journey. Really quick, the the language we're using is, you know, we can name our current reality with anything we're
doing. We can also name the ideal state and we can consistently do we can consistently name where we are, no matter where we are and where we're going together. That in and it of itself is actually a pretty powerful profound thing because then we can align what are we going to do to close that gap and
address the tension. I can speak on behalf of our elementary principal group cuz that's a group that I'm closest with. But the conversations we're having across the board are more aligned than they ever you know this is my 16th year here. It's just a really exciting time
and thanks in large part to the leadership of Dr. Anderson, Dr. Miller uh and the whole I shouldn't have started naming but the the teaching and learning team um the teachers uh and and the hardware it is it truly takes
everyone and when we're working together and we're focused really cool things start to emerge. So as far as um consistency across schools it's a it's a journey and we're all working towards that ideal state but I'm really proud of of where we are and where we're going together.
>> Okay. Thank you so much. Um there are no other comments. Thank you cup for coming and wish you luck lots of luck with with this endeavor and please come back again when you have more information to share with us. Thank you so much. >> Thank you.
>> All right. Next is the audience opportunity to address the board. Amy, do we have any We do not have anyone who has expressed an interest in speaking to the board this evening. Okay. Moving on, let's see what the next item. The next item on the agenda is the administrative
reports and recommendations. First, we have Dr. Anderson presenting one board policy for approval. Mr. Chair and members of the board, as you're aware, uh the agenda was amended to exclude policy 2011, uh pending
further discussion. So there's only one policy uh before you this evening and that is policy 209 school board code of ethics and it's presented to you uh this evening for
your review and the recommended action is on the agenda sheet. Okay. Thank you Dr. Anderson. Uh board colleagues, the recommended action is to approve the board policy 209 as presented. Do I have a motion to approve? I move to approve and I um
suggest we wave the second reading. >> Is there a second? >> Second. Moved and seconded. Is there a discussion >> here? Hearing none. Uh this is a this is a voice vote. So I'm going to
ask any everybody in favor say I. >> I oppose. Nay. The motion passes. Thank you to the policy committee for your due diligence. There are no teaching and learning reports this evening. And so moving
ahead onto the finance and operations report presented by executive director Trevor Peterson. Trevor will first present. Is it Jack? Okay. Jack will first presence the director of uh finance will first present.
Are you are you not presenting the financial reports first? >> Yeah. No, I'm going to defer to Jack. He's going to stay up there, follow that up. So, yeah, certainly. >> So, Jack is going to be presenting the combined financial report for the month ended February 28th, 2026. Jack,
>> good evening, Dr. Anderson, school board. Uh, and thank you, Trevor, for this nice little warm-up before we get into the fun stuff for the budgets. Um, as uh Dr. Soony said, as Chair Soony mentioned that these are the um February
28 or 226 financials. um for the month end. First is the statement of revenues. As you can see, most revenues are coming in right where we expect them to at this time of year. Um property taxes are right in line as well as state aids. Um state aids are metered, so we'll see
more of that coming in as the months go on as we get closer to the end of the school year. Um but they are right in line with previous fiscal years. Um you'll notice with federal aids that last year we did have 18.2% 2% um actual to budget by this time of the year. That
was due to the ESSER funds um which had to be spent by a certain time um and drawn on throughout the year during um 2425 uh due to not having these funds in 2526. That's why you're seeing that um the percentage dropped from previous year. And uh for the next one for
miscellaneous local revenue um this one is a little bit lower than previous years or previous year more specifically and this is just due to our interest revenue. Um I'll be getting into this during our revised budget presentation for why this is decreasing. Um but that's why that decreases there.
Next up looking at food service, community service, and our debt service fund. All these are coming right in line. Um, so total revenues uh to date are 100 just just over $185 million. Oh, thanks Amy. For expenditures to date, um you'll see
that salary and benefits are right in line as well. Uh when it comes to things like purchase services, um capital expenditures, supplies, and materials, these kind of are more of a flowing budget throughout the year. um depending on when things are expended, when projects are going on, this that and the
other. So, um everything is coming in right where we expect it to by this time of year. Um but that that is why you're seeing some various um percentages year-over-year in those categories. But, um bottom line, when you look at total general fund expenditures, um we have spent about we are at 1278
127.8 million. Um and all, you know, year-to- dates are looking right in line at 53%. And then for other funds, uh, food service, community service, and debt service, uh, those are all coming in line as well.
This is a a newer um report that Trevor and I added to uh, the monthly board financials, and this is just another way of looking at our revenue expenditures. Um we broke it out by restricted and or unrestricted as well as restricted funds um just to get a little bit truer
picture of those funds that aren't restricted um by the district. Um so as you can see unrestricted revenue uh is right at 121 million um sitting at 57.9% uh budget to actual which is right in line with previous years. Um and similar for the restricted funds those are
coming in line with previous year's expectations as well. Um so overall general fund revenues are about 61.6 6% um as I mentioned on the previous tab. Um but this is just another way of looking at it with the tech levy, long-term facility maintenance and operating capital broken out from the
unrestricted. And then similar for the expenditures, we've also broken out the unrestricted and restricted expenditures there. Um similar to the previous tab, everything's coming in line right where we thought it would be for this time of year. Um we do have the revision presentation coming up here coming up
next where we'll kind of talk about some areas we tweaked. Um, but overall everything is coming in right where we thought it would for for this time of year. Oh yeah, it's already switched. And then finally is our um cash our cash balances. Um, so this is our general
fund, our all facility bonds, and our capital facility bonds. Um, this is the current cash on hand. Um, I will point out the yield. You'll see that our yield is right about 3.63% 63% for PMA, 3.55% um for mislaf liquid as well as um the
alt facility bonds liquid and then the 3.65 for our max accounts. Um this was to be expected throughout the year. Um we did have higher interest rates last year than this year. They're about half what they were last year. Um so with that lower interest rate, that's one of the reasons why you'll see in the budget
presentation why we did drop that revenue expectation down. Um, but this is where the market's at currently and um, we'll see what happens in the future. But overall total general fund cash on hand is $52 million uh, just a little over to $52 million um, as of
February 28th. And then our all facility bonds still have about $550k left um, sitting there in that investment account for future abatement projects um, for pavement and things like that. And then the capital facility bonds at the bottom there are for the 2025A project going on
at West Middle School. Any questions with the financials? Thank you, Jack. Your light is on that you want to ask. Excuse me. Any question? I I do have a question, Jack. Um the the slide where you had the
fund balance. Sorry if I missed it, but was there an unrestricted fund balance percent on there or was it just the amount? >> Um, not on that slide. The at I believe the here I can I don't have it up anymore, but I don't think the present there I don't think there was a
percentage on there to date. It was just showing the actual unassigned or actual total fund balance. Okay. >> As of 2025 year end and our projected um 2026 fund balance. What percent do you think that is of operating expense?
>> Of operating expense are this projection is probably showing um right over 11%. So maybe about >> 11%. >> Okay, that's what I wanted to know. Thank you. That was my only question. >> There are no other questions. We'll move
on to the next presentation. Uh, are you going to be presenting the fiscal year 2526 general fund budget with Jen? Right. Yep. Okay. Thank you, Jack. So, this is our 2526 revised budget. I'm
very happy to be up here with Jen Welk. Um, she is amazing with our enrollments and everything that goes into that. So, um, it's been wonderful getting to work with her more closely and put together this presentation for all of you. So when it comes to the general assumptions for the budget, um we looked
at the budget trends um based on our final 2425 data as well as our year-to- date 2526 revenue expenditures. Um so we look at where things ended up last year and then also look into the revenue expenditures for 2526 to get a truer picture um by looking through most of
our expenses. I think we went through almost all of them this year just because of the changing of the guard as you will in the finance team, but it was a fun process. Um, additionally with the general assumptions, we look at the employee salaries and benefits. Um, just in case there was any contract settlements that didn't occur at the end
of last year. Um, the 2526 prelim budget was approved in June of 2025. So, there's some things that change between there and um, now for salary and benefits. So, we look at those as well. And then also we look at the enrollment projections um, and
update those as necessary. So this slide shares with you our district's ADMs and pupil units. ADMs are the portion of the school year that a student is enrolled in the district. That's so that's the blue bar there. And then the gold shows the pupil units
because we get a higher weighted factor for students that are grades 7 through 12. So here is our revised budget. Um on the next few tabs we'll on the next few slides we'll go more into all these items but um this is just a straight picture of our revenue expenditure
budgets. Um on the left side is the preliminary budget that was approved by the board in June of 2025. Uh the middle column is all the various budget adjustments that when uh that we decide to make and then the far right is the revised budget. Um, so as you'll see in
terms of the unrestricted revenues, we're we would we would like to add about $5.7 million there. Um, we're going to be decreasing the restricted revenue by 30,000. Um, on the expenditure side, unrestricted expenditures, we are um, revising to
$4.8 million in uh, higher than the prelim budget. And then on the restricted expenditures, we are going to be dropping that by 34,000. Um, so that brings our unrestricted revenue up to about $215 million. Uh, total general fund revenue to $237 million. And then
on the other expenditure side, um, that's going to be increasing our unrestricted expenditures to just a little over 211 million and then our restricted expenditures to 31 million. Um, and then on the next slides, we'll go into it more.
So here are all the assumptions that we made for that revenue budget. Um, starting off was the property taxes. Uh, we know exactly what that number is going to be based off of settlement reports. So, we increased our property tax revenue up to actuals. Um, by this point in the year, we've received all
that revenue for the most part. There's one more small payment in May, which we'll still get. Um, we know exactly what that amount will be. So, we increase the revenue budget to tie to true income coming in. Um, state aids, we did drop that by about 210K.
Um this was just due to at pre the prelim budget um the enrollment we used for budgeting uh the numbers didn't quite come in where what we budgeted at prelim was a little bit lower. So based on that we had to drop our state aid revenue down just based on those um I
believe it was kindergarten through uh early elementary grade uh early elementary ele uh enrollment that didn't come in. Um so that's what that that decrease is. Uh the next sign the next line is the $4 million addition for special education aid. Um special
education aid for state aids is a little bit difficult to budget for each year. Uh based on that what we receive come is based off of prior year expenditures. Um, so when you're doing the prelim budget in June, uh, audits wrapping up
in November and then the state's using those November final numbers to determine what you're going to receive for special education state aid. Um, most of the time when it comes to the prelim budget, um, PE individuals are a little bit more restrictive with their budgeting until that revenue until you
know what that revenue is going to be. So that's what that revenue increases for there. Um, here's the what I was talking about during my the revenue expense conversation was the interest income. Uh, we did drop that by about 500 well $500,000. Um, this was due to,
as I mentioned, uh, last year we were getting about 6% on our yield for our investments. Uh, this year we're getting closer to that 3.5. Um, so due to that and the timing of seeing that interest decrease, um, by this time of the year we can project where we're going to end
up. So we decrease our interest income to match. Uh student activities, we added a budget for the revenues for this, you'll also see it on the expenditure side. Um whenever there's a again kind of like I was we were mentioning earlier, whenever there's a kind of a change in the finance team,
there's a new way of looking at things. Um we wanted to budget student activities um where we thought they should be in line with for the district. So we budgeted those at $679,000. And then we also sold some equipment this year. And since we knew what we
sold, um, we increased the budget that we were originally expecting it to come in around 200k. We actually sold it for $400,000. So, we increased that budget as well. And then the increase for federal aids is just receiving our final allocation
um for all federal grants. >> So, next on the expenditure side, we did add $2.8 million to salaries and benefits. Uh this again was just kind of due to the timing of when contracts were settled. Uh we had expectations built into the prelim budget. Um but then due
to where those salary and benefits actually ended up based on contracts, we increased that budget. Um and then you'll notice various purchase services and supplies. Uh budget adjustments. These are really all due to enrollment growth. Whenever there's increased enrollment growth, you're going to have
increased um repairs and maintenance, uh some increased transportation and utility costs, there's some site adjustments in there just based on if there's more students, uh we do provide more supply and materials to those uh school sites. So, a lot of these
expenditure revisions are really related to that enrollment increase that we saw this year. Um as well as really the salary and benefits. So overall all these items uh a lot of work went into deciding what made the most sense for these. Um and on in total our total expenditure changes were about 4.7
million. So that gets us to the fund balance slide. Um the preliminary budget uh that was approved in June was projecting that revenue over expense um for the general fund was going to be right around $3 million. Uh based on our various
adjustments and reviewing the numbers, we're projecting it to come in a little bit closer to a little over $4 million um for our fund balance increase. So this will move us from the 11.55% um and 25 uh fisc year 25 final to a
projected fiscal year 26 at 12.5. There are some factors that could change this figure. Um there's various audit journal entries and things like that that come in closer to year end which could change this amount but this is our best idea at the time of where we think
we'll end up moving on from the general fund will be our construction fund um with the 2025A bonds. Uh those were not originally put into the prelim budget. Um, but then since we did sell the bonds, we know that we're doing the project because the
music suite looks awesome. Um, we did add that into the budget. So, we added the 6 point oh about $6 million in uh issuance of bonds to the revenue side. Um, the investment earnings is our best assumption of where we think of the amount of interest we think we'll make
on those bonds. Um, on the expenditure side, we just made those tie out to the issuance because the assumption was that the whole project would be finished this year. Um, so we just made the revenues expense and expenses tie for that. Um, and then the preliminary budget, um,
that $1.8 million is just the abatement bonds that we've been spending down this year. So within the construction fund is the abatement bonds and the 2025A bonds. So we only increased the budget for the 2025A bonds. And then next up is our debt service
fund. And this was just more so me. I we I noticed that there was um one smaller debt service payment that didn't make its way into the prelim budget. I'm kind of an exact guy. So when I saw that wasn't in there, I wanted to bring it to
you and add it just for when I'm tying up the debt schedule and like, "Oh, it matches budget perfectly." So, um that's what this revision is for. Just the one there was one interest um payment when the prelimin budget was set that wasn't included. So any questions?
>> Thank you Jack, comments, questions. >> No questions, just comment. So um this is great and I know Trevor you shared this with some of us as well as with C5 committee. Um so again I wanted to take
that opportunity and call it out again that Wisarda has received uh center again the excellence in financial reporting through association of school business officials and that obviously kudos to you all. Um you talked about
preliminary budget we have to finish before beginning of July when we don't know what the enrollment number looks like. Jen does excellent job in terms of tracking it every month. Um and then obviously you talked about the the
reimbursement revenue for the prior year that doesn't come until January. So with all those uncertainties setting up the preliminary budget and then where we are with the revised budget the revenue is less than 2.5
varants and for expenditure is less than 2% varants. That's awesome. So anything that you guys are doing to forecast it that's really working well number shows that and the audit report and the the external certification bodies they are
also vouching for that. So again kudos to the entire finance team. Great job. Thank you. Okay I have a some clarification questions. Uh so if you going to go back to the slide, the one that had uh
the miscellaneous interest, I think it was like 500,000 or something uh one one right here. So miscellaneous local interest income any of that from the mislab funds or is this just aside from that or is this all from mislab
funds? >> Yep. So, this is all going to be from the Mislaf funds. Okay. Um, so it's mostly in the max class account where we try to keep all of our >> cash until we move it to pay payrolls and various check runs and things like that. >> Um, but yes, we did see us a pretty
almost half a change from where we were at last year compared to this year and we just kind of watch it trickle down throughout the year. So, I think our highest was just over 6% interest on all that, which was really it was it was very helpful for the district. And then,
um, kind of watching that decrease over the course of the year. Um, and now since we were doing this budget, we had a little bit longer to do it than previous years, but um, we were able to project out what the next 3 months would be. And um we had budgeted about just
just over $3 million originally for um our interest income and then we dropped it down to just a little over 2.5 million. Okay. If you want to go to the slide that shows expenditure. Okay. So that first line there employee salaries and benefits. I heard you say
this was mostly from the negotiated contracts. Would it be fair to assume then that any of this was not related to hiring of more teachers? Um, so when we put together the prelim budget, we project out um any hires that
haven't been made yet. So we work with HR to figure out what the staffing is going to be for the beginning for the next fiscal year. Um, so we had a pretty good understanding of who was going to be hired and we put in we put in positions that we're assuming we were going to hire for. Um, so almost all of
this was um related to the contract. >> Okay. >> And then one final uh comment. attached with the question. So 12.5% fund balance for the unrestricted funds, right? Yeah. On that chart, would you
would you would you agree that the state of finances for Visi is pretty healthy right now? Uh yeah, I would say overall um I've really enjoyed working here because it's probably been the best place I've worked and it's because of the people that are here. Um we have
great program leaders all over the district. We have great teachers. Um just I think everyone who who's here wants to try their best and really show the wise at a way and I think that reflects on our finances as well. >> Okay, good. Yeah, that that that relates to the enrollment increase, right? I
mean, >> we just keep growing and uh that's that's a that's great news. So, thank you for everything you guys do uh to help us along. So, yeah, >> there are no other questions, comments. Thank you, Jack. Thank you, Jen. We'll move on to the next item.
still still on finance. Um this time it's going to be Visetta Caf's food service fund fiscal year 2026 revised budget and Jack will present that as well. >> Jack and Michelle, sorry.
>> Good evening. >> Okay, so next budget. So this slide we like to put into our presentations um for food service or the wisetta cafes just to show that they are truly their own um fund within the district. Um all their revenue is
generated from um meal sales. Um and then they have their own salaries, benefits, food. Um so really just wanted to show that it's separate from the general fund. Looking at our school year so far this year, uh believe many know, but we did a
nice big infrastructure update. Um mostly at the high school, uh that was our high school freezer expansion and cooler addition. Uh with increased enrollment, our back of the house, which is referred to as the kitchen part you probably don't see when you're in the cafeteria, they are we're needing some
more freezer space. So, we did take a locker room and transition that to a cooler, a walk-in cooler, and then took another walk-in cooler offline, knocked down a wall, and expanded that freezer. So, that was a big project that was done this summer, and it was up and running
before the start of school. Next, our high school salad and sandwich serving area. Again, more students, more students coming through our lines. We want to keep our offerings the same, but uh we needed more space. So we did do an expansion and moved one of our serving
lines into another part of the cafeteria right behind our alle cart and that did uh it opened up a little bit later than we wanted to in the school year but it's up and running and um as of January and it's doing doing well so it's fun to have that that up and running and it's a
nice it's a beautiful turned out to be a beautiful space. So lastly we did just a replacement of a rotating rack oven at Oakwood Elementary. So, as our schools continue to age in other areas, so does the kitchen and so does the equipment. So, there gets to be a point where we just try to chip away and replace what
we can. Looking at our menu of um what we continue to do, uh we have truly enjoyed this is our second year of our elementary student choice days and being able to engage with those students and have them pick the menu has been fun. Uh kind of piggybacking off of Dr. G's
Greenwood uh Greenwood video. We get to be able to see those students and interact with them uh on a more personal level and have them pick the menu and it's always fun and exciting to see some of the ideas they come up with. And secondly, we continue to just expand our
cultural food options into our menus. So each year trying to see what other cultural items, food items can we look at, introduce to our students. And again, we always like to take that look of uh are there any local vendors that are making these foods that we can tap
into. Uh there are experts. They're doing it uh on a daily basis as part of their business. So, we like to see who we can partner with and expand those options. And then lastly, just as always, we like to always continue to apply for the farm to school grant. Um we did receive that again for next
school year. So, that is um something that we look forward to to continue. So, um, we do that regardless, I think, if we get the grant or not. It's just another nice little bump in that revenue piece to support the farm to school. So, similar to the last presentation, here is a slide that's showing the
preliminary budget, the change, and then the the revised budget that we're bringing to you today. Um, as you can and then similar to the previous SL uh presentation, we will be going more into that in depth into this um on future slides. So, um, but just high level
total revenues, we're adding about 200 we're adding $200,000 to the budget. Um, bringing the total, uh, revenue budget to 10.5 million. And on the expenditure side, um, we're adding a little bit to salary and benefits to bring those up to actual um, expectations. And then um, no
changes to food, the food expenditures. And then for other expenditures, we're dropping that budget by 408K. Um, so that will bring the total expenditures to 11.2. 2 million um changing the revenue over expense um
from 1.2 million um at the prelim to uh 700,000 at revised. Looking at the revenue, uh as you know, just like we were talking about with the general fund earlier, we do our reimbursement rates from the state and federal level. We we budget that in the
prelim as to what we know in that current time. Our rates for the next school year typically are not re released until July of each year. So, we did adjust our reimbursement rates based on the actual reimbursement, state and federal uh revenue we're receiving back
for each breakfast and lunch. Our average daily participation at our elementary, middle, and high school continue to stay pretty steady. Um, with our elementary, the 80 to 85, middle school to 80 to 83 students eating percentage of students eating with us each day and then our high school at
77%. So it is they are very good participation rates. Um, so we are thankful for our our customers each and every day. And then our meal sales alart are averaging about 8,300 per day. This includes adult sales, uh, our preschool
meals, and our snacks that students are buying. This is down a little bit this school year, um, which we didn't anticipate, but, you know, on the flip side, our meals are up and that revenue piece is up. So, we just needed to adjust to the current reality of where our meal sales were sitting for this
school year. And then on the expenditure side, um I got to say Michelle and I hit out of the park this year. We were only we were within our um original budget of $32,000 for salary and benefits, which was really exciting um to bring that up just a little bit. That was makes you feel
good when you get close to your budget or where you're assuming your budget's going to end. So that was really nice. Um our biggest budget change was actually for operating equipment. Um, at the time of this budget, back in the prelim budget, uh, we were not 100% sure where those projects were going to come
in at the West High School or the why is it a high school. Um, and due to that, we budgeted high just based on we weren't sure where the bids were going to come in, uh, for the project. So, uh, we were really excited that we got a drop we had we got to drop the expenditures down by about $400,000 for
those projects um to save some of Michelle's, um, fund balance cuz we knew going into this year the expectation was going to be spending some of the her fund balance on the high school projects. Um, but it's always nice when we get to revise it in the correct way and save some money. So, and then the
rest of the there was a couple other miscellaneous um changes that we made for the revisions as well in terms of service fees, supplies, and health inspection fees. So, that's where we get to the fund balance tab or slide. Um we ended fisc
year 25 at $2.8 million um which was just about 3 months of operating expenses for Michelle um on her budget on the budget side. And then we for fisc year 26, we're projecting to be about $2.7 million for the fund balance. Um, which is still very very healthy and a
good place to be. Um, based on where we were thinking we were going to be here uh at the beginning of the year to now, we're we're really enjoying that number. So, >> and that is our last slide. So, we'll open it up for any questions or comments. >> Thank you both.
Questions, comments. Yeah, >> if you wouldn't mind um going back to the uh slide that had the farm-to-table grant piece on it. >> It was a great conversation in committee and I really appreciate your presentation. Um if you could share uh
what uh firms, organizations, departments are awarding those grant dollars. So the farm to school grant is through our um Minnesota Department of Agriculture and Minnesota Department of Education. So that is a grant that is
Minnesota funded and um very thankful that we do have that grant available to us that we can apply to apply to it each year um to support our local local farmers and producers. >> Excellent. Thank you very much. >> Okay, I I have a few questions. Uh can
you go to the slide which shows the expenditures break? >> Oh, I'm sorry. Did not see your light. um question I have it's about um I mean I'm working myself at school and I see how much food is being wasted to be
honest at breakfast one thing I wish that um at top level they can discuss that needy students need to get food but others uh that money can be used for something else like um like helping with
reading and all but with cultural food um I myself from different culture obviously and I'm experienced when you bring food sometimes different cultures do not want to try so I learned my lesson I do not bring some food uh which
people when they even look at it they feel like uh I'm not sure about that so how do you balance introducing culture uh food but at the same time not wasting >> it's a good good question um part of
that is taste testing things that we try to interact with students. Uh sometimes too when if we are not if we don't have the opportunity to do a taste testing prior to the day of the event, uh we'll see like our alternative graband- go
option maybe be those kind counts be a little bit higher. So on those days, we encourage our staff to just go around and still offer students a taste. So even though they might be selecting a different meal choice that day to still engage and interact with the students and say, "Hey, do you just want to do you want to try this sambooa that we
have on the menu today? So maybe next time they're um more likely to pick that option." So again, it's just engaging and having those conversations with the students and as much as possible do any prior taste testing and engaging before it is on the menu.
>> Yep. And one more I think that I asked in the past but I would like to see if you um looking at percentage high school is lower uh participation you would have think teenagers at least looking in my household would like to have more food
but uh why is the percentage participation is lower? Is it because they purchased them from alle cart or >> I think it's a combination of um alle cart they might be choosing to um get a meal through alle cart that's not part of a reimburseable meal um we have a lot
of students I think that go off campus for uh you know PSEO classes uh and then also at the same time uh like high school testing they just had like ACT testing MCA testing so on those days not all the students are on site so that
that impacts our overall percentage of average daily participation because that's still considered a school day for us. So even though that we may only feed 500 students those days. So that does impact that percentage too.
>> So I'm going to I didn't have that question in my list here but I'm going to jump on to what Valentina said earlier about food wastage. Uh do we do data mining with the help of uh director of technology Wade Phillips
where you where you feed data about what what kind of food is liked by a certain number of students and based on that you create a history and then do you plan accordingly based on that?
>> Yep. We um I have to call out Jenny cuz I know she's my blue friend back there that likes the details and the trends, but I I watch our meal counts on a daily basis. Um and so I we will go back to and we'll look we well so like next year we're menu planning for our our meals
and we'll look at what are our lower count days. Do we need to rotate those choices off more frequently or maybe just offer it that choice in the winter months? Are they getting tired of it? So we do watch those trends and really the students coming through the lunch line is that best that the best um data that
we have to be able to see what they are liking or not. The other one is just again engaging with the students. We have high school students that work for us over lunch. So a lot of times we'll be like hey come and taste test this new recipe. So it's really easy to have them right next to us uh taste testing those
new recipes. Also, >> it would be nice if you if the kids could basically tell, you know, mark off somewhere, this is what I ordered, but this is what I threw in the trash though, so you would know what was really asked for and then they really did not eat.
>> That would be nice, but I don't know if that that's feasible. >> Yeah. If and food waste is always a hot topic and um especially elementary, they get 20 minutes to get through that lunch line and sit down and eat their meal and that's their social time. That's their fun time of the day. Uh so that food
waste is always a battle also of being able to utilize it. There's share carts in the cafeterias. So there are share carts, share tables where if someone doesn't want to eat something, they can put it on there. So if they don't want their apple, they can put it in there or they don't want their cheese stick and
then a student can come by and grab it if they want to eat it then or save it for later. >> Yeah. Uh can you go back to the slide where you had the expenditures, corrected expenditures? There was one that had a reduction of
$400,000. Okay. Right there. So from under the under other minus 408 out of 2.4 million, that's a big big amount, right? That even as a percentage, what what what constitutes that other?
>> Yeah. So most of the other is operating equipment. Um, so about $400,000 of that other is the operating equipment based off of uh the middle the high school project that was going on. Um, so when we first went up for bids for all the equipment for the new serving lines and
the walk-in freezer, um, we weren't 100% sure where the bids were going to come in um, going into, you know, preliminary budget. Uh so we budgeted high for those projects because when it comes to the food service program where everything is state and federally reimbursed. Um we wanted to
know as budget as restrictive as possible to make sure that um we knew what could happen to Michelle's fund balance. Um luckily when the bids came in they did come in lower than projected based off of where we were thinking they were going to come in. So that's what the $400,000
>> that's a good thing. Right. I >> Yeah. Very good. We're happy about that. >> Yes. Um, going back to the average daily participation, I'm sure you cannot ever expect to go to 100%, right? Are these numbers better than before the free meals were introduced
or about the same? >> Yes, they are. We are staying steady. So, when free meals, Minnesota free meals were introduced, we did see how you're testing my memory now. Um, but I would say like our elementary participation would was more in the 75 to 80%.
Um, middle school was kind of around that same and then high school was more probably 65 to 70% participation. So, Minnesota free meals did have an impact on participation >> on the higher side. Good. >> Mhm. >> Um,
our cart sales again are they now less or more than when we when we had we did not have free meals? they approximately I'm not >> sales. Okay, so this one is a little bit harder because before our meal sales when meals were paid those meal sales.
So if you paid 360 at the middle school for a lunch that was tied into the meal sale overall um in this category. So, I'm trying to just um I would say all our cart sales have gone up just a little bit, but that's also in part to that the price of items have gone up a
little bit because the expenses to us have increased. So, they are pretty much the same if not um a little bit I would say a little bit higher for just all a cart. >> Okay. >> Yeah, I'd have to we'd have to maybe go back and look at that specifically.
>> With the free meals that started two years ago, most of the meal sales are from Alakart, right? I mean there is no other. >> Yes, major. Yep. Most of this is alle cart. Um adult meal sales are wrapped into there into that too. >> Okay. >> Allocart or second and second entre.
>> Okay. And then the fund balance u I think we we talk about it all the time that fund balance cannot be transferred to the general education fund. You can take money from the general education fund but you cannot transfer it there. Um, so is there a do you know of a board
policy that says we have to have a minimum fund balance just like we have for the general education fund. Is there a policy for from the board? >> You are at three months fund balance right now, right? Three months operating expenses. >> Yes. And I don't think it's in any board
policy here. That's um Minnesota Department of Education guidance for O2 funds is they you want to kind you want to be around that three-month operating expense. And then if you are or you're higher then Minnesota Department of Education actually comes knocking on
your door and they're like how are you going to spend this down? So what projects are you going to implement? How are you going to invest this back into the school? So they they do watch that and they don't like the O2 fund to build too high. They want to see that spent. >> So they are visetta cafes board basically. Mhm. Yes. Yeah.
>> Uh that's that's all I have. Anybody else have any questions, comments? No. Thank you both. I appreciate uh you know the presentation and great job keeping those fund balances high. >> Okay. And now next we have director of
community ed Jenny Eert who will present the community services revised budget for fiscal year 2026. Good evening. I'm Jenny Eert, director of community ed. Thank you, Dr. Anderson, and the school board for having me here tonight to talk about the
revised uh budget for the community services fund, which is fund four. Similar to um the slide you saw for Weisetta Cafes, we like to highlight that the community service fund is a separate fund different from the general fund. We cover the variety of programs
that you see listed there for community ed. And just as grounding work, I always like to pull up my community ed slide as a reminder of these are the things that are represented as part of our budget. We serve everybody in our community from our babies to our seniors and everybody
in between in a lot of different ways. So, this budget really makes up of uh all that that you're seeing up there that is um service work that we do for our community. Additionally, I just wanted to share u my leadership team who plays an active role in helping develop this budget. I
have Michelle Badora, director of early learning, Hillary Dish, assistant director of community ed youth programs, and our newest position, Christy Johnson, assistant director of community ed and partnerships and engagement. Um, these three all play an active role in helping project what we're expecting for
our programs to do active listening to determine what new programs are needed. uh doing the research on where we're going to go, what pricing should be, and all those details that go into running the business of community ed. I also want to note that Cindy Robinson, our finance specialist, plays an important
role in also helping to put this budget together. So, the midyear revisions that I'm sharing here today um fit into a couple different categories. On the revenue side, you'll see that overall we're projecting a
decrease in revenue from 16.9 million to 16.7. Um, I think it's important to note there that though we are projecting an endofear decrease, this is an overall increase of $1 million over last year. Last year, our revenue ended at 15.7
million. When we were revising or creating our budget for this year, we were optimistic that we'd hit 66.9. um as we've gone through programming and found we had some some less space for our preschool program and then we had additionally hoped for um we had to reduce that down just a little bit for
the year end. I'll go into a little bit more detail on those on some upcoming slides. On the expenditure side um overall we're seeing some decreases in our salaries and benefits. Most of this is due to timing of when we've hired new staff and again I'll go into that more
detail in coming slides. Uh overall our net revenue over expenditures are expecting to be about $157,000. Our revenue sources in community ed are for the most part fee revenue. About 75% of our revenue comes from um costs
associated with our our various programs whether it's Wisetta Kids, early childhood, family ed, preschool, and a number of other pieces. So the majority of our revenue does come from those fees. We do have about 25% that comes from state aid and local tax levy. This might be our school readiness. Again,
ECF um and a variety of other programs that uh the state and local levies uh support. We also have a very small amount of grant funding. Most of that comes from our partners for healthy kids partnership. As a comparison, year-over-year, our
revenue and expenses in community ed have been growing over the last 10 years. Um, we have had successful programs that I'm really proud of that also align with the growth that we're seeing in our district. So, as we grow throughout Wisetta Public Schools, our
community programs grow to um in alignment with that piece of it. You'll note in fiscal year 2020 and 2021, there was a dip in revenue and expenses. Um, of course, tied to the pandemic. Uh since then we have really adjusted our
budget to be um higher on the revenue versus expenses side in attempt to rebuild our fund balance which you'll see in a final slide in this presentation. We are now in a place where our fund balance is uh healthy and so working towards a net even budget which we see for that fiscal year 26
revised. So a summary of the changes in revenue um the highlight is revenue remains strong. Again, I noted that we're experiencing about a $1 million increase in revenue over last year. Um, happy to report that the slight reduction in our
um budgeted over uh over original was really due to the fact that we had we're hopeful that we'd have some additional preschool classrooms. Um those would be available only because there'd be space in our elementary schools. And as we know with our recent referendum, there's not a lot of extra space in our
elementary schools. We were um lucky enough to have that over the last few years and as that has shifted um those classrooms are now used for our K12 or K5 programming. So with that we have less revenue associated with that preschool programming. Where we are
seeing significant growth is in our wisetta kids childare and also um somewhat in our facility rentals program. I want to highlight Wisetta kids in particular. This has been an area where we've spent a lot of time really trying to meet the needs of our community in
new and different ways. Um the need for child care has just consistently grown uh since 2016 if we want we wanted to go back that far. Um and with the pandemic there was some um hits to our programming in terms of staffing and whatnot. So we've been working to
rebuild that for several years now and um are really proud to share that we have increased the number of students that were able to take into our program year-over-year for the last three years. There's a lot going on in this slide, so I I don't need you to read all the details, but the overall uh takeaway
that I want you to see is that community ed offers a wide variety of programs and our revenue comes from a wide variety of sources. We wised at a kids child care, whether it's school year, summer, non-school day, is our largest source of revenue, but there are many other programs that um come together to build
that net $16.7 million in revenue. Um these are both programs that are generating revenue through fees as well as um things like state aid and levy like the community ed levy that you see up there. I also like to point out when I'm u
doing our budget that we look at how revenue is generated and where programs fit in this matrix um as we're developing the how our budget's coming together. So, in an ideal world, everything we do would be high impact and high profitability. Um, I put
Wisetta Kids Childcare in that in that area. We're meeting our mission. We're doing really good work and we're making um some profits off of that as well. Um, but that's not the case in education. Not everything that we do is going to generate funding. So, we do have programs like our adult literacy
volunteer program, which is adults that come in are supporting um reading in our elementary schools. that doesn't generate any funding, but it's high impact, so it ends up in that top corner with the heart up there. Uh we want to continue to be able to do those
programs. Of course, um there's a lot of high impact programs that have lower no profit that if that's all we did, we wouldn't be able to run our programs. So, we look at where do these different things that we do in community ad fit across this whole spectrum of matrix.
On the expenditure side, we are a service arm of the district. So the majority of our expenses are in salary and benefits about 80,000. Um even in that green wedge which is purchase services a lot of that is actually paying for people in our youth programs.
For example, we pay vendors and contracted um folks to provide camps and classes for us. Um but they fall under the purchase services, but really that's people providing service to our community as well. So, a quick summary of where we're at from community expenditures, the changes
that we're seeing. Um, there was a decrease on that slide um in salary and benefits and a lot of that was really tied to timing of hiring. We've been working really hard to continue hiring for white set of kids. If you think back to that slide where you saw the increase in the number of kids we're serving. Um,
that just didn't always happen right away on September 1st. That's happened slowly throughout the year. Um, so there's some decrease in that total cost associated with that. We also hired the new assistant director of community ed, Christy Johnson. Um, that was a hire we had anticipated earlier in the year and
ended up hiring in March. So, there were some savings associated with that. Uh, we had some increases in purchase services. As programs expand, we expand the cost of of the materials and whatnot that goes along with it. We've also expanded our contracted services with a
talent recruitment agency. this agency is helping us to hire staff for Rosetta Kids. So, while there's an expense associated with that, um the payoff is of course service to our community and some revenue. Uh lastly, we are contracting with a new
out of school time training for our childcare program. As we grow, we want to also make sure that we're maintaining a high quality program. So, investing in training of all of our new staff is really critical. Lastly, there was uh an increase in our capital and technology expenses. um over
what was previous budgeted and it was really timing. We had planned to make some upgrades to um some spaces that community had heavily uses particularly in our auditoriums had hoped that would come in in fiscal year 25 and just purchases ended up being in fiscal year
26. So there was an adjustment there. The last thing I want to touch on is just fund balance. Um in community ed we have a couple of different fund balances. The one I'm going to highlight to you is the one that's in the gray box. We do have a couple others that are restricted and tied specifically to different programs that are noted there
as well. But the one I want to show you is um where the bul bulk of community ad programming lies. Uh we have had um a history similar to what you saw with a cafes in the fund balance charts here where there was a dip due to the
pandemic. Um you'll see we went in the hole about $1 million during that period of time and had to adjust our budget in terms of revenue expenses to build our way out. Um we are now at a place where again we're looking for a more net break even budget and so you'll see us
leveling out up there. Again um similar to with Wisetta Cafes, we are really looking at having a three-month operating reserve is there which is about 25%. So we have a a healthy fund balance right now that's above that. Um, we do this for a number of reasons, but
really to weather any kind of economic storm that might come our way. The pandemic shows what can happen to the community budget really quickly when there is a downturn or in our economy. So having a healthy fund balance is really critical to um support community programming as well as to protect the
school district in that process. So with that, I will pause and allow questions you have. >> Thank you, Jenny. >> Questions? So yes, Valentina, >> I have one question. Um, why is that the
kids nonschool day? Uh, would you be able to explain what this is about? >> Yeah, that's internal lingo. So, thank you for asking for that clarification. So um on days when school is not in session so it might be a professional learning day um a grading day or those
types of things we offer child care all day on those days like over spring break over Chris or the winter holiday break. >> So when we have this at home learning days uh parents have to pay for that child care if they need if they if they cannot do it themselves.
>> Yes. Yes correct. Any of those days that school is not in session we would have those non-school day childcare opportunities. Thank you. >> Yes. >> Um, also why is that a kids? Do you know about what the percentage of families
you're not able to serve right now and like how that's being impacted year-over-year? Yeah, it's that's a a good question, Alicia. Over the years, we've um looked carefully at how do we maintain a weight list for our childare program. And over the last several years, we actually
capped our weight list at about 200 students because we know we knew we were never going to be able to accept more than that off of our list. So, it was really hard to gauge what the true uh need is in our community. If we were to keep the registration open all year long, I'm guessing that number would
grow uh much more significantly. I'm really happy to share though that for this year, for this coming school year, um six of our nine buildings do not have weight lists as we start this school year. So that work that we're doing with the talent recruitment company, the work we're doing to retain our staff and
train our staff is really helping um and we hope to be able to continue to grow that and and serve more students. >> Yeah, that's great to hear. And then just a final note, I mean, I do think every time I hear about community ed and even as a resident of the community, I feel like I'm always learning about new
services and, you know, new ways to educate myself and my students and I just think it's like you said, it's like from babies all the way to retirement and beyond. And so you guys really touch everything and I think you're doing a great job. So thank you. >> Thank you. As we were celebrating our chess team up here, I was wondering how many of them maybe went through a chess
class with us when they first started and if that sparked their interest. >> Yeah. Have a Oh, you can go Heidi. Well, I just want to remind everybody that during the pandemic, the hit was not just because of a loss of fees, but it was also because community ed stepped up
to the plate and took care of a lot of our frontline workers's children while they were out there fighting the pandemic. So, community ed reaches far and wide when the need steps in. And so, that's I just want to remind everybody that that's also why that uh we went so
deep into the red. >> Yeah, I appreciate that. um we had all the expenses and none of the revenue and that definitely played a a part in it. Um but I think it says a lot about the work that we do in community ed that we can we can take that kind of um work go
into a deficit and rebuild out of it as quickly as we did. Um that ability to be creative to listen and to serve our community really uh is what enabled all of that to happen. I never want to pass up an opportunity to mention the mountain bike team that
my kids have gotten so much um joy out of which is a partnership with community ed and also a sport um for our middle schoolers and high schoolers. Um the coaches there have done a lot of work to create a program. Um, you know, there's a lot of requirements that go into
whether, you know, how the sport can be part of community and and a sport at this at the schools, which is, you know, one of the more non-traditional sports that we see. Um, and and they always talk about how great it is to work with community ed. So, thank you for for
that. Um, and also back to Wisetta Kids, um, is it correct to say now that like our main, um, limit on how many students we can take is really just space limited and hopefully with the render referendum, we'll be able to maybe open
up a few more, you know, when it'll be take some time because obviously the building has to happen and then it will be several years, But yeah, that that is correct. Um, thank to the thankful for
the work that we've done with this talent recruitment agency. They've helped us to streamline different processes to really bring on people more quickly. Um, my staff have been working really hard on retention and training, too. So, all of those things have really helped on the staffing side of it. And so, as we're able to finally be fully
staffed, which hasn't happened for many years, I'm looking at Dr. Anderson because I think that was long before I was here, which was more than eight years ago now. Um, it feels really good to have that one solved. And then it's really what are those spaces in our schools that are available that our teachers are are because our teachers
are still there in their classrooms after school um that we can be using to serve our kids, make sure they're still having a really fun and engaging time. Um, hanging out in the hallway isn't really something that a student wants to do after school, right? So, we need to find those spaces that um they can still
have a fun, engaging experience and um still meet the needs of the school building. So when we have a 10th elementary that will make a difference in all of this. >> Thank you. >> Um I have I have a question for you Jenny. Uh so we we talk about visetta
cafes and community ed fund balance not being able to transfer to general education. But I didn't realize that within within community ed fund balance also there are four categories that are restricted. Right. So it's I think it's on slide 14. >> Yeah. If you can open that slide, can
you just curiosity question, which of these uh categories have have the best fund balance? >> Um the one that I showed you is the one where we maintain that the larger fund balance because that's one where we have the most flexibility to be able to spend it in a variety of different ways. Um
for example, um early childhood family ed there's specific ways that those funds can be used. Um, so that is a and that's a fund balance that we want to keep low because that's really services that we want to get out into the community. Same with school readiness. Those are preschool scholarships that we
um provide and so that's not an area where we want to provide or where we want to maintain a fund balance. Those are funds that we want to be out and using. Additionally, they're highly restricted as to how they can be used. And then lastly, um, the adult basic ad, I believe, is a balance of zero. That's
really one where we're using the same amount every year that's going out. >> So, so these 1, two, three, four, five categories constitute that 29% fund balance, right? >> U just the top category is >> just the top category. That's all that 29% is in the top category.
>> Yeah, >> I see. Okay. >> Yeah, the other ones are much much much smaller and again restricted to really specific activities. >> Interesting. Thanks. Good to know. Dr. Sony, I can chime in. I pulled it up real quickly. So the ECF fund balance is sitting at about 276,000.
>> Mhm. >> Uh the school readiness is at 326,000 and then the restricted um is at 215,000. That that 464 one if you go back to the other slide, Jenny. So and then as Jenny mentioned, the AB one um is does not
have a current fund balance. So >> Okay. >> Yeah. And we maintain fund balances in some of those for school readiness. That's an area that um as we got VPK funding, we did build up the fund balance and school readiness slightly where now we get to be creative and think about um how do we serve our
community better. So if you think back to the presentation I did at the end of March that talked about needs in our community. One of them was around transportation for our families. And so that would be a way that school readiness funds could be used for those specific students. So we're looking at um what funds we have available and how
do we really look at targeting our students and serving them differently. >> So so help me understand um you know if 447 is we we are you know really not maintaining a lot of fund balance right. So if a time comes when we really are in
trouble and we need funds for those we can't take money from 431 either. >> Uh the within community ed there is a little bit more flexibility. So if our AB um programming for example had a a
net negative um balance at the end of the year, I could use the 431 okay funds to shore that one up. >> Okay. So because that restricted kind of mis mis misled me because I thought they were all restricted with among themselves also >> restricted on how we use those funds
specifically. But um that 431 on the top is really where we have the most flexibility. >> That money can be used for 447 if needed. Yep. >> Thank you so much. Anyone else a question? No. Well, thank you, Jenny. >> You're welcome. Thank you for the time.
>> Anyone need a break? Keep going. Okay. Just making sure. All right. The next item on the agenda is um the revised budgets for 20 fiscal year 202526. And that's Trevor, right?
>> Yeah. So, I want to thank Jack and Jen and Jenny and Michelle for doing that and also for the board for uh sitting through all of those presentations. Historically, our district has not brought all of those budgets to the same meeting, but um we found value in um
being on the same timeline and schedule and doing it all at once and uh after this meeting, we'll probably start over and um start working on the prelim budget for 2627 shortly after this. So, um, and thanks also to the other staff members that aren't here tonight or
didn't present on in on all those departments. So, um, as you can see from the graphs and the information that was shared, I I think all of us are very very proud of where we're at and, uh, the envy probably of a lot of other districts in the in the state. So, um, with that, I just thought I'd bring it home and I know everyone is sticking
around if any other further questions may have come. Otherwise, the recommended action is before you that we'd like you to uh approve all of those revised budgets for 2526. >> So, colleagues, the recommended action is to approve the revised budget for fiscal year 2025 26. Is there a motion
to approve? >> I so move. >> Second. >> Moved and seconded. Is there discussion? >> Can I just take a moment to say thank you to all three of those presentations? It was phenomenal to see. Um, we saw
this both in committee and with SEFAC and I just want you to know that I had several individuals from SEFAC reach out to me afterwards and say it feels good to be in this position again. Um, so it's we are in a strong position. Our fund balances are healthy. It means we
can do more um and reach more um than we could previously. And it feels good to have our our wings balanced out again. It was a lot of hard work over the past four years, five years, but we did it. Um, and we did it together and and I'm excited for what comes next. So, thank
you all for your very very good management of our not just our money, but our resources. >> Okay, if there are no other comments, again, the recommended action is to approve the revised budget for fiscal year 202526. This is a roll call vote.
Colleagues, Heidi Kedar, >> yes. >> Valentina Ays, >> yes. >> Dan Janestra, Dan Janestra votes yes. Alicia Little, >> yes. >> Paris Bendy, >> yes. >> Sheila Prior,
>> yes. >> Milan Sahony, >> yes. The motion carries. Thank you, Dan. >> Moving on to the next item on the agenda. Trevor will now seek a resolution awarding the sale of 32,472,000
70,000 general obligation school building and alternative facilities refunding bonds series 2026A. >> Good evening again, Chair Sahony, Dr. Anderson, members of the board. Um, thank you for bearing with the very hefty finance and operations portion of
the school board meeting uh this month. But um our district is continually working with um our financial advisor Ellers to seek refunding opportunities um of existing bonds that may result in decreased future debt service liabilities. And a few months ago, um,
we began the process of offering bond holders of our two our 2021A bonds, um, the opportunity to submit voluntary tender offers, allowing the district to repurchase those bonds at a specified price. Um, and then at the February 9th schoolboard meeting, the board did adopt
a resolution authorizing the sale of those refunding bonds. Um, and following that meeting, uh, the necessary due diligence, uh, was completed in advance of the tender period, uh, which ran from March 12th through March 25th. And then on April 1st, uh, the district did issue
refunding bonds to pay off the tendered bond. So, uh, with me tonight, welcome. Thanks for coming back, is Matthew Hammer from Ellers. Um, he'll present the results and Matthew's been a pretty consistent fixture at our board meetings recently, so he'll run through those, and we'll, uh, open up for questions after that.
Thanks, Trevor. Good evening, Chair Sony, members of the board, Dr. Anderson, Matthew Hammer, the district's financial adviser, and I'm here tonight. We're almost to the finish line on a successful transaction that's um poised to save about $3.1 million of future
debt service levies or reduce taxes for the district's property owners. um those uh savings are required by law to go back to reduce future commitments for for property owners in the school district. And as Trevor said, this was
atypical um from how a normal process would work. Um typically, similar to a home mortgage, your a municipality will look at issuing new bonds at lower rates that are going to then in essence pay off the old bonds. Um and you'll start
paying at those those lower rates. In this case, um, the district issued bonds back in 2021 that had to be taxable at the time. So, if you think of the presentations earlier, um, when the financial situations, the financial markets were stressed at that point in
time, interest rates were really low and the school district was able to maximize and issue taxable bonds because you couldn't issue tax exempt because you were too far away from the the call date. um you had to issue taxable bonds, but taxable rates were low enough at that time that the district was able to
create debt service savings on the bonds that were issued back in 2014. And that rate at the time was an average rate of about $1.8%. So the district saved about $13 million on those bonds at that time. Um those rates are low. Um and just the
economics of the market conditions where we're at now and the inverse relationships between interest rates and bond prices. um the interest rates were low at the time. Um and as interest rates rise, bond prices decrease. And that's really what we were able to um
leverage in this case. Um we offered bond holders a repurchase price that we repurchased those bonds at a discount to what um we would otherwise had to pay for them. So if you look at the different um bonds, we had bonds out
through 2036. um for the most part we were paying about 85 cents or less on a dollar to repay for the bonds that were that were outstanding. So the participation that we received as Trevor said um we put out a voluntary tender invit invitation and
we had 38% of the bond holders take us up on that participation. Um that's about $40 million of par amount of those outstanding bonds. Um and to re um purchase those um we only had to sell
about $35 million in taxexempt refunding bonds. So that's the bonds that you have in front of you tonight. We did um receive a reoffering premium. So the par amount is a little bit north of 32 million almost 32.5. But as we account for the the premium
that we received, um that gets us to that $35 million and the interest rate on the tax exempt bonds were 3.2% was the rate that we paid. But the net of that discount um that we were able to repurchase was the 3.1 million that
we're going to end up saving in um as part of this transaction. So that uh the bonds were priced back on April 1st. Um the action before us tonight is to ratify the award of that that sale that we had and then we're planning to close
on the new bonds, start paying on the new rates and then pay off those bond holders on April 30th simultaneously. So um the net the net effect is going to be $3.1 million of savings. So I uh will just give kudos to Trevor and his staff.
um this wasn't there's a lot involved in this process, right? You have to go through rating, you have to provide information um out to the markets. Um so over this period of time, we've had lots of meetings, lots of interactions uh with the underwriter in this case. Um
but the net result is that we're going to have a very successful transaction. Um, and it's not a necessarily a typical way, but it's a way that we're able to generate savings that's going to be meaningful for the district's taxpayers as we move forward. So, with that, I can
answer any questions folks have in regards to the process or any of the details. Let me read the recommendation the motion itself and then during the discussion we can ask questions. So colleagues, the recommended action is to
adopt the ratifying resolution awarding the sale of $32,470,000 in general obligation school build school building and alternative facilities refunding bonds series 2026A. Is there a motion to approve?
>> I so move second. >> Moved and seconded. Now we can have a discussion. If you have any questions for Matthew or feel >> I I might Oh, sorry. I'm going to have one more comment. I just want to illustrate. It was probably hidden a little bit with what had said, but um these original bonds, they were refunded
in 2021, series 2021A, but that was a refunding of bonds from 2014. So, when they were refunded in 2021, we saved taxpayers $13 million on those bonds at that time. Uh and we are saving another $3.1 million this time around. And um
these B bonds will be callable um should a opportunity present itself in future years to even uh lower that interest rate again. So um this would be really unique where you would see three rounds of refunding um to continue just it's important just to illustrate that that's
constantly what we're doing to um look out for the the best interest of the district and our taxpayers. So >> okay go ahead. Thank you for looking out for our community and, you know, saving money for us. At the same time, we're
not reducing anything that we're offering to students. I mean, that's really big. And thank you for all the work that you put into that. Um, I have a question about how this will impact taxpayers. Um, I know we like it's kind of evened out over time and so what what
will it look like when what will taxpayers see when they're seeing their statements? >> Yeah, it's going to be incorporated into the overall plan for the voter approved plan. Um, so in in that in the long
term, right, there's savings that those $3.1 million are no longer commitments to the district. Um but over time, right, um as we look at the structuring of the the new referendum bonds, they're going to be incorporated into that overall structure which will allow us to
mitigate cost over time. >> So thank you Trevor. You answer one of my questions because I wanted to I know we talked about it in other meetings, but I I was going to ask you to kind of reiterate that. So you did that. So that's great. Um the only other question I have is I know there was a cost
associated with the whole transaction um so the 3.1 million profit so to speak um that is >> that's accounting net right okay all right thanks yeah >> I have one other thing I just kind of
want to raise up can you remind us what we were anticipating the participation was going to be >> yeah we didn't 100% know right because this is voluntary in nature Sure. So we we had estimated between um had ran levels of 20 to 30% uniform
participation. Um that's we had participation in certain areas, right? And the areas that we ended up with that participation were happened to be in the the areas of the issue that generated the most discount for us on the repurchase. So they were in the um good
areas across the years of the term the bonds that were outstanding. So at that time we were estimating anywhere between one and about 1.8 million. So we were able to uh double that estimated savings from what we had shared with the board back um when we talked about this in
February. >> Yep. So even if had we had we only earned that 1.8 or saved that 1.8, it would have been well worth it. But this is outstanding. >> Yes. You have a question.
Okay. So thank you. I just know Baris asked my question actually. So the net 3.1 million is net after all expenses. >> Yes that's correct. >> Good. I think this is a great deal and you know if if if what we had envisioned
had not happened there would not have been loss right of anything we would just not save that 3.1 million. Okay. So thank you again. Thank you both uh for presenting that and we have to go back to the motion which was to adopt
the ratifying resolution awarding the sale of 32,470,000 general obligation school building and alternative facilities refunding bond series 2026A that's a mouthful
this is a roll call vote >> thank you colleagues Valentina ays Yes. >> Dan Janestra. Dan Janestra votes. Yes. Alicia Little. >> Yes. >> Paris Bendy. >> Yes. >> Sheila Prior. >> Yes.
>> Heidi Kedar. >> Yes. >> Milan Sahony. >> Yes. The motion carries. Thank you, Dan. And congratulations for doing a great job. Okay. And then the final item on the finance agenda is where Trevor will ask the board to approve the road
property purchase agreement. Trevor, could you please tell us about the agreement? >> Yeah, thank you. Um, just a a quick little um I I guess reminder to to the board and to the to the public that um the district does own property in in
Madina that um now it's a little easier to talk about it after last week, but um it is the location to which we are planning um to construct new um school facilities. Um and it's a little unique that on that property there's um our
property actually surrounds a residential property. Um a unique opportunity has been presented to the school district that um we have been offered um that property has been up for sale. Um and they um the sellers of that property reached out to us um as it
makes sense for both parties if if that was a transaction that would um be of interest to us, which um kind of a no-brainer that it is. Um, it just makes a lot of sense. And I think what's really really unique about this property, I I I think it's um it's amazing how it worked out where uh there
is actually a old schoolhouse on this property. Um so it'll be uh interesting to see how the architects u might weave that into our um long range planning out on that site. But um kind of come a full circle there. Uh so the purchase agreement before you um asks for us to
purchase this property um at a closing price of $325,000. Um the lot is about a6 acres lot. Um and the 2026 assessed value was right around $268,000.
Um, also part of this, it's kind of a a longer uh winded motion or or um I guess recommended action and with that is the current owners of the property um would wish to remain um in the property for um
a limited amount of time. So, um, part of this purchase agreement is also a postclosing occupancy agreement where we will allow, uh, the current residents to remain in the property until December 31st, 2026 or earlier, um, if they are
able to, um, find another place to go for that. So, um, with nothing happening probably on that site, um, for a little while or or certainly not to the extent where uh, we would need to vacate that property, we thought that was a a fair solution and have no problem doing that. So um with that um we'll certainly
answer any questions when it comes to otherwise the recommend action to uh purchase this property is before you. >> Okay. Thank you Trevor. Uh so the recommended action colleagues is to approve the purchase of the Hamill Road property pursuant the terms and conditions outlined in the purchase
agreement and the postclosing occupancy agreement. Is there a motion? >> I so move. >> Second. >> Second. Moved and seconded. Any discussion? Any questions for Trevor? Hearing none, we will go ahead and have
the roll call. >> Colleagues, Alicia Little, >> yes. >> Paris Bendy, >> yes. >> Sheila Prior, >> yes. >> Heidi Kedar, >> yes. >> Valentina Ays, >> yes.
>> Danestra, Danestra votes yes. Milan Sahony, >> yes. The motion carries. Thank you Dan. Again, thank you Trevor for all the work that you have done and your colleagues and your your staff and also Ellers and everybody else. CFAC also please thank
them from us. Okay. >> Okay. Final item of of the night. Admin assistant Amy Guys in her role as the district's election clerk. We present a resolution relating to canvasing returns of the special election that was held on
April 14th. Amy, >> good evening. school board members and Dr. Anderson. I know we're very excited to cover this and while I don't enjoy personal accolades, I do enjoy giving credit to those that have earned it. So, I just want to take a second to acknowledge um the 9-month process of
getting geared up for the election that took place on April 14th. Um a few people um specifically the absentee election judges. There are three of them that I have worked with for the last three schoolboard um elections. They're phenomenal people. So, thank you Karen,
thank you Michelle, and thank you Marcus. I know that they're watching. Um, also, um, someone that really stepped up, uh, the welcome center as a whole, but specifically Jonathan Blight. I know he's watching. Um, thank you. We could not have done it without you, especially the Saturday when we had over
700 voters that went through. And then finally, a shout out to Henipin County. I had no idea how good I had it until I heard from my colleagues throughout the state um at their county's lack of support and I have had nothing but support from Henipin County. So, thank
you to those election folks. Um I would be remiss, this wasn't necessarily on my behalf, but Amy Parnell is not here to thank them. So, um Amy Parnell and her team again, it was about 9 months getting ready for this election and I truly don't think it would have passed.
um certainly not by the percentage it did without her and her communications team. Dr. Anderson, I did add it up. You did 34 presentations on behalf of the referendum. Uh spoke with countless voters and citizens um that requested
more information. So, thank you for that. uh on also on that behalf, Dana, Trevor, and Wade. Um they did an amazing job both with presentations and with one-on-one contact and email answering for voters with questions. So, thank you
for that. The referendum site team members, um Amy did an amazing job again with those folks, but each of our um locations, each of our buildings had um a lot of people out there helping to push um voters to get to the polls. So,
thank you to them. And finally, the YES committee. Um, again, while I had absolutely nothing to do with them directly in my position, um, they were quite effective and I know some of the board members did that. Thank you very much for your contributions and those out in the community watching. We really appreciate it. Okay, I think I caught
everyone hopefully. Um, so the recommended action before you is to approve the resolution canvasing the return of votes for the district special election. Um, as you know, that was held on last Tuesday. We're almost a week out. Uh, question one passed with uh,
over 78%. Question two passed with over 70% and question three passed with over 60%. And I know specifically a couple of you board members like numbers. Um, at 7 a.m. on election morning, we had 50,896
registered voters. And not everyone voted on each question. Um, however, the average was about 8,020 voters. So, that puts us at just right at 16% voter turnout. I know that um Amy
Parnell and her team were hoping to be at about 5 to 6,000 voters and we cleared 8,000 voters. So, any questions? >> Thank you. Thank you, Amy. So, let me let me read the recommended action again. It is to approve the resolution
canvasing return of votes of the district special election. Is there a motion? >> I move. >> Second. Moved and seconded. Is there a discussion? Now we can ask Amy questions if we have any.
>> I want to make a comment. Wowza. like the on so many levels on every at every corner every single days of those nine months and the planning that went in ahead of it. This middle school and the elementary school have been in the works
as far as I can remember. I mean it was like 2019 really when we started thinking about that when the when the land was purchased and the SEFAC community members that were a part of that and helped that happen. Um, this community is incredible to be a part of.
Um, not every district has referendums that get passed. So, we are very fortunate to live in a place where our values and our resources are able to align in the way that they do. Um, and I'm just really proud of our community.
We we pass our referendums. We do it because we put we put our money where our mouth is. And um and I I'm I'm really proud of us. Just really really proud of us. So congratulations. I you did a great job thanking everybody. I just want to say congratulations to
everybody to our entire community because this is going to this built us up even further and um public education is an incredible model when is when when the community invests in it. So thank you to everybody and congratulations.
Yes, >> I just wanted to make a comment for anybody listening at home. I just want to I want to thank the voters um and say congratulations to our community and thank you for um having faith in the school district. Um I believe our school
district is an excellent steward of um all of your tax dollars and they do what's right for our students. And thank you for coming out and voting and showing your support for the district. Alisha, >> just one more final comment. Being in
this position, you know, I've always loved to talk to my neighbors and people in the community, but it felt really good to really believe in this and feel like any conversation I got in where someone maybe had some concerns or questions, it was a really easy lift to
be able to explain the rationale behind this, how much this is going to touch every building in our district. This is going to really improve life for every resident in this in our district. I I strongly believe. And I will also say um doing some outreach at the high school with voter registration, I was so impressed how many of our high school
students even knew about it, which is phenomenal because I don't think I would have thought about a referendum when I was in high school. So kudos to all the parents out there who are clearly having conversations and getting civically engaged with their students. So, and thank you again.
>> All right. If there are no other comments, I'm going to read the action again. Recommended action is to approve the resolution canvasing return of votes of the district's special election. This is a roll call vote. >> Colleagues, Paris Bendy,
>> yes. >> Shayla Prior, >> yes. >> Heidi Kedar, >> yes. >> Valentina Ays, >> yes. >> Dan Janestra, Danestra votes yes. Alicia Little, >> yes. >> Milan Sahony,
>> yes. The motion carries and thank you, Dan. Okay, I think we are done here. There are no human resources, human resource services reports. There are no board there is no board action this evening and there are no board reports this evening. This concludes the Visetta
public schools regular board meeting. The next board work session will be on Monday, a week from today, April 27th at 4 p.m. Is there a motion to adjurnn? >> I so move. >> Second. >> Moved and seconded. All in favor say I.
>> I. I >> oppose. Nay. The motion carries. The time is now 9:28. The Visetta Public School Board of Education regular meeting for Monday, April 20th, 2026 is adjourned.
>> Was it 9:28 or 9:27? Okay.