(gravel bangs) - I now call this meeting of the School Board of Independent School District 624 to order. Will the clerk please call the role? - Ellison? - Here. - Skaar? - Here. - Streiff Oji? - Here. - Thompson. - Absent. - Arcand. - Here. - Lloyd? - Here. Daniel's here. - All right, let's go ahead and get going. The first item on the- - Chair? - Yes Sir. - I would like to make a motion to revise the agenda. - Okay. - Agenda items D2 and E1 require the opportunity for a public meeting.
Unlike regular public meetings, which include a notice that the meetings are public. Work session notices that go out to the public don't include such a notice. This may explain why the public is confused sometimes with work sessions and public attendance. I know that I've received that since I've been on the board. These are important matters. These two matters. And the public should have the ability to weigh in through the public forum before the board considers anything. Work sessions don't have a public forum.
So I make a motion to move agenda items D2 and E1 to the regular public meeting on June 8th, where we would benefit from more public attendance and a public forum. - Alright, so we have in front of us to move two items. Do we have a second? Do we have a second? Do we have a second? Okay. Motion failed. (gravel bangs) So we're gonna go ahead and keep moving. We're gonna start with discussion item B1, recognition of student liaisons to the school board.
Dr. Kazmierczak. - Thank you Chair. Okay members of the board, we have Lillian Johnson and Tom Reese here tonight, we have a gift for them. This is our last meeting and this is our tradition. We like to recognize our outgoing student liaison. So if you don't mind, we'll come out front and take a picture with the board and here you go. (board members talking faintly) - [Secretary] Alright, one, two, and three (speaks faintly). I won't make you do a go bears, unless you'd like to.
Would you like to do one? Here you go. (members laugh) All right, here we go, one, two, and three. - [Together] Go Bears! - [Secretary] Thank you. (audience applauds) - All right, we are gonna move on to discussion item B2, Middle School Activities and Community Rec Update. Mr. Maurer? - [Tim] Yep. Thank you Dr. Arcand, members of the board, I'd like to introduce Matt Riebow, our coordinator of facility use and middle school athletics, as well as Ashlie Anzel, our youth rec sports specialist, to provide an update from winter, spring
and some upcoming summer activities in terms of middle school athletics in youth rec sports. - [Scott] Welcome. - Thank you. School board members. Thank you. Ashlie's got a fun little sticker with our new logo on it for small little token for you guys. - [Board Member] Thanks Ashlie. - If anybody needs more, we could probably find a couple more too, so. Anyways, yes. So my name is Matt Reibow. I oversee facilities and middle school athletics and this is actually Ashlie Anzel, our new rec specialist,
doing all of our recreational activities. Again, we just wanna say thank you for having us here tonight to show and talk about our awesome programs that we have been running for the winter and spring and upcoming summer. So just briefly to our main goal for middle school athletics is kind of to create a school spirit and a good energy in the building and have students participate in multiple sports offerings throughout the school year. We also have a goal to connect our middle school athletic programs to our varsity programs too.
And we also do travel for competitions to Stillwater, Forest Lake, Centennial, Roseville, and a few other schools that will have us on certain activities, so. Dive in here. So this winter was our middle school wrestling season. We had 45 wrestlers and we hosted practices and matches at the Field House, which was awesome to have. This photo right here is one of our matches on court one. I had to go and see what was going on with my own eyes
because that right there was pretty amazing. When I first started overseeing middle school athletics about 10 years ago, we had about eight wrestlers And now we have 45. I mean, our shout out to our head coach for recruiting. It's pretty amazing going from eight wrestlers and then 10 years later we have 45. So that is awesome. During the season our middle school team does practice at the Field House Monday through Friday and they do work with the varsity team on occasion and do workouts together too. So it's kind of fun to see those groups bond together.
The other winter activity that we had this past winter was our new middle school basketball program. This was year two of it. First year we had 23 girls participate. This last year, we moved up to nine girls. Two years ago we had 43 boys participate and we bumped up to 10. So we're just kind of gaining ground here. This was year two. We're still kind of navigating on how teams form and getting new jerseys next year hopefully.
'Cause we didn't really know what participation numbers were, but as you can see things are moving in the right direction. So that's pretty fun. Some other winter sports too that middle school students have the opportunity to participate in is swimming and diving, gymnastics, Nordic Ski and cheerleading as well. 'Cause those are grades seven through 12 activities. So just throwing that out there too. Our spring sports, so right now we are actually just winding down, this is our last week of some of these activities for our spring sports. Golf, we have 33 boys and 12 girls.
The past handful of years we've been up at Jim Lake, which has been a great partnership to have because it's super hard to find a golf course to be at from four to five o'clock in the spring and you know, early summertime. So we've had a really good partnership with Gem Lake. They accommodate us, they welcome our students. It's pretty cool with what they do up there. Boys tennis, we do combine with Central Mariner to create one team, we have 24 boys. There's our track numbers, 52 boys, I mean almost a 100
participants as Central and Mariner has 50 boys and 38 girl. On the bottom right corner of the slides there. Our varsity track teams hosted our middle school teams at the new stadium a couple weeks ago. We got away from that about six years ago and I approached our activities department and said, "Hey, can we bring this back? Let's work on doing this together." They were all open for it. It's super cool to see our varsity athletes coaching
and helping and cheering on our middle school athletics or our middle school track team. So that was an awesome event. I'm glad we got it in with weather. We were kind of dodging some lightning, but we did get it in. So hopefully moving forward we'll be out there with our middle school teams every year and our varsity boys and girls track athletes will be helping with that too, so. And actually our middle school track teams have their conference finals tomorrow at Stillwater, so route them on for us. The other piece too that we offer
is just kind of an intramural like recreational opportunity at a low cost of $60 and we offer boys volleyball, ultimate Frisbee and flag football and these programs meet a total of eight times. So ultimate Frisbee would meet Monday and Wednesday, and then flag football would meet Tuesday and Thursday. So these students can have the opportunity to do both or if they wanna be on the track team and then be on the flag football team, there's some flexibility with that stuff. Ashlie can kind of dig in more about the specifics
on each of those activities so you take it away. - [Ashlie] Perfect. I'm Ashlie Anzel. I started this position in November, so still learning the ropes here, but it's been great to be in the community. I live in the community. I have a second grader at Lincoln and a seventh grader at Central, so I know a lot of the kids that we're serving through these programs. So just fortunate to have the opportunity to work within the White Lake community. Like Matt said, both the intramural sports, our boys volleyball program this year had 21 kids.
This is our second year offering it. There are currently not a lot of middle schools offering boys volleyball, so we're kind of just doing internal scrimmages, getting them during those eight sessions. Just an opportunity for those boys to have a chance to play before they move into the high school where they can potentially join the club volleyball program there. So ultimate Frisbee, like Matt said, we have 27 kids and we do a spring and a fall session and numbers are pretty much on par for both seasons. A couple of kids here and there, but ultimate Frisbee, we work really close with the high school ultimate Frisbee coaches. So they provide a coach who comes down
so they can really have that connection between the high school and the middle school kids that they're have an opportunity for something to join when they get into the high school program. They're a little more familiar with it. Flag football this year we're at 77 kids, this is year four of doing flag football. The biggest increase is we went from about 22 girls last year I believe you had said. We're up to 62 girls in our middle school flag football program. So majority of those are girls in the program and it's going really, really well. We're playing games against Maida, Columbia Academy,
Hastings, they just went to a tournament last Saturday down in Anoka. So the girls are having a really good experience and the boys are as well. We have to find teams for them to hopefully eventually play as those programs continue to build. So the intermurals are going really well, gives kids a chance to try something new with a low commitment, low cost. So it's been great. Alright, so I'm gonna move into our youth rec sports, which is the main piece that I'm overseeing. The youth sports, you know, opportunity to serve kids from, you know, pre-K all the way up through, we have some high school programs as well, low cost,
affordable options, low travel for families, just something to keep active and providing a good program at the same time. Big thing is all our recreational leagues are driven by volunteer coaches. So we have hundreds of volunteer coaches serving our programs. So it kind of speaks to the connection within our community. I think it has a big piece of that is getting everyone involved and everyone playing a part in that, so we're very grateful for all the coaches that we have that make this possible to run. So in the winter, our main rec programming is basketball,
775 participants last year from our K through two clinic all the way up to our high school rec league. The K through two clinic we have two sessions that run, one in November and December and another one in January, February. So we had 164 kids in that, girls and boys. And then from there they transitioned into our third through eighth grade youth league, which we have very strong numbers there. We had 12 girls teams and 38 boys teams last year
in those grade levels. So it's pretty fun to see on Saturdays up at the field house and get kids playing up there and they're having a lot of fun with it. Numbers are very on par year to year. So strong numbers there. And then one of the unique things that we have is our high school rec program. So we had 18 boys teams this year we combine and run our league with Mahtomedi and Stillwater. So it's a pretty strong healthy league. Kids have a lot of fun with that. Probably our biggest challenge right now is we're trying to figure out ways that we can increase our girls' participation at that high school rec program
and mainly who we can play against. So we've been talked with communities about different options and maybe we go to a three on three modified type leagues that we can play more games but not needing as many kids, but that's something that we're working on and hopefully next year we're gonna some good things going for that as well. Coming up here in the spring and summer we have our baseball softball and then our Tball and Little Sluggers leagues. So we just finished getting our baseball and softball teams finalized. They're all out practicing, games will start in early June.
We have 12 baseball teams this year between first and second grade league and a third through fifth grade league. And then we have 18 girls teams between our first through all the way up through high school. We have girls all the way through high school playing. So in our high school league we have five girls teams, which is great. So they have an opportunity, we can have a little league with them, working in with some other communities and maybe try to bring some more girls high school league team. There's not a lot of communities that offer that softball league at that age level. So it's great to see them playing,
continue to grow it. Tball, little sluggers, that registration's still open, but right now our numbers are on par with what they've been. So keep providing those opportunities and we'll get that going June 8th, once summer hits. Youth rec offering of gymnastics. So this was a brand new program in the fall and we had 202 registrants in our fall programming and this spring we're at 303 registrants. So we've heard from a lot of parents, families that are very happy with a convenient, low cost option for their kids to participate
in a gymnasts offering that's right here in their neighborhood. So it's been really, really good. We have our high school head gymnasts coach is leading that program, so it's building a really good connection with our high school and our youth and a lot of our instructors that work there are high school gymnasts. So it's been a really, really positive program. I'm really excited to see where that goes to here in the next year. The last thing I'm gonna touch on, is we do have our summer camp offerings. So we run a lot of sports camp offerings in partnership with our high school coaches.
So between basketball girls and boys, volleyball girls and boys, track, we work with them really closely. Newark skiing also has a summer opportunity, so partnering with them to give kids opportunities to be around those high school coaches. And a lot of times they bring their players with the help out as well, which is great for great for our youth. We also work with our soccer and lacrosse associations and some other camps that we run as well in partnership with them. And then also we have teachers and smaller staff members who jump in and run some camps in our programming as well.
So it's been very good for the kids and very exciting. - [Matt] And before we have time for questions, we also wanted to take the opportunity for a shameless plug. So if you're not doing anything on Friday, May 29th, we have our, I think be our fifth annual Bears Explore outdoors event. We are gonna host it at the high school this year. So if you're busy or I'm sorry if you're free that night, come join us up at the high school between 5:30 and 7:30 we'll have food available, entertainment by our senior ukulele bears and literally things to do for all ages.
So we'll have our early childhood program providing some opportunities for interactive activities there. We worked with the Minnesota Recycler, which is a local nonprofit of retired gentlemen who take donated bikes that parents or families don't need or want anymore. They refurbish them, get them back to working order and they donate them out for free. So we'll be giving away, raffling off between 90 to a 100 bikes that night for people to take home. And then the Field House will be filled with a collection of different vendor offerings, summer camp offerings,
kind of an expo type situation for people that have some interactive activities. So come out and join us that night. We'd love to see you guys there. - [Scott] Yep. Thanks Tim. Any questions? Okay, Ms. Beloyed. - My favorite was like little sluggers, tball and I have very fond memories of both of my boys doing that. I was kind of wondering these kind of act like feeder programs into the high school sports and I love that we have so many things for kids to try out because not every sport needs to be competitive
for every single kid, but I was wondering how much interaction do you have with the high school coaches? I know for basketball the girls team was coming in and working with, you know, the seventh, eighth and ninth graders and things like that. Is that still continuing with the different sports? - Yep, absolutely. And we try to just grow on it every year. Again, with middle school sports, we try to connect that, make that connection as much as possible. It trickles down into our youth rec leagues
and our summer camps as well, so. And then also I know the varsity coaches try with the local associations too, sports specifics associations. So all those coaches are trying to trickle down into the youth and parents getting their face out there, getting the word out there. We help with that. If any info's needed to be shared with with parents or whatever, we're there to help with that too. So we always just try to create that bond and bridge to all the programs, so. - [Deborah] Yeah, I know all the younger kids seem to be starstruck with the varsity kids.
- You're you're absolutely right. And I have a first grader right now too, and we're kind of in the midst of that, so I can see that with my own eyes, like, so it kind of gives me another like, you know, energy to make this stuff happen, so. - [Deborah] Thank you. - We do need coaches for Little Sluggers if you want come back too, so. - [Deborah] I could do it. - Other questions or comments? Ms. Streiff Oji. - [Christina] I just wanna say thank you. The increased enrollment over time and seeing that more and more people are joining and participating is great to see. And just to give kids in middle school an opportunity
to try out things that if they have not been in it in elementary school and haven't had those opportunities, you're providing them with opportunities that could lead them into things that can really affect their high school years And their sense of belonging. - [Matt] Absolutely. - [Christina] Thank you. - Ms. Ellison. - [Jessica] Yeah, also, thank you. I appreciate, you know, I remember having this conversation with Dr. Kazmierczak a long time ago about the fact that there weren't a lot of middle school athletic opportunities that if students wanted to participate, they had to do it in a club setting, which can be prohibitively expensive.
And so I appreciate that we've added basketball and wrestling. Are there plans to add more middle school sports? - We offer tons right now, we offer more opportunities than most schools in our area will say that. We're always looking to add on if we can, the issue is who will we play? So whether it's a boys volleyball club that scrimmages each other for, you know, eight sessions, so be it. And then in five years who knows what that turns into. But yeah, we're always looking to open up
and see what we can fit in there, so. - [Christina] Great. - [Board Member] What others did we add? We added soccer. - We added soccer in the fall. Boys and girls soccer. That's a big one. Those numbers are extremely good in the fall. And then so yeah, soccer and basketball and then we did those intramural ones just to kind of sample that stuff and who knows what happens in the next five years with those, so. - [Board Member] Great. - We're trying for sure. - [Christina] And I can see that, I mean this is just in the last,
you know, seven, eight years, this is a huge improvement. So I appreciate that. - Yeah, absolutely. - [Scott] All right, Ms. Thompson. - I don't have questions. I guess just comments. One, maybe we'll get some more girls to sign up for baseball and stuff as we now have Women's Professional Baseball league coming back in for the first time since what 1954 I believe. If I'm right. So that's exciting to see and hopefully that'll bring some more participation there and really like watching the amount of sports be added on for our students to have the ability to try.
And sports are great for kids, it's good support for their academics and just things to keep them busy. So it's really nice to see. And then on the event on the 29th, I recently had the pleasure of donating bikes to a family in need. And so if you have bikes and you're willing to bring them and donate them, it's a great opportunity and the families that get them are very appreciative. So thank you for that also. - [Matt] Just wanna specify we're not accepting donations that night, we're giving them away.
- Okay, so don't bring your bikes that night. - But if you'd like to donate them. So the Minnesota recycler, they house out of the smart Car building on, was it White Bear Parkway? And they have a donation area there in the parking lot. So if you do have bikes you want to donate that you're not using at home anyway. Yeah. Drive out to the Smart Car building, you'll see a station for them to donate bikes there. - Awesome. - Yep. - [Scott] Ms. Daniels. - Just wanna compliment you on all the additional activities that you've added over the last few years, as my colleagues have noted. And I just wondered about the rec t-shirts that have been so famous.
Since the '80's and '90's and you know, we used to have, I don't know where I was seeing it maybe on our own webpage where people were wearing these rec t-shirts all over the world. Like they take their picture in Paris with their White Bear rec t-shirt and you know, all over. And I just wondered, are those still accessible to the community? - [Matt] They're still accessible, they're still more popular than ever. And if you think about it, that's what makes this kind of one of those pieces to this whole community. That's what makes this community awesome. Is just a t-shirt, like,
'cause it's three, four generations now. - [Matt] Yep, they're the same. The only thing that we've changed is this more breathable material for our athletes. - Well, I'll have to let my family know. My daughter who's 40 still wears, it's in tatters, but she's got it. - I have 15 I can give you. - [Matt] There you go. - [Scott] And I believe they give it away for free. All you gotta do is volunteer to coach. - Oh, well there you go. - [Scott] Any other questions? Well, thank you for what you do. And as a former participant in the '70's,
it meant a lot to me to be able to come and do things with different groups here through the rec department. So thank you very much. - [Matt] Thanks for your time. - [Ashlie] Thank you. - All right, we're gonna move on to discussion item B3. Mariner Middle School, Dr. Pierre. - All right. Good evening everyone. I'm Christina Pierre. I'm the principal at Mariner Middle School and with me tonight is Ryan Brown, our associate principal. So we're going to give you an update on what's been happening at Mariner. - [Ryan] We're so pleased to be here today.
Thanks for having us. - So this is our mission statement at Mariner Middle School. We love our diversity, we want our community to feel like a family. We value our students' unique strengths, and we commit to the success of every learner. This is at the center of everything we do. So please hold that thought. Also at the center of everything we do is delivering on the hopes and dreams of our students and their families. This past January at our Meet Mariner event for current fifth graders and their families,
we asked them, "What are your hopes and dreams?" And so these are some of the things that they said. And what we were really excited to see was that the hopes and dreams of our students and families fit really well with our mission statement. So on the left hand side of that slide, you can see our mission statements and on the right are the hopes and dreams. Going even further, our mission and the hopes and dreams of our students and families. Really all of that work has what's led...
Is helped us to become a school of excellence. So last fall, we were notified by the Minnesota Elementary Principals Association that we were being recognized as a school of excellence. And what I wanna tell you about tonight is the work that we've done that really got us there. And I hope you'll see how it aligns really well back to our school's mission, which was developed in partnership with students and families and staff members. And it also aligns really well
to our work to realize the hopes and dreams of our students and their families. So becoming a School of Excellence actually goes back to our Sunrise Park days. So it was a multi-year effort and it really started with a self-assessment. So we looked at the expectations for a School of Excellence and we did a self-assessment and we identified where are our strengths, where are the areas that we need to improve on? And also how can we leverage our strengths, right? We're a strengths-based school
and we do that with our students and we do that with ourselves as well. So how can we leverage our strengths to move forward and become a School of Excellence? And so these aren't the exact expectations from the Elementary Principals Association. I put them in a little bit more middle school friendly language. But we're just gonna share some examples with you of the things that we believe make Mariner excellent. - [Ryan] A family is a place where you belong. And at Mariner, everyone's part of the family Advisory is a time during the day when students in our space
are known, seen, and connected. It provides students with the opportunity to build relationships with peers and with trusted adults. Advisory classes are intentionally scheduled to have smaller class sizes to help facilitate stronger connections and more individualized support. During our daily advisory time, students participate in activities to build connection, to work on important schoolwork, and sometimes just to simply enjoy each other and have a bit of fun. Each student is thoughtfully hand scheduled into their advisory class. With a teacher that they already have
at a different part of the school day. Helping strengthen the relationships and create a greater sense of belonging within our school community. Mariner offers more than 20 clubs and activities, all supported by dedicated district employees serving as advisors. We are continually adding new opportunities based on student interests and staff passions and expertise. Whether a student is interested in Dungeons and Dragons, Baking Club, Creative Writing Club, or something entirely different, we believe there's a place for every student to connect and belong at Mariner. Each grade level at Mariner is divided into two teams
and students on each team share the same core teachers in language arts, math, social studies and science. This middle school model is long used to help larger school communities feel smaller, more connected, and more personal. And it truly works. Our teacher teams intentionally create opportunities to build community through student recognition events, positive behavior incentives, community celebrations, and even the occasional student versus staff dodge ball game. - [Alison] Alright, we know our students don't come to us as empty vessels. All of our students, every single one of them comes to us
with talents and unique strengths. And it's our job to continue to nurture them and to leverage them to help our students grow even more. So one of the things that we do is our talent showcases. And so we've had several of them this year. We invite our community in to share and celebrate our students' talents. And our students have an opportunity to perform for each other and for our community. We're super proud. Sunrise Mariner is on its 22nd year of sending students
to nationals for History Day. If you're not familiar History Day, students who participate in that do intensive research on a historical topic or person and they do a presentation, either something that they can show or video documentary or they might act something out. And so this is a tremendous point of pride for our school to have sent students to the national level 22 years in a row, Mariner students are also excelling in math.
This year we sent our seventh and eighth grade advanced math students to St. Cloud State for a statewide math contest. Our seventh grader, Chase Cortus, scored first place out of 281 students. We also had two students score in the top 10% and our seventh grade team was number four out of 25 schools. - [Ryan] Tremendous teachers make rigorous and relevant instruction possible by combining high expectations, meaningful relationships, thoughtful instructional design,
and the core belief that every student can learn. Carla Triggs is a incredible example of an educator at Mariner Middle School that lives that out. She's a sixth grade language arts teacher and a reading interventionist. She was the 2025 White Bear Lake Area Schools Teacher of the Year and deserves that honor in every way. But she is certainly not the only educator in our building that's doing exceptional work. Over half of our staff was nominated for Teacher of the Year this year. These nominations come from a variety of stakeholders, including family, students, and colleagues.
To me, it validates a long held belief that Mariner classrooms are filled with incredible teachers and incredible people who deeply care about White Bear Lake area students. AVID is an example of rigorous and relevant instruction happening at Mariner. AVID stands for Advancement Via Individual Determination and it helps create pathways for students to access more rigorous coursework and build the long term academic skills to maintain that success. These photos highlight our AVID Family Night.
Where students shared passion speeches, they talked about their future hopes and dreams, and they displayed their incredible academic artifacts of their learning around the building. The evening became a powerful celebration of our students, our families, and our school community. WICOR is a core component of AVID. It stands for Writing, Inquiry, Collaboration, Organization, and Reading. Each element of WICOR supports and strengthens the others. While WICOR is a foundational AVID process,
it's also become part of our broader instructional approach at Mariner. In fact this year, WICOR was a major focus of our professional development and we continue delivering on our commitment as we continue to delivering on our commitment to engaging instruction for all students in our school building. - [Alison] So excellence is a journey. It's not a destination, right? Like we never really arrive at excellence. We are always striving to keep improving. And so what are some of the ways that we do that?
One of them is Building Circle. And so Building Circle is a conversation that we engage our staff members in when there is a problem that needs to be solved and we need lots of perspectives to come together to be shared around that problem. So the goal of Building Circle, isn't necessarily to solve the problem. By the end, hopefully we can generate or brainstorm some ideas to get there however. Everyone who's interested it is invited to participate in Building Circle. That can include cafeteria staff, it can include custodians,
teachers paras clerical. And this is a picture from the one that we did this year. You can see the centerpiece. The topic was Chromebooks and we were recognized by MASSP, the Minnesota Association of Secondary Principles with the Gold Star of Innovation for our use of Building Circle. Curriculum work, I'm not going to go into the details of this, but I just wanna recognize that the intense work that our staff are doing on an ongoing basis to make sure
that we are engaging in the very best practices, the most current practices that we are delivering the top curriculum to our students that are aligned to the Minnesota standards. And our teachers are always working on improving our assessments that we use to check on student learning and the instructional strategies that we use day to day in the classroom. Professional development. This picture might look like chaos, but it's really teachers participating in a connecting activity.
If we want our teachers to feel confident, bringing great strategies to their students, we want them to experience them first. So this picture shows this teacher's actually experiencing a strategy in action. So the professional development that we do with our staff, we always wanna make sure that it's relevant to their work and that it's modeling those best practices that we want them to be carrying out in their classrooms. and students, we recognize that every student is not at grade level. And so we make it our job to accelerate the learning
of students who are below grade level. So we use data to find those students and to track their progress. We engage their families as our partners and we provide additional instruction and supports based on the needs of the students. Another way that we have engaged learners outside of White Bear Lake is we hosted this year a statewide showcase for AVID district directors. So directors came from throughout the state, they visited Mariner. In this picture, you can see our student and staff panel
where they were able to ask us questions. I was really nervous as the principal. They didn't hardly ask me anything. They only wanted to hear from the students. And then our students brought them on tours. They were able to visit classroom and see us using our best practices in action. So a tremendous honor for us to be able to help others from across the state to learn as well. - [Ryan] Our community has so many opportunities to offer our students. One exciting partnership that we've begun developing is with the Maplewood Area Historical Society.
This is their centerpiece, the Boontra Heritage Farm. A preserved farmstead dating back to the late 1800s. That is happens to be within walking distance of Mariner Middle School. We hosted our fall kickoff event with staff there this year, giving teachers the opportunity to dream together about what authentic long-term partnerships and learning experiences could look like for our students. It sparked conversations about hands-on learning, local history, community connections, and how we can continue extending learning
beyond the walls of our school building. Mariner has made some significant gains this year in helping students get to class on time. This work brought together a wide range of stakeholders, including teachers, counselors, administrators, and families, all working together towards a shared goal of increasing instructional time and student success. By shifting our practices and engaging families as partners, we saw tremendous results. We're very proud that this work was recognized with the 2026 MASSP Gold Star of Innovation Award. Another way we strengthened the connection between our school and our community
was through partnerships with local churches. Our Black Student Union has done the truly hard work of building and nurturing those relationships. The impact has been undeniable. Through the generosity and support of our community partners, we're able to upcycle 500 ties as thoughtful staff appreciation gifts. We supported student quilting projects, we outfitted some student performers with sequined shirts during our BSU showcase and even launched a new Reading Buddies program. It's been a powerful example of what can happen when students, schools
and communities work together with a shared purpose. - [Alison] Alright, so we're done bragging. We're gonna remind you of our mission statement, and I hope some of the things that we shared with you tonight you're able to see the connections to our mission statement as well as our mission to deliver on the hopes and dreams of our students and their families. What questions do you have? - I don't have a question, but I have a comment on your history day and you say 22 years.
I believe Mr. Wynn has been part of that for the last 22 years, it's not a coincidence. He works hard with those kids. He does a nice job. And so he's a big factor why those kids are so engaged in that and we wanna make sure we thank him and give him the recognition he needs. So that's what I wanted to say. - Thank you. We'll pass that on. - [Scott] Okay, Mr. Skaar. - Oh, okay, thank you for the presentation. Appreciate it. I wanted to kind of gauge your level of happiness with the facilities. How are the facilities working out?
Have you guys thought about do we need any adjustments to make them better? - [Alison] So we're absolutely thrilled. We feel super lucky to have the school that we do. It's beautiful and we're really proud to show it off and we're very grateful. - That's great. So, kinda what's your capacity there? Where are you at student wise? - Sure, yeah, and so we designed for a larger capacity than we have right now. We designed for 1,350, I believe. And we're at 950 right now.
So we do have a little bit more room to grow. We've already grown quite a bit from just in the two years that we've been there, the first year we felt like we had room to spare and oh sure, you can have a classroom and you can have a classroom. Well, now going into next year all of our classrooms are taken. - [Daniel] Thank you. - [Scott] Ms. Ellison? - Yeah, I wanted to also congratulate the History Day program. I think the context here is that Minnesota is one of the biggest and most competitive
History Day Programs in the country. So the fact that these kids took home first and second place in the same category is tremendous. And I don't believe that there's any other teacher in the state of Minnesota who had 22 years consecutively going to nationals. And that's a huge accomplishment. So kudos to Mr. Wynn and the kids. And so I have a seventh grader at Mariner and my son who's a ninth grader right now, he went to Mariner and also Sunrise.
And my son, who's a ninth grader, has struggled with a lot of things in school, ADHD and a number of other, you know, executive functioning. He started high school, so ready, so ready. We were really nervous. We weren't sure. It's a high school's really big and the support that he got at Mariner, especially from the special education team. He has leaps and bounds gone beyond what we thought. So I just wanna say that as a Mariner Sunrise parent,
I saw that transition for him. And so I'm incredibly grateful for the work that you and your team do. - [Ryan] Thank you very much for sharing that. - [Scott] Mr. Streiff Oji. - I just wanna say thank you. The advanced mathematics, it's also very exciting and just also the MASSP recognition that you are receiving because of your leadership and how you're leading and how you're involving voice from your community is very admirable, so thank you. - [Scott] Ms. Daniels? - Just wanna congratulate you on all the awards,
And being an AVID statewide showcase and the other Gold Star Innovation Awards, were there two of those, right? Two of those, yeah. And the other ones that everyone has mentioned, just outta curiosity, when is advisory, is that the same every day, the same time every day? Is it morning like the old homeroom we used to have or is it rotate? - We offer it two different times of the day, but it's every day for students at the same time. For them it's a 25 minute block of time. - [Kathleen] Okay, thanks. And all the clubs are after school?
I take it before or after. Oh, before too. Okay. Cool. Thank you. Great presentation, thank you. - Thank you. - [Scott] Ms. Beloyed. - How many students are taking part in AVID? - [Ryan] We have four sections next year. And so each section's about 25 students, so maybe a little over a 100. - I love the AVID program. I especially love it at the middle school level because I think it does a lot to prepare those students for high school, especially the note taking and I mean the whole thing is kind of note taking. But yeah, I think that's a wonderful thing
to get as many kids who are interested and maybe some others could pushed in that direction a little bit. But I think it's a great program for those kids. So thank you. - We laugh too. - All right. And I just wanna say thank you for keeping the legacy of Mariner alive and how you've integrated into it and move forward. 'Cause you really did honor the students of Mariner that came before and integrated it and the great work you're doing, thank you. Alright, I'd like to go on to discussion item B4. Fiscal year '26/'27 preliminary budget.
Mr. Wald and Ms. Johnson. Welcome. - Good evening Chair Arcand, members of the board, Dr. Kazmierczak and our student liaison, Mr. Reese. Tonight we have before you the fiscal year '26/'27 preliminary budget and then projected budgets for '26/'27 and fiscal year '28/'29. This graphic represents the budget cycle for the school district. I think it indicates or shows the budgeting is a cyclical process with multiple touch points throughout the year.
At different times throughout the year, our team is working with the previous year budget, the current year budget projecting out next year's budget and projecting out multiple years beyond that. So a lot of budgets happening throughout the year and the board is involved throughout the year. We have about five or six times during the year that we come to the board for different elements, discussions and decisions that the board makes that impact the budget that we're presenting tonight. This graphic shows the formula allowance from 2003 to 2027.
If you follow the blue line from bottom left to top right, you can see what the formula would be if it had simply kept up with inflation since 2003. The orange dash line shows where the actual formula allowance landed in 2026, 2027, fiscal year 2027. When we look at that delta on the right hand side, if the formula increase, it just kept pace with the rate of inflation since 2003, the per pupil funding from the state would be $9,157.
The state allowance to for fiscal year '27 is $7,683. That's a shortfall of $1,474 on the state formula. And that is the core of our funding. Represents a 19% deficit in purchasing power over the last 20 years for school districts across the state. To be fair, the last cycle we saw better increases. For FY '26, a increase of 2.74% on the formula. And for '27 we'll see another 2.7%.
So while these are welcome increases, they do not close the compounding gap that you see on the right hand of that screen. And to be clear, we're talking the student formula. With this gap that is represented on this screen represents is the shift in funding for education in Minnesota that has shifted from the state taking responsibility for school funding to a greater reliance on local property taxes. So if you go back to 2003,
school districts had operating levies on the books. It's not that they didn't exist in 2003, it's that those were for extra things that communities had decided, they voted in favor of 'cause they wanted to add something to the programming in their school district. What has shifted and this gap explains it, is that that reliance on local property taxes now is a basic funding mechanism for public education in Minnesota.
It's an important thing to keep in mind. It certainly is fundamentally shifted how we fund schools in Minnesota. Okay, moving on. We last presented this budget to the board in February as our projected budget for the '26/'27 fiscal year '27. We need a budget at that time during the school year, because we're making decisions throughout the spring for the next year. We also identified that as we prepared our budget for the next fiscal year we would need to reduce a million dollars in expenditures.
And so we've found those expenditures made those decisions, there's a few things here. The majority of that $1 million, $1,094,000 reduction, will come in the form of student transportation. There won't be any reduction in services for student transportation. It'll actually be a result of shifting high school start times up five minutes, middle school start times and then times back 10 minutes. Several years ago, two years ago, we tightened up the gap between the tiers,
start with elementary at 7:30, followed by high school and then middle school. We tightened up the gap thinking that for by adding about three buses to our system, we'd be able to make it work. And it just hasn't worked that way. The amount of time and traffic that gets in the way of getting buses up to Hugo or out to Venice Heights and then back to the middle schools, just made it impossible to run the system. With just a few more buses, we've had to add more buses that's resulted in increased expenditures.
So we're gonna make that adjustment back to where we were just a few years ago and that will make up most of the reductions here. We also have three FTE reductions that's administrative or a district level administrator, the Assistant Director of Educational Equity. And two FTEs at the Area Learning Center, which is an adjustment to the same staffing level that they were intended to be at this year. You've heard Mr. Reese from the high school talk to you
about the programming they're doing at the high school to help students not fall behind early in their high school careers. That's very effective and it's helped students stay at the high school for their four year experience, fewer students going to the Area Learning Center. That's resulted in, you know, a more generous staffing level at the ALC than we anticipated for this year. But it's a good problem to have. And so we're just right sizing at the Area Learning Center. Okay, Andi, you'll walk us through the budget now.
- [Andi] So as Tim said, in February the school board approved the FY '25/26 revised budget. And at that time we had the preview of the upcoming '26/ 27 projected budget. If you recall, this school year, we had a significant increase in the enrollment of students who require special education services, which led to the creation of several cluster programs throughout the school district. Those programs, along with increased transportation needs in all areas reflected in the revised budget you see on the screen.
So today we're focusing on the 2026/'27 preliminary budget, which is what you see in the gray shaded column. You see that there's a $10 million increase in revenue. Half of that is the special education revenue, which is in response to the increased expenses that we have in this current year. And then the other increase is related to the increase in English learner revenue beginning in fiscal '27 that the legislature had approved a couple of years ago. That brings in nearly $700,000 of additional revenue.
And the remainder of the increase is normal property tax and state aid in inflationary increases. On the expenditure side. After the budget adjustments are incorporated, expenses are going up about 2.2%, which is based on known salary settlement increases and inflationary increases where appropriate for utilities, transportation, and insurance estimates. And looking at the fund balances, you'll see several of the fund balances we estimate flat until actuals are known. We have a few small changes in the operating capital
and capital project areas. The main fund balance that we focus is the highlighted one in blue. The unassigned fund balance. You see we're budgeted to come in at a ending balance of $12,185,000, which puts us right at our fund balance target of 8%. Looking forward at '27/'28, we're projected to be at 8.2% and then in FY '28/'29 back at 8%. This slide shows the total revenues of all of our operating funds. So as you know, the bulk of our operations
flows through the general fund at 75%. Then we have the debt service fund at 17%. That's what accounts for all of our debt, which is like our mortgage payments. And then the community services fund and the nutrition services fund each at 4% a piece. Now we look at the general fund specifically. Most of our revenue comes in the form of state aid, 52%. Special education revenue is a form of state aid as well. So a total of about 73% of total state revenue for '26/'27.
Then we have a small amount of federal revenue, Which accounts for special education, Title I, and then American Indian Education. Property taxes both general at 20%. And then long-term facility maintenance, make up the next largest source of revenue with a combined 20%. And then rounding out the general fund, we have a small amount of investment earnings and then others such as donations, activity fees, and then gate receipts. We look at our expenditures in the general fund in two ways. First by object area. So 80% of the district spending goes towards salaries and benefits.
Purchase services is the next largest portion of spending. That includes the contracted transportation and then a large portion of our LTFM expenses as well. And then finally just 4% of our spending goes towards supplies and then the last 3% towards capital and then other miscellaneous expenses. The other way that we look at our expenditures is by what we call program area. So starting on the right with regular instruction and then wrapping down and around. We have regular instruction, vocational ed, or career and technical. Special education, instructional support, pupil support,
and then transportation. All of those are areas that are directly involved with student contact each and every day. Those programs add up to 83% of our total spending. And then we have our Buildings and grounds department, which is responsible for sites and LTFM, which includes our custodial grounds and maintenance. That totals about 9% of our total spending. We have 2% of just miscellaneous spending reflected in the other category. Administration includes all of our building principals and administrative assistants. And then the superintendent and school board, that's about 4% of our spending. And then finally, district support services,
which is our district center folks, at about 2% of the district's expenses. So then I wanted to take a look at our general fund revenue and another way by breaking it out into three broad categories. So we have our restricted or funded mandates, which accounts for about 15% our revenue. So these are funds that are available for a very specific use. And if the funding goes away, either the program needs to go away or these would be need be funded outta the general fund, most likely at the expense of some other programming. And we have special education, which accounts for about 20% of our revenue.
This revenue is based on prior year expenses, and then is currently funded at about 80% of our expenses, which includes our both our special education staffing and other related expenses and transportation costs. And then general revenue, which is about 65% of our total revenue, which is available for any school operations. So what do I mean by restricted or funded mandate revenue? So the examples of this under property taxes is our LTFM, capital projects, operating capital and achievement integration. On the federal funds,
for example, we have special ed, Title I, American Indian Ed, and then previously COVID, which that funding is gone. And then on the state aid side, we have compensatory, the hourly worker unemployment aid, multi-language learner, paraprofessional training, student support personnel, school library, several miscellaneous competitive grants that we have currently and previously operating capital and a achievement integration as well on the state side. As I said earlier, these are really important funding streams to the school district. We're very, very pleased that we receive them,
but if the funding goes away, we would need to find a different way to fund them, obviously at the expense of other operations. This graph shows the correlation between special education revenue, the black line on the bottom, and special education expenses, the orange line on the top in a given year. As you can see, there's a significant gap. Some years the gap is quite large and some years the gap narrows. In FY 25 '26, for example, you see the large gap that I spoke to earlier that comes from unexpected growth
in students requiring special education programming. And then a narrowing of the gap in '26/'27 when the revenue catches up. This speaks to the importance of maintaining a healthy fund balance so we can weather those funding fluctuations. So then on the general revenue side, examples that are truly available for just general school district operations. We have investment revenue, local revenue, which is donations, the activities, athletic fees, and then concession sales. We have just property taxes, referendum, general,
career and tech ed, safe schools. And then state aids. We have a general formula allowance, ALC, staff development, learning development, gift and talented. And then transportation revenue. Enrollment trends. So because so much of our funding is driven by student enrollment, to truly compare year to year funding, we can't just look at what was our enrollment or what was our revenue in one year and what was it in the previous year and what was that increase. We really need to break it down on a per student basis. So these graphs show three enrollment data points.
So ADM, average daily membership, how many students did we enroll in a given year? ML funded ADM. So multi-language learner ADM. How many students come to us requiring additional support because they speak multiple languages. And then special education child count. How many students are we serving each year with an IEP who require specialized services? The scales on these two graphs are the same. You'll see we had a slight dip in the ADM from '21 to '22. But since then, our enrollment has really stabilized
and it's projected to grow slightly over the next few years. But during that same time period, you see there's a significant increase in students who require ML and special education services. We proudly meet those needs. We provide the programming necessary to ensure each of these students has what they need to be successful each and every day. But these programs come at a cost. And the state and the federal government has not fully funded these areas. So we're charged with providing these services with the limited resources that we have available
in the general fund. So moving on, we have the other operating funds that come before the school board for approval. Nutrition services, community services, and the debt service fund. So nutrition services is budgeting at a deficit of $220,000 this year, which is very similar to the current year, while maintaining a very healthy fund balance at '26.5%. Community services programmings really struggled through COVID, as you know, and families weren't able to participate in programming as they had historically been able to.
So they've been working their way out of their deficit and are proud to report that they're gonna come in the black probably this year, but very likely for sure next year. Projected fund balance of just shy of $250,000. And then lastly, we have our debt service fund, which is the fund that relates to our bond payments. So we report our bond schedule to the Minnesota Department of Education. They calculate our property tax levy based on that schedule with a 5% cushion to allow for delinquent property tax collections. And then this year we'll have a fund balance
just over $7 million or 20%. So with that, we'll open it up for questions from the board. We'll come back for approval at the June meeting. - [Tim] Do we have any questions? - Ms. Daniels? - [Kathleen] Did we get an increase in the cross subsidy from the state? Like last year was it? - [Andi] It's in fiscal '27, from 44% to 50%. - Yeah. So that helps a little bit. Not, you know, not as much as we'd like of course, but it makes a difference. - [Andi] It does, yeah. - Okay, thanks. - [Scott] Ms. Beloyed.
- Can you describe what the formula is that the state is using? What is it? What does that mean? - [Andi] The General Education formula allowance? Sure, so we'll go back to that slide. So this is, as Tim has said, this is the largest portion of our district's funding. Pull the total amount here. - [Deb] we hear a lot of stuff and we read a lot of stuff about the formula allowance, but I don't know that people truly understand what that means. - Yeah. So for next school year, our total state revenue is projected to be at 82 million.
The total formula allowance, I don't remember the total number off the top of my head. It's about 70 million. So it's the largest source of our money. And so when that doesn't keep up with inflation, it's a significant impact on our budget. - [Deb] But the allowance is based on what? - It's based on statute as approved by the legislature. - So there's different formulas for different parts of the budget that fall in under? - [Andi] Correct. - The general fund. Can you gimme a couple of examples? - Yep, so as I had kind of mentioned some of those restricted things. So compensatory for example, is a part of that.
I had mentioned learning and development. Of course, I'm not gonna think of them off the top of my head. Professional development, the Area Learning Center, there's many different parts according into it. - Can you think of any examples recently or say within the last 10 years of specifically state mandated things that the school had to do or the school districts throughout Minnesota have to do besides special education? 'Cause we know about that one. Any other mandated programs that we lost funding for?
And then either had to quit the program or pull the money outta the general revenue? - Yeah, one area that comes to mind is there was an increase in the school library aid in the last, I can't remember, 10 years. And then a corresponding decrease in it. It wasn't mandated, but that was an area where there was an increase and then a corresponding decrease. And so school districts had to make the decision, were we gonna make reductions that we had previously, you know, added or keep that, you know, those positions
or budget and then figure that out. Any other mandates that were away? - Well, school lunches would be one that hasn't gone away. But a school lunch is a significant revenue source for schools, but it also comes with a matching expenditure. There's unemployment aid... Unemployment for hourly workers, a summer unemployment for hourly workers is a new revenue that districts are, you know, paying out. And it comes with expenses that go with it.
And it actually compounds an issue because many of our employees choose not to work in the summer because they can access summer unemployment for hourly workers. - Yep, another one would be the paid Family Medical Leave Act. So that's the 0.44%, that's on, I mean, that's statewide, right? So that's a cost that we have to us, but then we also have the related sub costs that we wouldn't otherwise have for all of our teachers.
Paras, you know, nutrition services folks, all of, yeah. - So when you look at total revenue there is more revenue, there's more expenses. What is really important to look at is the formula allowance, because that tells the story of what purchasing power school districts have compared to total revenue, which is, they're really, it's not as relevant in terms of identifying what services school districts and programming
are able to provide. - So to break it down. If the general education formula doesn't meet each year what the school's expenditures are, and that can vary year to year. There's lots of schools making reductions, we're just reducing by a million. Where does that money come from? - Often local taxpayers, right? I mean, you'll see a lot of school districts going out for an operating levy or, you know, we look at where can we tighten our belts. - So approximately what would our budget be
without taxpayer dollars, property tax? - Well, we have 32 million in local property taxes in the budget. - [Deb] So if we had to cut 32 million from our budget, what would that look like? - Oh, I have no idea. I can't even. - [Deb] Could we? - Boy, it would be a different environment for sure, yeah. - Alright. Thank you. Appreciate it. - [Scott] Thank you, Mr. Skaar? - Oh, thank you. First of all, Tim, thanks for addressing
the general education inflation where we make up for it with levies. So that's helpful because our overall funding has kept up with inflation when you include our all in revenues over the five year CPI. So I appreciate the fact that you at least addressed it this time, also- - [Tim] Depends on if you're using the right CPI numbers. - Yeah, we can argue. - I'm not sure it's quite kept up, but when you take mandates out of it,
it hasn't kept up, but the revenue is there. You're correct it's just- - I'm talking about all- - Competing expenditures are- - Right Tim, I'm talking about all in funding. - Yeah, I've looked at the numbers- - And I would just say it's an irresponsible way to refer to school funding is all in funding. Because to say that when a community decides they're gonna improve their facilities and then say, look, their revenue's up, well that's true. The community supporting the facilities, but it doesn't tell the... It irresponsibly paints a picture. The district has more funds- - You could look at it expenses too.
I think from a taxpayer's standpoint and from a person like myself, it's a very responsible way to look at it. So I don't think it's irresponsible at all. But getting back at the numbers, you did a good job of providing insight on what's driving the numbers. However, the reality is we had a projection of 11,000 students, we built a 400 plus million dollar
facilities upgrade based upon that 11,000 enrollment number. And it's not there. It's 20% less. So it seems to me that we should be looking at a flat to declining budget as opposed to increases. We shouldn't even have inflationary increases. It should be flat. I mean am I wrong on that? - [Andi] Why should it be flat? - Because our enrollment's declining. - Our enrollment is not declining. - Compared to the 11,000, we built 400 million.
- [Andi] Right. But we don't build the- - Those facilities require care and feeding. They require heat maintenance and so forth. So what I'm just conveying my worry, my worry is, is that we're in a false sense of security that this is gonna come back and, you know, be a surprise. That's what I'm concerned about. - Well, I'll point out one more thing. And that's, and you look at levy increases from municipalities, counties, school districts, you'll find that our levy increase was lower
than every municipality. Lower than all three of the counties that we serve and lower than most of the school districts around us. So that's reflected in the levy. - Thank you Tim for providing that insight. We had a truth in taxation meeting. When was that, March? - [Tim] December. - December, that's right. And we had eight people come up. People that were parents, community members, taxpayers that were outraged with the increase, so there's...
And I'm sensitive to that and I'm sensitive to the fact that we have to deliver for our kids and student success and there's a balance. And I don't know whether we are striking that balance and if we're putting enough effort into looking at, well how can we optimize our budget and cut our budget and get it so that it's more flat to recognize that we have an infrastructure that we built for 11,000 students and we don't have that.
We may not get that for a long time. - Sure, so when I talk about enrollment projections, the first thing that I'll say is I can guarantee they're wrong. Right? They're always wrong. They're built on facts that we know, history that we know. And our very best guess when I build a budget, I base it on everything that I know. I've never once built a budget based on 11,000 students. If I did, I would agree that we need to be doing a whole bunch of reductions. But the budget is built on last year's enrollment
and all of the previous year's enrollment and what we know to be coming down the pipe. And so I think that this is a very responsible budget that we're presenting forward. - Okay. Thank you for your opinion on that. However, the community was sold the bond referendum of 326 million plus the LTFM money, which makes it more than 400 million, based on the number one reason, enrollment's gonna grow to 11,000. - [Andi] I don't believe that was the only reason that they sold that.
- That was the number one reason. - [Andi] Well, you just said that was the only reason. - That was the number. I'm sorry, it was a number one reason. Number one right off the bat. - [Andi] Because of it (indistinct) okay. - All I'm saying is are we aware of this? - [Andi] We're aware - And I'm concerned- - [Andi] And what I brought forward though is a budget based on current enrollment and there's no reason to reduce based on a number that was built almost, I dunno, eight years ago. A projection that was eight years old. A lot has changed in that time. We all know that, it is not relevant to this budget.
- I believe that it is relevant to this budget. - Why would I reduce a budget based on 3,000 students? A 3,000 student reduction that's not relevant to this budget. - Four years ago we had what, 8,500 students. Now we have like what, 8,100? - [Andi] 8,300. - Yeah, so why is the budget continually going up? That's my question. All I'm saying is let's be aware at the sensitivities that we have this investment that we've made that requires care and feeding based upon 11,000 students.
And we don't have that. - If we had 8,100 students and now we have 8,300 students, why wouldn't the budget increase? Can you answer that? You just said that if we had 8,100 students a couple years ago, and I'm telling you right now, we have 8,300 students- - No, wee had like 8,500 students and now we're declined. We can look at enrollment numbers. I don't want take time- - [Andi] Can we move on from this. - I don't want take the time from the other board members. (gravel bangs) - [Board Member] Yes sir.
- And as I said, you know, throughout the entirety of this though, we have always staffed based on the number of students that we have not on a projected number. You know, the only time that we're operating on a projection is looking at the following year. And we're responsive to that as we move through it. And the dollars, you know, the preponderance of the dollars that we're spending because we are a service providing organization is on the people as you look at what that looks like. If we were staffed to support, you know,
more students than we currently enroll, then it would be really problematic. And I would be worried about the future there. - Hey Scott, can I just respond to that real quick? I'd like to get others a chance to respond 'cause they haven't gone. - Okay, Ms. Streiff Oji? - So I just wanna say thank you and I appreciate, you know, you said we proudly meet the needs of our students. We do so, I think that your presentation really helped provide clarity in the funding, clarity in the inflationary increases
and the importance of the fund balance because we don't know what student needs we're gonna have. We don't know what that's gonna cost. We've had a pandemic. The reality is, as far as I'm concerned, what you have presented here and I appreciate that reality. - [Scott] Okay, Ms. Ellison? - Yeah, just a question about the recently completed Minnesota legislative session. Is there anything that happened in that session that's going to have an impact on us that? - Yeah, small increases. The compensatory increase would be about $30,000.
So that's not factored into this. If the endowment that would go the permanent, I can't think of the, yeah, the permanent thing that's gonna go to the voters, that would mean approximately $200,000 if that were to be approved. But I believe that's in fiscal '28. And then the other change would be that utilities can now be charged to the operating capital fund, so- - [Christina] Were they before? - Just in the general fund. So, or it could be charged to the operating capital funds,
which is part of the general fund, but that could shake up operations little bit, but. - Okay, and then do we expect any additional or decreased federal funding as far as you're concerned? As far as you know? - [Andi] Not that we've heard. - Okay. I really appreciate your expertise. This is a lot of work. - [Scott] Yes, Ms. Thompson. - Well thank you for the presentation as always. It's very informative and it is very well put together. And every year you have always done an amazing job of getting us as close to the actuals as you can get
with the projections and the numbers. And it is amazing to me. So I'll just start with that. When we did our truth in taxation Tim, you always do a great presentation that discusses the prices of homes and how if you put a little bit into your house, your property taxes are gonna go up. And you always do a great job of the a $100 house to the a $100 house but then in the next slide, the a $100 dollars house here stayed a 100, but this one may be added on a couple hundred dollars. So their taxes went up.
One of the presenters that evening specifically noted how they had had significant work done on their home, which would also cause an increase to the taxes on their home. And another individual who was discussing how their taxes had also gone up then came up afterwards and had a discussion with us. And it had nothing to do with the operating levies or anything that the school did. Their taxes went up based on the value of their home alone. Not on school district expenses or levies or any of that stuff.
So I just wanted to say that and then, yeah, just thank you for everything. And we built our schools because our community voted for us to be able to do that. They said, yes, we want this in our community. And I go so many places I was just at Solid Ground, is a great resource in our community. They do wonderful things for our families. They had a fundraiser event. I was there with a fellow graduate, I graduated from Mahtomedi but they were talking about how amazing our schools are
and how they love our facilities and they love coming here for sporting events and seeing what we have. And it makes them a little envious of what our community did for us. So thank you for everything that you guys do to keep the budget as good as you can because it is a lot of hard work and I appreciate it. - I wanna make one comment. I still have you there. When we look at our facilities, I think it's important to remember that we're trying to provide facilities for the ebb and flow that comes through. And so when we built our facilities, we thought of that.
And sometimes when we talk about this, it makes it sound like we have whole wings that are sitting empty. We don't have empty wings or empty classrooms, we don't have extra space. We are, you know, we have them set up and we are using them. And so it's not like they've built so large that we're not using it, is that correct? - Yeah, sure, when you walk through the buildings, you know, there's a lot of kids in the buildings and they feel like they're being used fully and they are. And yet we have capacity to add more students
and use them more fully. - Yeah, but at this point we're using every bit of the public money they gave us and we built on and they're being used and they're being used a lot not just for the schools, but the public is coming in and using it. And so we have to remember that. I just wanna say there's nothing sitting empty. So that's important to remember that we just don't have, you know, big sections that are just nothing in them. Okay. I'm sorry Mr. Skaar, I know you were waiting. - Oh no, thank you very much. And thanks for that comment, Scott. I was just going to say, you know,
to address Matt's comment there, it's like when you buy too much car, you know it's a $1,000 a month, right? It's too much car and it eats up expenses, you know, groceries, utilities, things like that. That's what I'm trying to convey. That's my concern with the facilities. That's why I asked about capacity with Mariner at what was it, 1350, we're at 950. So there's a lot of room, there's a lot of extra capacity there and that costs money.
That's all I make, the other just quick comment is, you know, when you look at your property tax statement, anywhere between 40 to this is what I've heard from folks between 40 and 45% is to the school district. So when people look at that, they take notice right? - Point of clarification. - [Scott] Yes? - Is that? I don't, is that somewhere where we can see that that going up 40%? Is that? - No, I didn't say that. - What are you saying?
- I said if you look at your property tax statement, anywhere between 40 to 45% goes to school. So if it's $10,000, 4200, $4,500 goes to the school district. That's all I'm saying. - And that's true of any school district in the state and any county, any municipality, school districts will always be the largest share. And we're conscious of that and we were aware of it. We hear we're property tax payers ourselves. And so we see that And so we're aware of that when we make decisions
that impact property taxes, we kept our levy lower than, you know, than our municipalities and our counties for that very reason. - [Daniel] Thank you Tim. - Alright, - [Scott] One more comment, we gotta get going. - Just that, I just remember when we were going around talking about passing the building bond, the referendum and how really one of the main things was getting our high schools into one building. Our two high schools so we could have nine through 12 and that was a 40 year separation
and that was gonna be temporary. And we finally, and kudos to the community passed it. And you have now this beautiful high school. In addition to that, we had many buildings that were built in the '50s and then the '60's, and they needed upgrading. And so the community again supported all those things. And it wasn't just about the projection of the students, it was about so much more. It was about the buildings, the athletics, the facilities you know, and pride that this community has in its schools.
So while you know, we can say yes we had hoped that we would have more building and more families. And we've talked about that many times about why some of those reasons are that we don't have as many students, birth rate and people staying in their homes longer and slow down of building homes. So we know there are reasons for it, but that was not the main reason that we passed it. It was so much more than that. So thank you very much for your hard work
and your great presentation. - [Scott] Alright, thank you, we're ready to move on. Okay, I would like to thank you and I think you're hanging out here, are you not staying? - [Tim] Yes. - We're gonna move on to operational items C1, action on the resolution to sell the property. - Yeah. Thank you Chair Arcand. We had a discussion just a week ago about the property at 4871 Bald Eagle and in the board packet tonight is a resolution
that includes a change that the board requested regarding, identifying the parameters of the sale. Lemme just grab my notes on that. On page two, item number two in that resolution, language was added that says must exceed, or indicating that the purchase price must exceed the total net funds expended by the school district for the acquisition and betterment of the property. And so that now the parameter that you requested is now in that resolution. Other elements in the resolution are unchanged.
And so the recommendation is that administration recommends the adoption of the resolution to allow the district to sell the property located at 4871 Bald Eagle Avenue as outlined in the enclosed resolution. - You've heard the recommendation. Can I get a motion to accept? - [Angela] So moved. - So moved by Thompson. Can I get a second? - [Deb] Second - Second by Beloyed. Any further discussion? - Mr Skaar? - Yes, I guess this goes back to the point I made at the previous meeting when we were discussing this
and you know, I'm gonna vote against this primarily because it's... I believe that the board should approve and execute and deliver the purchase agreement as opposed to the board chair and clerk. I just think it's a board decision. It's cleaner, you know, we know it's not that there's a trust issue or anything. I just think that there's a responsibility for the board to review these and approve them and not delegate it
to two members of the board. But the full board should do it. - [Scott] Okay. Thank you. - Thank you. - Any other questions? - Yes, Ms. Beloyed? - I would like to say I don't believe there's a trust issue. We added the language at the request of a chair member Skaar to include the information that it would actually, we would not lose money on the property. So I'm not quite sure why that would create a trust issue, but I think this should take care of whatever issues that could come up and that's it.
- I'm gonna correct this because I heard you say you didn't feel it was a trust issue. - [Daniel] No, it was not. - That's what I heard. So I just wanted to clarify- - [Daniel] it's not a trust issue. And you know who we got as a realtor. You know, we don't know. I mean, what if we picked a realtor? I didn't know. - [Deb] We know the realtor. - I know, but what if the person's related to me or something? I don't want that. So anyways, but Deb also. Deb, it was really your idea. So you should take credit for the idea. I just raised it, but you clarified it. - Is there any other discussion for this moving on. Okay, I'm gonna go ahead and call a question
because it sounds like discussion is done. This will be a roll call vote. I'll ask the clerk to call the roll. - [Kathleen] Ellison. - [Jessica] Aye. - [Kathleen] Skaar. - [Daniel] No. - [Kathleen] Streiff Oji. - [Christina] Aye. - [Kathleen] Thompson. - [Angela] Aye. - [Kathleen] Arcand - Aye. - [Kathleen] Beloyed. - [Deb] Aye. - [Kathleen] Daniels, aye. - Okay. Motion carries six one. - All right, we're gonna move on to operational item C2, actions on the resolution addressing the status of board members for the purpose of the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act. Are we getting any help on that or does? Can we invite Nick kinda help us with this?
You're the expert. - Good evening. Members of the board. So before you as a resolution, just clarifying that board members are indeed elected officials for purposes of the Government Data Practices Act. The purpose of this kind of resolution is to promote transparency. If you are elected officials as opposed to employees, more data on you are public. And that's the short of it. - All right, so we've heard the recommended action to approve the resolution addressing status of the board members for the purpose of the Minnesota Governance Date of Practice Act.
Can I get a motion to accept? Okay by Ms. Daniels. Can I get a second? - [Jessica] Second. - By Ms. Ellison. Any discussion? Yes, Mr. Skaar? - Yeah, I was curious as to the timing of this resolution. And by the way, there's a board action in the closed session D2 that I requested that that item be in the public session. So I did make that request. However, with respect to this resolution,
it almost appears that there is some bootstrapping this before potential action against a board member and taking away rights that that board member would otherwise have. And I would say, can we defer this to June 8th? Otherwise it just looks a little odd to me. - [Scott] Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Any other comments? - Can I get a point of clarification? What does bootstrapping mean? - Well, it means you're about to take an action
against someone. - [Deb] And what action are we taking against someone? - I don't know. I don't know. It's in here. - In this motion, chair what action are we taking against someone in this motion? - Nothing in this motion. This is just for the purposes of the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act. - I do have a question for... How does this affect, and I cannot remember, what the name of the statute or law that was passed after the murders of the State House officials
where you could limit some of your private information. How does this affect that? - Yes, this resolution would not have an impact on that. This is solely for purposes of saying are you an employee or not an employee under the Data Practices Act? You would still have the same protections that apply to all public elected officials, including things, for example, like your social security number, different kinds of identifying numbers, driver's license numbers, other protections you could otherwise invoke through the Secretary of State's office.
You know, in the event that you had concerns or fears, none of that is impacted. This is simply to clarify that you're not employees for purposes of the Data Practices Act. And I do think it's wise at any time. And certainly if you have a situation where there are allegations against a board member, it is certainly something that makes a lot of sense because then it eliminates any kind of question about whether or not there can be free discussion relative to the allegations against the board member. - [Deb] Okay, Thank you.
- Anybody? Can you just hold. I gotta give everybody somebody else. Anybody else? Any questions? Okay, Mr. Skaar. - I would just say the timing looks odd giving the rest of the agenda and you know, if it's probably legal, but to me it looks a little, you know, a little possibly underhanded. I don't know what the term to use, but can we defer this to June 8th? - [Scott] That's not part of the... We're talking the hear and are you
trying to make an amendment? - I'm making an amendment that we would move this matter to June 8th at the open meeting. - Is there a second? Is there a second? Is there a second? It fails. Okay. We still have the regular motion on the board. Any other further discussion? Yes, Ms. Ellison? - Just a comment that this is something that we've talked about in the past, the fact board members are not employees and that's come up in conversation in board meetings. And so this is just confirming that.
And I would also just clarify that all of our meetings, our work study and our meetings are open to the public. They're not public meetings. There are meetings that are always open to the public and can be accessed also by livestream. So I feel like we are open to the public and we are choosing to pass this or choosing to bring this to the table during a meeting that's open. - Right further discussion, any? Okay, I'm gonna bring it to a vote.
This will be a roll call vote. Will the clerk please call the roll. - [Kathleen] Ellison. - [Jessica] Aye. - [Kathleen] Skaar. - [Daniel] No. - [Kathleen] Streiff Oji. - [Christina] Aye. - [Kathleen] Thompson. - [Angela] Aye. - [Kathleen] Arcand - [Scott] Aye. - [Kathleen] Beloyed. - [Deb] Aye. - [Kathleen] Daniels, aye. - Motion carries six one. Okay, we are gonna go on to D1. Do we have negotiations? We have to go into closed session. Okay, so negotiation. This portion of the meeting may be closed to consider strategies for labor negotiations including negotiating strategies or developments or discussion and review of labor negotiation proposals
conduct to pursuant Minnesota statute 17980.01 to 178.25. Are we gonna stay in there? Also while we could stay in there to preliminary consideration of allegations against an individual subject to the board's authority. This portion of the meeting may be closed if- - [Daniel] I requested it to be open. - Okay. I just wanted to make sure that I covered my grounds. - [Daniel] Thank you. - So what I'm gonna ask then, can I get a motion to go into closed session? - [Deb] So moved. - By Beloyed, can I get a second? - Second. This will be a voice vote. All in favor say aye.
- [Board Members] Aye. Opposed? Same sign. Okay, seven nil. So we're gonna go to closed session, then we will come back out and have a couple of items and we'll finish the meeting. We're back in open session. We're gonna go on to operational item E1. Potential actions following the session we talked about. - Can you turn your mic on? - Yeah, sorry. Ah, I can say it. We're back in open session. We're on E1, potential board action following information.
And so this is for the record, Mr. Skaar is requested we do this in open session and so then I'm gonna turn it over to Mick and you can lead us through. - Good evening chair. And members of the board we're here for a preliminary consideration of allegations against an individual subject to the board's authority. And that individual is Dan Skaar. So Mr. Skaar has exercised his right to have the discussion take place in open session. The issue that we're dealing with here involves a complaint
that an employee filed against Mr. Skaar, and we had an investigation that was completed and we have an investigation report and we have findings. And now the question is what action if any, does the board intend to take? I want to give that kind of overview first because one of the things that's going to be a little bit cumbersome is that you may freely discuss matters related to Mr. Skaar, but with respect to the employee in question who made the complaint. And that will become obvious very quickly.
We are to discuss in public session only that those data on the employee that are necessary to be discussed in public session. So we don't have quite that same leeway to discuss anything we want about the employee in question, the employee in question who filed the complaint is Dr. Kazmierczak. And again, I have to disclose that in order for us to have a discussion of what has occurred here. So with that I'd like to just give a little bit of background timing of events.
First of all, the complaint was filed on March 3rd, 2026. And I think it's safe to say that following a general training presentation that I did for the school board that I've done annually for a number of years, Dr. Kazmierczak had concerns about whether or not some violations had occurred. He filed the complaint, you contacted me as you know, and I immediately recommended and you immediately authorized an investigation, took us some time to identify an investigator
who had the availability and capacity. My firm, for example, we are at capacity almost all the time now. And so it's very difficult to take on outside work. We're able to secure an attorney from the Pemberton Law Firm to conduct the investigation, happens to be a law firm that's a competitor of my law firm. So we don't have any standing relationship by any means. But the investigator came down, conducted interviews
of the relevant folks sought to interview Mr. Skaar. There's correspondence in the investigation report about Mr. Skaar declining to participate in that interview process. And by doing so, him waiving his rights then per the information that the investigator provided to him. And Mr. Skaar did provide his statement for the record on that. But that is the bottom line in terms of what the outcome is. So as I said earlier, really the purpose for here today is to talk about the findings of the report
as they relate to Mr. Skaar to have a robust discussion of what if anything, the board thinks should be done relative to the findings in the report and then, you know, to implement that action if an action is chosen. So the main gist of the findings here against Mr. Skaar are that he made statements publicly about the superintendent that were evaluative in nature.
He reported facts that would relate to data that are maintained by the district relative to the superintendent. He made statements that certainly could be perceived as allegations against the superintendent. And I'm not gonna review all of them at this point in time, obviously because of the privacy of the superintendent. But the statements were undeniably critical. Evaluative and again accusatory in the sense of allegations.
And that raises some concerns. It raises some concerns under some policy language that the board has adopted. It raises concerns under the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act. And it raises concerns under the open meeting law. And I'm just gonna touch briefly on the legal pieces of it through your policy so you can look at those just as well as I can. But in terms of the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act, the law states that data that a governmental entity
maintains on an employee, including the superintendent, are classified as private unless there's a statutory exception that applies and none would apply to the issues here. And we know from the case law and in particular the case of Navarra versus South Washington County, that it doesn't take much to constitute a violation in terms of what is said about an employee. And in that case, as you may recall from trainings that we've gone through, a jury initially found a damages award in the amount of $500,000
against the district. It was later settled at a lower amount than that. But that's what a jury came back at saying what the damages were and the statements in that case, I won't go into them in detail here, but certainly were a lot less significant than the statements in the case that we're dealing with here. So that certainly raises a concern from a liability perspective as your outside school district counsel about the conduct that occurred. The open meeting law, just like we had here today,
requires that there be preliminary consideration of all allegations against an individual subject to the board's authority, including any employee, including the superintendent in closed session. Unless that person says, I want it an open session as Mr. Skaar did here today. And why is that significant? Because when a board member makes allegations against any employee, including the superintendent, that has to happen in a closed session at least for the board to decide whether action
is going to be taken or not. When it's not, it violates the employee's data of privacy rights, violates the open meeting law. Similarly, the open meeting law says that the evaluation of an employee may take place in closed session. That's for the board as a body to decide, not for an individual to decide. And the concern here are that there were evaluative statements that were made about the superintendent, including calls for the superintendent's resignation that circumvented the board's ability
to have that discussion in closed session and thereby violated the open meeting law as well. So that's the nature of the concern board members have received the report, the public does not receive the report 'cause it contains ample private personnel data on the superintendent. But those are the basics of the issues that we're dealing with. There also are a number of allegations that were made that I think are fair to say are false and unfounded,
that don't have a factual basis. Suggestions of wrongdoing by the superintendent with no legitimate factual basis in support of it. Speculation, opinion perhaps, but no legitimate factual basis. And that also raises concerns from a liability perspective because we have another case from South Washington County where a parent was sued for making false statements against a coach. That's not so much of a concern of liability for the board in my opinion, but that does raise some level of concern,
certainly for Mr. Skaar. So those are the general findings. Does the board have questions for me on the general findings before we talk about options and what actions the board means? - [Scott] I have a quick question. Mr. Skaar was given his Tennyson rights? - He was given his Tennyson rights. - And so after that's done and after he chose not to participate, does that mean we won't discuss, there's no defense to the findings. We can't say this isn't true. That's not true. Is that? - That's correct. He's this opportunity to be heard
in front of a neutral investigator. He chose not to. He has the opportunity though to certainly have a robust discussion with the board in terms of what action if any he thinks is appropriate. If he thinks no action is appropriate for a variety of reasons, he's free to articulate that. But now is not the time for him to state, hey, I never did this, I didn't do that and I suspect he probably wouldn't do that anyway because most of it's documented in either videos or Facebook posts or other things that he's made.
So it'd be hard to dispute the actual core facts themselves. But he has the right to say, I disagree if you wanna take this action. I disagree as to whether that's appropriate or not. - Thank you. I just had that question. I didn't how we move forward. Mr. Skaar, you have a comment or question? - Well, yeah, I was just gonna say. Yeah, I would like to respond to this and I should have the ability to respond to this. - [Scott] Correct. I plan on responding to it. - You have the right Mr. Skaar to respond, as I just said, to what action if any the board takes.
You had the right, the district hired an outside neutral investigator, gave you full and fair opportunity to respond and you elected not to take advantage of that opportunity. The investigator notified you in writing that by taking that approach you would be waiving your right to challenge the findings at a later point in time. And you persisted in taking that approach nonetheless. You demanded that the investigator provide a list of questions in advance. The investigator explained to you that that is not how it works. It's a free flowing, fact gathering conversation.
She doesn't script her questions in advance and nor does any good investigator do that. They go with the information. The investigator also, I'm gonna turn to the page here that has that statement that was provided to you. In terms of, you demanded data. She did share the complaint with you, which is more than she's arguably obligated to do. She shared video links with you, evidence, but she's certainly not obligated to share the full reams of evidence or statements that other people made with you. And nor did she do that.
And again my professional opinion, nor would a professional investigator do that either. - [Scott] Thank you. - Just a couple of things, things that you characterize me, I probably wouldn't characterize it that way, but I did see the complaint. The complaint was extremely vague. I asked specifically to tell me what details and how the content violated data privacy and I got no answer. Therefore I said I was unable to provide an accurate
and effective interview if I don't know what I'm accused of. And there was nothing there. So that's what I told the investigator. - [Mick] Okay, so first of all, if I may respond. - [Scott] Yes sir. - When somebody does an investigation, it's not their job to apply the facts and say how a violation of law has or has not occurred. Their job is to gather the facts. You knew that the allegation was that you had violated data privacy rights, how you've done that. All she's asking you are the facts. Did you do this?
Did you do that? Did you do that? You can answer. You know those, those are facts, you know, whether you did it or you didn't. She had Facebook posts, she had videos, she had other things to ask you questions about. Her role is not to determine whether that then rises to the level of a violation of policy law or otherwise. My role is to advise the board in terms of whether that rises to the level of a violation of law. And it's the board's role to determine based on its own policies, whether your conduct rises to a violation of policy.
- Thank you. Am I recognized? I'd like to make one comment more. I was an investigator for 20 years under federal authority. So I did provide those types of details. I didn't go on fishing trips. I provided details as to what the allegation was. And that was not done here. Also as an auditor, I have it. It's a fishing trip. Thank you. - Alright, Ms. Daniels, you have? - I just had a question.
May we ask Mr. Skaar questions during this time or? - [Mick] Yes. - Yes. - [Scott] Alright. Ms. Thompson? - [Angela] Did you have a question? Yes I have a question. Can I ask? - [Scott] Yeah, go ahead. - Okay, Mr. Skaar, did you participate in the formal evaluation of the superintendent that we do annually last summer when we were filled out a form and evaluated him and then had a discussion afterwards with him present? Did you participate in that? - No, as I stated, and I don't know if you're trying to trap me,
but as I stated, I was not available during that time and no one provided me. Usually if you're out of town and not available, you're provided some kind of an evaluation form to complete and discuss. - There was an evaluation form form that we all had time to fill out. It was sent to you as it was sent to the whole board. We filled that out individually from our homes and then we discussed it together. So maybe the day we discussed it together, perhaps you had a conflict, but you could have filled it out.
- I don't recall getting that, so I apologize for that. - Maybe we can check on- - You know what I don't like Google email and I'm just trying to understand how to work it, so. - [Scott] Alright, Ms. Thompson. - First I'm not an attorney, but I do work for the state of Minnesota as an independent investigator in child protection cases. And I bring in the independent piece of the case and present that to all the parties so that the court and the judge and the lawyers and everyone can make a determination on whether or not the facts in the petition are true or not.
I'm not the only one who brings forward evidence and things of that nature, but yes, we would never, I would never go to a parent and tell them specific, like, you sit down, you have a conversation, you interview them, you ask them questions, you gather the information that they get, and you take that and you use that to decide is this true or is this not true? And then it's not even my job to necessarily, like you say, determine whether it is or not. It's my job to bring forward the information I gather to the parties who then do determine
whether these are true or not, such as the judge or in our case, the attorney who we have that works for the district. So yeah, independent investigators, you don't go with a list saying this is all the thing because then you just give them the ability to maybe say things that they think they want you to hear. Rather than actually getting real evidence on the investigation that you're looking into. I just wanted to appreciate to put that in there. - So yes, Ms. Streiff Oji? - Will we be talking at all here as we're focusing
on this investigation about the violation of the open meeting laws that Mr. Skaar has been sending emails, inviting us and making motions via email? Is that a part of this or separate from this? - That is also part of this. After we are done that parts on the investigation report, I will address that. And of course the full board is aware of that. Members of the public might not be aware of the fact that on April 15th, 2026, Mr. Skaar sent an email to the full school board and in the email he made a motion
to authorize an operational audit that included an investigation of the enrollment incident and review of the district's enrollment procedures. And in the same email he stated that he would welcome a second and an email vote. And that is, in my legal opinion, a clear violation of the open meeting law. - And there have been multiple times that we have been emailed as a full board and that is also a violation and it continues. I've asked for it to stop. So as long as we can include that in what we're talking about here is great, thanks.
- I'd like to respond to that. Because I'll just tell you exactly what I said and I sent this to Chair Arcand. This is the email to all of the board. Below is a statement I would've made at the meeting before I was cut off by Member Ellison, techniques and policies to silence dialogue with public or other board members regardless of their legal or within Robert Rules are not in public interest. Below is the second call for the board to take action on operational audit of this district.
I would welcome a second and an email vote if possible, or a discussion at the next meeting. I sent a response to... Because the Chair Arcand said, hey, you violated the open meeting law. I said, no, I didn't. I said, it's the chair who determines the agenda and how things are set and voted on, not me. I gave him the option. I said, if possible, that is a moot nonsense. It's nonsense. - [Scott] Ms. Thompson?
- When did we have our training with you? Where you go over the rules and what we're allowed to do and not allowed to do? And that happened before this email was sent to all of us asking us to vote. - We have the training, we've had it annually and we had it in this case I believe it was on or about March 2nd. And I specifically addressed those types of issues. I'm also aware that Chair Arcand had sent a reminder email to board members about not sending out reply all, not sending emails to the full board and to say that I welcome a vote if possible
and then claim if possible excuses your conduct. It didn't say I'd welcome it if legal for one, but two, when you're saying I'd welcome it, you are soliciting the board to engage in a violation of the open meeting law with Mr. Skaar. And I am sorry, but there's no way I can conclude that that is not a violation of the open meeting law. Or that it's not a means of circumventing the fact that you twice brought a motion in public session were twice unable to get a second on that motion.
Then try to bring that behind closed doors. Promoting secrecy versus transparency. That is a violation of open meeting law. - I have always been promoting transparency. That is ridiculous. That is ridiculous. (gravel bangs) - [Scott] One at a time, please. - So yes, we certainly can address that issue as well. So that takes us then to what action if any, the board would like to take. I don't want to get into a more detailed description of the findings relative to Dr. Kazmierczak,
because I want to honor his privacy rights to the greatest extent possible. I did send the board members a list of what I thought were potentially relevant provisions of policy. I have stated, and I'll just be very clear about it, that I do believe the conduct in question violated the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act and violated the open meeting law. I'm talking specifically the comments relative to the superintendent. That's a separate violation I believe that occurred with respect to the email, the vote and soliciting a vote. So those are the legal pieces that I can help you with.
That's my legal opinion that those violations occurred. It's for you, as I said before to walk through the policy provisions and say yes or no for one and for two then to decide what do you wanna do? And I want to just be clear in reviewing what I think the options are. You could take no action. You know, this discussion in itself may have a fair deterrent effect that can be considered to be appropriate. You could verbally reprimand, meaning you just say to Mr. Skaar during this meeting,
hey, I don't like what you did, don't do it again. You can adopt a resolution censoring Mr. Skaar. That's a public action. You can adopt a resolution disavowing his conduct, which means that in the event of a lawsuit, you're saying, hey, you're on your own. We're not defending you and we're not indemnifying you in the event of a damages award, you know from anybody who brings a lawsuit out of this. You could remove Mr. Skaar from committees. You could implement a one-time reduction in his compensation as a board member. You could warn him about future violations
and you could seek to remove him. I am going to share, and you haven't asked for it, but I'm gonna share it anyway my legal opinion that I don't believe this conduct rises to level of removal. I would not encourage you to consider that option. I think that if it occurred again in the future, then you would be looking at a different scenario. I don't believe you're at that spot right now. I also would not professionally, it doesn't mean you can't, the board is a self-policing body, but I would not recommend implementing a one-time reduction
in compensation or removing Mr. Skaar from committees. I don't think that that helps nor is it tightly or directly related to the nature of the infraction at hand. So those are not things that I would recommend that you consider. The other things I think are all open and fair game if the board wants to consider any of them, I do think it may be wise for the board to disavow conduct amongst other actions if it wants to take others. But disavowing the conduct. Of course I'm a liability guy, right? I'm here thinking about what are the concerns
from the district from a liability standpoint. I think that's a wise and prudent course of action for the board to take. So with that, I turn it back to the board now. Feel free to ask me questions about any of the policy provisions or anything else that I've stated and then to, I think the board, it's just your opportunity now as a self-policing body to determine the course of action that you would like to take, if any. - [Scott] Okay. Ms. Beloyed? - I would say that given Mr. Skaar's reaction so far, I don't think you understand what you did.
Therefore, I'm wondering if that behavior is going to continue in the future and I'm not interested in subjecting the district to liability. So I would like to propose the resolution to disavow Mr. Skaar's conduct. - [Daniel] Chair, could I have an opportunity to make a statement before you guys take action, because- - I'd like to add one more thing before we do that. There's an awful lot of talk about financial transparency.
A lot of the actions that you do require time and money to be spent by the district. Backing up things. Answering things, which is fine. But when we have to consult attorneys, when we have to bring in auditors, when we have to bring in all this stuff, because you think these are important, yet the board speaks as a board, not one person. You think it's okay to do what you do because you don't believe that your circumventing
the open meeting law, but you've been told numerous times that you are so therefore it feels to me like you're not learning. You haven't taken the time to learn. You've gone through two of the sessions. I don't know what else we can do because you're not working with us. - Well, first of all, I appreciate your perspective. Counselor. I appreciate your perspective as well. And I'd like to make a statement, but I would like to find peace.
And if you bring me inside of the tent, I think it would be much easier. Please, I'm talking about the way I view things. I don't feel like I am inside the tent. - None of us talk to each other. That's part of the open meeting call. - Could I make my statement? Well, we're not ex parte though, counselor. There's no ex parte rules correct that apply to us? - Two board members may freely communicate with each other. Yeah, as I discussed in training,
you can't have serial communication. - No, I understand. But ex parte rules don't apply to us. I just wanna make my statement. You know, there's a funny thing. You know, funny thing about accountability. Everybody says that they want it right up until somebody actually starts asking for it like me. And this really isn't about me. It's about suppression. I'm just the messenger delivering the mail to the public and doing the job I was elected to do. You don't have to agree with me. I'm not asking for agreement. That's fine.
But nobody has a right to silence me and prevent the public from hearing what I have to say if they choose to listen, that's suppression. So let me save everyone some time here. I didn't violate anybody's rights. I didn't break any laws, period. I exercised my right to be heard and followed the instructions provided to me by Chair Arcand. What's happening now. - [Scott] Just a point of order. Wait, is arguing the findings? - No, I'm not. I'm making a statement.
Let me make a statement. That's fair. - [Mick] I'd allow him to respond to whether he thinks specifically, whether he thinks action should be taken. And if so, what action. - No, I would like to finish my statement. Thank you. - [Scott] Okay, so there again, you had an opportunity- - Statement. - He's the chair. - So I'm gonna ask another point of what a question. You had an opportunity during the investigation and chose not to. So now what we're talking about is what type of action are we gonna take? If you wanna discuss that, you say no action
or verbal reprimand or you know, what do you want? We will entertain that, but we're not gonna entertain the investigation. - I will only talk about the investigation to the extent that I've already communicated that to the investigator. But what's happening now is retaliation against a board member who refused to sit quietly while those in charge operate the district like their own private club. The complaint against me contain no specifics. I already said that. No facts and no merit.
As a former investigator and an auditor, I refuse to participate in a taxpayer funded (gravel bangs) - I can't hear when everybody's talking, so. - [Daniel] I should be allowed to finish my statement. - Okay, so what is your statement or what actions do you believe should- - I'll get to that at the end. - Okay, go ahead. Talk about what I said. I'm looking for peace. Okay? I'm looking for peace. So the timing is also interesting. You know, the complaint arrived less than four hours after I asked why the annual audit?
(board member speaking softy) (gravel bangs). - Again, speak to what action should be taken. - So I got notice four hours. That's not transparent. So it's not transparency, it's suppression. For more than a year, this district and board have hidden behind policies, investigations, lawyers, and bureaucratic theater designed for one purpose, suppression, not discussion. - Point of order. And its harassment and intimidation. And yes, even an anonymous death threat at me. - This is about Mr. Skaar characterizing himself
as a victim. - What terrible offenses have I done? Yes, I've critical to this school board and the superintendent. He's the CEO of our district. According to our policy. CEOs and boards get criticism. - You know, I wasn't gonna (speaks faintly). - Alright, just can I just get a point of order? As a school board, we have one employee and that is the superintendent. And so as our employee, we cannot violate his data privacy. We can't go out there and make comments about him because he is our employee.
Just like the superintendent can't go out and make a comment about a teacher into the public. So that's I think that what we're looking at. - Not making a comment, I'm just saying he's our CO. - So you've seen the results and you had a chance to talk to them, and you chose not to. You had your Tennyson warning and you were told that you had to, you know, you had that chance then. We're not gonna rehash that now. - I'm not rehashing it. - I would really like to know if you have an action you think the board should take. - Can I finish my statement? - As long as she's talking about
the action the board should take. - Chair Arcand? - Yes, sir? - May I speak on the matter? - Yes. - I don't want there to be this inaccurate impression out there because the statement that was just made is utterly false. The suggestion that this came four hours after he took action X, Y or Z is absolutely false. We have verifiable demonstrable uncontestable evidence that the superintendent makes a written complaint on March 3. You and I have a conversation the next day.
I'm sending out emails to potential firms for investigations the following weeks after. The fact that he makes a statement. The 20th or whatever the date was I can't remember, is of no moment. It tells us nothing. And you know this, sir, this all comes weeks after the superintendent makes his complaint. No, I'm not done. (gravel bangs) To suggest that we have fabricated that is utterly false. And I want the record to reflect that. - Okay, so if you have...
All I really want to hear then from you is what action do you think the board should take? - Well, I'd still like to make my statement. - Okay, on what action you want the board to take? - No on, I'd like to make my statement and then state the what action. What action I think that the board should take is take it up a level here. Stop suppressing because it fixed nothing. - [Board Member] Chair Arcand? (gravel bangs) So what we should do, I'm making a suggestion.
We should have a town hall with the public. (gravel bangs) Irrelevant right now. - [Daniel] All of these issues- - We are discussing what action the board should take. And so unless you're gonna speak to that, I think you have nothing to say. - May I introduce an action? - No, I have other people waiting, Streiff Oji. - All right, there have been a 77 page report presented to us. Evaluative statements were made in public. The report's extensive. It is not vague in any way, shape or form. There are specific quotes.
There are Facebook quotes, videos, everything is in there. The false and unfounded accusations continue even tonight, right in front of us with that accusation. But also that you never received a superintendent evaluation that we all received weeks before with weeks of time to do it. So it just continues. I agree with Ms. Beloyed that there is no learning, there is no intention of working together as a board. And I would like to, I make a motion that we,
I don't know how we do this. If we can combine but center disavow and provide a warning for Mr. Skaar about future behavior. - [Scott] I would refer that to our counsel. - Can I just- - [Scott] She's making a question. Can we do all three? - [Mick] Yes you can. - Okay. - And you would do that by a resolution. And I do have very rough drafts of a resolution that would have to be tailored to fit whatever you would want. And I have a computer here to do that. - [Scott] Okay. - [Daniel] Can I just make a clarification? - [Scott] I got others that are still-. - Well, he just said that I misrepresented something,
but counselor, I- (gravel bangs) - You are not recognized. - I received the complaint. - [Scott] You were not recognized. - I received the complaint. You were not recognized, sir. I'll give you an opportunity, but we have others that would like to talk. - Thank you. Alright. - Okay, Ms. Thompson. - Well I guess I mean I had a lot of questions, but Mick, you had mentioned before that not one board member is allowed to decide that we do this in public and that if an other board members wanted us to go into closed session to finish that, we can do that.
- That was in terms of the evaluation of the superintendent. But not for Mr. Skaar he has the right to decide that 'cause he's the subject of it. That's to say that he made comments that were statements publicly that were evaluative of the superintendent and all evaluations of the superintendent. That's a board determination, whether that's to declare in close session or open session. And historically your district has to my knowledge, never done it in open session before. - Okay. I just wanted, I thought there was a point where we could go into So I mean I don't even wanna ask a question, but I would just say if we wanna talk about accountability,
we have full accountability for everything we do up here as a board and in this district. Every meeting is an open meeting. We sit here and we talk about everything in front of everybody all the time. And it is unfortunate that sometimes people don't always come to the meeting to get the information that they want answered in other areas. And then they don't come and they don't listen to the actual information being presented in a board meeting. If we talk about accountability, I am accountable to every single community member, student, staff member, everyone that makes up
the White Bear Lake area School district. I am accountable to when I was elected, whether they voted for me or didn't vote for me. I represent every single community member and student in this district. And that is my job and that is who I'm accountable to. I'm not accountable to a certain group of people who decide and determine what I am and what I do up here? And my action is that we disavow and I didn't wanna censure you, but you have not learned anything. So I feel like we need to disavow, censure
and do the result of what will happen if there's future violations. - Okay, thank you. Okay. I promised I would give you time. - Thank you. - So there you go Mr. Skaar. So keep it to the, oh wait. Okay. Sorry, okay what do you have? - Well, I would like to say that he has violated policy 215, 209, I'd like to give him a verbal reprimand. Also disavow Mr. Skaar's behavior and warn him
that further violations would result in removal from the board. And I believe that Mr. Skaar characterizes himself as a victim and someone who has been censored and silenced. And really, he tries to circumvent the will of the board every time we vote on something that he doesn't agree with, he goes out in the public and tries to, you know, make a case for why that was wrong. Instead of after we vote, we should be done. And then we're supportive. We act as a unit.
We are a group that after the vote is taken, that is how we move forward. We don't go out individually and say, I didn't win this time, or I didn't agree with what happened, so I'm gonna build a case. And they're not listening to me. 'Cause I disagreed with them, but they're still not listening to me. So I just wanna say, you're not a victim, you're not following the policies that we have on our behavior as board members. And I wasn't going to have introduce a resolution
about censoring, but this is sort of an example of like not telling he's not telling the truth. He's acting. (gravel bangs) - [Scott] I will give you- - [Daniel] That is just not- - [Scott] I will give you an option. - And again, you know, trying to characterize himself as this victim and he's trying to be the hero for whoever he thinks he's speaking for instead of following the will of the board and the policies of the board. - [Scott] Okay. You done? - Thank you.
- I apologize I didn't mean to cut you off. - Well, I'd like to be a hero of all of our students and parents, but I would just like to correct counselor here on March 20th at 2:18 PM is when I sent an email out regarding the audit and transparency. And then Friday, that same Friday at six o'clock is when I received your complaint. Now tee other stuff that you talked about, you may have had that complaint, but when I received it, it was four hours after that email.
That's all I'm saying. - And you received that email from me and I would've had no way of knowing that you even made that request- - [Dan] Perhaps. - And my point to you is that the complaint was made on the third. The conversation occurred with the board chair I believe on the fourth. The investigation was immediately authorized. I had emails showing that I was reaching out to multiple firms and individuals to see if they were available to conduct an investigation long before that ever occurred. And so to suggest that there is a temporal nexus
between the two is absolutely false. - So it was in somebody's holster ready to go. That's what I'm talking about. It just looks suspicious to me. - I can say that you didn't put something out and we said we're gonna do this. It was in the works from when we received the complaint and then it was an ongoing process. It's not something I pulled out or anybody pulled out at the last second, it was in process. And I authorized to move forward just because I needed to make sure that everybody's, we had an investigation to make sure for the safety of all
to know, you know, what was going on. So I can tell you that we had it in process and it wasn't because of one email that was sent. I'm sorry you feel like that was a retaliation, But it wasn't. - No. Okay, well you provide an explanation. Nobody provided me an explanation. However, I would say this, I mean, we're spending a lot of money on this investigation. We could have spent it on an operational audit to really drive efficiencies, so. - Okay, so Ms. Streiff Oji, she has a quick comment. - We do have someone that has been violated in this room
and that is the superintendent. And so this is not the victim. There is someone else, it's someone's breaking laws and going after. So I just wanna acknowledge that. And it just continues. The untruths continue. The manufactured lies continue. So I wanna go on record an say that, and that is why I would like to move to take action. - [Scott] Okay, Yes? - I have a question for you Mick. Is anything that's said in open session today, can that be used against us as a board in any lawsuit?
- Certainly, you know, there's always a public record that can be, and you know, I think that that's part of the disavowing the conduct too. You know? - So repeating things that are defamatory opens us up once again. - [Mick] Well, or- - Continues to. - Or again, it may, depending on the action you take, it may just open up, make the statement to action, so. - Okay, so then my question is, I believe that, I mean heard from everybody. I think we are all resolved to do this resolution.
How do we move this forward then? - Yep. I have heard different things. I've been taking some notes and starting to type some things here. So I heard a resolution to disavow. I heard a resolution censure disavow, resolution censure disavow and provide a warning. I heard another, disavow censure warning. I heard verbal reprimand and disavow warning and maybe censure resolution. I heard bring me under the tent.
And I think that that's the sum of it. And chair, I don't think I've heard from you. - I would go ahead with the censure, the warning and the disavow the conduct. I'm gonna interrupt you right here we are. Our end time is at seven. It's 7:54. End time is at eight o'clock. Can I get a motion to extend the meeting? - So moved. - Okay, so, okay, the second. - [Kathleen] Point of clarification. Can we add a time limit to this case? I was gonna extend the meeting- - [Kathleen] In 15 minute increments.
- Do you I was gonna go, let's extend it till 8:30. - I would not support that. I would 15 minute increments. - [Scott] Okay, so we're gonna... What I'm hearing is can I get a motion to extend the meeting to 8:15? - [Board Member] So moved. - [Scott] Okay. Is there a second? - Second. - Second. Alright, can I get any questions? All in favor say aye. - [Board Members] Aye All opposed? Same sign. Okay, we have extended our meeting now. I'm sorry. We can get back to business. - [Mick] So chair? - Yeah, just a second. I'm gonna ask a question. So now can we ask you, do we have to make a motion
and you can tell us how it was gonna go if somebody makes that motion. - So if that is the consensus of the board, I'm just quickly typing here I'm almost there. If you do a resolution, you don't have to do it this way or a censure, you don't have to. But the recommended way to do a censure is to have a resolution that includes findings, that includes conclusions, includes conclusions, and that then takes the specific action. And so I'm very close to having that done that would be the disavow censure warning language.
And I would either need to print that off or I could read it, if that's sufficient. - [Angela] Point of clarification. - [Scott] Okay. What? - Censuring can you just explain what censuring will, I wanna make sure that I'm fully aware of what that means. - Yeah, a censure is nothing more than a formal public reprimand. Instead of just a informal verbal reprimand coming from individual board members, it's an action by the body to formally reprimand
the individual and create a record of that. And the US Supreme Court has stated that that is something that boards have an absolute right to do. And it is not violative of first amendment rights. So that action, again, that is a safe course of action if the board elects to take it. The disavowing, that's just saying we don't approve and we're not gonna be liable for it. That's also within your purview to do. And a warning is nothing more than that. It's just that a warning just says basically,
you know, we're placing you on notice. If you engage in the same or similar conduct in the future, there may be more significant consequences. - [Scott] Okay. - Just on the censure part, what does that, I mean, it's like you said, it's a warning, but Mr. Skaar can still participate in the meetings and still ask questions and do all the things any board member would do? - Absolutely, I'm not recommending that you strip him of any rights or participation or anything like that. I don't think that that's commensurate with the offense. I think at this point in time, the disavowment is very specific to the liability concern,
A censure is to say, okay, we're giving you this opportunity. You want to come into the tent. Is was the description, I don't know. You want to show us that you can comply with the law, that's great. But if you don't in the future, here's the consequence. - [Scott] So I'm just gonna ask if you want to get that written up, can we just put it up on the screens so you don't have to print it out? You could send it and get it put up. - Yep. - [Scott] Is that okay? - I need just a minute to.
And like I said, it was a very rough But I can have it in short order. - [Scott] Mr. Skaar, I know you were waiting. - [Daniel] Oh sure. Thank you. - [Scott] Did you wanna speak while he's putting that together? - Sure, I would just say that, you know, I'm very, very disappointed that you deprived me of making a full statement, that's number one. Number two, I haven't said anything defamatory. Sometimes the truth hurts, you know, if you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen. The next thing is, hey, can I finish? I have not lied or mischaracterized anything.
If you believe that I have a code of ethics. (gravel bangs) Tell me what I've done. - Findings have already been made chair. You're not allowed by law at this point. - So everybody just just wants to gang up by me. - In the findings and you talking and talking. - Thank you. Okay. - Chair Arcand? Could I make a? So just so Mr. Skaar knows that he's not the only one who's ever had an investigation done to ensure that things are... We have all sat through an investigation process before in relations to things that were being done in the district
where we all had to go and sit down with an investigator and do an interview. And we all did it because we had no reason not to do the interview. Because there was nothing that I needed to hide and nothing any other board member needed to hide. So the investigator contacted us all, we all went we all did interviews because we had no reason not to do the interview. - Can you make sure you speak to the topic of this. - I resent insinuation that I had something to hide. I don't have anything to hide. I'm an open book. - Great. So we're good with that. And then we are gonna wait and we're gonna put the resolution up.
- It's a 100% ridiculous. - I know, but can you watch your comments? - Okay. - And so when this goes up then it's for the board to say strike things, add things to it. Should I just email it to someone and then? - [Assistant] Yes, that'd be great. - To you. - Yes, that's perfectly fine. Absolutely. - And I apologize if it's kind of in a rough, I was doing it very quickly here. There you go. 'Cause these are just the frameworks. - Chair, I would just like to say the offer still stands.
Bring me inside the tent to help. You guys can all laugh but I really mean it. I'm dedicated to this district. - We've already offered that to you Mr. Skaar. - No, you have never. (gravel bangs) - I don't know if this is productive. - It's not productive. - It's not. - So at this point I'm gonna ask that we stop. (board members speaking faintly) - No one won my own here, it does say went. - I'm hot. I guess now that you mentioned it. - I make sure I went through Oh should I do this? - Yeah, do that. Or you just respond to that email?
- Yeah, but I have to attach it somehow. Let's see. (Mick speaking faintly) So I can just attach it then to that. - [Assistant] There we go. I just got it. - You got it? Okay. - It's the bloody sugar. It's from the snack I gave you. - It's coming your way. - It's from the snack. - Are they printing it too? - Yes. - Thank you sir. - I thought we could get started this way though, if we can get it up. Whichever is faster. Yep, I know it's warm. - When was that evaluation sent? Do you recall?
I'm looking for it now. - July. It was in the summer. - Yeah. - June or July. You have to ask Rachel. - I'm just looking to see if I could find it. Who was it sent from? - Rachel. - I do believe there were also multiple reminders sent. - I just don't know whether I sent it in. Just say I didn't have enough experience with the superintendent to complete the evaluation because I had only been on the board for what, a few months, but I can't recall. If I recall that are you gonna retract that? - [Assistant] Marissa? Did you get it?
- Retract what? That I said you didn't fill it out. - Yeah. 'Cause I may have said I can't fill it out. I asked you if you filled it out. - Yeah, I don't- - So I do not retract. So you didn't say you didn't recall, you said you didn't get it. - I don't, I just don't remember. So I'm gonna look for it. And I'll get back to you. - Well you can get back to everyone. It was a question more for general. - No, don't get back to everyone. No, but verbally he could. Yes, that's right. - Don't get back to everyone. But it was a question whether you filled it out or not. And you said didn't.
That's just not, it's not me to not follow up on something. So, yeah. Well I can't answer that for you. I don't know what you did You're pretty busy at that time of the year sending emails about all kinds of other stuff. - Alright, you have the resolution here. Introduces the following resolution and moves for adoption. The resolution censuring a school board member and disavowing the board member's conduct. Whereas the school board has retained outside law firm to conduct an investigation into allegations that were made against board member Dan Skaar.
And whereas the school board has carefully considered the allegations against Skaar, and the findings from the investigation. Therefore the school board makes the following findings a fact, the superintendent is an employee of the school district and the district maintains private personal data on the superintendent. - Personnel. - Personnel, yeah, sorry. It's a long ways for me. Skaar has publicly made recorded statements about the superintendent that derive from data that reflect actions the superintendent has taken
and data that has maintained because the superintendent is an employee of the district. For example, Skaar has publicly criticized the superintendent's performance and decisions. Skaar is also publicly and falsely stated or implied the superintendent is the source of distrust that students do not feel safe at school because the superintendent and that the superintendent has not shown leadership and the district
needs new leadership. Skaar has publicly called for the resignation of the superintendent. The outside investigation made the following findings based on their substance tone and content, Skaar's public social media statements appear to be more than a general discussion of publicly reported facts and related to the superintendent and tend to be evaluative in nature. Although some of the content has been removed from Skaar's Facebook page.
Skaar's statements. - [Mick] Chair Arcand, can I read the rest for you? - Yes. It's getting lower and they keep moving it. - The public, that's the news article. Skaar's signature made available resulting in ongoing availability. The publicly accessible critical statements by Skaar, an elected official have increased the superintendent's visibility and exposure to negative public reaction. And that contributed to legitimate safety concerns within the current social and political climate. Skaar's post and statements about the superintendent had potentially harmed the superintendent's reputation. Skaar's statements did not reflect
a view of the school board. On April 15th, 2026, Mr. Skaar sent an email to the whole school board. In that email, Skaar made a motion to authorize an operational audit that includes an investigation of the, actually (speaks faintly). Yeah, one change to be made is District 624. (Mick speaks faintly) So 624, you can cross that out into written materials. In the same email, Mr. Skaar stated that he would welcome a second and email vote. Now therefore, the school board of independent school district number 623
makes the following conclusions. - [Board Member] 624. - [Mick] 624, Geez Louise, how many times can I make a mistake? Excuse me. Now therefore, the school board of Independent School district number 624 makes the following conclusion. Minnesota statutes, misspelled. Section 13.43 subdivision 1 defines personality and the government data on individuals to maintain because the individual is or was an employee of a government agency or entity. Minnesota statute section 13.43 subdivision 4 classifies personnel data as private data on individuals unless an exception applies.
Skaar's public comments about the superintendent violated the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act and specifically section 13.43. Based on training is received as a board member. Skaar knew or should have known that he was not permitted to publicly make evaluative statements about any employee including the superintendent. Minnesota statute Section 13D.05. Subdivision 2b requires the board to go into closed session for preliminary consideration of allegations against an individual subject to the board's authority. Skaar violated this provision by publicly making allegations against the superintendent.
Under Minnesota statute Section 13D.5 that should say the school board decides whether to go into closed session to evaluate the performance of an employee based on the training as received as a board member Skaar knew or should have known that the unlawful disclosure of private personnel data may result in litigation. Skaar has violated the provisions of policy 215 Code of conduct for school board members, the following of potentially applicable provisions. You'll have to strike those when we're done. If you think none apply. Paragraph nine. Skaar violated the provisions of policy 209,
which is the code of ethics to board members following our applicable provisions. You can strike any that you think apply or don't apply. Paragraph 10. In the amenable lawsuit by the Superintendent against Skaar, the board concludes that Skaar was not acting in the performance of his position when he disclosed private personnel data on the superintendent. And in the view of the board was acting in bad faith. Board members that is the standing by way for that. Defending and identifying employee. Board members are expected to serve as role models and must adhere to all legal and ethical requirements. Skaar failed to fulfill this expectation.
After weighing the competing interest, the board has determined that this resolution is in the best interest of the school district. Skaar's email of April 15th, 2025 violated the open meeting law. Paragraph 14. From trainings that Skaar has received as a board member, Skaar knew or should have known that all motions were required to be made in an open meeting. By soliciting a vote by email. Skaar asked other board members to join him in violating the open meeting law. Skaar's conduct promotes unlawful secrecy not transparency. Now therefore be it resolved by the School Board of Independent School District number 624 as follows,
number one, the school board hereby censures Skaar for the conduct described in this resolution. Number two, the school board hereby places Skaar on notice that if he engages in the same or any similar conduct in the future, the board may initiate action to remove him from the board. Paragraph three, the school board hereby disavows Skaar's conduct and will not defend or identify him in the event of a lawsuit against him for the conduct described in this resolution. - [Scott] All right, I just need a quick motion to extend the meeting till 8:30. - So moved. Just in case we need it, is there a second? - Second.
- All in favor say aye. - [Board Member] Aye. - Opposed? Save sign. We can keep going. - So now at this point in time, a member could move the motion as it is without further reading. A member could move to strike or add to the policy provisions and then move the resolution with those changes. The floor is yours as a board to decide which actions you want to take and what changes if any you wanna make to the resolution. - Mr. Skaar? - Yeah, in paragraph two, you know, I take issue with Skaar has publicly and falsely stated
or implied that the superintendent is a source of distrust. I never said that and I never implied that, that students do not feel safe at school because the superintendent, I never said that. I mean, I don't know where you get that. - On your page. Read the report. - Read the report it's right there. - As to superintendent leadership. And when I said it need new leadership and the resignation, I said, Hey, I'm just one person. It's not up to me. It's up to the community. - That's not. - Okay, I'm sure there's other things in this resolution
that I will have issues with, but. - Those comments are taken directly from social media posts that you made that are in the report. - I'll have to take a look at them. - Did you read the report? - You have the report? - Well no- - Mean I stayed up to make sure I got it read 'cause I had other things- - I remember- Make sure I read through the report. - I remember the video but- - That's enough, everybody talks. Nobody hears. Are there any other changes? - I just don't think that that's correct. - Changes, additions, subtractions that you have. - You said in eight, those three things were ones
that we could, I mean not that I don't know if I'm going to, but those were ones you had said we could change. - Certainly, I mean you can change any part of this, but paragraph eight and paragraph nine, the- - The subsections- - I just listed, the potentially relevant ones. And it's for you to decide which of those apply or not. And then you would say the following are applicable. - Chair, I'd just like to make one question. I mean, why are we doing this? Like it's almost June, this happened like in October of last year. If there were issues, why weren't they percolated before that?
Why'd you wait until now? That's my question. - Okay, I'm not sure because I know that the complaint came in January sometime. - No, I can state that the- - Why not in November, December? - The complaint came in the day after training. The training that we provided. And my understanding is that's what brought it to light. - Okay. That's convenient. Thank you. - Other things? And for the record, you get to read out the paper for (indistinct) county. - Okay. - I don't have any problems with 8, A, B or C. And I think leaves those in there. Anybody else? - There's a D two. - Oh, sorry. - On the next page.
- And then you do wanna strike the word potentially. So it says the following are applicable provisions if you want to keep them all. - I'd be in favor of that. - Striking potentially? Do we have to vote on that or how do we do that? - Well you can make a motion to adopt the resolution without further reading, but with the changes, the following changes. One, correcting the clerical error of 833 to 624. And striking the word potentially. And then striking any other ones that you want. 'Cause paragraph nine, you can also strike any of those if you see fit to do so. - I mean I really care about any.
They come say whatever they want about me. I don't really care. - I mean, I don't really know about D, 9D, I don't know about if there's been criticisms of other employees. I mean is that only regarding other employees or is it? - But we only have one employee. - Yeah, so it will be presenting criticisms of the superintendent. - To the superintendent, okay ,all right. Then you can leave it. - Well, just for the record, I can't find that evaluation email. - It's June 25th. That was sent to you by Wayne.
Wayne sends it to us every year. - Oh, Wayne. - Because he also sends a letter with an update and then you get the evaluation. - Oh right, he gets a lot of June 25th. - Okay. I hear a lot of chatter. So can I get a Can I get a recommendation or a motion if somebody like to make a motion? - I'll make a motion to adopt the following resolution with the changes that we talked about. - So the change is clerical error. - Clerical errors and the potential the word-
- And striking the word potentially from paragraph eight. - Yep. - And then also Minnesota statute section 13D.0 right? - That's correct another clerical. - All right. So we have a motion. Do we have a second? - Second. - Second by Thompson, any discussion? Can we have we have discussion here? I don't know. - Yes. - Okay, any other discussion pertinent to this resolution? Hearing none. This will be a roll call vote. I'll ask the clerk to call the roll. - Into my screen here.
Okay. Ellison. Oh, she's not here. Sorry. Skaar. - No. - Streiff Oji? - Yes. - Thompson. - [Angela] Aye. - Arcand. - Aye. - Beloyed. - Aye. - [Kathleen] Daniels, aye. - Motion carries. Five one. We now in the part can I get a motion to adjourn? - Do we not need to make do action on the other part of the closed meeting? - No, it was just. - Oh, that's (indistinct). - So who made the motion? Did Thompson. - Thompson, is there a second. - Second. - All in favor say aye. - [Board Members] Aye.
- Opposed? Same sign. Hearing now adjourned.