Hopkins School Board Meeting January 27th, 2026

001workshop which um for oh my gosh i don't even know the date january 27th 2026 starting at 5 30 p.m vice chair roper has let us know that she will be just a few minutes late but she is on her way but we will go ahead and get started because we have um a few logistical things to get out of the way for the school board, a couple updates, and then a discussion that I wanted to have given some research that I've been doing and also input from the community as well as other board members about the structure of our workshop and... agenda items. So we will go ahead and get started with that. And then I have an update from MSBA, who we hired to do our superintendent search. I've met with Barb Dorn,

002who has given me some next step items that I want to make sure the board is aware of. So with that, I would like to get started by talking about how we structure our workshop and board meetings and also just to give an overview for the community about how we do engage not only in discussion as a board but also the ways that we engage with our community. So the Hopkins School Board for a number of years has made it part of our board goals to host board engagement sessions. Generally, we ensure that there are at least two around the budget once that starts becoming a topic of interest. And then we also make sure that our monitoring committee hosts engagement sessions around any new or really impactful policies so that our community can have

003input and we have hosted those throughout the years and they come up pretty regularly and that is a way that the board can interact directly with community and get questions answered and make sure that we are all aligned and on the same page about our two biggest areas of impact. The Second way that we have started engaging with the community, which is a new thing that we started this year, is listening sessions. And those are where we invite the community to address the board. a measure that we decided as a board to put into place in order to alleviate our open agenda public comment sections so that we could hear from more of our community and also have it be around one particular topic. And we're going to get an update on transportation, which was

004the topic of our first listening session at this board workshop. So we are looking at Well, I have been thinking that another topic is coming up, bubbling up within the community, and we may want to discuss as a board if we feel a listening session would be appropriate around any other topics. Feel free to email me about that. And then the most set and formulaic ways that we have gotten input and conduct our business as a board is through workshops and also through, of course, our regular meetings. And I've heard loud and clear and have also felt that our regular board meetings are going longer than a lot of us would like. By the end of them, I think almost all of us to every single member is worn out and unable to contribute in

005a way that we would like to. So one of the things that I have been talking with other school boards across the state about is how their meetings are structured. And a lot of our neighboring boards. reserve their regular meeting for action items only so that there can be robust discussion before the board takes action. And so I am proposing that Hopkins make that change, especially given the fact that we have... Three robust ways to have more informal conversations around topics that are really important not only to us but to our community. And then we will be reserving the workshops for information only items. So workshops, if you don't know, are a lot less formal. We can have more of a back and forth. There's not... The need there's just not as much pressure on

006workshop topics so I am proposing that we make that shift for our board in our community going forward and The chair and the superintendent will be mindful of ensuring that We're putting only action items on the meeting agenda and workshop items are for information only so that the board can engage in a really robust discussion about things that don't require an action. And that's what other, that's what I've heard from other boards, how they structure their meetings. Wondering any thoughts, feedback? Chair Andreessen? Yes. I appreciate considering the topic. You know, it's not an open conversation that we've had for some time, and so thank you for doing some research into it. I wonder, during the regular board meetings, then, are you envisioning, we have a couple of reports that we get by, I don't know,

007tradition? That's not maybe the word that I'm looking for right now, but we typically have, like, a superintendent's report. We have a treasurer's report. Are you envisioning changes to those? No. This would be part of the new business and or old business. So the report section. Only action items. Yes. Shortening. Yes, shortening. The superintendent and I have discussed having a time limit. And also... This is important. for questions and comments as well for the superintendent's report. We'll be disciplined in keeping that to 15 minutes, including the department highlights and also ensuring that we do have time to do things that I think are really important for a school board that centers student voice, which is hearing from our student board reps, and also acknowledging the great work that our students are doing, and also the

008adults who support them to make those achievements. I think we all find our royal blue runner. celebrations very meaningful. So yes, try and keep those though. Time constrained. OK, thank you. I appreciate that. Chair Andreessen, yes, thanks for thinking about this and checking with other districts. I think one of the questions just as making sure I'm tracking with you. Will this still include in our board meeting at 7 p.m.? Public comment will be included in that. Thank you for clarifying. Unless people are thinking they'd like a change to our half-hour, half-hour structure for public comment. No, I'd like public comment. Thank you. Thanks. Chair Andreessen? Yes. I appreciate... As other members have stated, you looking into this with respect to updated reports, basically. So, for example, on tonight's agenda for the regular meeting, we have.

009the 2024 audit update that is not an action item so would something like that move to workshop or would we consider putting items that perhaps have a lot of public interest on the regular agenda I do think that that has been our practice in the past and as we can see it has created these long meetings that go on and on and on. And so this suggestion of changing that practice is what that's hoping to alleviate. We did discuss when we were creating this agenda, at the time that we created it, it was going to be an action item. But I think we are what one or two days away from being able to vote on it And so it became an update But at the time that the agenda was created it was going

010to be an action item So yes, certainly if that became a situation again We would definitely Have it remain as an agenda item. Okay one of our follow-up question I lost my train of thought. Well, we can come back to you. Does anyone else have any thoughts, feedback? Sharon Driesen. Yes. As others have said, appreciate the willingness to consider this, think about it, research it, really appreciate it. I absolutely support it because, I mean, I completely agree with you. You know, we make decisions that are impactful, and we owe it to ourselves and our community and the kids in this district to... be making that as fresh as possible and as considered and thoughtful so i appreciate it and i'm definitely supportive thank you sure andreessen i remember what i was going to ask yes

011um with respect to the open comment periods i believe the current rule is that the open comments um are supposed to relate to agenda items is that right Currently, our guidelines are that the first public comment Section is that what you're addressing? The first public comment section Priority is given to comments that are for things that are on the agenda If we have more than ten people wishing to address the board Then those that do not pertain to items on the agenda go to the 30 minute at the end of the meeting Okay, and I don't think this has been an issue before, but perhaps we could consider opening that public comment up to include items that are on the workshop agenda then as well. No? Maybe? Thoughts? Yeah, I don't think people have thought

012we've considered that because... The the idea is that we want to have public comment on things that are actionable that we're doing at the meetings so priority would be given to anyone who wants to talk talk to us about something that we're voting on At the meeting that's the idea for that understood makes sense to me. Thank you. Yep Well, I will say that I feel like the consensus is this is a good shift. We will, of course, not be inflexible about it. If we do find ourselves with a meeting where there are no action items, we might shift something. However, I feel really good about this practice going forward, and I think it will help us get home before 10 p.m., which... I can't remember when we were able to do that. So, and

013then I did also just want to share with everybody, as discussed when we, at the end of our special meeting, I did notify both search firms that our choice was to go with MSBA. And I have been in contact with Barb Dorn, who is the person who is heading up our search, and got some really good feedback from her on next steps. And I appreciate some questions that were posed by board members, and she was also able to address those. And I just wanted to make sure that... i updated the board in our community about Next steps and what this process is going to look like. So the very first order of business, and we really can't get anything done until this has happened, is our planning meeting. So finding a date where that can

014happen is of the utmost importance. So one of the things that we discussed, Barb, Dorn, and I, was the thoughts that multiple board members brought up about ensuring the MSBA this process reflects our values and one of our central values is equity here at Hopkins so she recommended that another part of their of the search firm would be would come with her and be part of the planning process And so those dates that are available, I'm just quickly running these by people to get a temperature check, would be Thursday, February 12th, 5.30 p.m. And then Friday, February 13th, 5.30 p.m. And then Saturday, February 14th, after 1 p.m. This would still keep us timing-wise very competitive. And so hoping that some of those, one of those works for everybody. She did also know that we

015discussed MSBA's hiring the right superintendent workshop, and that's something the board, I think, unanimously agreed we wanted to engage with. and it is included with search services, but we do have some options as to how we want to receive that training. There are two options. So we could use one of the dates that were listed for a two-hour workshop and schedule the two to three-hour planning meeting for a later date, or we can hold an abbreviated one-hour workshop. prior to or on the same day as the two to three hour planning meeting. Does anyone have a preference for which model you'd like? Chair Andreessen? Yes. I'd prefer the second set. I don't want to push back any further, our planning, if I heard you correctly. Right. So an abbreviated one-hour workshop. Yep. and then having

016the two to three hour planning meeting on the same day. And she did also tell me that a lot of the content of that workshop is just kind of included in the supports and the facilitation that MSBA provides along the way. So I don't see any issue with having, condensing a one hour, a two hour workshop to a one hour. but because they are doing our search, anyone else have a preference? All right, then we can go with number two and I will let her know. And so I can send these dates out if that would be preferable to everyone and you can get back to me as to what will work best for you because I know we want to get to transportation. Then we have a timeline so we have two timeline options

017because Barb and I discussed the some board members wishing to have community engagement before we post Well before we decide on our leader profile and so she really So she gave us two timeline options. So option one would be with MSBA's assistance, the board develops a leadership profile and the position is posted two days later. Community engagement begins two days later, so at the same time, and runs parallel to the posting with the resulting public engagement summary report being used to screen all applications, recommend finalists, develop interview questions, and inform board deliberations after both round one and round two candidate interviews. This timeline represents the process utilized in 95% of MSBA searches So we would not be an outlier by any stretch of the imagination And then there is option 2 which has in community

018engagement begins two days after the planning meeting and runs approximately three weeks After which the board meets again to review the public engagement summary report and then develop a leadership profile The position is then posted two days later and the report is also used to screen all applications, recommend finalists, develop interview questions, and inform board deliberations after both round one and round two candidate interviews. This timeline, however, would set back your search by approximately one month and it is utilized in 5% of our searches. So that is our two options. Karen Dreesen. Yes. Thanks for doing the legwork on making the sausage here. What is the timeline? So choice two is waiting and collecting feedback, and what does that look like? In fact, if we were to choose that, what does that look like for

019our timeline? Are we pushing into the summer then, or what is that? Well... So if let's say we get our planning meeting done on the earliest possible day the 12th then two days after that would be the community engagement so we are then running into a month that So we would essentially be pushing out for a month to six weeks. So that means we wouldn't have our, the timeline with the first option would be our profile, our position would be posted in February. Going with option two means it would be mid to late March. Late March, okay. Which from my understanding is. late So we we may miss the prime window for when supers are looking. Yeah, okay in my understanding Like just reading this I think that I really appreciated her Writing all this

020down because I was like well the community engagement is happening the same across the search right And I think really all we're doing with option two is pushing it out. Cause we're doing the community engagement upfront, but we're still using it. Yeah, we're still using it at the time that we're doing the actual search. Chair Andreessen. Yes. I don't have a problem with either choice. I'd prefer... the second, but I also don't want us to miss the greatest opportunity window we have. That being said, is there an option to, well, first, let me take a step back. The planning meeting is an open meeting for the community. They could attend if they wanted to. Yes. And it's at the planning meeting where the board will Discuss and determine the profile is that what is that

021what happens at the planning meeting? The board developed the leadership profile I Would assume so And all of that is with MSBA's assistance Okay, so my my thought is that if that's an open meeting Would it be possible to? invite perhaps those that feel very strongly about being present while we develop the profile to attend that meeting. Yeah, our board meetings are posted. They're public knowledge. I wouldn't want to, in the interests of being fully transparent, prioritize any one community member over another in this process. But they could be here present physically to have the profile piece of that. If people felt more comfortable to be physically present here, they have that option to be here. As they do for every board meeting. Right. Thank you. Yep. Any other thoughts? Yeah. Welcome. Thank you. Thank

022you. Okay. Is there... Any option, and I don't want to burden staff too heavily, is there any way to get a temperature check, like is a little bit of a bummer, to maybe take on some work inside the board that MSBA would maybe have done? But is there any way to like list 20 qualities and send it to the community and ask them to pick their top five? Like is there any way to do something like that and people have five days to do it? THAT WOULD LET US GO WITH THE FASTER TIMELINE AND LET THE COMMUNITY WEIGH IN AT THE PRESCRIBED KIND OF MSBA TIMES, BUT WE HAVE AT LEAST ANYTHING AT ALL FROM OUR COMMUNITY UPON WHICH TO BASE OUR DISCUSSION IN THE PLANNING MEETING. AND I HAVE THE SAME CONCERN AS YOU

023AS IF THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO ARE REALLY TUNED IN AND REALLY CARE ABOUT IT, I THINK THAT THAT'S GREAT. And they are welcome at any meeting. But I absolutely do not want to say, like, those 5 to 40 people, that their voice is kind of more important than this. And so I would hesitate to, like, issue that invitation to, like, this is the time that you can weigh in. And it would not be my understanding that a planning meeting for this would be the time that community members can weigh in. Like I don't foresee that that being on the agenda. Okay. So if that's the expectation, that's not what the planning meeting is for. It's for the board to get what we need to get done done in order to start this process. That is

024what the planning meeting is for. Yeah, that does help me. Thank you. So I don't know that exactly this format that I suggested is the format, but is there? I mean, I think that that's something we can take back to Barb and I can let her know that that's like if we like, I feel like because of timing, we want to go with option one, right? All of us here at the table want robust community input across the board in this process. And so what are the ways, because when I was talking to her, I said, well, can't we just send out a survey and be done in a week? And she's like, no, you can't do a survey that way. And I'm like, ah. And I agree. You really can't because we all know

025this. Yes, we all know this from doing this work, that you hear from the same people over and over and over again. And I don't want that to be the community input we get. We need to be intentional. We need to be really, really careful that we are hearing from everyone in our community and, you know, a week. is not gonna do that. But I can definitely go back to her and say, how can we, even in a small way, bring some community input into this? And what she did suggest, and I frankly, I think she's spot on. She said that in all the time she has done this work, she has never experienced a board that is disconnected from their community. She said, that's why you were voted in. That is your role to

026represent your community. And I agree with her. And I think that, and I also defer to her experience in that we are connected to our community. We do know what a leader profile for Hopkins would look like based on our community needs. And I think we are all tapped into that and tapped into different communities, which I think is the strength of this board. So I will go back to her and see if there's an additional way that we can get community input beyond the seven of us at this table, which is our role. Thanks. Chair Andreessen, just to echo as we're talking about this. I absolutely, you know, I think that... many of us are feeling that, you know, that both and of wanting to ensure that on the one hand, absolutely we are

027getting the timing thing came up during the conversation with, with them, right. Where it's like, sometimes it comes down to who do you get the offer from first and say, yes. So I want them to say yes to us only. And first, of course, the best candidate for our district. And, and so I think absolutely. Waiting until the end of March, I noticed my own anxiety creeping up, thinking about waiting until the end of March to let folks know we're for sure have a posting that they can apply for. And, you know, and that sense of wanting to be so intentional throughout this process that it just bolsters our community trust in our work as their representatives and holding that space. And it truly can be just something that launches our next superintendent with such

028community support and buy-in. And so I just want to acknowledge that that tension is there. And so I do echo some sort of wonder, and this is, I will acknowledge I'm brand new at this table, and so I don't know how this would be thought through. You know, like if there are even some representative persons who can even just help to... way in in this first moment for us so that there's still some check, you know, checking in with some folks before we get to that planning meeting. And then I think, again, the big thing, and I'm not the only person naming this, being so intentional in our communication about that this isn't a, oh, we decided and everything's set, that the community engagement that we will be doing is deep and substantive and will

029deeply impact. what sort of questions candidates are being asked and just being so clear repeatedly in our communication. And I'm happy to help vocalize and support that, you know, as a part of the board into the community to say, absolutely, we started here and here's how this was shaped. And so I just think that will be important. And I would echo if there's some possibility that can be both equitable and thoughtful in a moment of representative community engagement as we come into planning, I would be very in support of that. And if that is not possible, then I would say let's go with option, get it sooner, but be so intentional about deep community engagement. Thank you. I think in the interest of time, because transportation is important. Obviously. I am going to just sum

030up and if you have other feedback, please email it to me. What I will do is communicate to Barb that we are leaning strongly to option one, knowing that there's a desire to get community input at the forefront. I would just encourage every board member to reach out to your people. and to reach out to your people and to get their input so that you bring it to the board table. That's what we were elected to do. And so you have. Few weeks to do that work, which is our work as board members quickly a question was asked about having a committee Barb responded that Appointing a board subcommittee to assist with the search is an ineffective way to conduct the process There's only about five meetings involved And almost all of them need the

031full board in attendance for decision-making sessions and interviews and training opportunities. So having a board committee isn't necessarily going to take off any of the load. The full board needs to be a part of it. And also there has been... communication to Natalia who is our amazing assistant who is communicating with our director of communications to make sure that this is fully transparent to the public MSBA shared a bunch of examples from other districts on how they have conducted their public facing superintendent search communications and MSBA will be working in conjunction with our interim director of communications as well as Natalia to get all of that running and ready and part of the process. So again, sorry to cut this short, but I want us all to be able to have a deep conversation about

032transportation. because I think we have some work to do in the coming months. And I will be sure anyone, if you have any feedback at all or have any questions, feel free to email me and I will follow up with Barb. And I will also send you out those dates so that we can get the planning meeting on the calendar as soon as possible. So with that, I would like to invite... I don't have your name in front of me. Apologies. Tomber. Sorry. Tomber up to the table for transportation, and I will turn it over to Dr. Mary Peary-Reed. Thank you. And we also have our Assistant Director of Transportation, Naisha Williams, who is coming up. I did not see you there. So we did want to provide our school board and community with a

033mid-year transportation update. As many of us are aware, we... implemented some changes this fall to try to reduce our transportation expenses and operate within our means while still trying to provide families with quality transportation services. And then shortly after our implementation, we thought that it would be a good idea to bring in a transportation professional to partner with Nyesha really just to offer a fresh lens into our current state and to really support Ms. Williams in assessing, okay, how well did we implement those changes? Were they the right changes? and what do we need to do now to just continue moving forward. So Tom Burr will introduce himself. He has some experience in multiple districts, and he's been working closely with Ms. Williams. Your chair is quite low. Do the adjustment thing so you can

034sit higher. There we go. Okay, that looks much better. Okay, so these two have been working closely together for the last couple of months, and we're excited to hear your report. Thank you for being here. Thanks for having us. As the superintendent stated, my name is Tom Burr, and we got together in November to start this process. I want to go over some things as to who I am and why I'm here tonight. First of all, I would like to thank the transportation staff at Hopkins for welcoming me into the office and providing a very cordial and professional setup. And I have immersed myself in the transportation office since November. They were very kind in getting me set up. I want to start out with who I am. I consider myself, I don't consider myself

035a consultant. I consider myself a student transportation professional. I've been in this business for a long time. I started out as a school bus driver while attending St. Cloud State University. and graduated with my criminal justice and psychology degree. And then a job opportunity opened up and was asked to apply to be the assistant supervisor. So I got that job and then moved to supervisor. Spent 10 years at St. Cloud. public schools on the public side. And then an opportunity rose at YZETA, so I spent six years as transportation director at YZETA. And after that, another opportunity came my way that I could switch from the public side to the private side of student transportation, the bus, the actual school bus contractor side for St. Louis Park. A gentleman that I worked with at YZETA.

036Obtained the contract for St. Louis Park schools and he needed someone to get the bus company up and running to service St. Louis Park schools. So I did that for 10 years. Another opportunity at Vision Transportation. I live in Rogers. Vision Transportation ran... school bus operations in Elk River and Big Lake at the time. So I enjoyed my three years, was general manager of Vision Transportation. Another opportunity, St. Paul Public Schools. I was back on the public side. I guess you can consider me a job hopper, but at St. Paul Public Schools, I spent eight years at, and I technically retired from St. Paul Schools. And now I am back driving a school bus a.m. and p.m. because I just can't get out of the industry. Oh, that's amazing. Thank you. I love that. I

037consider it public service now, and it's still something I enjoy to do. But I was invited in via a colleague of mine and a colleague that knows the superintendent, and she obtained my name and number, and we had a couple conversations, and she told me what was up, and I agreed to jump into this. Everything that was done with the changes this fall were meant to reduce the budget. Obviously, I think Hopkins was facing a pretty steep budget shortfall, and Hopkins wanted to look at cutting some costs and thought they could achieve that in transportation. So these are the specific items that were looked at or that were implemented this fall. The zones around the schools, the no-bus zones, as they're called, were increased for elementary from a half a mile to one mile, and

038then at the secondary level, increased from one mile to two miles. So that was the no-bus zones. Open enrollment was capped at capacity. What open enrollment does is... The buses within the district, for kids that are non-resident, they can access a bus within the district. What happened with that was they filled up quickly. And once they filled up, there were no other buses available. There was a time, correct me if I'm wrong, there was a time that there was a hub system that was provided for enrollment kids in Hopkins. And there was also a bus provided with the contractor to provide some transportation. But the routes reached capacity, and then they created a lottery system. The lottery system, from what I gather, created some frustration, both on the part of parents and families and on

039the transportation staff. When I came in mid-november they were still receiving calls from parents looking for bus seats and the transportation staff was still working in to figure out What is actually at capacity? What is it the problem? You know with routing and especially high school routes is that capacity is fluid it changes daily You might assign 70 students to a route and one day 30 will show up, one day 40 will show up, then back to 30, then back to 50. Capacity is hard to get a hold of. And that's one thing that the Transportation Department had to deal with. And the other item that was changed was the bell time. or the tier system that the buses run on. That was also altered. Prior to this year, there was a two-tier system that

040transported students in two waves, first wave, early wave, and then a second wave. And then this was converted to a three-tier system. And I'll go into each one of these into a little more detail as I move along. And then I had a discussion with intra district transportation I just wanted to verify with naisha before the meeting and I thought I was under the assumption that it was discontinued but it is not intra district transportation is for example if you're within the Alice Smith Attendance area and you wanted to attend Gatewood Typically there is no transportation, but Hopkins has provided that and continues to provide that. So that needs to be corrected on my PowerPoint. So that is still in place. I don't know that there's many kids that take part in that. Depends on

041the school. Depends on the school? Depends on the school. You can fill up a bus too. Okay. It depends. So these are the items that specifically were looked at to rein in the budget for the transportation department. First of all, no bus zones. These are the numbers of students that are impacted by the no bus zones and by the bus zone changes. As you can see, there's some outliers, some bigger numbers. Al Smith with 152 kids, families. Meadowbrook with 112, the total is 537. In my experience, 537 students is not a lot of students. And if you want to look at it a different way, of those six elementary schools, 43 routes service those six elementary schools. So if you do a simplistic math, and this is very simplistic, five... 40 or 537 divided by

04243 is about 12 and a half kids per bus could be added and Would take care of the situation obviously that's that's overly simplistic, but I think you you get where I'm going that There's a potential that this could be just absorbed within the current route structure and also likely with the The secondary schools because those numbers aren't very big either now these Changes were presented via an audit by an outside firm called CISO. I don't know what transpired and how all that took place as to what was adopted and what was picked and chosen, but no bus zones was in that discussion and was in that choice that was made. Continuing on. The open enrollment discussion is always quite interesting. It's interesting, I don't think that open enrollment came into the school districts in

043Minnesota in 1988. I don't think they had a Hopkins situation in mind when open enrollment first started. From what I gather, it looks like about 1,000 students go out. And 1,000 students come in. Is that correct, roughly, number experts? About 2,000. 2,000 go out, 2,000 come in? It's that big? Yeah. Okay, I understand. Overall, there's some detail to that. All right. But it's about an even split. It's a little bit. The lines recently crossed where we have a couple more hundred going out than coming in. Okay. But overall. couple thousand out couple thousand in and of those thousand coming in a vast majority of those kids Look to reside in the Northeast section of the school district. So What you have up there you've got You've got an opportunity and and from what I see

044It's it's a benefit to to have open enrollment obviously and then It has to be decided how best to service them. The current way, as I explained earlier, is having buses within the district run routes up in the northeast quadrant, and then when they're full, that's it. They wait. Now prior, there used to be a hub system with gathering up open enrollment students. My one of my proposals is or one of my thoughts But it needs some this open enrollment needs some additional conversations. I would recommend putting hub stops just outside of the district border and creating a pay-to-ride situation however Those hub stops will likely fill up I know we're probably dealing with over 500 kids and a number of them 500 using the junior high nor junior high and Hopkins High School, so

045how many hub stops and how many buses does the district want to? service those areas with Each bus runs approximately $100,000 so once excuse me Yes, $100,000 per year. So where do you begin and where do you stop? Do you accommodate all? Do you accommodate some? So it's a discussion that needs to continue on how best to service open enrollment families. There's also equity options that there are a number of kids that come in from North Minneapolis that are provided transportation and from what I gather they're considered open enrollment also. And that's a corridor just west of 94. that we run buses for, Hopkins runs buses for. It's three buses for North Junior and it's North Junior and the Hopkins High School and there's a few other buses for the elementary schools. So that's all,

046that's included in the discussion of open enrollment. But it, and I understand open enrollment, I've worked at other districts that open enrollment's very valuable. They actually go into the other district, develop routes, and take their kids to school. For instance, my most recent experience is St. Michael Albertville. They brought in, I would say, 35% of their student population from within the Elk River School District. Each family had to pay. I think the pay was around $600 per family per year, per student. There are options out there. It's just we, the transportation department, needs a little more direction on how the school district wants, you know, where do we draw the costs at. But I'll kind of leave open enrollment there, and like I said, it needs a little further discussion. The two-tier busing. This, to

047me, was the one that... Save some money for how the Hopkins School District The school year 2425 five elementary schools went early And then the secondary schools went later and then there was the outlier Meadowbrook at 933 to 403 That required 55 buses to to do 55 general education routes This year with the conversion to the to the three-tier busing system With three elementary schools going early, the secondary schools going second, and three more elementary schools going later, the 55 general ed school bus routes dropped to 47, which translates... These are rough. I just used ballpark figures, but 55 buses, $500 per bus per day, 170 days, $4.7 million. Roughly, this saved the district $680,000. And it's a positive to the Transportation Department to have done that, to have developed that and taken those routes

048out of the system. I want to explain a little bit more about the tier system in Hopkins. This is a screenshot of the transportation software that the Hopkins department uses. It's called Traversa. And this is a screenshot of the fleet. It's only route 701 to 713. Hopkins School District operates 47 general education routes. The odd thing is 18 of those 47 run like route 702 to 708. One route in the morning and one route in the afternoon. That's unusual. But it's due to student location and geography. For example, yep. And the other one, for instance, the routes that run for equity options, they're included in this, and they are solo runs because they're an hour and 15 minutes long in the morning, so you can't do an early route. And then in the afternoon, they're

049an hour and 15 minutes long again, so you can't do a late elementary route in the afternoon. It uses up a full bus, three of those. And there's also a number of other high school routes and West Middle School routes that are in this boat. Now, I do have a recommendation to mitigate a portion of these single runs. And that is to combine, and I'll go back to the map. West middle school and the high school is to combine West middle school and the high school riding the same route Because what we have now in the southwest quadrant of the district We're running independent routes for West middle school and independent routes for the Hopkins high school at the same time Some of these routes follow each other so my proposal is to My recommendation

050for this particular situation is to combine West and the high school. Kids on the same bus, picking them up at the same time. It would involve a minor time shift. And I'm prepping a report, and I've got the time shift, but it's five minutes. The high school should end. earlier in the afternoon than West Middle School. And I'll explain that. In the morning, I would anticipate we could cut five routes out of the system if we do something like this. In the morning, you'd run your West and high school kids at the same time, picking them up. You would then take all of those buses. I'm going to estimate 10 to 12 of those routes. They would go to the high school, drop off high school kids at 8.15, and then go back to West.

051and drop them off by 825. Then they're done. And then in the afternoon, I would elect two to three to four buses to gather up all the high school kids at dismissal time. You remember the high school? A lot of this gets kind of technical. Five minutes means a lot, especially when teachers are waiting for kids to leave the building. You want to be timely. In the afternoon, you'd start at the high school with three to four buses to load up all the high schoolers, bring them back to West where they would disperse and get on their bus home. This does a couple things. The ride times down in the southwest quadrant of the district are very long for both West and the high school kids. They're long. This would shorten their ride times. In

052fact, I would say... Create routes that are no longer than 20 minutes to service that area. And it would also free up buses because they're shorter routes. You could put a early run elementary school in front of it and a late run elementary school behind it. So then you'd be tier three tier setup. That's one of the routing recommendations that I have in mind for Hopkins School District. And on paper, everything, I've looked at it and written the times every which way you could. It looks like it'll work. Aisha, do you think it'll work? That's the important question. I like the idea. It's kind of similar to what we're already doing for North Middle School. So it's pretty much just adding a west piece. The same as what we already have for North. The difference

053is North and high school are kind of on the same campus. And it's not uncommon, this practice is not uncommon. When I went to Wyzetta back in the 90s, they had Wyzetta West, they had Wyzetta East, and the high school at Central. And every day, all the buses ran to the high school, dropped kids off, and then dispersed to the middle school. In the afternoon, 12 buses lined up at Wyzetta High School, six went to West, six went to East. I think our challenge, Mr. Burr, is that often we have competing priorities. So we're trying to really save on our resources and be super efficient. And at the same time, you know, we engaged in like a two-year sleep study, which does say that our older adolescents need... They benefit when school starts later in

054the morning and so that's why we have our Later than 815 starts at our secondary schools. Now. I don't know if you can apply your same Framework to the later start times that we have for our secondary schools. Right, and I'll run these times past you. I just pulled it out. I found it. We've got the high school going from 835 to 320, and we've got the middle school, and this is in my recommendation, we've got the middle school going from 840 to 325. So it's very, very similar to what it currently is. I think it moved up the high school by what, 10 minutes? But I would say the PM is the one that we have to think a little deeper about. The AM one, 815 High School, we have to think about North,

055but the high school opened their doors up earlier. So for that earlier breakfast. So that one may not cause for like a time change in the AM. It may just be an earlier drop off. versus an actual bail time change. I can say that, but the PM may actually need the five minutes. Yeah, I thought I heard 8.15. Say that again? I thought I heard 8.15 drop-off. 8.15 for a drop-off, not a bail time change. So that's the difference. So the bail time could stay the same if... we're able to drop off at the 8.15 time. So we kind of deal with drop-off times more than we do bell times, but we understand that the bell times are very important. But for us, that 8.15 time is just a drop-off time. If class can still

056start at the same normal time and we can drop off at 8.15, which we've heard from the high school, sometimes they would like us to be a little earlier, that could be helpful for the a.m. part. So it's increasing our comfort level with more time? where students are in the building but not in class in the morning. And maybe there are some structured experiences that we can offer students. Thank you. And remember, the routes will be a little shorter, so that might mitigate the time change where some of these high school routes are starting at what time? Very early. An hour and 15 minutes before school starts. And that's a long time to ride a school bus. Yes. Especially in the metro area. Some of this is actually due to us moving the high school

057on that second tier. That's just where the bulk of our buses are. That's where the bulk of our students are. So what we've been trying to do since that change is figure out a way to make everything work with what we have for all of our students. So I think that... It hasn't been such an issue when they were on the first tier just because we could have shorter routes and spread them out a little bit more. But being in the middle, it's hard to have something ahead or behind it. So part of it is us trying to rectify something that we've done a few years ago. And this is just an increased solution as we were able to look more into it to say, hey, it's a possibility to make this change and make

058some things that we've been working through easier for us. So are there other recommendations? Yes. Should we go to those? I've got a list coming up. Great. Of additional recommendations. I just want to make sure I'm covering everything. So that was a discussion about the routing change that creates some efficiency going forward if that's the way the district chooses to go with this routing change. That brings a close to my discussion of the two and three tier and there's the fleet again and like I said it is it is unusual for a school district most school districts have a better balance of buses using or going through three tiers. There's always outliers in every district, but 18 is high to have single runs. And you don't get a cost break for that. There's no, because

059they have to put a bus on the road and a driver in that bus. So there's no cost savings. Here are my, here's the recommendations. Communication, okay. We're all in tune with everything. We're at instant communication with everybody. We want to get the transportation system to that point. There are tools out there that are available. First of all, campus integration. Prior to this summer, another event that took place for the transportation department that... Was difficult to manage it at the particular time was a change in transportation software that occurred June June June or so It went to a different and it's always recommended to Do that in at least six months in advance and run it parallel with the current system, but anyway The campus integration was lost with that change in software So we

060are working diligently with the RIT department and campus to get campus integrated. Parents should be able to go on their student's portal and find out, here's my bus, here's my bus stop, here's the time it comes. It's a week before school starts. We can send out an email. You can now retrieve your information in campus. It's vital to get that up and running. We are on a good path. We're meeting with campus and our internal IT tomorrow to continue this process. Two other items that are within our transportation software, currently in the software, it's called automated vehicle location, AVL, and My K-12 app. Basically, automated vehicle location is GPS. All of our contractors use GPS in their vehicles. It's running now. We have the capabilities of gathering up their GPS information and integrating it into

061our software. So what happens is you've got a bus route, and then you've got our written structured route laying over it. We can monitor. performance. We can check on time performance. We can check did this bus driver make this bus stop this morning? And it's, I hope to have that going and I've kind of taken that off on Aisha's plate to... Because she's got her hands full so I'm working on that. There's a lot of third-party Conversations going on because our two vendor contractors have two different GPS systems And we've got Tyler tech so but it they ensure me that it's going to be In February that we'll have that up and running once we get automated vehicle location the next step is my K-12 app, which is what families can download to find out

062if their bus is running late. Or where is the bus? My child's not home yet. Where is the bus? So that's automatic vehicle location has to come prior to my K-12 app. We hope to get that up and going this spring, piloted this spring, maybe run it this summer. to get it up and going for the start of school this coming 26, 27 school year. I just want to quickly remind, let everyone do a time check right now. I would like to give some time for board member questions. So if we're in a position where we could wrap up in five minutes, that'd be great. I'm all for that. All right. And then routing talked about implement pay to ride. We can say busing to 24, 25 levels, but instead of no bus zone, it's

063a pay to ride situation. And these are my numbers I just threw in there, 200. A lot of this is mimicking what Minnetonka's done for years. And they're at, I believe, $150 per student, and they cap at a family. And then open enrollment, further discussion is needed, potentially create hub stops. RFP is coming, which we go out, send out specifications. Anybody interested to contract with the Hopkins School District, this is the time that they have the opportunity to do this. New bus contractors, sometimes that can be a good thing, sometimes that can be a bad thing. However... And we hope to have this situation finalized end of March, beginning of April. The earlier the better, because if there's a new contractor, they need time. They have to buy equipment and hire drivers. Cost impact. I

064don't see a great cost impact with my suggestions. A little more efficiency created with the West and the high school combination. The biggest unknowns right now, open enrollment. What does the school district want to do with open enrollment? And what is going to happen with the RFP? What are rates going to come in at? That's a big unknown. Impressive, two minutes, you wrapped up in two minutes. Thank you for that. That gives board members five more minutes to ask questions. So really appreciate this, especially the historical context of where we were, the process we had last year, which I think there was a lot of information thrown at us as board members. So thank you for consolidating all of that. Yeah, I think these recommendations are really interested. Any feedback or questions from board members?

065Chair Andreessen. Yes, Director Zhao. Yes, hi, Director Naysha and Tom. I appreciate you for being here. When we talk about transportation changes, I understand and I appreciate that it's very complicated, but I also get very, very anxious because execution has been uneven. And we've had, I mean, I think since I've been on the board, a lot of situations where kids aren't getting picked up or they're late or people don't know where the routes are. So, you know, I think. we really need to get it right. And so we need to have a focus on execution. And so your recommendations, I think, are great, but we just need to have them happen, right? And so, you know, stuff doesn't go according to plan, and we just need to, I mean, do you have a sense for,

066like, can you nail it? Like, I don't, you know, it's maybe a hard question to ask, but, like, if you can execute it, then that's great. But if you can't and it's like a moonshot, then that's something that we need to consider as a board. I think from my perspective, we are able to execute with enough time. And so one thing that we've always had... Conversation is about us having enough time when decisions are made to be able to make the changes and implement them on time. And so I think that's where some of our frustrations are coming from is one, the communication, which a lot of that we are working through with our new system. There's like the My K-12 app and things like that that come along with that. But also it's just

067having the time. We usually start routing even now. for next year. We at least start preparing, but we haven't had the chance to do that in a few years just with a lot of the big changes that we've had throughout the year, different bail time changes, or we may have started routing and had to switch a few months later and reroute everything. So we're just hopeful that, you know, without any big changes, we'll be okay with time. And I'll jump in briefly. I don't see any of this as a huge change. Really. It's just incorporating the kids that want to ride. We do the pay-to-ride. We've worked with the business office, and they said that, yeah, that's not a problem. We can set that up, and we'll get that all set up well in advance.

068And one thing I do want to say is... Routine and stabilization in transportation is a good thing. We want to create that. There's been turnover in Naisha's office over the years. There's been changes from three to two tiers back to three. Routine and stabilization really is vital in transportation. And I think the families would agree to it, obviously, too. I'll send you a holiday card if you figure it out. So it's a little extra kicker. You can be on my holiday card list. Thank you. Yeah. I appreciate that question, Director Zhao, because I think that... At least from my perspective my expectation was that we were going to have a pay to ride option My my expectation when we were making decisions last year is that we were going to have a pay to ride

069option and so seeing this as a recommendation is great and makes me really worried that we were It was the expectation that we would have that delivered to us, to families, and it was not. So it raises my alarm bells to see that as a recommendation because I struggled to have confidence that that's going to be a reality. And I'm also just naming this. As someone who has a high school student, I love the idea of shortened routes. I think it's critical and really important for kids to not be on the school bus unless they have to be. But I do, as a parent, worry about putting middle schoolers on a bus with high schoolers, right? Like you just, it's widely different. developmental stages and just speaking as a parent I wonder if that would

070be a consideration so yeah those are just my wonderings and my thoughts and really I I think for myself in order to get excited about these recommendation in particular the pay to ride I would really need to know that this is actually going to happen for our families I would say Tom was not here during that first portion of when we went and implemented all of our no bus changes and things like that last year. And so as he come along, he's heard about what we were intending on doing and he's heard about what. didn't happen and how it didn't happen and so what we've been able to do and he's been really working hard with that it piece um when it comes to like our gps and making sure those systems are in place

071and we are way closer than we were before if we're talking about just the no bus zone uh pay to ride option and so that it was more of we had to get everybody the no bus zone situation started up, we're past startup, and now we're at a place where we know that we can implement it. We've talked to different districts. We've went through the processes in time. I think may have already worked in some districts that have something similar. So we are way closer, and we know for a fact that in transportation, that's something that we want to make sure that we implement for families. So I hope that helps with... we understand that it didn't happen and we wish that it could have happened and would have like we planned in in the

072first place but we are way closer and we plan we definitely want to make sure that we have this for our families um it's it would be helpful i mean the logistics of all the extra pieces of it is a whole different story but the process to get it done is really close and then just sorry just a quick follow-up on that um So I'm thinking from a policy standpoint. So the recommendation is to keep our policy as it is and to actually enforce our policy, which we weren't doing. But the fix for families then would be to implement the pay to ride. Is that my understanding of this recommendation? I think what Tom was saying from his recommendation is the fix for families would be essentially a pay-to-ride zone instead of a no-bus zone.

073So families could choose to pay to ride from that one mile or .5 or whatever with the fee. So essentially we'd be getting rid of the no-bus zone. say even a block away from school. If you decided you wanted to get a bus, you could pay to ride. That's what Tom's recommendation is. And I know we didn't go into that in depth on the slides, but that is what the fix would be for families. But keeping the one and two mile parameters. So that would be, so what we would, the policy shift would be to shift the language from no bus zone to pay to ride. So for elementary students, technically, yes. If we want to call it pay to ride, whatever we want to call it, that's fine. But yes, instead of it being

074a no bus zone, there's a certain area. So that one mile for elementary families, if you're within this one mile, let's take that, you are in our pay to ride zone. If you would like to, you can pay to ride. Families may not want to, or maybe they're in kins of company or different things like that. But that is what the fix is for families in this situation. Okay. Chair Andreessen? Yes. I just wanted to make sure that you and the board understand that currently North Middle School and Hopkins High School students ride the same buses. And some West also. So I would think it actually context calmer environment with high school kids on oh Believe me there is that would there is maybe they be a school bus driver to share their headphones And

075they've always rolled together except for the one year where we changed North's bell time Away from what the high school's bell time was that's the only time that they didn't ride together Which makes no sense whatsoever. And so just quickly to clarify around that, the understanding is that we would be able to keep our bus routes to 47 even with... The pay to ride, like we should be able to absorb that amount of ridership because I remember last year we were talking about, well, if we do that, we're just going to add another bus. We're going to add another bus and we're going to add another bus. So we're saying this is not going to be the case. It's still going to be 47 plus we'll be getting income from pay to ride. That's what

076I believe. Yes. Fantastic. With some outliers with open enrollment. Right, yes, that's that's the big question. Thank you. Sorry everybody. Change reason that I just have a quick question. I know we're limited on time so. Around this RFP so we've had two transportation providers MTN and Lake country right? Do we think we're still going to need two or are we going to move to like one? And then a quick follow-up. I'm thrilled to hear about the... moving to the automated vehicle location. If we ended up going with a new provider, does that put us back in the progress you've made, Mr. Burr? So for the first part, we have one primary contractor, which is Lake Country, who was awarded the contract. MTN has been a contractor that has helped us in driver shortages. So it's...

077We were fortunate enough to be able to utilize them to help us in a time of need when we didn't have the drivers to fulfill the routes. Typically, we'd go out for one. We would like to find a contractor that can take on everything that we have, all of our SPED, everything that we have, and it would be that one contractor, especially with us having the building that we have that they're housed in. And that's the hope. I mean we could always look into other things but the hope is to go back to the one which is more simple easier and then we would have that one GPS component that we'd have to deal with when it comes to the new contractor I don't think it would set us back it's just a matter of

078we make sure that stuff is in the RFP like we do for all of our contractors but we'd also just make sure what they're using or we could even require them to use a certain type of gps or whatnot if they're going up for bid for for the contract okay thank you Thank you all so much for coming to give this presentation and just for the interest of time I will just email some additional questions but I have one specific question so I know that start times was something that some families struggled with like with the later ones and so I know that's working for my family is that there is a before school aspect and the busing for that is seamless for us. And so I know there's a few kids who get on

079that bus. So if we implemented a before school program for some of the later schools like Alice Smith or Meadowbrook, will that resolve any issue at all for busing capacity for families or routing issues? I'm not sure completely. It all depends. It could shift either way. It could increase buses or it could take some away. It really depends. The bus that you're talking about was added on one of those high school buses that didn't have a first tier, and we made some adjustments to make it work. Give or take, it actually depends if we looked at it and we could see it. It would essentially be adding a first tier for someone else. So it's something to look into. Thank you any other questions thoughts Okay, so what I hear that the board needs to

080do if we Accept these recommendations and I think we might have more questions But we we do need to look at our policy again to make that no bus zone to pay to ride transition And then I'm also wondering and this would probably be a question for the monitoring committee Which we'll be sure to address is is there anything in our policy that? Would make our solution or our fix for open enrollment Non practicable like do we need to shift policy at all for that and we can look at that in the committee or Just to make sure that we have options when we're talking about open enrollment because I heard that is another recommendation We need to look at that. Is that correct? Policy just I just can you clarify? What would we be

081ship shifting the policy into I just I'm curious so I hear a recommendation that we address open enrollment and the what I heard is that Going to the hub idea of having adding in a few buses For students to get on that are open enrolled is that accurate? Yes, and so I'm wondering does the board need to do anything policy wise so that we can I think we should check just in action because I'm not sure if it would be a policy change I think it would be more of a practice change. I think we follow the STATUTE POLICIES ALREADY. IT'S JUST A MATTER OF AS A BOARD, ARE WE, WHAT WOULD WE LIKE TO DO WHEN IT COMES TO OPEN ROOM FAMILIES AND IF THE NUMBERS ARE INCREASING, DO WE WANT TO PUT MORE

082RESOURCES TO THE HUB STOPS OR NOT? OKAY. CHAIR ANDERSON, ONE MORE THING, IF I MAY. YES. THERE IS MINNESOTA STATUTE THAT REQUIRES Hopkins the school district to provide transportation within the attendance area of the school For open enrolled students. So would the hubs be within the school boundaries or are you talking about? Hubs outside of the school boundaries. Yeah, they were just outside The big thing there is you cannot charge you can create a pay-to-ride system within the district, but you can it's outside of the district Okay. Thank you. So we will at monitoring committee, Vice Chair Roper, we can look into that. Thank you all. I appreciate it. Thank you for the recommendations and for answering our questions. I think we have some really great things to consider and discuss and to look at

083to solve some of these issues for our community. Really appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks to you both for the time and the work And we get a whopping three minutes break Well back here it's welcome. I'd like to invite my board colleagues back to the table so we can get started We're a little bit past the 7 p.m. Hour I want to be mindful of people's time this evening so I will Go ahead and get started I will call to order the general meeting of the Hopkins School Board for January 27th 2026 at 7 o 5 p.m Thank you all for being here. Our first order of business is open agenda and we have the first part as public comment. The Hopkins School Board believes that hearing from our community members is crucial for implementing

084Vision 2031. If you wish to contact the board, you can do that via email. Instead of coming and providing public comment at a meeting, you can do so in two ways to provide public comment at a meeting. The first is voicemail. Do we have any voicemails for this evening? We do not have any voicemails, and I do not believe we have any in-person comments either. So thank you everybody. We do appreciate hearing from our community members. So please consider public comment or contacting us via email. That then takes us to our student board representatives report. I'm thrilled to see three of our board reps here at the table and I will turn it over to you. I will start. My name is Iris Moore. I'm a sophomore student board representative, and this is my second

085year on the board. First off, I wanted to talk about choir step-up night. This is tomorrow. High school choirs will sing a song called Turn the World Around with current eighth graders who will hopefully then join choir next year as a freshman. You may remember from last board meeting that I talked about Band Step Up Night and the Orchestra Festival, which happened, band happened two weeks ago and orchestra happened one week ago. Both of those concerts went really well, and I'm sure choir will as well. Next up, I wanted to talk about bilingual seals. This is your last chance this year to sign up for the bilingual test. You can earn the bilingual seal in a few different ways, one of which is through taking this test. The bilingual seal is an award that shows

086that you are able to write, speak, and comprehend in a language other than English fluently. There are different tests for many different languages to earn this seal. There are three levels of bilingual seal that can help you earn a scholarship, which are silver, gold, and platinum, platinum being the best score, silver being the lowest. Though those are only for scholarship scores, you can also get a bronze score, but it's unlikely you'll be awarded anything because of that score. It's equivalent to a two or lower on an AP test. In a similar strain, AP test registration is open. This is the second window of the year. So if you took an AP course first semester, this is your last opportunity to sign up for the AP test, which will be in May. If that is the

087case for you, then you will be feed. I believe it's $50, but I could be wrong. If you are taking the AP course this semester, then you won't be feed, but it is your only chance to sign up for the test. And then Eloise was not able to be here tonight, but she did have something very important to talk about, so I'm taking that over for her. She is leading this, though the entirety of student board is helping out with it. We are distributing red cards stating your rights and a script to say if you come in contact with an ICE agent. So these will be distributed hopefully next week at, at lunch in English, Spanish, Somali, Mandarin, and Hmong so that students and families can have a physical card that says everything they need

088to know and say if they come in contact with an ICE agent. And then lastly, I wanted to give my teacher spotlight, which is Mr. Liepa. As I'm sure you're aware, all of the classes have just changed because of the new semester, so I haven't fully gotten to know any of my teachers, but so far, Mr. Zliapa's class seems really fun and interesting. He's my HPAL teacher, and in the two class periods we've had, we've already analyzed a poem, started a new book, and learned a bunch of some obscure, some more common, interesting literary devices. Both class periods have been super interesting and enlightening, so I can't wait to see what we learn in the rest of the semester. Hi, everyone. My name is Adina. I'm one of the ninth grade reps, and it's my

089first year on the board. I want to start off by mentioning that today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Today marks the 81st anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, and it's a very important day, not just in Judaism, but for everybody to remember. I'll start with my teacher spotlight, Mr. Therrell. Mr. Therrell is the teacher for the DECA club and teaches my business and management class. It's only the second day of the term, but so far we've learned about the core pillars of management and what they mean for a business. Mr. Therrell always communicates clearly with his students and ensures that they have everything that they need to succeed. Next I want to talk about the end of the term. Last Thursday was the final day of the second term and the first semester and to

090celebrate the student council provided donuts at every entrance for students as they arrived to school. Looking ahead, there will be a boys tennis clinic for grades 7 to 12 on January 31st. It'll run from 2 to 4 p.m. in the North Middle School activity structure. It's a great chance for students to practice or see if they're interested in tennis before the season starts in March. Lastly, I want to highlight the DECA competition and awards ceremony. DECA is a business competition where students from many schools present projects and participate in interviews based on their chosen career path. The competition was held on Sunday, followed by the awards ceremony on Monday. And I am proud to announce that 37 of the kids from Hopkins qualified for the state competition. Thank you. That's impressive. Hi, my name is

091Hafsa and I'm also a freshman on the board. Today I wanted to start by talking about the upcoming interest trip meeting to go to Egypt. That's happening on the 29th at 5 p.m. at Hopkins High School in the West 121 room. The trip is basically for past or current AP World History. AP European History or AP African American Studies students interested in the trip to go to Egypt in the spring break of 2027. The second thing I wanted to talk about was the SMAC volunteer opportunity. SMAC stands for Student Multicultural Advisory Committee. They aim to create a safe and supportive space with opportunity to directly impact the safety and security program at Hopkins High School. Interested students can fill out an interest form to be provided with further information in the newsletter that's sent out.

092The next thing I wanted to talk about was that next week the high school will be signing up for next year's classes. Students will be able to fiddle around with their course requests through infinite campus just like last year. It's recommended that each student sign up for 16 credits each year, though it's not needed to graduate it. Lots of interesting courses that are available at the high school include culinary, psychology, and even keyboarding. And finally, I'd like to spotlight my math teacher, Ms. Han, for creating a positive environment and giving us time to do the math problems she gives us. We're still picking up. So today we did an equation of the day and examined some graphic data. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate those updates. Super impressed that 37. Deca, people made it to the

093finalists. Any other comments or questions? Thank you. I really do appreciate your board reports because it just gives us like real time insight about what's happening at the high school. Just wondering how can we as, you know, like as board members, as a district best support you right now, just given the current climate of everything that's happening in Minnesota. I want to make sure that we are supporting you all a hundred percent. I know as adults, we struggle, right? But as high schoolers, you all may be struggling a bit more. I don't want to miss the mark to provide you with what you need in this moment. Yeah, thank you. I think right now a lot of students are just really scared and the best support that we can offer is I think information and

094like making sure that every student knows that they are valued and they are wanted in Hopkins and I'm saying this as a white person who is a citizen of the US so If someone else also wants to comment and say what they would think as someone from a different perspective, then that's obviously wonderful. But from what I've noticed, I think the biggest thing is just to be transparent about what students... like what their rights are right and that's why we're distributing these cards if ICE agents come to school what's going to happen right so we're trying to get this information out about what our policies are at the high school and the district and things like that just that students are informed about what could happen and everything that they should be prepared for if

095that makes sense thank you I would just say, I mean obviously everything Iris said was perfect. I would just say like keep continuing your engagement and your communication with the students, making sure like Iris said that every student knows they're valued and that they just know that you're going to be there for them whenever they need it. I think so far this has been great. I myself, after everything that's happened, the principals have reached out to students and stuff with emails about things and how the support they can get if they need it. I think currently this is like personally what I think is like. such a great way to show not only students, but sometimes even parents that like get to see the emails that were sent to the students that, hey, Hopkins likes

096everyone. They're all the same and everything is, you know, like that. I think, like Iris said, information. I think some people aren't as informed as others. Some people, again... like watch the news like 24-7 some people are just trying to like lock in and just like Trying to hide everything nothing's happening, but I think information especially like direct information like face-to-face information Something like this if we had people like come in and we talk to them like this I think this is like the best way to put it into like real words for them I will say you know these are certainly dark days, but one thing that gives me hope is seeing and hearing our students standing up for ourselves and each other and being kind to each other. I know you had a

097walkout and I'm really, really glad that you did that because I think it's important to get the attention of adults and. say that this is not normal and I really appreciate all of you for doing that. So thank you. I wholeheartedly agree. Very, very, I'm always proud to represent Hopkins students, but increasingly so every day. You show us how to be in community with one another and I'm very, very proud. Thank you for that, and thank you for being with us this evening. Of course, we welcome you to stay. We always appreciate your input and understand that you may have other things to do with your evening. So with that, we will turn it over to Dr. Mary Perry-Reed. Thank you, Chair Andreessen. Was just looking for a photo from my phone. I should have

098included it in the slide deck, but it's a photo of nearly a foul well probably not a thousand because the auditorium seats about 900 but 900 of our high school students who were debriefing in the auditorium after the student-led protest and Just to see the facial expressions of our students and really engaged on the debriefing Listening to the adults who were guiding the debriefing was a really strong reminder of how our students Show up during important times and also show up for each other. So it's a small little photo Oh Is the slide deck not working? Okay, thank you So we normally have a student recognition before the board meeting begins and we were going to recognize our AAA award winners, but they are busy people just like our student board reps So neither one

099of them were available for this evening So I did just want to do a quick shout out to our two high school seniors who are this year's triple award winners, Lucy Johnson and Levi Lagasse. I'm not sure if that's how we pronounce Levi's last name. But the AAA award honors high school seniors across the state who maintain a GPA of 3.0 or higher and participate in Minnesota State High School League-sponsored athletic and fine arts activities. So congratulations to Lucy and Levi. It's a big award. On this next slide, you'll see examples of our kindergartners engaging in our new math curriculum. Our students and teachers really love the new math curriculum. This curriculum invites students to talk and write about math, to listen to each other's ideas, justify their thinking, and critique others' reasoning to develop

100their own mathematical understandings. These kindergartners are at Alice Smith in Ms. Largo's class. They're practicing their adding and subtracting skills by using counters and 10 frames. And then in addition to addition and subtraction, our math curriculum will require kindergartners to represent and compare numbers, recognize 2D and 3D shapes, explore measurement, spatial reasoning, and patterns. So kindergarten is a really important year for developing mathematical thinking. This next slide is about assessing student writing. So two years ago, we piloted dictating sentences in all classes across grades K through two and administering the same writing prompts in all classes across grades two through five. And these are now required writing assessments. These common writing assessments are aligned to standards. They include clear administration guidance, multilingual prompts for immersion, and opportunities for student reflection. And they are used by

101teachers to better understand student writing and also the impact of instruction. Based on feedback and best practice we are exploring a similar approach for Back to the writing slide We are exploring a similar approach for middle school that would support student portfolios balanced assessment and student agency over time and then the long-term vision is for students to build a meaningful writing record across grades that reflects growth strengths and personal voice as they prepare for high school and beyond Here on this next slide you'll see, oh Iris there you are. You'll see, actually we had probably close to 40 students, high schoolers in this room, S182. These students joined district leaders and reps from Fielding International and SiteLogic, our architecture and construction partners for the bond referendum. And these students shared input on what the school's

102physical spaces. could look like for the next generation of learners. Students participated in a gallery walk to review images of learning spaces from actual schools around the world and shared what inspires them and what could be improved in our own high school and also what would best support learning. This gathering is one of many opportunities for students and the Hopkins community to help shape school upgrades and renovations that were made possible by November's voter-approved bond referendum. We're very grateful to our community for investing in modern, welcoming learning spaces, not only for today's students, but of course for future generations. On this next slide, you'll see Ms. Nelson. Rachel Nelson is one of six academic counselors at Hopkins High School. Drawing on prior experience at Minnetonka High School, Ms. Nelson believes student seminars are an effective

103way to build relationships, share information, and ensure students are prepared for high school and post-high school planning. while also reducing the need for repetitive one-on-one counselor to student meetings. After aligning with district leaders on the college and career scope and sequence, Ms. Nelson and other counselors... help integrate Mya Learning tools into a comprehensive 6-12 post-high school planning framework. Seminars are intentionally sequenced throughout the year. So seniors in September, juniors in November, freshmen in December, sophomores in January. So we're grateful to our high school counselors and also our college and career specialist, Dr. Kuhl, for designing this structure to ensure that all students are receiving. the post high school guidance and support that they need and deserve. I would like to thank our Hopkins Education Foundation, HEF, for launching the Hopkins Strong Relief Fund, which has

104now raised more than $167,000. Wow. Putting us more than halfway to our $250,000 goal as we continue working to meet growing needs for food, rent, utilities, and other essentials for our vulnerable. families. Support has poured in from more than 670 donors across 40 states, Washington, DC, and even internationally, reflecting this really powerful sense of collective responsibility for our families. Many of our immigrant families are facing extreme challenges and through this partnership with the ICA food shelf the fund will be able to help those who need it most and as many of us know the momentum was strengthened by a generous matching donation from Paige Becker's whose leadership and generosity inspire our community. So thank you Paige. Thank you HEF. Thank you, ICA and all the parents and community members who have been helping to make

105this a vibrant opportunity. Okay, and then this is my last slide because I'm trying to meet a time limit. Am I meeting it? Awesome. Then we have Mr. Kappel, who will help with a program spotlight. So I just, we had our students earlier talking about how they are doing during this radically uncertain time. We are monitoring our staff and students very closely. We're monitoring our student attendance and staff attendance very closely. We are currently offering as described in an email to staff and families on January 15 We are offering flexible learning pathways to any student or family Who does not feel safe coming to school? So please know that students families can call the point of that just call your school They will know who the point of contact is to get students connected to

106a flexible learning pathway so that that content con continuing learning can occur and we also have a really organized district-wide parent network probably close to 200 or more I don't want to say a number because I actually don't know how many hundreds of parents are involved in this really organized network that's connected district-wide, but also provides a base of support for each of our 11 schools with a parent coordinator who is the point of contact for each school principal. So this network of parents is available to provide that very unique. or individualized support that students and families and even staff might need. Then we talked about safety protocols. So to date, federal agents have not attempted to enact immigration enforcements on school property. So important to know that. If staff encounter federal agents at our

107schools or in our parking lots or at the external doors, then staff know, and they've been informed multiple times across all of our sites, so staff have been informed, to contact the administration, who will then call local law enforcement, and we talk with our local law enforcement partners. about what they will, how they will engage with federal agents and they're prepared to take over those conversations to try to just, you know, get everything. Taking care of off of school property. I think is the most important things we can keep our students and staff safe and Then also bus drivers have been informed that if they see agents at bus stops They are not to let students off of the buses. So we do feel confident that staff are well informed at this point Families I

108think is a different story. So I think it's a good idea to send reminders to families either written or in social media just what the protocols are and where they can get some resources if they want to know more about their rights or safety protocols educational support opportunities things like that and then we did want to let our community know that if a student or family is questioned or detained or deported. We do not share that family's personal situation and private data with our broader community. We do share information if we have permission and only on a needs-to-know basis. So we did receive a few emails when a family recently was detained and now, you know, It's more well-known because it was in the news. And so families asked, well, how come we weren't notified?

109And unless families are in a need-to-know basis, for example, if it impacted a specific classroom or a specific school, then we'll share information, but not more broadly than... like I said, on that need-to-know basis. So I hope that makes sense. And with that, I'm going to invite Mr. Kappel to come and provide a program spotlight on AVID. So AVID stands for Advancement Via Individual Determination. It's a nationwide program that has helped thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of students. acquire the organizational and academic skills that help them be more successful in advanced high school courses and then obviously apply and get into So Mr. Kappel is our wonderful AVID coordinator. He's also a Hopkins High School teacher, and we're grateful for all the work you do for our students and community, and I'll let you put

110a program spotlight on AVID. Thank you, I appreciate it again. My name is Matt Kappel. I'm avid district director along with that I teach science actually not at the high school anymore at our virtual edu school. So so that's my role. That's my 31st year here in the Hopkins District. Welcome. Thank you for being here. The mission statement, as you can see, AVID's mission is to close the opportunity gap by preparing all students for college and career readiness and success in a global society. I want to emphasize that AVID, while we strive to make sure that all of our students have all of their options for them post-secondary, including admission to a four-year university, we are not limiting our students or steering our students to any one particular path. We encourage career readiness, job readiness.

111two year technical schools, any of that, but we feel that the skills we teach will serve our students well in all of those options. Currently in Hopkins, we have AVID in three of our buildings at Alice Smith Elementary and then at Virtual EDU and at Hopkins High School. In all three of those buildings, AVID's goals and purposes are to build strong academic habits for all of our students, our executive functioning skills, and to help build the traits of our Hopkins scholars. We really truly believe in holistic and confident scholars for everybody. And we think the skills centered around, you can see on the presentation, the acronym is WICR, Writing, Inquiry, Collaboration, Organization, and Reading. And students with strengths in those five areas can be successful. in any of their post-secondary pursuits. And so in all

112three of these buildings, we really strive to build skills school-wide in those five areas. At Alice Smith, they focus specifically on vertical alignment and vertical growth of rigor so that students are encountering when they go from pre-K through five at Alice Smith, they're hoping to see the same types of... the same type of teaching techniques, the same type of strategies, but increasing rigor as appropriate from pre K through five. Along with that at Hopkins High School and virtual edu, we have targeted avid elective classes for students who need and want support in some of those areas in a more targeted fashion. We have two sections at each grade level at Hopkins High School 9 through 12 serving. about 50 students at each grade level, so total of 200 students. We have one class at virtual

113edu serving about 25 students. Those students again receive targeted support in three areas. We call it opportunity knowledge. What are your options after high school? Why is being successful in high school important and how do we then prepare you to handle? rigorous coursework to help build your resume for post-secondary options. And then student agency, how do they become advocates for their own needs, both with their peers as well as with adults that they encounter? We've had some really great successes over the last multiple handful of years. I wanted to spotlight a couple of recent successes that we've experienced. Our students, particularly in their junior and senior year in our AVID elective classes, receive coaching for the ACT test. And this year's seniors showed a tremendous amount of growth in their ACT scores when we compare

114their first attempt at the ACT during their junior year. to their second attempt in October of their senior year. And so on this graph, you can see students that are not an avid at Hopkins High School showed around 2% growth in their scores between their first and second attempt at the ACT. Whereas our avid students, you can see depending on that subject area scored between five and 14% growth depending on the subject area of the test. And so we're very proud of that. A successful ACT score not only opened more college admission possibilities for students, but it also opens more scholarship opportunities for students. And so they're highly motivated to show success and growth in the ACT because, hey, more money is good, right? So we're very proud of our AVID kids for that type

115of success. And then over the course of the last three years, every single one of our AVID seniors has been accepted to a four-year university, at least one. That does not mean that they... attend. We obviously don't, we can't force them to go to college, but we, like I say, our goal is to open all the doors for the students so they can have the choices that they deserve. And so every one of our seniors over the last three years has been accepted to at least one. And not only that, but as we track our AVID students through their college experience, Hopkins AVID students stay in college. 10% higher than the national average. So not only are our students qualifying to go, not only are our students attending, but they're staying and persisting in college.

116And the national statistics show a huge drop off after freshman year. A lot of kids go and realize it's too hard. But Hopkins AVID students are going and staying. So we're very proud of those statistics and we're... very proud of our AVID kids and the AVID program as it's existed at Hopkins High School now for 16 years and it's in its first year at virtual EDU. We look forward to that success at virtual EDU as well. Thank you. And Dean, on a high note? Yeah, that's a great way for me to end. I'd be happy to answer any questions if you have any. Great. Well, I didn't know if you were done. I'm finished. Well, thank you. As a parent of kids who went to Alice Smith, I'm a big fan of AVID. I think

117it just sets kids up. for success in life. So really grateful that you're here and able to highlight the program. Any feedback or questions? Chair Andreessen? Director Zhao. Yes, thank you. Nice to see you again. I saw you at AVID graduation. And I think I asked you there, and I'm going to ask more formally here, how can we roll this out to more kids? And what's the bottleneck and how can we alleviate that bottleneck? That's a great question. If we were looking to do this at more schools, which I would love to do personally, there is a yearly fee for each school of around $3,500. That covers the professional growth that is offered and the materials for AVID for each school. and so i think our next natural steps would be the two middle schools

118to begin to build that and feed into the high school appropriately i would also love to to go to other elementary schools as well but if i was to prioritize i'd say the middle schools for the actual elective class itself We would love to see some growth within the sections. I'm not sure that more sections are appropriate. The target audience for the AVID kids are students who are considered in the academic middle. So it's not intended for everybody. It's not intended for. straight A students. It's not intended for students who have special needs that we can't service in a mainstream classroom. It's intended for students in the academic middle who are very underrepresented in the college level. So we do have a target audience for our elective classes. Not that we eliminate anybody based on

119any of those things, but it's the students that tend to succeed the most there. So I would love to see our sections. but I'm not sure how many more students would actually qualify for that targeted elective class. For the buildings, I would love for Hopkins High School and for virtual EDU in terms of building wide, professional growth and development and learning for the teachers around what are effective strategies and how do we build consistent strategies between classrooms. is a tricky thing given all of the requirements that our teachers are under, but I'd love to have time with our staff to help build that cross content collaboration where we can talk about consistency and making sure that what students see in Mr. Leopold's class can be the same as what students see in a science classroom.

120So that students aren't jumping from classroom to classroom having to learn different ways to learn, if that makes sense. Thank you so much for your presentation. I always appreciate college access programs because I went through one. Which is my question for you, just a two-part quick question. One, do you know of any college access programs that still exist? For example, I went through a program called GAP. that helped me get a pathway into Minnesota State University Mankato. And so I went there right after high school through that program. So I don't know of any programs like that exist anymore that you may know of. And then just really quick then too, do you partner with community organizations such as like the Minneapolis Urban League who have a program called Black Gyms where they do go

121to HBCU tours every year, but they also prepare students. And I think it's now offered. to students across the Metro to support them with secondary college education and resources? Those are great questions. For the first one, I'm not aware of specific programs. I know that we work, the AVID program works closely with Michelle Kuhl, our college and career readiness person at the high school, and she... Funnels those opportunities to our makes our avid kids aware of those opportunities I don't know of any specific ones But I know that Michelle works Michelle has her ear to the ground on those and she works with our avid teachers to make sure that all of our students are informed in that not just our avid kids but all of the students In terms of the second one, I

122think that's an area of growth for our program as community partnerships I think that that I know that I think when we talk about opportunity knowledge, I think that many of our students are sometimes limited by financial constraints about seeing HBCUs or going to see schools or opportunities outside of the state. And so I think that's the next level of opportunity would be for us to partner with groups like that, who I'm aware of and I know their mission and support it wonderfully. And I hope that we could. use that as an area of growth for us. We don't do anything now, but I think that's something we're working toward. Thank you so much. Can I ask just one more little quick question? Sure. I know that AVID is, correct me if I'm wrong, that

123it is implemented within several different school districts or is it within like different areas? And so how is... It may come out of our budget. I'm still learning about this, but how is Abbott funded? Like, do you all have, like, donors? For right now, it comes out of our building's budgets. Okay. So, virtually, do you, Hopkins High School, Al Smith, fund that yearly fee out of their building budgets? I know that a great majority of districts around the metro will fund it through their A&I dollars. We used to fund it out of those dollars and a few years ago it was moved to the buildings as we moved to more building-based budgeting. But I know that if you were to ask around, many districts around us offer it, Robbinsdale does and Burnsville and Apple Valley

124and Minneapolis and St. Paul, all of those districts fund that out of A&I dollars. Okay, thank you so much. And I'll reach out with more questions and maybe a connection to a community partnership if you're interested. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being here with us this evening. I appreciate it. Thank you, Mr. Kappel. Thank you. And then that takes us to approval of tonight's agenda. I would look for a motion to approve the agenda for this evening. So moved. I have a motion. Is there a second? Second. I have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Seeing none all those in favor. Please say aye aye Any opposed? The chair votes aye and the agenda for tonight is approved And that takes us to our consent calendar these items provide the board with

125information considered to be more routine in nature if the board deems an item to be necessary for additional discussion a Motion will be made to move the item to new business I did want to say before we consider approving the consent calendar that there were two changes to two of the items. I wanted to highlight those changes for our community. They were in the minutes. The first is item a which is approval of the minutes for the organizational meeting conducted on January 13th 2026 We the Minutes were altered because our committee approvals and assignments were were not listed correctly because we did not approve that particular item. So a vote to approve the consent calendar tonight would be approving the committee assignments that we did at the January 13th meeting. So I wanted to make

126everybody aware of that, but that's... also what you're approving by approving the consent calendar. And then there was also a necessary change to the approval of the minutes for the special meeting conducted on January 20th. Originally, when the minutes were posted, Clark Thompson was not listed as not attending the meeting. The minutes have been updated to reflect. Did I call you clerk Thompson again? Director Thompson's absence from that meeting. I will get it right probably by the end of the year. So with those changes, I would look for a motion to approve the consent calendar. So moved. I have a motion. Is there a second? Second. I have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Seeing none all those in favor. Please say aye aye aye any opposed The chair votes aye and the consent

127calendar is approved and that takes us to the treasurer's report treasurer Heartland Wonderful. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. And for the next couple of meetings, I'm going to review some topics we've touched on in the past, both because they're either timely or because we might have new community members joining us and new board members. And so quickly, I'm going to touch on the district's use of P-cards, which is how our departments and buildings purchase. some of their supplies. And the district has made several proactive moves to stay ahead of the danger of fraudulent spending. And some of our metro districts have had some issues with that. And so... One of these ways that we have increased rigor and transparency around that is by instituting the use of P cards. And the district worked hard to

128reduce the number of cards we have active. So from an original number of 140 cards, we're down to fewer than 40. And P cards are credit cards, essentially, and they get paid after the fact. We have approximately one P-card per building, one per department, and then just a couple key people with spending power, and the owners of all cards have to go through a mandatory training before they can get one. All P-card transactions require the submission of receipts and documentation, and so they need to be approved by the head of their department, and then finally, again, the business office. and those transactions get audited by external auditors. And so this is highly relevant on our current check register. There's a lot of Amazon expenses, and I'll touch on those in a minute. But I do

129want to point out that both department heads who are approving purchases and business service people can go in and see the actual items purchased, not just like an Amazon receipt, and I can inquire into any of those purchases as well. With the exception of IT and building and grounds, every other card has a limit of $10,000. IT and building and grounds routinely have to make larger purchases, and the nature of their departments is that they sometimes respond to emergencies or immediate needs and need a little bit more flexibility. So if you exclude those two departments, total P-card purchases are well under 1% of our budget. And in fact, BMO Harris, our card servicer, just finished their annual review of our credit limit usage. And so based on past spending, we went into this year with

130an overall credit limit on P cards of $1.4 million in the district. And we have dramatically cut that spending over the last few years, both because of budget cuts and being really prudent with the dollars and also from moving. as many expenses as possible into kind of more planned purchases that are done via purchase order. And so we actually received a recommendation that we cut that credit limit by more than half, and so that's currently being considered. And so that is kind of just a brief update on how some of those purchases are made and it's relevant. because I mentioned a wealth of Amazon purchases that are on our current check register. And these are P-card purchases. They are all actually from our previous school year. There was an issue in Oracle with paying Amazon.

131It was a technicality on how our old system interfaced with Amazon. And when we made the decision to move away from that system and back to Skyward, Then we didn't complete fixing that issue. And so a pretty large effort had to be made to move those expenses to Skyward and tie them to the previous year. So they are all coded correctly. This is actually only about 50% of them. You'll see the next batch next year. So it was a pretty significant effort on behalf of business services. And then also in the check register, I'd like to point out that if you see a set of exactly duplicated expenses, almost always that is the result of reissuing a check. And so the entry, because of this report. In Skyward, it does not show the voided check,

132and that was kind of a strength of Oracle's is that they did do that very clearly. Checks need to get voided for a variety of reasons, like if the check is lost or if it has some kind of clerical error. So, for example, Arbiter Sports on this check register. multiple invoices or covered by a single check that did have to get reissued and I can go in and see the voided check. So there's a couple instances in this check register of such an occasion and if one worries you, you can always email me and say like, did this get duplicated? Multiple times I've inquired, you know, on... every other check register. So I make such an inquiry to business services to see if that's an actual duplication. And occasionally it just happens to be like

133the same dollar amount and just looks the same, but generally it's due to a reissue and we have the appropriate documentation. And other expenses, we paid $20,021.40 to Breck School for their textbooks and educational software. $16,150 went to the city of Minnetonka for traffic studies as we planned for changes to our parking lots and parent drop-off lines for some of our schools. Our arbitrage payment to the IRS was $133,161.07. That was related to our capital project fund, and so we owe taxes if we earn profit from the investment of those funds. So that's kind of a special case. $386,000 was paid to Lake Country, our busing contractor, and of that, $16,176 was for transportation to charter schools within our boundaries, not even for our own students. We paid $68,780 to Mavo Systems, and that invoice

134is titled... APP 1 HHS. And so anytime you're looking at our check register, if it says APP 1 or APP 2, those can go up to any number. In the teens, certainly I've seen. Those will always be for building construction supplies or service providers. And that is associated with our kind of long-term facilities and maintenance plans. We have to submit plans to the Department of Education. And then we have to, you know, each of those numbered applications and plans require that. you know our invoices tie to that particular project so you'll see that app a lot um 16 328.94 went to the north hennepin community college to pay for pseo credits to our high school students that's a direct benefit that the district covers so our students have yet another way to earn college credit

135at no cost to them and as a final note i shared a fund directory with all of you school board members. So it has notes about the numbers of the funds, kind of their title, and then I'm working on continuing to add the main sources of, the main expenses and the main sources of revenue from those funds. So that's something that I've had and should have shared with you before, but if you remember on the check register on the far left column, it does list the fund number that the various expenses come from. Please let me know if you have questions. I'd be happy to talk about it more. And with that, I move that we approve total disbursements in the amount of $2,468,411.22 for the period of December 1st through December 31st, 2025. I

136have a motion. Is there a second? Second. I have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Seeing none all those in favor, please say aye aye any opposed The chair votes aye and the treasurer's report is accepted. Thank you treasurer Heartland as always for an excellent report That takes us to our first item first and only item of new business our fiscal year 24 audit update I would invite Mr. Grease to the table and turn it over to Dr. Mary Perry-Reed. Thank you, Chair Andreessen. Well, I think for some framing and also Dr. Lightfoot, do you know if Emily and Jessica are? Okay. Okay, great. So just a quick framing and then I'll turn it over to, is it Andy Grice? Yes. Okay. So I would like to... share with our community that school districts

137are required to submit their audited financial statements for fiscal year 24 to the Minnesota Department of Education by December 31, 2024. So we are relieved and happy to reach this point of completion with our FY24 audit. And we regret that it's more than a year late. And I want to just profusely thank our business services professionals here in Hopkins Public Schools, our CISO and CLA partners on all of their audit prep work and also our partners at KDV for reviewing and finalizing the audit and I want to welcome our new Business Services Controller. She's maybe attending virtually. We don't see her face, but Emily Westrom is here with us and we're excited to have her and she will also play a role in prepping future audits. And thank you for being here, Andy, from KDV

138and Dr. Lightfoot, who after our former Director of Business Services transitioned out, Dr. Lightfoot has stepped in really at the ground level to help us assess our current budget and fiscal landscape and work with the team to identify all of the things that needed to be reorganized and strengthened. And so there's been a lot of work to this point. This audit will give us a roadmap for continued improvement, and improvement is what we're focused on. So thank you for the work that you've put in to date, and we look forward to hearing from you, Andy. well thanks for having me here tonight um yeah we are nearing the completion of the audit so i wanted to take the opportunity to provide the preliminary audit results here tonight again it is for the year ended june

13930th 2024 but i wanted to start by highlighting the independent auditor's report that will be included in the district's financial statements this report talks about what our role is as your auditors as well as the role of management and that management does have the ultimate responsibility for those financial statements And it's our job as your auditor to provide assurance as to whether we will believe those financial statements to present fairly in all material respects. Reminder, that is a reasonable assurance, not absolute assurance. And that's based on an audit performed in accordance with generally accepted auditing standards, as well as government auditing standards. Based on the work that we've done, we do anticipate issuing a clean or an unmodified opinion on the district's financial statements. And that's the best that we can provide as your auditors.

140In addition to that independent auditor's report, we have some other communications, one being our report on government auditing standards. That report talks about our consideration of internal control over financial reporting. We do not provide any opinion or assurance as to the effectiveness or the design of internal controls, but we are required to understand your internal controls to be sure that we're effectively assessing risk of material misstatement and designing our audit procedures accordingly. As part of that process, if we do become aware of any deficiencies in internal control that rise to either a significant deficiency or material weakness level, we are required to report those in writing. We had three findings to report internal control deficiencies. One was the lack of segregation of accounting duties, and that was related to some overlap in certain accounting functions,

141as well as noting the timeliness and review of journal entries, as well as bank reconciliations. there were also prior period misstatements that were identified related to previously issued financial statements so that indicates that the internal controls were not able to identify and detect misstatements in a timely manner so did report that and then lastly noted that procurement policies were not effectively implemented for certain transactions In addition to the internal control findings, we also have an area for compliance findings. We had one compliance finding to report for this year, and that was the implementation of software prior to getting review and approval from the Minnesota Department of Education. The next report that we have is our report on uniform guidance, and that is our report on federal programs. Whenever the district expends more than $750,000 or

142more in federal awards, which the Hopkins Public Schools definitely has, it does trigger a single audit or a compliance audit. And that is specific to the major federal programs that were selected. Child Nutrition Program Title I and the Education Stabilization Fund programs were selected. We do anticipate providing an unmodified opinion on compliance with those programs. We did have two findings, one being a compliance finding and the other being an internal control finding. The internal control finding was around... time and effort documentation to support the time allocated to certain federal programs. And then the compliance finding related to the education stabilization fund. And that was the prevailing wage requirements that we did not see documentation for. Two other elements of our reporting, one being our report on Minnesota legal compliance. The Office of the State Auditor

143issues legal compliance guides each year, and there are certain guides that are specific to school districts that list certain state statutes that are applicable and that we're required to report on in terms of any noncompliance that comes to our attention as part of our audit procedures. We did have four compliance findings, so one being the reporting requirements in terms of the timeliness of reporting for the June 30, 2024 fiscal year. We also noted instances of UFARS coding not being consistently followed. And then we had two findings related to some reporting requirements, one being the broker acknowledgement certification and the OPEB trust investment reporting. Lastly, did want to highlight our communications letter that includes all required communication in accordance with audit standards. Also, it provides a legislative summary and some emerging issues to consider for future

144reporting periods, as well as a financial analysis that includes some charts and graphs. So we have that to highlight here tonight as well. But before digging into any of those, any questions or concerns on the audit results for the June 30th, 2024 fiscal year? Any questions from my board colleagues? Chair Andreessen. Yes, Treasurer Hartland. Thank you for being here tonight. We definitely are anxious to get this completed and discussed at the board table, so we appreciate your efforts and your presence tonight. I hear that you are anticipating issuing a clean audit report, which is a relief, and then on the other hand, you still have these findings, and so I understand that... those findings are not particularly grievous if overall we are being issued a clean report. But when I hear lack of segregation of

145accounting duties or procurement policies not effectively implemented, it feels like those could cover kind of a wide range of types of happenings that... you might have uncovered. I was wondering if there is any context that would be helpful for the board to understand. So when we take a look at the internal controls, if we, again, become aware of deficiencies in terms of policies not being followed, for example, so the last finding on the internal control section there, you know, we did note those instances. And if we believe that those, that condition could result in a potential material misstatement, we, you know, that's kind of that criteria for reporting. So it's really more towards the processes and procedures, not necessarily towards. the numbers themselves. I don't know if that helps to give some clarification there, but

146any further clarification needed there? No, I appreciate you giving context that that is a practice that could result, and so therefore it's a signal for us to tighten up or to review that and not necessarily that an actual... Correct. ...must have happened. And you said in the full report there will be more details about that? Correct. Okay. Thank you. Chair Andreessen. Yes. Thank you. And thank you for this preliminary report. I guess this is more a question for Dr. Mary P. Reed and Chair Andreessen. So we don't have the actual audit yet. And so what I had heard you say earlier was we had this scheduled. It's not quite in our hands yet. So I guess my question is... After we have a chance to receive it, review it, if we have more questions, what

147would be the avenue to ask those? So what we're anticipating for this evening is to hear the preliminary report and for the board to accept that report and then We will be further reviewing the findings and providing response to the findings which get included in the finalized report and once Andy signs off on it Then we would include it in the agenda for the first board meeting in February and it can either go on consent and we could have discussion at that time or we could include it as in the, I think there's, what do we call, the incidental reports at the bottom and that could also yield questions from board members and a conversation. And if there's another suggestion for how to make sure that... questions are addressed, then I think we can be

148open to that, but that's what we are anticipating. Okay, yeah, I think that's fair. It sounds like whether it's on consent or in incidentals, there would be a forum after I've had a chance to kind of read it, think about it, to be able to ask some questions if that's possible. All right, that makes sense. Thank you. I guess just... One question thus far, when you mentioned the finding around the UFARS coding requirements, can you just expand upon that? Does that mean like we categorized it differently than MDE would have or just curious your take on that? Sure, so it was specific to the use of finance codes and so that kind of identifies the certain streams of Revenues that are coming into the district that have to be spent on certain activities and those

149you far as codes were not being consistently used or there are some outside Reconciliations being done to kind of get to the final numbers But it should have been done through the use of finance codes being consistently used I think the transition in the finance system probably had some impact on that but we did we weren't able to completely verify certain Activities solely based on the use of finance codes because they weren't being consistently used Okay, chair Andreessen. Yes treasurer Harland as a very brief follow-up to the you know time to review it see FAQ will also Our citizens financial advisory committee will also have a chance to review and question this and I believe the board audit committee will as well I just had a quick follow-up on that, UFARS. So what I heard

150is that it's that the reconciliation wasn't able to be done using financial coding solely, but it was reconciled external from the coding. Correct. Okay. Thank you for that clarification. Any other questions? chair andreason yes i just wanted to address your question treasurer hartland so we do have a cfac meeting on wednesday february 4 so we'll be providing this audit update and then what we don't have scheduled i think is a board audit meeting so we'll want to get that scheduled the audit committee yes the audit committee That that goes to my question so for myself I guess I'm eager to to know what our timeline is for this Knowing that we were hoping it this would be something we could vote on tonight. So just wondering Are we days away? Are we weeks away? Are

151we months away? Sure. What's the timeline? So we received the final draft of the financial report about a week and a half ago. So we're just working through some final audit procedures to ensure that we've kind of completed each element of the review process accordingly. And we do anticipate that next week we would have our final reports available for issuance. Great. Thank you. Chair Andreessen, you have a question? Thank you for providing this information. I appreciate it. Kind of a follow-up to Chair Andreessen's about timeline. Besides the challenges of maybe staffing differences, what are some other challenges that we see? um in getting this complete because i want to just make sure that you know if we have a timeline that we are sticking to it so you know that we don't get like any

152additional fines or that it doesn't impact our budget or it doesn't you know impact um you know anything with the district just wondering Can you say that one more time? So just wondering, like, besides, like, staffing challenges, I want to know, like, what are some additional challenges that may impact the audit being done, like, within the timeline that we are anticipating? What could happen? Yeah, like, what are some additional challenges? We are still working through the review process. So, again, we've had the final report, final numbers. for about five business days. And so we've done a significant amount of work leading up to that point. The first draft of the financial statements we received in October. So we were able to do a significant amount of work with that document, but we did not receive

153another draft until just about a week and a half ago. So if something were to come up as part of the completion of these final review steps, that could potentially delay things. I don't anticipate that, but that is a possibility. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Sure. Sure. Andreessen. Yes. Director Hyman. I think my question kind of piggybacks on Treasurer Heartland's question as a follow-up to slides four and five where you've identified the internal control and compliance findings. Could you help distinguish which of those control and compliance findings are relatively minor or common versus any that you found that you would consider a higher risk and needing immediate board attention? The three internal control findings are at the highest level. So material weakness is the highest level that would, I think, warrant board attention. Okay, and

154can you provide any context as to what those were related to or what the material misstatements were, specifically around the procurement? I'm specifically curious about the procurement policies and the compliance finding, the software. Finding so for example, I think that that Minnesota statute requires MDE to approve software implementation prior to implementation and so I'm curious what Where where the compliance missed the mark there? Did we not get permission? Did we get permission late? The Minnesota Department of Education, we did not see evidence of approval prior to implementation of that software. Okay. And then with respect to the procurement policies, any light you can shed on those as well? Sure. The board has a policy 354 around program consultants, which we evaluated associated with the awarding of the contracts associated with the implementation of that software.

155And it did not appear that those policies are followed for those procurements. That's specifically with respect to software? Correct. Thank you. Chair Gerson. Yes. Yes. Hi. So when we say the software, do we mean Oracle? Correct. Okay. Thank you. Think that we can continue with the presentation. Thank you So the final pieces that I wanted to cover tonight are just some of the trend data in the communications letter And you know, obviously we're a bit removed from that particular reporting here. So I'll try to make it somewhat brief but wanted to highlight First the state aid sources the general fund does rely You know over 50% of the revenue in the general fund is made up of state sources. And so the most significant component of that is general education aid so just wanted to

156look at the history of that here over the years noting a four percent increase there for 2024. the other component of general education aid is enrollment and so we started wanted to take a look at the trends here in terms of resident adm so these are the students within the district boundaries and how that's changed here since 2020. we do see that you know since that time frame there's been about a three percent increase or about 210 going into 2024. From there, there is a conversion to a pupil unit number. That pupil unit number is weighted. There's a 20% premium for secondary students, but it also takes into account the open enrollment process. And that open enrollment process does provide information in terms of residents going elsewhere, non-residents coming into the district. That net... Open

157enrollment number was a net loss back in 2020 of 128, and that grew to a net loss of 360 here for 2024. The enrollment has dropped since that time in terms of pupil units served from 7,591 back in 2020 to 7,565 here in 2024. Also providing a chart just to show the rate of change over those years. So there have been periods of increases as well as periods of declines over that period. And then that leads us into general fund revenues overall. Over the last five years and here in 2024, we do see it at the high point in the years presented at about $141 million. The most significant increase occurred in that state sources line item comparing 2023 to 2024, it increased from 68.4 million up to about $78.4 million. Majority of that increase...

158is due to special education funding increasing during that time frame as well as that increase in um formula allowance as well as the um pupa unit served during that time period Local property taxes also increased with an increase in levy. And then the other sources have been elevated since the 2021 timeframe because that does include federal sources of revenue. So all of the COVID-19 funding that's been spent during that timeframe continuing here into 2024 did cause that to be elevated to the highest point in the years presented in 2024 at about $12.4 million. The next chart I wanted to highlight is the budget to actual results. The original budget called for about $134.1 million in revenue, $134.1 million in expenditures, and anticipated basically a break-even budget. That budget was amended for anticipated increases in revenues

159and expenditures, but again, still anticipated about a break-even budget with revenues and expenditures at about $141 million. Actual amounts came in just under budget, under budget by $81,000, but there were some significant variances between categories, and a majority of that had to do with certain revenue streams being budgeted in one category but ultimately being required to be reported in another. For example, local property taxes came in over budget by just over $2 million, and that was due to the tax shift not being budgeted in the correct category there. And then other local and county revenues, that was over budget by about $1.8 million with... better investment earnings than anticipated, also being conservative for those returns as well as being conservative for donations. Expenditures came in at $137.6 million, so about $3.4 million less than anticipated.

160Majority of that variance occurred in regular instruction coming in under budget by about $4.9 million with less salaries and benefits and open positions. Special education also was under budget due to those same reasons. And then we did have some offsetting variances in sites and buildings, as well as capital outlay. There were... There was certain activity that had to be recorded from an accounting standpoint that was not included in the budget. You can see down there towards the bottom, there's an other financing source of about $3.7 million, and that was due to the commencement of a finance purchase agreement, which does require the recording of the related revenue associated with that, as well as the expenditures that weren't budgeted for. So you do see that capital outlay line item being over budget as a result of

161that. Pupil support services was also over budget by about $1.6 million with transportation costs coming in higher than anticipated. The net result was an overall increase in fund balance of about $7.1 million. We also provided some additional information just for comparative purposes as well as some additional perspective, one being revenue per student served. Overall, the district has been above statewide averages as well as averages for similar sized districts. And that's mainly due to that property tax line item, which is a bit higher than... that comparative data. We also do provide the same information for expenditures per student. And as we do see revenues come in higher per student, you'd expect to see expenditures per student kind of follow. So you do see that similar trend there. Next, I wanted to highlight the general fund operations

162over the last two years, comparing 2024 to 2023. Most categories in terms of program expenditures were fairly consistent between the two years, but we do see increasing costs going to special education, which did see an increase from about 14% up to about 16% in 2024. The next chart highlights the overall general fund operations over the last five years and did want to highlight here in 2024 that there was an overall increase in fund balance of about $7 million. There was a significant increase in the capital projects levy restrictions. So the bottom part of the chart highlights the different components of fund balance. The restricted... components being certain revenue streams that are restricted by the state of minnesota and the department of education to be spent in specific areas the majority of the capital projects levy

163related expenditures were allocated to the capital projects fund so that did leave a significant amount of unspent capital project levy dollars here for 2024 leaving a balance there of about five and a half million dollars there was also a spend down of other restricted categories so operating capital was spent down basic skills as well as the learning and development category so the the remaining variance occurred in that unassigned fund balance category which increased from 11.6 million to 16.3 million here for 2024. In addition to that, I did want to highlight just the board's policy as it relates to the unassigned fund balance. So there is a policy in place to maintain a minimum unassigned fund balance of 6% of the annual budget. And based on current year results, that unassigned fund balance represents about 12%

164of expenditures overall. So the district is in compliance with that policy. The next chart highlights similar information, but it is calculated a bit differently. This combines unrestricted fund balance as a percentage of unrestricted expenditures, and there's some comparative data from MDE just to give you some perspective in terms of how the district compares to all other traditional districts, and the district has been historically below those averages, but did see an increase here in 2024 with the overall increase in fund balance. The next two charts that we have is to highlight the food service fund as well as the community service fund. So the revenue streams in this fund has varied, especially with the COVID-19 funding, as well as the state funded meals as well. And so we did see revenues in the food service fund

165increased to the highest point in the years presented at $5.1 million, compared to $4.8 million in expenditures, did provide for a surplus overall. And then there was a prior period restatement in this fund, so that related to the allocation of interest. earnings by fund that was corrected and that resulted in ending fund balance for the year at about 1.1 million dollars last one to highlight is the community service fund this fund did see an increase in revenues as well as an increase in expenditures ultimately did provide for an increase in fund balance increasing fund balance to just below six million dollars at the end of 2024. that's a high level look at the financial results and some of the trend analysis and like to open up for any questions on those Thank you. Any feedback

166or questions? Chair Andreessen? Yes. Thanks again for the time. I think I have two questions on this section. So first of all, in the pie chart on slide 21, it looks like one of the big slices of the pie that went up is that capital outlay. And so can you just explain that to me one more time? It's like we paid something to get more of a revenue stream. Is that, am I getting that right or not quite? The majority of the increase in that category in capital outlay is the result of a finance purchase agreement to purchase a capital asset. And so there was actually no cash resources expended there. It was just an item that was required for recording in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. So it's kind of an odd. It's

167based on when those particular capital assets... asset purchases occur and those aren't necessarily an operational item so you may see variances in terms of the significance in that area from year to year so yeah looking at the bottom of um the budget to actual results there was about 3.7 million dollars in that activity that really kind of drove that up in 2024. and do we have an idea of what that capital outlay was i want to say it was technology equipment related but i'd have to double check thank you Yeah, thanks. I think I get it. It's just a little tricky to understand. So just one more time, you purchasing a financial asset, you said? So if you're purchasing, let's say, a group of computers and that, you know, those computers cost $3.7 million, but

168you're paying for it under a lease over a period of time. Accounting standards require that you recognize the full cost of that in the year that that agreement commences, even though you're paying over a period of time. All right. Thank you for that. Absolutely. I appreciate it. And then the last question I have was, so on 24 and 25, you show us snapshots of the food service fund and the community service fund. Are there any other funds that would also have this type of layout like in the final audit? So, you know, the only other funds presented in the financial statements, you know, relate to in terms of governmental funds are the debt service fund and the capital project funds. Usually those are a bit more set it and forget it in terms of you

169have a set debt service requirement, you have a set levy to cover for that. And so it's a little bit less to monitor and oversee in terms of, you know, operations. These funds, you know, do require monitoring in terms of kind of going back to like a capital project fund usually you're you're dumping in bond proceeds and then doing a project and then it's kind of done from that standpoint just for more significant activity these are actually operational you know type funds that have certain activities that you know you can see over these time periods have generated a fairly significant fund balance so that is something that we've seen across other school districts as well specific even to food service there's just been additional funding being provided for meals served there's some COVID-19 money during

170that time frame and there are some limits in terms of the amount of fund balance that you can have in the food service fund so that most districts are kind of starting to kind of look at that and realize geez we need to kind of see how we're going to utilize those additional resources and a lot of looking are looking at capital related you know improvements to kind of help spend those the community service fund is another one that's you know kind of interesting over the years presented because it has seen significant increases in fund balance over So I think the district is kind of already in evaluating, you know, future programming and how that, you know, will be utilized going forward. But there's a bit more decision-making I'd say in these funds. We did

171highlight those. It makes total sense. Thank you. Sure. Chair Andreessen. Yes, Director Hyman. I have two questions. Thank you so much for... the concise presentation. I appreciate it. I look forward to reviewing the entire audit. I have a specific question about slide nine when we're talking about average daily membership and pupil units served. With respect to, I just wanna make sure I'm understanding and reading this correctly. That's the total number of residents that are eligible to come to School in this school district is that correct? Okay, and then the resident PUN going elsewhere. That is the The total The total amount following students that have opted to go somewhere besides Hopkins School District, okay, and then the non-resident PUN excuse me, coming in, those are open enrolled students? Correct. Okay, so if we're looking at

172this correctly in 2024, for example, we essentially, and I'm gonna air quote, lost 2,621.31 pupil units. but gained 2,260.56. Is that right? Correct. So is that a net loss or how, how, how, how should we be looking at this? Yep. That's a net loss. And so, you know, just. For informational purposes just to kind of understand the activity of residents where they're going where they're being served You know how you know some districts might have some sort of effort to try and attract more students and sometimes that can be engaged to see you know How have we done with that, you know in terms of attracting more students? But you're correct that that is the right way to look at it. There was a net loss of 360 for 2024 and that's varied you know

173back to 2020 was at a net loss of 128 so it has grown a little bit since that time thank you i have one more question if it's okay sure um my um other question is i think you mentioned at the beginning about the prior year's financials that You maybe had to make revisions to the prior year's financials. And so I understand you're expecting to issue an unmodified opinion of the financials. But I guess I'm curious if there were changes that you had to make during the audit with respect to the prior year financials that have, you know, materially impacted this year's. Sure. So the financial statements will show the beginning fund balances as previously stated, and it will clearly identify all of the restatements that were required for the errors that were identified in

174previous years. And there's also a footnote disclosure that will go into some more detail on those. But yeah, the two areas were the allocation of interest earnings, and there was a receivable balance that appeared to be overstated. Great. Thank you. Chair Andrews, I have a quick question. Yes, Vice Chair Roper. So just really quick, and you may have already mentioned this, so please forgive me, but I'm just looking at the general education aid formula allowance. And I'm just looking at... year 2024 and then 2025, I see there is a 2% difference. Can you just explain that just really quickly, like how the difference? Sure. So this is set by the legislature. So, you know, those 2% increases have been pretty consistent over the years. And, you know, the reason to highlight this, yes, there was

175a 4% increase for 2024, but costs have just continued to increase in excess of that. So it just kind of helps to show some of the challenges districts are facing in terms of trying to maintain a similar level of service with, you know, yeah, right. Thank you. I think sometimes our community who's listening don't always understand it in a way that we do. So I appreciate you giving that quick synopsis on that. Thank you. You're welcome. Well, thank you. I appreciate you being here. And while we're at the table, I just want to... Tell the board and the community that it is very important to this board that we have our audits Completed in a timely manner and I appreciate that this is before us today and Want to be clear that we are in

176partnership with treasurer Heartland looking at being transparent about where we're at in the 2025 audit so that our community can follow along with us and where we're at in the process. So just wanted to ask again for that, assuming that you will be part of that process and have been part of the planning and seeing what pushed things back in 2024 and how can we plan for and be mindful about being timely with 2025 as much as we can be sure so that process is ongoing in terms of scheduling, you know the Audit schedule for us is something that we've worked on since the fall timeframe And so it's really been dependent on the wrap-up of this 2024 audit, but we do have time scheduled within this next three months to be able to get

177the 2025 audit on the schedule with anticipation that it would be completed in the May to June timeframe. Thank you. I appreciate that. Sure. Well, thank you for being here this evening and for this report. I think I speak for all of us when I say we look forward to being able to approve this and getting it. done and off to MDE. So thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Thanks, Andy. Thank you, Nick. And with that, we will move to our board member reports. We will take a moment. I would invite each board member to introduce themselves. Just give a little update on any things that you have. encountered in the district and or educational opportunities. And I will, did I start over there last time? I'll just start with Clerk Wilhelm Garbers.

178Thank you, Chair Andreessen. You know, two weeks in, and so grateful to be a part of this work in this moment. And I think just a couple of things I want to say. I want to begin by saying on this International Holocaust Remembrance Day, that never again is an ongoing invitation to all of us. And in this moment, as well as we're in a space of human rights and these sorts of things being an ongoing, hey, does everyone's rights equally matter? I'm so grateful for the people of this district in the way that they're showing up and being community to one another. And it's just a deep honor to be a part of this community. That's my only report. Thank you. Hello, I'm Kai Thompson. I have three kids in the district, 5th grade, 9th

179grade, 10th grade. I think just quick mention on board report, was able to go to both the orchestra festival and the band concert with all the grades. And I mean, what an awesome event. First of all, the conductors who were running it were able to just... very subtly talk to the older kids and say things like, you know, how many of you also participate in a varsity sport? And, you know, a bunch of them raise their hand. How many of you also do this? And a bunch of them raise their hand. And so, like, to show these younger kids who are also there, like, hey, you can still do music, but also be well-rounded and have time to do other stuff. It was just really a brilliant way that they did that. And it was

180so cool to see, you know, fifth grade level. Sixth grade level, and just the progression from year to year was just unbelievable. And so really kudos to them. So that concludes my report. Thank you. My name is Rachel Heartland, currently serving as treasurer. It is my beginning my fifth year on the board, and I have three children in our district. I have a sixth and eighth graders at North Middle School and a tenth grader at the high school. I use she, her pronouns. There's been a whole variety of musical events that I've attended. The middle school musical has begun as well. The Citizens Financial Advisory Committee and the Board Audit Committee have met recently to discuss some of these items that were for us today and to talk about the necessity of us doing our

181very best to get totally caught up, so we're submitting audits on time. The last thing that I want to say is that the Legislative Action Coalition last board meeting, I issued an invitation to all board members to come on the 30th to join us for our breakfast. All of our legislators are... currently attending to various community issues and civil rights issues in our community, and the Legislative Action Coalition made the decision to postpone that breakfast, and so it is a bit TBD at the moment, but you guys will all receive an updated invitation. Good evening. I'm Rhoda Marie Peary-Reed, superintendent. I'm in my ninth year as superintendent, and I have a senior not in the Hopkins School District, but I have an eighth grader at West who's very excited to go to the high school

182in a semester. She's counting her days. Hello, everybody. My name is Shannon Andreessen. I have been on the board. This is my... seventh year and I also have a senior who is at the high school and involved in, oh, and I also work at Gatewood Elementary. And I wanted to say my senior is involved in the one acts. So the... The Hopkins High School puts on a series of one acts and you can go see them. I think there's four in total, three or four. And you can see them Friday and Saturday night, one time only, no repeats. So you're going to want to make it this week starting at 7 p.m. And also one of those one acts is a competition and they had the Hopkins high school hosted the section competitions for one

183acts, which was amazing to go and see the energy of these kids coming from all over the Metro. And so supportive of one another and each other on. Yeah. And just this amazing way it was, it was great. And part of it is they do all the. the hair and makeup and they have to change the sets and they do it all. The kids do everything. So it's really cool. And our Hopkins one act advanced and is now part of section finals. So maybe I'll give you an update on that if there's time. And so just wanted to give that brief update. And then I also wanted to mention another two of my board colleagues talked about the music department here in Hopkins, which is very strong. And I give so many kudos to. the

184amazing directors and people who run that program across choir, orchestra, band. And we have been in Hopkins really lucky that because of that strong program, we have sent so many students to Allstate over the years. And I think last year we had the most students represented from any area high school in Allstate. And so I wanted to share with you an update that came out for this year's Allstate members. It does impact eight of our students who qualified for Allstate this year. And this is from the director of the Minnesota Allstate. And I'm just going to read it verbatim. So to my Minnesota music family. my MMEA community, and all who care about the future of our field. This has been an incredibly painful and destabilizing moment for our community. Many students, educators, and families

185across Minnesota are navigating real fear, uncertainty, and emotional weight right now, particularly those from immigrant communities who are feeling unseen, unsafe, or unsure of what the coming days hold. Within this climate, we are also grieving the recent deaths of Alex Pretty and Renee Good, two community members whose loss has deepened the sense of instability many are already experiencing. In moments like this, we cannot pretend things are normal. We cannot move forward as though nothing has happened. And we cannot teach young people that tradition matters more than their safety. We have a responsibility to acknowledge the gravity of what is happening around us and to protect the people entrusted to our care. After careful reflection, consultation, and a formal vote of the MMEA Board of Directors, which authorized this decision, I am announcing that we have

186made the decision to cancel this year's Midwinter Convention and all associated all-state activities due to ongoing safety concerns affecting our community. This decision was not made lightly. We understand what this gathering represents. We understand the months of preparation, the anticipation, sorry, the pride. We understand the disappointment this brings to students, to families, and to educators who rely on this space for connection, affirmation, and renewal in a profession that already carries tremendous weight. We know what is being lost. and that loss matters. Students matter, educators matter, families matter. That truth is precisely why this decision was made. We are not simply canceling an event. We are refusing to teach young people that their safety is negotiable. We are refusing to pretend that excellence matters more than humanity. When safety is uncertain, continuing for the sake of

187tradition does not serve our community. Protecting people must come first. And when young people are watching how adults respond to crisis, our choices teach more powerfully than any lesson plan ever could. Music education is not just about music. It is about sanctuary. It is about belonging. It is about creating spaces where people are safe enough to be fully human. We ask students to be vulnerable in their art. That vulnerability deserves protection. We ask educators to pour their hearts into others. That labor deserves dignity and care. If any student or educator is entering our spaces carrying fear because of who they are, where they come from, or what their family is facing, then we have work to do before we gather in celebration. Fear cannot be normalized. Violence cannot be accepted. No community should be forced

188to live in anxiety simply to exist. And still this moment does not call for retaliation or division. It calls for something stronger. It calls for wisdom, for restraint, for shared humanity. So here is the invitation. You do not need a title to lead. Leadership lives in classrooms, in rehearsal rooms, in hallways, at dinner tables, in neighborhoods. Oh, sorry. Just went away. In neighborhoods. Each of us has the capacity to be a safe presence for someone else, to notice who feels unseen, to choose care where others choose indifference. to protect dignity where others abandon it. We also recognize that many in our community may need space to process, to ask questions, to grieve, or simply to be heard. We encourage educators, schools, and local communities to hold space for thoughtful dialogue, especially for students who are

189carrying heavy fear, confusion, or uncertainty in this moment. That is how communities heal. That is how trust is built, rebuilt. That is how young people learn what integrity looks like. This decision is not the end of our community. It is a recommitment to its deepest values. We will gather again. We will celebrate again. We will build again. But we will do so with greater intention, stronger care, and a clearer commitment to creating environments worthy of the people inside them. Because music education is not about shaping musicians, it is about shaping spaces where people are safe enough to become who they are meant to be. That is the work. That is the responsibility. That is the standard we must hold. And it's signed Christopher Rochester, President, Minnesota Music Educators Association. Thank you. A report. Well, that's

190hard to follow. That was such a thoughtful letter. My name is Brooke Roper. I am serving in my third year on the school board. I have two incredible children in the district. My board report is very similar to Chair Andresen's and my colleagues. I wore my sweatshirt today because I'm so proud to be a Minnesotan. We are dang, I'm dang proud of Minnesota. I'll keep it PG. for our listening ears, but I am so proud of the way that our community have just shown up over the past few days. We have been in unity, solidarity. We have been working together to ensure that our families are safe and protected and to keep politics out of the classrooms. That is one of the bigger things, one of my bigger concerns is to make sure that this

191is not impacting students where they are unable to learn. And so I just thank everyone who are showing their commitment to ensure that our state just remains one that is full of humility and one that is accepting of everyone. And I want to just let people know that whether you're... protesting on the lines, on the front lines, whether you're grocery shopping for your neighbors, whether you're just sharing love and words of support. It's all action. It's all direction. It's all love. So don't let anyone make you feel bad for what you're not doing. Just know that it's all contributing to the greater good. So thank you, community, Hopkins community, and thank you, Paige. Buckers for the awesome donation and the match and the Hopkins Education Foundation for all of your incredible work. I am so

192excited to support that, the foundation and everything that they do because they are truly dedicated to supporting our students and it shows in all of their events. And so, which their gala is coming up. So if you receive the postcard, make sure that you register. And that is my board report for tonight. Hello, this is Jim Ming Zhao. I'm also on my third year on the board. I've got two kids in the district, a fifth grader almost going to middle school and a second grader in the Xing Xing program over at Eisenhower. I'd like to just share a little bit. I'm on the district safety committee, and we had a meeting on the 22nd. It was with the chiefs of police of Minnetonka, Hopkins, and I believe fire in Minnetonka. And so we had a

193very frank discussion about the kind of geopolitical kind of happenings around. But, you know, I just kind of wanted to make community aware and to really highlight as well, right, these are the chiefs of police of our cities, and they are very, very, very busy right now, right? There's more... Federal people in the in our metro area than there are police and so they're getting called to Minneapolis. They're getting called even here, right? So they're overstretched and yet they took the time to come to our school and talk to us about protecting our children and how we can work in community and together to be safe and so. I think they understand the measure and the things that are being asked of them and are being asked of our schools. And it's certainly not fair.

194But I think the partnership that we strike is indicative of just all the adults in the room, every educator that shows up, every parent that is on patrol, everybody is pulling in the same direction. And we will, as I said to them, um you know there will be a day when this passes and we'll all rebuild together so thank you my name is johanna hyman i have two little boys in the district both at meadowbrook a kindergartner and a third grader and i hope they're not still up watching me on youtube I wanted to use my board member report time to acknowledge that today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, a day to honor the six million Jewish people and the millions of others, the Slavs, Roma, people with disabilities, religious leaders, persons targeted based on

195their sexual orientation and political beliefs who were targeted for systematic murder during the Holocaust. As a Jewish parent and a member of this community, I believe this day matters not only as an act of remembrance, but as a call to action for education. The Holocaust did not begin with camps or gas chambers, both of which I have personally seen with my own eyes. But it began with subtleties first, dehumanization, propaganda, lies treated as truth, and with silence in the face of hatred. As educators and as a school board, we have the responsibility to ensure that nothing as atrocious as the Holocaust ever happens again. We must commit to ensuring future generations understand Holocaust history clearly and honestly so that evil never rears its ugly head again. Teaching about the Holocaust is not only about the

196past. It is about cultivating empathy, critical thinking, and a commitment to human dignity in the present, particularly with recent immigration enforcement actions in our state, raising fear and uncertainty for many families. This day reminds us why we must teach students to recognize dehumanization early and to stand for human dignity and the rule of law. Today, we remember the victims, honor the survivors, thank all of those currently standing up in our community against the ongoing dehumanization of our immigrant communities, and recommit ourselves to education as one of the strongest tools we have to fight hatred and bigotry today. Thank you all. It actually is nice to have a chance to give board reports. So I appreciate you all taking the time to do so. And with that, we will go to our incidental reports. The purpose

197of these reports is to provide the board with information. and or data focused on the various facets of different educational priorities in the district. And I do really want to urge board members and the public to take a look at these because they do provide really important information. The first is the homeless student update for 2025-26. which gives us a really good snapshot of our students and families that are experiencing housing insecurity. And I just wanted to quickly also highlight a couple of dates that are upcoming for the second report, which is the Community Education Enrichment Update. We have... The summer registration opens February 13th at 8 p.m. So I know that lots of families love the summer opportunities in Hopkins. Those include Camp Royal, the middle school enrichment, and field trip weeks. And then

198also for the Kids & Co, the 2026-27 registration opens on February 16th at 8 p.m. So I just wanted to call those out and make sure that people are aware. There's also a really great update on adult enrichment. And whenever I am knocking on the doors and I am talking to people about school board. i hear inevitably i don't have any kids in the schools and i say but you are part of community ed and we serve you as well so make make it an opera make time to to really look at these reports because they do provide really important information about our district um so with that i would look for a motion to share oh yes yeah sorry um i just had a quick question or about the mckinney binto Yes. And maybe

199this is just pondering, but are we expecting an influx of unhoused or under housed students as the parents can't go to work or pay rent and things like that? Are we expecting an onslaught, not an onslaught, but an increase in the number of homeless students? And are we considering, is there anything that? we can connect the two together and help. Be like, okay, if this is happening to you because of circumstances, with ice or whatever, that we can direct you to these things. Just kind of wondering if we could make that connection for some of our families. Yeah, I think that part of what the fundraising through half is addressing is rent rental rent assistance for families that need it or for housing I know that ICA provides Help in that area as well So

200families can certainly reach out to ICA and that's part of what the fundraising is going for and then I would also urge anyone all of us as elected officials, but certainly people in our community to advocate for the state legislature to, or their municipalities at minimum to install a moratorium on rent. We certainly were able to do that during the. pandemic and i think that locally this is a crisis that rises to that level increasingly we are going to see families struggling to pay their rent and right now for a lot of families that is their only safe space so it it is urgent and thank you for for bringing that up I think that we don't know what's going to happen, but certainly our community is already responding in tangible ways. But definitely speak

201with your representatives and with your local electeds to ensure that we are proactive in helping our families stay in stable housing. Thanks. Karen, Jason, can I do a follow-up to that? So, Director Zhao, I am on the, and this is for the whole board, too, I am on the executive committee for heading home Hennepin, and so there is a, we do have meetings, I have to look at the meeting cadence, but I am the voting member for the district. we do have meetings that talks about like what Hennepin County is doing to address some of these issues. Like it's not just respective just to like homeless students, but they talk about housing in general across like the state. And so if any of you would like me to connect you to the meetings, I'm more

202than happy to share them on your calendars because that is a space where you can come and ask questions and learn and understand more about what's. what's going to be like the next steps in regards to addressing homelessness. Yeah. I mean, my concern is that last mile, right? Like help seems to exist, which is great, but how do we get that information to where it needs to be? Like, how do we reach that last mile? And that's. I don't know. I don't know if we, school has mechanisms and I know that we have privacy concerns. So like, I totally understand that it's a double-edged sword, but what can we do to get that information, all this good stuff and resources in the hands of those who need it, who probably are not, you know, they're

203worried for their personal safety. They're not thinking about next month. Right. And so how do, how do we connect those dots for them? Yeah. One of the things that's really helpful is, um, ICA does a lot of this work in the community and they are co-located in most of our sites. So there's already a relationship developed and at least I know at Gatewood they are involved in meeting this moment for our families. Chair Andreessen? Yes. And just to further add context, we do create work intentionally to... create the conditions where families increasingly feel comfortable contacting their respective schools and then when a contact is made then there there we have a social worker at each school and all of our social workers are directly connected with our McKinney-Vento coordinator and so the supports are there

204and really the there's work that we do, and this is ongoing work, to create the conditions so that families feel comfortable reaching out to the school. And that is often the first necessary step. And once that contact is made, then we are ready to go and preparing for this kind of support to be articulated so that we can meet it. Chair Andrewson, can I ask another question? Yes. As I'm thinking about the fund that was just recently established from HEF, is there going to be a priority for immigrant families or is it for any family who may be experiencing loss of income or who have been impacted by the... by the recent chain of events that's not related to their race? Is there any identifying factors that make one family more qualified than the other?

205I think HEF is working in partnership with the ICA. So that would be probably, unless you know Dr. Mary Perry-Reed. Well, and I know Lindsay has frequent, Lindsay Leisman, who is in the audience, has frequent contact with ICA, but I believe that they have specifically shared that they... ask minimal questions so that families, regardless of their immigration status, can get their needs met. So I don't think there are a ton of requirements or questions asked. So I believe the goal is to have a very... Are you saying something, Lindsay? Do you have some information about this? Like really lowering those bars for entry so that families can get support. Okay. And obviously we're focused on making sure that our immigrant families have that support, but there may be other families who also need specific support.

206Hi, everyone. This was not the topic that I expected to be speaking about this evening. Thank you for having me. Yeah, so like Dr. Mary Perry-Reed just said, minimal questions are asked. I know ICA is just still finalizing that application set of questions. And in order to be sensitive to families' privacy, Families will be asked in an application just to indicate a reference because we're balancing, of course, needing to use those funds how they were intended. And so a reference point is designated at school sites. There's just one person. Also, for security purposes, that ICA staff are referred to, that's my understanding currently. And then that staff member will just verify no identifying information about. students but just yes no based on what that family has shared that they do indeed have a student enrolled

207and is it that person's understanding they can verify they have been impacted by the current immigration enforcement activities that's my understanding that's the extent of that check but again those questions are still being finalized so i can't say that that will be what is asked once that becomes available to the public. Thank you, Lindsay. Thank you. Appreciate you answering an on-the-fly question. Absolutely. Thanks, everyone. Good to have you here, Lindsay. And with that, I would look for a motion to accept the incidental reports as presented. So moved. I have a motion. Is there a second? Second. Second. Second. I have a motion and a couple of seconds. Lots of seconds. Any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? The chair votes aye and the incidental reports are accepted. And

208I would look for a motion to adjourn. So moved. I have a motion. Is there a second? Second. I have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. The chair votes aye, and we are adjourned at 9.06 p.m. That's a first.