001Okay, we can get started. This special meeting of the Hopkins School Board is called to order at 7.30 p.m. First, I would look for a motion to approve the agenda. So moved. I have a motion. Is there a second? Second. I have a motion and a second to approve the agenda. Clerk Andreessen. Thank you, Chair Bouchard. Director Adams. Aye. Director Ahmed. Aye. Director Andreessen aye Director Kahn aye Director Peterson aye and chair bouchard hi thank you clerk andreason we have six eyes zero nays motion carries next we'll move into new business and agenda item a is our appointment voting i'll give a brief introduction and then turn it over to clerk andreason to facilitate our cumulative vote So during this special meeting of the Hopkins School Board, we will vote on a new member to
002appoint to fill the vacancy left by former board director Chris LaTondris' resignation when he was elected to Hennepin County Commissioner for District 6. So a little bit of context for our community members joining us via YouTube. State statute gives boards flexibility regarding the process for appointing a board member to a vacant position. Our board chose to seek applications from the entire community and facilitate a transparent process interviewing all candidates who are legally eligible to serve. We interviewed 15 candidates on three dates on December 15th, 17th, and tonight before this special meeting. It has been an incredible experience and very energizing to learn more about the depth and breadth of knowledge and experience as well that exists in our Hopkins Schools community. So before we move into our voting process, I'd like to take a moment
003to speak directly to our 15 candidates and to sincerely thank you for taking the time to apply and interview for this open Hopkins School Board position. It speaks volumes about who you are, that you were willing to put yourself forward to serve during this very complex and challenging time for our entire community. and we're so grateful to your dedication to Hopkins schools and your commitment to Vision 2031. We've said many times at this board table that implementing Vision 2031 takes all of us and there are many ways to get involved with work at the board level. You know, I was thinking last night as I was kind of discerning that it would be so great if we had 21 board seats because we would just have such an incredible team. But fortunately, we do have
004other ways for you to be involved in board work if you are not appointed to the Hopkins School Board this evening. Tomorrow morning with my morning coffee, I plan to send you a follow-up email that includes a list of all of our board advisory committees that have community member representation. And I encourage you to take a look at those committees and reach out to the contact person listed if you would like to learn more or become part of them. Because we could absolutely not do our work on the school board without these committees and community member involvement. Also, I'd like you to keep in mind that there are three Hopkins School Board seats that will be up for election in November 2021. In late May or early June, the board will host an informational meeting
005for community members who might be interested in running for those seats. And the information about this meeting will be communicated through all of our district channels, email, social media, through the website, et cetera. But if you would also like to receive an email from me about the date and time of this meeting, please email me and this goes for anyone watching tonight please email me and i will put you on our contact list of interested candidates as we move into our voting process it's important to acknowledge that the success of the hopkins school board and the entire district hinges on collective efficacy As such, our decision-making process tonight is about how the individual experiences and qualities of our candidates might fit into the overall makeup of the board at this particular time. Some of the
006many factors that go into making this incredibly important decision include a candidate's understanding of the role and work of the board and how it aligns with Vision 2031, the skills and perspectives that our community and the district need in board leadership at this time and ensuring that our board reflects the demographic and geographic makeup of our district including representation from different school communities we also hold in mind some of the major themes that are many of our candidates spoke about during the interview process these include The need to engage a broader range of community members, including families for whom public education has historically not been effective. The importance of communicating where we are in our Vision 2031 implementation and continuing to welcome community members into this work. The priorities of listening to students and supporting
007our educators as we move through and beyond COVID. The desire to expand community-based post-secondary and professional partnerships to meet the diverse needs of our scholars both while they are in Hopkins and beyond. The importance of effective advocacy to decision makers at all level of government. The need for anticipatory budgeting to support both short-term and long-term implementation of Vision 2031. the importance of policies that are authentically inclusive, equitable, and anti-racist, the awareness that learning will not and should not be the same after this period of navigating the dual pandemic of COVID and the compounding impacts of systemic racism and oppression in our community, and the fact that technology will continue to play a major role in this evolution. so i know i said it was going to be a brief introduction i guess it wasn't that
008brief but with all of this said i will now turn it over to clerk andreason who will facilitate our cumulative voting process that will narrow our pool of 15 candidates down to three final candidates for the rank choice vote thank you chair bouchard i want to um let the public know and also remind my board colleagues that you have received a cumulative voting form that you can now complete virtually. After all of those have been submitted, I will be able to see the results. But before I share my screen to share those results with everyone. Each board member will write down how they distributed their votes across the 15 candidates and read those into the record through a roll call. Did I get all that correct? Thank you, Kirk Andreessen. And just to clarify, board
009members can distribute the votes however they would like. So you could give all of your 10 votes to one candidate. You can give three votes to one candidate, two to another, just to make sure that that's clear. Okay. Excellent. So we should go to our Google Forms now and complete the cumulative vote, and then we'll do the roll call, and we'll read it into the record. Thank you. Sounds good. Thank you. Okay. All votes have been submitted. So we will go through and record our votes via a roll call. Steve Adams. Are we recording just the first vote or cumulative votes? All 10. So I would suggest probably the easiest way would be to list the candidate and then how many votes you allocated to them out of the 10. So perhaps your first in
010alphabetical order or however you wrote them down. David Schmidt, I gave him eight votes, one for Jason Ross and one for Robert McNeil. Thank you. Director Ahmed. Can you come back to me? I'm just going to put the baby down really quickly. Absolutely. Director Andreessen would be me. Cassandra Buffalohead, four votes. Jason Ross, two votes. Joe Weiner, two votes. And John Kuhl, two votes. Director Khan. No, Jen, I'm so sorry. My kids had dropped something. So I think I missed hearing something that you said. We could give all 10 to one person though, right? Okay, good. Then I did do it correctly. Okay. So I gave all 10 to John Kuhn. Did I say his name right? John Kuhl. Yeah. Director Peterson. I gave four votes to John Kuhl, two votes to Joe Weiner, two
011votes to Cassie Buffalohead, and two votes to Jason Ross. Thank you. Chair Bouchard. Thank you, Clerk Andreessen. I gave four votes to Cassandra Buffalohead, three votes to John Kuhl, three votes to Jason Ross. And Director Ahmed. Sorry, I gave four votes to Cassandra and five to John. Did you have one other vote? Sorry, I misread that. Five and five each. Oh, okay. Thank you. Now I'm going to attempt to share my screen. I don't think I've ever done this on a Google Meet before, so bear with me as we will go to the results. And just to... Make sure director like, but you recorded those roll call votes. Correct? Thank you. Can everyone see my screen? Yes, thank you. Great. So we have our responses. It doesn't look like we. Sorry, we're going to have
012to take a quick break. My spreadsheet template that I set up is not working correctly. Is it okay to recess for a moment, Chair Bouchard, while I correct the formula? No problem. Or do we want to go with the roll call vote? I think we can go with the roll call vote. Dr. Lightfoot, do you have those totals? I'm totaling them right now, so I should have it naturally. Thank you very much. Excel spreadsheet just like not there when we needed it to be there. I don't know why it worked on the test but it's really a very 2020 situation. Right. It's a real yeah. We'll adapt in real time. This is the work of the Hopkins School Board folks. It's the hybrid version of virtual voting. Exactly. Well the Shannon's brilliant child who said
013why don't you just write down your vote totals and hold them up to the camera. I just want to give him props right now. Chair Bouchard, I believe you were looking for the top three candidates. Yes. And we will double check that I have the role correctly. Director Adams, I have eight votes recorded for Mr. Schmidt, one vote for Mr. Ross, one vote for Mr. McNeil. Director Kahn, I have 10 votes for Mr. Kuhl. Director Peterson, I have four votes for Director Kuhl. I have two for Mr. Weiner, two for Ms. Buffalohead, two for Mr. Ross. Chair Bouchard, I have four for Ms. Buffalohead. I have three for Mr. Kuhl. I have three for Mr. Ross. Director Ahmed, I have five votes for Ms. Buffalohead, five votes for Mr. Kuhl. Director Andreessen, I have four
014votes for Ms. Buffalohead. I have two for Mr. Ross, two for Mr. Weiner, and two for Mr. Kuhl. Is that correct? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yep. All right. Then my quick totals do show that we have four candidates who have emerged. to eight votes. I have candidate Ross with eight and I have candidate Schmidt with eight. I have candidate Buffalo head at 15 and I have candidate cool at 24. Thank you, Dr. Lightfoot. Clerk Andreessen does that coordinate with your votes on the spreadsheet? sorry i'm muted and looking at a spreadsheet and talking to you sorry um i have 24 um john cool i think i'd have to go back and um yeah there are some differences so i think we go with the roll call vote if everyone's in agreement with that yes so it
015looks like um Mr Schmidt and Mr Ross are tied then for 3rd place. And so we'll need to go to the coin toss. I will share my screen so we can all see the coin toss. Does anyone want to. Who should assign heads or tails to which applicants? Let's go alphabetical Ross heads, tail Schmidt. Here is our. coin flipper from random.org. Can everyone see it? Yes. All right. So we decided heads Ross, tails Schmidt. Correct. And it is heads. So that means Ross is our third candidate. Okay. Thank you very much. So our three top candidates who will advance to the rank choice vote are Mr. Ross, Mr. Cool, and Ms. Buffalo Head. SO AT THIS POINT, BOARD MEMBERS, IF YOU'D LIKE TO TALK ABOUT THE STRENGTHS OF THESE CANDIDATES, THIS IS YOUR TIME. I'LL
016START. I'M PULLING UP MY NOTES HERE. I HAVE TO SCROLL WAY DOWN. I TOOK A LOT OF NOTES. I'LL START WITH JASON ROSS. The strengths that I noted during his interview was that he was a good communicator, had budget experience, was very observant around the technology piece of Vision 2031, teacher focused. and very future thinking regarding educational models committed to a curriculum that and a system that truly serves and represents all of our students and a background in international business which i think is a really great compliment division 2031 scroll up What impressed me about Cassandra Buffalohead is her advocacy experience. The work that she's done within the district to build our American Indian education program and to engage families and parents in that work. Just so many transferable skills there that could easily scale
017into what we do at the board level. Her experience in budgeting and really jumping into challenging situations in her social work career and finding ways to make them work. She exhibited during her interview a real growth mindset and a commitment, a real commitment to that engagement piece, which I think is great. And then reflecting on John Kuhl's interview, so some exciting ideas around corporate partnerships to help. sustain us financially as we continue to implement Vision 2031, a clear investment in the community, personal investment in our anti-racism and LGBTQ plus work throughout the district. And again, just bringing that international business perspective that I think could be really valuable. You know, my background's in international education. And so I WAS REALLY ATTRACTED TO THAT INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS PIECE IN BOTH CANDIDATE COOL AND ROSS. I'D OPEN IT
018UP TO OTHER BOARD MEMBERS. I'LL GO. GREAT. THANK YOU, DIRECTOR KAHN. THE REASON WHY I PICKED JOHN COOL WAS BECAUSE He was the first one who this isn't just the main reason but it seems like he is very familiar with education because of his experiences with family educators who people in his family who have been special ed educators He is very interested in policy and I like that, you know, he's very involved with his own children and our school district and that he has good leadership skills since he served on it was at fast pitch um the fast pitch uh girls uh team um and uh you know his letters of recommendation were actually really very very good um and that's why i i like him and like you said he has that connection with
019the business community as well and um AND I LIKE THAT HE SAID THAT HIS FAMILY AND HIS KIDS ACTUALLY REPRESENT ALL OF WHAT OUR SCHOOL DISTRICT KIND OF REPRESENTS. AND THAT'S IT. NEW SPEAKER THANK YOU, DIRECTOR KHAN. ANY OTHER BOARD MEMBER OBSERVATIONS? SHOULD WE MOVE FORWARD INTO OUR RANK CHOICE VOTE? I'M SEEING NODS. I WISH I COULD JUST LIKE LOOK AROUND THE TABLE AT YOU AND SEE YOU NODDING HERE. ALL RIGHT. CLERK ANDREASEN. There will be a few moments while the ballot gets delivered to your email. So just hold tight and talk amongst yourselves. Thank you very much. Clerk Andreessen and I had kind of tossed around the idea of me leading a sing-along during this part, and I'm so sorry. I just didn't get the... The words, I was going to have like the
020bouncing ball with the words. I just didn't get that together. So I'm sorry, no sing-along. So we'll just have to have a little quiet time while we wait for our ballots. Has anyone gotten theirs yet? No? Is it going to come from you, Shannon? Whose name is going to be on the email? It should be from, here, I'll look up a preview of the. Vote it's signed by me, but I'm pretty sure it would come from opa vote opa vo Okay, I'm wondering if maybe our arse The school email is filtering it out Let me see if I can find It's not in junk but The spam filter most likely it wouldn't send it to junk though. It would most likely be held up Oh, I just got mine. Mine came through as well. Great.
021Mine didn't come through. I don't know if I should reload it or. You can always hit refresh on Gmail. It's the little circle arrow. Did you get it, Director Kahn? No, I don't know what's wrong with my computer. I'm so, so sorry. Mine came through. My vote is submitted. My vote is submitted as well. I have submitted also. Recommend anything else that I can do? Let me go and check. I'm sorry, am I unmuted? Tonya, I would, if I were you, have you pulled down, like where you pull the screen down to refresh? Okay, then I would get out. And I refreshed it too. Okay. Did you try are you on an iPad or at man? I'm on the iPad I'm close out of the mail app itself and restart the mail app. See if
022that works. Okay, I'll close out everything I'm gonna try and resend it to you tractor con and it's on the Gmail, right? Yeah, it's the app Director con it came to my outlook as well. Okay, so I could try outlook. Okay I just sent it to you again. I'm so sorry. I can't believe it. I guess I'm like holding all of you up. No worries. We all waited a long time for me to get the ballot set up. But you can only vote once, Tanya. Yeah, you can only vote once. Yeah, I get it. I don't know why. It's just even your email, I've reloaded it. I did everything. I don't know what's wrong. I know I'm doing something wrong. I just don't know what it is. Is there any other thing I can do?
023I'll show you my screen even. We believe you. Just trying to figure out how to do it because we need all the votes submitted through in order to tabulate them. Yeah, during choice voting. And Clerk Andreessen, you resent the link to Director Kahn? I did and there wouldn't have been oh it's um it's bouncing is it a problem with the email address um I don't think so um let me hmm no it looks it shows five voted two not voted so you're not um well let me try this I will try and send it to your outlook address structure con see if that works. I found it. Okay, great. Thank goodness. Good. That was so suspenseful. I'm glad you saw it. So sorry. We'll let you vote in peace now. Okay. Okay. Did you get
024it? Could you unmute clerk Andreessen? Sorry. Yes. I show that. The results are in. So did everyone vote? I voted. I voted. I voted. I did too. Because I only show five votes. Maybe it's taking a moment for Director Kahn's votes to register. There we go. Six voted. We are ready to go. Excellent. So I will stop the voting. I will share my screen. I think we have a, from the results of this, we have a clear winner in John Kuhl with 66.7% of the vote. Thank you very much, Clerk Andreessen. So we will move to our next agenda item, which is the approval of the resolution to fill the school board vacancy by appointment. I'll just read through the background and then we'll move into the resolution. So at the board meeting on November
02517th, 2020, the board accepted the resignation of Vice Chair Christopher Latondris, a newly elected Hennepin County Commissioner. and ultimately authorized chair bouchard to establish and implement a process for board member replacement based upon input from board members the board candidate interviews were conducted at publicly available board workshops on december 15th 17th and preceding tonight's special meeting and i did want to make another background clarification that this appointment is for the remainder of chris latondris's term and so this seat will be up for re-election in November 2021. So we'll move to the resolution and I would look for a motion to approve the following resolution. I will read it and then I will seek the motion. Whereas a vacancy exists in the office of school board member with a term expiring the first Monday in January
0262022, and whereas the vacancy occurred less than 90 days prior to the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November of the third year of the vacant term or on any date during the fourth year of the vacant term. Now therefore be it resolved by the School Board of Independent School District 270, State of Minnesota as follows. Pursuant to Minnesota Statute section 123B09 subdivision 5, John Coole is hereby appointed to fill the vacancy and to serve the remainder of the unexpired term and until a successor is elected and qualified. the appointment shall be effective 30 days after the adoption of this resolution unless a valid petition to reject the appointee is filed with the school district clerk pursuant to minnesota statutes section 123b09 subdivision 5b b within that 30-day time period and i would look
027for a motion to approve that resolution so moved chair bouchard i have a motion is there a second second I have a motion and a second. Is there any discussion? I have a motion and a second to approve the resolution. We can move to the roll call vote. Clerk Andreessen. Thank you, Chair Bouchard. Director Adams. Aye. Director Ahmed. Aye. Director Andreessen. Aye. Director Kahn. Aye. Director Peterson. Aye. And Chair Bouchard. aye thank you clerk andreason we have six ayes zero nays motion carries next i would look for a motion to adjourn so move i have a motion is there a second second i have a motion in a second to adjourn any discussion see none clerk andreason thank you chair bouchard director adams aye director ahmed Aye. Director Andreessen? Aye. Director Kahn? Aye. Director Peterson?
028Aye. And Chair Bouchard? Aye. Thank you, Clerk Andreessen. We have six ayes, zero nays. Motion carries. This special meeting of the Hopkins School Board is adjourned at 8.16 p.m. Thank you.