001I'll call order the uh work session for Byron Independent School District 531 at 602. Um can I get an attendance please? >> Yep. Kelly here. Jeremy >> here. >> Nadia >> here. Alicia here. David >> here. >> Lisa >> here. Carrie Jackson. >> Thank you. Vision: Byron Public Schools, a community of learners committed to making the world a better place. Mission is learn, share, innovate, and inspire. Priorities: personalized learning in the pursuit of academic excellence, inspire students and staff to develop their character, share their talents, and apply their learning, maintain excellence in resource management. Uh, any questions on the agenda? Otherwise, I would entertain a motion to approve the agenda. >> I make a motion to approve the agenda. >> Second. >> First and a second. All in favor say I. >> I. >> Motion
002carries. Uh on to reports, achievement and integration update. So, the achievement integration grant is a three-year grant that um we qualify for because we share a geographic boundary with Rochester. And Rochester is designated as a racially isolated school district or an RIS and we are an adjoining school district or an A, believe it or not. That's what it it's a very simple acronym. And so, um, the achievement integration grant, you, uh, you create a three-year plan that has goals, and this is the third year of our last three-year plan. And so, um, the intent behind it is uh you you have three goals. One is a student achievement goal where you focus on graduation rates or reading uh, proficiencies or math or whatever kind of student achievement goal. there's a million of them that you
003could build. The second one is centered is intended on centering on teacher equity. Um most common of those is um providing professional development for teachers so they provide a more equitable classroom environment. Um uh initiatives to um hire a more equitable workforce that's representative of your district uh population numbers. Those are really the two most common uh teacher equity goals. And then the third is an integration goal where you are cooperating with your racially isolated school district in some way, shape or form where the students our students integrate with the racially isolated schools students in some way. Um, so we met as a as a collective, which is Rochester and every one of the districts that surrounds Rochester, um, to talk through the integration goal specifically because it makes a lot of sense and it
004makes things a million times easier if we all just have the same integration goal. Um Rochester is going through their own refurbishing of a strategic plan right now. And so they did not really have uh a great direction to point everybody in. And so um in working with MDE, they suggested that we use the next year of the achievement integration as a planning year. And so our integration goal for year one will be to cooperate with Rochester public schools and the other joining districts to build a two-year integration goal. And then um we will set um an achievement goal that's just for public schools. And we'll we'll set a teacher equity goal that is just for public schools. So, um, the budget for or your your proposed budget for the ANI grant is due in
005about 2 weeks. And so, I I'll take care of that. It's it's pretty it's a pretty simple, straightforward process. Um and as part of that we'll we'll build I'll build in some goals but um right now the achievement integration budget for this year um was uh part of that money was used towards um the salary of our career one of the career teachers up at the high school and then the lion's share of the money was used for reading curriculum um at the elementary schools. So, um, anyway, there's a little bit more work to be done on that, but I just wanted to provide an update because that's kind of a it's a unique grant. It's it's a relatively stable form of revenue that we receive. Um, it does go up a little bit every
006single year, but when I say a little bit, I mean it's a cost of living adjustment. So, >> how much is total rent? >> Um, this year was a little over 130,000. Wow. Yeah. All right, >> good. Thank you. >> Yeah. >> Any other questions? Further discussion? >> No. Thank you. >> Thank you. Uh move to CRM radon testing report. So IA the institute of environmental assessment came out uh to the intermediate school in January and did some intermittent radon testing and the preliminary results showed that uh it was above 4.0 0 pico curies per liter. Did I say that even right? >> Yep. 100%. >> Why you looking at me? >> Well, because you're nodding. So, so um what that does is it triggers a a more robust monitoring which they did uh February
00716th through the 18th and then they run that through the testing and everything came back below uh the Department of Health's ranges. So, everything's good. >> Great. But IA said that have to present the report to you guys. And here we go. >> All right. >> Perfect. >> Done. Thanks. >> You did well. >> Great. >> I know too much about it. So, >> you know too much about it? >> Yeah. My company installs radon system. So, I know all about radon. >> I know very little about radon. >> Jeez. >> You're lucky. Yes. Um, any questions or further discussion on the radon testing? >> No. >> All right. On to discussion items. Review policy 611, 502, 104, 526, and 427. >> Okay. Um, in the case of homeschooling, um, homeschooling is, uh, at least
008the way that we, the public school interacts with homeschooling is determined a lot by the legislative, uh, branch of our state government. Um, and this just provides um some policy and direction for those people who are electing to um homeschool their students as to what what they need to do um and what expectations they're um they're beholden to as they home choose to homeschool their students. >> Any questions on >> I had a question on this, but now that I'm looking at it, it doesn't make sense. Under number nine, optional cooperative arrangements. A for activities. Do we have any students who fit this category? Let's see. That was my note. >> So, that would be homeschooled that are not residents of the district. Do we have any of those kids? Okay. I didn't think so.
009Okay. All right. That was just my question. We have >> and there were no suggested updates to any of these, right? >> All right. Um 502 is the search of student lockers, desk, personal positions, and student of the person. Um these uh these policies are also uh well they're really guided by at the federal level with u a lot of these end up coming down from um case law from the Supreme Court frankly. Um the standard of evidence is um reasonable suspicion which is very different than what the police officers um do. Uh, so if we if a administrator even hears a rumor of, you know, uh, Nate having a vape in his locker or whatever, like that's enough for the administration to to go ahead and make a search. Um, this does get controversial
010in a hurry for some families and and students, but um, please know that our um, our administrators are well aware of the law. Um, it is not very interesting to any of us to have to search kids. We'd much rather do about 10 million other things with our time. Um, but we do take our responsibility to keep our schools safe um, very seriously. So, >> and the their vehicle is not in this one, right? That's all >> that's in the other one. Yeah. Yeah. >> Any questions on that one? Um this one just outlines the vision and uh mission statement, the priorities that we have. We go through this every meeting. >> Is there anything we should consider editing or adjusting based on our strategic plan discussion we had recently? >> Uh for right now,
011no. >> Okay, sounds good. Um, I do think, uh, at least my, as I've been delving more into what our plan looks like over the next couple of years, um, I'll be open in that a lot of my strategic thinking about it is not centered on changing anything with the mission and the vision statements, right? But >> but when we get to the listening sessions that you all will inevitably be participating in, if you feel strongly um that is absolutely an opportunity to say I really love this or I really don't love this and here's what I'd like to see. So, >> and so for policies like this, do we um do we review them at certain cadence when there are some changes coming from the Minnesota School Board Association or for something like this?
012Can we just pull it up and make changes on the fly? >> That one? Yep. So if we end up when we navigate through our strategic plan, if we end up changing this and we're like, "Hey, then once you adopt that strategic plan, either at that same board meeting or the next one, this would end up coming up in >> and they're all on a three-year rotation." So even if you make a change or if MSBA does like a recommended change, I still keep it on the same three-year rotation. So you might see it again then if you were to make a change in two years, you see it again a year later to keep the rotation going. >> Yep. Smart. >> Just just a question. It says right on there that it's reviewed every
013two years. Is this one on the two or the three? >> Yeah, there's a couple that are yearly and then there's a couple that are >> two years and then most of them are three years. >> Okay. >> Any other questions on 104? >> Um, no. But I'm to David's point. It said the school board will review the mission every two years especially when members of the board change. So I wonder if we haven't we should note this in our board handbook to do that. >> Totally. >> Anything else on four? >> As far as I know, it hasn't changed for >> Yeah. >> It's not necessarily a bad thing either, you know. That's right. >> What we like and we're still following and it's still good. >> Okay. The hazing prohibition. I can't remember
014when this this issue became a law. I want to say it was in the late 20 odds was some sort. But um but anyway um obviously we have a prohibition against hazing in any and all of its forms. Um and this um this policy outlines what what the definition of hazing is um and then also what the reporting and the consequence procedures into like for hazing as well. Any questions on that one now that I out? >> No questions. >> Okay. All right. Um on 427 um this is uh recognizing that in certain cases with certain special education teaching case loads that there should be some workload limits. Um it is important to highlight in the definitions that there are two different types of services that end up happening which are direct services meaning these
015are services that a teacher is providing to a student directly. So if you were my special ed teacher and I was there for math support you teaching me math and intervening with me on math and helping me organize my math. That's considered a direct service that you and I have. Um, an indirect service are things that you might be doing outside of my presence that still ends up supporting me. So, you might be lesson planning for my upcoming intervention session. You might be communicating with my regular education teachers on my accommodations or trying to find different ways to support me. Those are all indirect services because a lot of times when we talk about the case loads, most people default to, okay, I'm a special ed teacher and I have 15 kids on my case
016load. Well, there's a difference between each one of those 15 kids. You know, one 15 one of those kids might be really heavy on the direct service minutes and you might have kids that have zero direct service minutes but have quite a few indirect service minutes. And so all of those things are computed when talking when talking case loads. Um the one thing I was going to highlight is uh and I haven't been through this yet and Byron, but generally when you have a collective um or a cooperative, not a collective, sorry. Um, when you have a cooperative like Zed, um, one of the services Zed provides is they take every one of your special ed teachers and they will do a workload analysis where they provide weight for both the indirect and the direct
017service minutes so that you can compare all of your all of your sped teachers. And it makes it to the extent that it is at all possible kind of an applesto apples discussion because in some cases the direct service minutes at the elementary level look very differently than they do at the high school level. And then you also had different types of disabilities where their direct service minutes look very different than other types of and so the workload analysis that comes out of the cooperative at least the ones I'm familiar with balances all those so that you can see you know if Nadia Alicia and Lisa were all sped teachers it will say hey here's their workload number and you know it's weighted so then we can see well Nadia and Alicia really have a
018heavy weight you know in the upcoming year and so if we have new students that come in qualify. We're going to assign those to Lisa because she has she has less of a wait. >> Okay. >> All right. Any other questions on that? Sorry, that was private looking. >> No, it's good. It's helpful. Yeah. >> Any questions on any of the policies? All right. On to action items. uh action on the director's contract. >> Um I uh I'll happily give you just kind of a run through of some of the things that were changed in both the contracts. I'll give you my general impression and then you board negotiators, you're welcome, and Sean too, cuz he's part of it as well. Um are welcome to share um your thoughts on the director's side. Um we
019did what we were referring to as right sizing. Um with many of the cuts over the past couple years um those did trend towards administrative and leadership positions. Um and as a result there was a lot of responsibilities that ended up getting farmed out to the remaining leadership. And so um we part of the negotiations was to rightsize those individuals who had received the uh significantly increased numbers of responsibilities and duties. So that was the first part of it. Um second part of it was the was the salary um salary increase um which uh averaged out to 3% in year 1 and 5% in year two. Uh we also um did some changes to um their longevity stipened over the 2-year contract. We changed um we increased the insurance contributions as well during the contract.
020Uh and let's see, we changed the vac or we increased the vacation sellback number of days. They were at eight and now they can sell back 10. And then we also changed the title of the transportation manager to the transportation director or director of transportation. I don't know. I I think those are interchangeable, but maybe somebody doesn't. Um >> and so when you do look at the language of the contract now, there are no more managers that fit in the contract. And so the word manager has has also been removed. Um I do think with uh I was anticipating walking into negotiations with both the directors and the principles that um these were going to be some more protracted and and pointed discussions as compared to the teachers and the pair professionals. Um but I
021will say from my side I think both sides were able to articulate the things that were important to them. Um, and both sides did a good job of listening to each other and I think we um I think we came out with with wise settlements um for the directors. Um, if I remember right, Sean, I'm side eyeing you here. The directors were just slightly over budget, right? Correct. Maybe a couple thousand dollars over over what was budgeted. So anyway, board negotiators, any additional points to put point or highlight with the directors and all? >> The only thing I can think of is the severance side of thing. There was some language in there about severance that we changed out. >> Oh, yes. There was a um Thank you for bringing that up. There was an
022article in there that um that had been added and I don't know how long ago it was, but basically if the district was making contributions to their 403b that if if an employee was to leave or retire, the sum total of the contributions that the district had made for these 403bs would be subtracted from whatever settlements or retirement package. Um and so we we did remove that clause as well. Thank you for bringing that up. The only thing I would add is gratitude to you two because um because there was right sizing that needed to be done with the directors. Um you it took I feel like you two did a lot of homework and benchmarking. So we made sure we were giving fair offers but still being prudent with our budget. Um, and so
023that was a lot of extra work and it really provided data to us to feel confident that we were making offers that were in everyone's best interests, I feel like. So, thank you. >> You're welcome. >> Makes our job a lot easier, too, when we do our homework. >> Imagine that. >> Um, any other questions or thoughts or comments on the director's contract? Make a motion to approve the director's contract 25 to 27 as presented. >> Second. >> Motion and a second. All in favor say I. >> I. >> Motion passes. On to action on the principal's contract. >> Um there's a lot of similar veins uh between the principal's contract and the director's contract. Um uh we did um increase salary uh 5% year 1. um three and three/4er percent in year two. And
024then in addition, we did remove the if you looked at the old contract, there was a salary grid that is very similar or was very similar to the teacher salary grid. Um that entire salary grid was removed. um we also removed the longevity stipen um sorry uh from their contract and um they had um the principles had in their contract some I guess I would argue confusing language about severance and retirement benefits and so we cleaned that up and made it very simple um but then also uh what I would argue It was it was a good move on both sides parts because it made it very simple and easy for us to budget. It also capped our expenses overtime which was not happening in the previous in the previous agreement. >> Um and let's
025see they um they also got an increase in their sickly buyback um from um 8 days to 10 days. Um and then they also received an increase in their bereavement leave. Um most of our other working groups get up to 5 days and they were at 4 days. So we increased that one. And um oh and then uh we added Junth as a paid holiday. That's more of a state statute thing. And so we also dropped it into the contract because they have a section about the paid holidays that they're granted. So um I will say unlike with the directors with the principles I felt like um I felt like just mostly uh due to like trying to time it right and to be very prudent with um the principal's time specifically there was less
026board negotiators um participating in the the dayto-day kind of sword fencing that happens when you're negotiating. Um, so Sean and I were were a lot more involved with it. Um, you all can speak to how much you felt like you were updated by Sean and I after I'm done pontificating. Um, but uh I do think again with the principles as with the directors um I was I was initially kind of concerned about you know how these conversations would go. Um, but I do think um I do think both sides uh were able to walk away with things that they were able to get accomplished and um I think it it ends up being a wise agreement and a wise settlement for both sides. So there so that's my that's my opinion. Yeah, >> I thought
027it was great how we I we met with everyone the first time and then I felt like we had regular updates and um if we needed to and I think if they wanted to meet with us, we absolutely would have to. But a lot of that um language cleanup doesn't it's just so hard to collaborate everyone's schedule for those things that you know we can do over email like this could have been an email kind of thing. >> Yes, fair enough. Um yeah, I think when we a few years ago, I think the administrative budget was cut by like 30%. Was it I don't remember exact numbers, but I know that our directors and principles took a freeze and um really kind of took one for the team, so to speak. And so I just
028really appreciate everything they did to help us get back on track and feels really good to be able to now move forward. And >> yeah, >> agreed. >> We also removed the uh 403b severance combination from the principles as well. >> Thank you. That that same clause that was in the directors that we removed was also in the principles and that was that was also removed. >> Right. So thank you. >> It was interesting that both groups that was the first point they brought up was that specific thing. So >> yeah. >> On the radar. >> I do think it's worth noting that you know the um in the cases of the the principles specifically that most of them have served in the district for a long time. And that's >> yeah, >> that's unusual
029for principles, um, myself included, where you're you're trying to find a a good fit. You're trying to find ways in some cases to move up. And it it's something that you have, you know, three of the four um building administrators have been here for almost 10 years or 10 years plus. Um and that that is something that I think um districts take for granted that that kind of stability that exists in your buildings. Um and so I um I'm grateful for their service and their commitment specifically probably mostly because I was a principal. I was never a director. So >> they are also super committed and amazing. Um but but I I think sometimes it's easy to to pick on the compensation of principles and what that looks like. But um they do provide the
030most direct leadership in the district and um and having them um in a good place is just creates so much stability and consistency across everything that we do. So >> yeah, I think their sturdy leadership is largely what got us through like our there that's a big part of the reason why our staff like they could do what they did the last few years and their kids didn't even necessarily know that they had gone through a financial crisis. >> Awesome. Uh any other questions, comments, discussion on the principal's contract? Motion to accept the principal's contract 25 to 27 as presented. >> Second. >> Motion and a second. All in favor say I. >> I. >> Motion carries. Uh listening session. Nobody was there. >> No. So I booked tickets to San Diego for my daughter.
031>> And I and I listened to you complain about not being able to check a bag right there. So >> that was it. That was our weekend. >> So the problem was solved. Problem was solved. Yes. On to the last >> motion to adjurnn. >> Second. >> Motion and a second. All in favor say I. >> I. Ocean carries.