School Board Meeting (5/5/25)

001A herea here vision Inspiring public schools a community of learners committed to making the world a better place. Mission to learn, share, innovate, inspire and our priorities are to personalize learning in the pursuit of academic excellence, inspire students and staff to develop their character, share their talents and apply their learning and maintain excellence in resource management. Any questions or discussion on the agenda as presented or would entertain a motion to approve? Make a motion to approve the agenda as presented. Second. Motion and a second. Uh any questions or discussion? All in favor say I. I. All opposed. Agenda is approved. We will turn it over to Jeff Taylor with Taylor PR. All right. Hi Jeff. So you have the attention of the board. So, I will just we're just going to turn it right right

002over to you right away. Sounds good. Very appreciate it. Uh good evening, uh Mr. Chair and members and Superintendent Dub. I'm Jeff Daylor. I'm going to share my screen with a presentation and uh with my goal here today of just talking a little bit about how a school board can take a role or play a role in sharing the message, telling a story about your needs and about um your proposal, how to solve uh your challenges. So um let me find the share button here. Um I appreciate that you all started with um kind of looking at your mission and your profile of a graduate at Dale Lord PR. Um and we do the same thing. We pay attention to we are we are mission based as well. So our our mission is to improve

003communities through exceptional public relations, marketing and strategic counsel. And the improving communities part is really important to us. What we care about um about the clients that we serve is to um uh is is to work with you um to to provide the resources that you and your teachers need um to be able to help your students learn and grow um so that your your communities are improved. And so we do that in a variety of ways. And so some of that is through uh communications about a referendum um but some of it is through other things. So we provide a variety of different services to public school districts across the state of Minnesota and we've been doing that since 2011. Um I started the business in 2011 after serving as the communications director at

004Robinsdale Schools in the Twin Cities um in the in the early 2000s. Um we've done a lot of work in referendums. I I don't want to focus on that because we do a lot of other stuff, but that is a piece of what that's that's that's the reason why we are here today. Um, and so this is part of our part of what we do and and and we have a decent uh record with that. You know your situation really well. I'm going to try to encapsulate it a little bit in a summary here. And this summary is not intended to be comprehensive, but it tells a little bit about your story. and we'll be honing in uh more closely on what that message is over the course of of uh you know this this

005period of time between now and the referendum. So we know that you've got financial challenges. Um you've had to balance your budget through a combination of using fund balance and and budget reductions. Um and uh not just in this current school year but in the coming school year as well. There are many reasons why you've got uh the de a deficit budget and a low fund balance, but some of those reasons are that state revenue increases don't keep pace with inflation. And you're not unique. That is uh impacting school districts across the state. Um some of your costs are going up in a in a in a much faster at a much faster rate than your um than than inflation is. And so that includes health insurance costs. um and a number of other things

006as well. So um in addition to that there are and again this is something that all school districts in Minnesota are facing there are a lot of new state mandates. Um however some school districts are more impacted by those mandates than others. You also know that you've got um um a dip in revenue due to co funding expiring. Um and then there have been challenges that you faced and and we all know this that um um it's been reported in the media um salaries underbudgeted by a million half dollars um other challenges that have resulted in bringing you to the place uh that you are at today. So, in addition to all of this, um, just based on who you are, the demographics of the public school district at Pirate, uh, you're the third lowest

007in state funding. Um, you've been enjoying uh uh growth in in enrollment over the course of quite a few of the previous years, but that's starting to level off. and and you're probably fortunate that you've had an enrollment growth because you've been able to get by without an operating levy for a while and in large part you're you kind of base that on the on that growth you get as more students come in. Um with the growth leveling off that means that that um operating revenue is not increasing um with new students as they are showing up. you've had some um kind of mixed history with regard to uh referendum history uh passing or or passing of referendums. You've had some that have passed and some that have not. Uh and of course the most

008recent failed operating ledger request last year. Um I think the good news is that um despite the fact that uh there has been some loss of trust in the school district as a result of some of the financial issues that you've had to deal with at the same time in the recent in recent months you've been engaging with community members to help to budget to determine budget reductions. there's been this community budget committee that has been meeting since December to look at the challenges that you're facing to provide feedback on ideas on how to deal with that. So that engagement of the community I think is really important and it's good work and it's represented um uh with with some of the community that you're doing. other important issues. Um, people like the Byron school

009district, they go to the Byron school district uh to search out good education and so people who are moving to Byron or people who are open enrolling students into Byron are coming here because of the value of the product that you offer and that's a good thing. Um, it means that people support you. So um uh it it might be however misunderstood when you see people who are open enrolling in. Do we support those kids? What benefit to our community in Byron? And that's a that's an issue that is happening at other school districts that also have open enrollment uh a net open enrollment gain. Um and there's a lot of good um of help that that provides to the community as a result of having open enrolled students. Um without those open enrolled students,

010you wouldn't have um as many teachers. You wouldn't have as many um u program offerings including um uh electives um or or um after school activities. And so there's more opportunity available to resident students um than there would be if those open homes open enroll students weren't there. Um a referendum sometimes can be looked at as as uh needing two different groups to communicate and uh one would be the school district and the other would be a citizens or a yes committee. Um but there really should be more of a a a dotted line between those two. And the reason is that um and we'll outline this in a second even more, but but school board members and uh staff members for a school district can participate yes committee. They can also participate in a

011no committee uh because you have the right to free speech when you're not on the clock. So, schools uh district employees are not allowed um to participate in advocacy either for or against um if they're on the clock and they can't use their school email addresses, school equipment um like uh computers and that sort of thing um uh for advocacy purposes, but you are allowed by state law to share factual information. So this is comes straight from the Minnesota School Boards Association um information from their brochure on this subject and it's a re just a reminder of what you can and can't do basically. So the goal the school district is comm is to communicate about um uh about your referendum in a factual manner neutral manner to everyone. So, what we would propose to

012do is to make sure that all of the channels, the communications channels that you're using, uh, we want to make sure that, um, voters have the opportunity to be informed prior to uh, election day and prior to even um, open uh, early uh, early voting, which would begin in the third week of September. this contract and you so you use your standard communications tools, website, social media, email, etc. We would also do at least two direct mail opportunities to all residents um a fact sheet about the project and then um kind of more in-depth mailing though in October. and um and then the key to have school district representatives um out and and communicating with members of the public at meetings and with presentations etc. So again the school district's goal communicating with all and

013that contrasts with a yes committee and the guest committee's goal is to win to pass that referendum but they cannot use any taxpayer dollars. they must raise their own money to be do that kind of communication and um their goal their goal is to on the next page identifying yes voters and get them to the poll. Uh same is true of the identifying no voters and getting them to the polls. So it's a political campaign that concentrates on the yes committee getting those yes voters to the polls. So, one more item from the school boards association brochure. This little box in yellow. I'm going to blow that up um to remind people that again board members and staff can serve on vote yes or vote no committees during their personal time. So, the personal time

014there is key. Um board members and staff can put vote yes or vote no stickers on their vehicles. It's an exercise of free speech. However, in the buildings, in the school buildings, um you cannot wear uh advocacy um clothing or buttons or that sort of thing um because they're on school grounds. Um uh and and it's a disruptive. I think the reason that they allow stickers on cars is because it's very hard to take them off when you get out of the into the parking lot. Hardly. And hard to put them back on again when you leave. Um, but I want again focusing on that board members and staff can serve on advocacy committees again during their personal time. And so we like to say on your own time, on your own time. So no

015school district money and no school district uh um um materials and and and uh equipment and that sort of thing. So roles and next steps. So what does the school board have to do with a referendum? And you're getting a new superintendent um uh soon who um was part of a referendum in Howard Lake Waverly Winstead uh last year and I would call his experience with a school board as maybe the best experience I've ever seen. So, you're going to have a high bar of expectations from your new superintendent of uh their school board, but use them as a case study was amazing. Um, we met monthly with the school board to learn about what connections schoolboard members had with community members and how could we get the superintendent in front of those community members

016to share information. And so school board members um uh had an assignment of if you know someone who is let's say the president of the Kuanas club or a member of the booster club or whatever um tell us how we can how we can schedule a um uh a presentation to that group. And so the so the school board member would say I know the Rotary Club president. I'm going to I'm going to uh schedule that presentation and then I'll go with the superintendent to that uh to that meeting to serve as sort of that an introductory person. It's it's uh that person you know that board member had a relationship with those people in that room and the superintendent uh at that time was new. He'll be new in your case as well. um

017and and so he doesn't know anybody and so having that bridge um between the new superintendent and community members is was so valuable. Um and so the school board uh members can provide assistance to the to uh the superintendent both in the connection in the networking but then also to be the eyes and ears in the community. And so I'm hearing this reporting that back to the superintendent. so that if there are questions that need to be answered, the superintendent can answer them and that generates more information that we can put on the website as a frequently asked question. So, um it's important also uh for school board members to be able to share, you know, know what the what the key talking points are and to use those talking points consistently um so that

018there's no confusion in the community about what the what the needs are and what the proposed solution is. And again, school board members can take any role in the citizens committee and can lead by example. And that means that um just show just showing your your physical support. Um and uh so yeah, attending open house presentations, networking, all of that stuff. Um, the last thing that I wanted to talk about is just a little bit of the timeline and then open it up for questions and uh and hear what your ideas are about how you can help your superintendent uh your current superintendent and your future superintendent u to be in the community and have conversations. So we want to start and fundamentally uh with community engagement and um the community engagement is important because

019what we what we want to do is gather as much information for you as a school board to have to be able to inform the decision that you make about what the proposal will be. And so, um, uh, I appreciate that, um, uh, that that you have been listening to both Mike as well as Nate, your your future superintendent, about when is the right time to make a decision about what does that ballot question look like? Um, how much of an increase in taxes are we asking for, how much of an increase to our revenue are we asking for, what will the money be spent on? All those questions are questions that people in your people want to know uh before they can decide whether or not to support this project. And so we want

020to know the answer to those questions before we put that on the ballot. And um on the one hand um we want to ask questions and receive the feedback. On the other hand, we also want to make sure that our community knows that um that what your what you the information that you receiving as a board will help to inform you as you make your decision, but it's only one set of of uh inputs or or information that you are that you're listening to. You're listening to community members about what their priorities are, but you're also listening to administrators and what their priorities are. and you're listening to student what they care about um and you're listening to your constituents. So, so the set of inputs are coming from multiple different places. You'll take all

021of that information to help you to decide on what that ballot language looks like in the end. And so um uh our hope then is that based on the information that you received from uh from community members that one community members will not be surprised what they see that you've gone out for another referendum and that two they will see their fingerprints uh on the project on the on the final ballot question um a little bit so that they can say yep okay I see that it was um I see that that you know it's not exactly what I would have preferred but I see that that some of what I was looking for is in here. So it's important to um engage community members first before you make those decisions. So um um that's

022what we'll spend the month of May doing. We'll do a a survey. I know that that um your superintendent has been talking to you about you know there's a variety of different ways to gather information. uh we're going to do what we will call an informal survey. An informal survey uh is something that gathers information, but we know that it is not necessarily reflective of the entire community. It's different than a much more expensive yet also valuable survey, which would be a formal survey, which would typically be um a telephone survey, a random sample of uh community members. What we're hoping to do is um one save you some money by doing this, you know, basically an online survey um and it'll provide good data, but it will I want to make sure that we're

023kind of caution us all to remember that this is not a statistically valid survey. Therefore, you cannot extrapolate that across the whole um uh community to say that this is the way the community feels. It still is valuable information. um and is worth collecting the data. In addition to that, there's some other things that we would like to do to engage community members and it's all about having conversations. So, we know that some of the um uh some some there will be some um events that are occurring in schools between now and the end of the school year. Um uh and so let's have people talking to people as they come in for those events, completing some information and getting feedback um from people in those cases. Um and then we have a couple of

024other uh ways that we're intending to engage the community as well. We're going to focus on parents in the month of May um of of current students and then in the month of June um focus on the rest of the community making sure that other community members who don't have exit school have an opportunity to provide input through the survey or through other means. Um that means that in July we can report out to you on what that uh what that uh both the results of the survey are as well as the other community engagement uh uh tactics and that allows you to um uh then take that information and decide on what the final ballot question looks like possibly at your second meeting in July, possibly at the first meeting in August. We'll see

025what works out best for that timeline. The neighbor days is in here. It's a great opportunity um for a community festival to be able to communicate with people. Uh and then all the other referendum communications will roll out after the decision is made by the board of what the what the ballot question is. That continues on through November. There's there's a a district-wide mailing that goes out the end of August um in advance of early voting which begins in September. And then um the second mailing will go out in October. There's also in there these are marketing mailings. There's also the required um uh notice of special election that is uh needs to be sent around the beginning of October to um uh to property holders and then it's election day on November the 4th

026this year. Um so next steps right now community engagement and then making sure that we're building a team of people can help to the message and part of what that budget committee is is there for is to deeply educate that group of people um because they can be ambassadors for you. So, any questions on any of this, but especi your roles as schoolboard members and um in determining just how active you would like to be and how how often you would like to um uh to have this on your agenda, talk about what's next. Um, if I know Nate, there will he will have you do this um have have at least some discussion about the referendum at every board meeting that happens between now and November. So, any thoughts and questions? I have a

027question about the survey. Um, how can we captivate the reader to open their survey? Yeah, that's always the hardest part is is just getting it in front of people. And um we've been pretty successful in in um in the number of responses um as long as we can get it in front of people in a creative way. And so part of it is getting it in front of them multiple times and multiple ways. So if um uh starting with uh uh parents and guardians, families of students in your school district now um we'll be sending email, we'll be sending uh information through uh um uh through the uh e newsletter that comes out on Sunday afternoons from superintendent. Um we'll be sharing um paper versions that come home in backpacks to elementary school students. um

028and doing everything that we can to get in front of it in front of people in multiple ways. Um you get to set the survey so that you can only receive a response from uh one um you know from from your from your PC. You only get to share your opinion one time. Um there will be some potential for people to um use different devices. I don't see that happening very often. I think your your question that you asked is much more likely to happen which is getting more people to respond. Um then when we get to community members um how do we get in front of of of them and that is a variety of traditional media, social media and then even to the point of going to find all the public bulletin boards

029that there are all the um uh even point of purchase displays or or table tents and restaurants and stuff like that. ways that we can get in front of of community members and we want to pay particular attention to some of your specific demographics. Um, you know, we know that in your community um uh you've got a variety of different demographic groups. So, so we want to get in front of people at the country club, but we get we want to get in front of people who are farmers. We want to get in front of senior citizens. So, where do we find those people and how do we get them some information so that they see stuff and are able to uh access it? And again, multiple times so that it finally sinks in that

030we want their their participation. We'll also leave the survey open for uh a number of weeks to make sure that we can try to increase the numbers of people that are participating. Jeff, in your experience u conducting surveys like this in other school districts and other communities similar to Byron, what was your final percent of people who did respond to a survey like this? Um uh say say that again. The last question was how many? Yeah. How many approximately as a percent of the total? Yeah, you know, typically, for instance, if you send everything out by email, if you can get a response rate of of literally 5%, that's as good as you can hope for. We've been able to get to about 15%. Um, if we again communicate multiple times and we leave it

031the survey open long enough, um, if you were to do a direct mail, um, there's there's a company called School Perceptions that does uh, direct mail surveys and uh, they can usually get a little closer to 35% uh, return. U, but it requires you to to send mail to every household and in school district. So um um we're in order again in order to save cost we're not going that route but we think that through the multiple other ways of communication we should be able to uh you know to get to get to that 15% u uh um number and you know there are about oh shoot I have this note here um to somewhere here I have here you know the whole number of registered voters the virus district. So our goal is to

032try to get um uh that percentage of you know knowing how many registered voters there are if we can get to that a certain percentage of them that's that's our goal. Um and so once we get that number I'll uh we'll have a target to shoot for. The other thing that you might want to know about and and that we will be that the survey will will help us to determine is what percentage of the total number that participated in the survey um are senior citizens, what percentage are parents, what percentage are staff um won't be able to balance that perfectly to match what your demographics are in your district, but we want to be fairly happy that we reached a certain number of people those demographics. groups or age groups. Um and so so

033not have only parents participate. Uh we we want to have more more people in the community. Thank you. Any other questions for Jeff or I just want to thank Jeff and his team. He uh they met with several groups last week. We are setting up a weekly meeting um with myself and Jen Hegna and others. Um he's going to be at up at 7:00 a.m. to meet with the steering committee this Wednesday morning um to do that as well. Um and uh he came and and spent about a half hour or so last week with our leadership team during our admin meetings. So trying to get everybody on board, trying to um get those that foundation, that groundwork out there. Um, but it's already starting. I mean, it's it's May. Um, it's not going to

034be a big push, but there there's the push and the foundation to get things started. I think that's important for us to and it'll be great that we have a a company that can help us, you know, do the right messaging, get the messaging out that that's important for our community um between now and November. So, so thank you, Jeff. And if at all you have questions um for Jeff um you can send them through me and I will forward them on to to Jeff. Um but I again we'll have u periodic discussions in the next you know couple meetings about it updates but I'm sure when uh Mr. wall breakfast joins on then then especially as August comes in that's when things will go you know that's when you want to get the big

035push up otherwise you push heavy now and it's ends up being too much too long and so forth so you have some time you have some plenty time and that's why Jeff is here is to help us walk through this and get the right information out at the right time so thank you Jeff appreciate being here everybody nice to meet you appreciate your help yeah thanks Bye. Bye. All right, we will turn it over to Brad Hack to talk about electronic ticketing. Hello everyone. We'll take up a lot of your time. Um, I wanted to bring attention to the direction we're moving forward. We've had digital ticketing in the district now for four years. Um, the plan was to initially was to do a three-year roll out of digital ticketing before going all online. Uh,

036and then the provider that we had in hometown kind of went south. So we moved uh to to Goofan and now Goofan's been established for two years. The majority of the area you utilizes GoFan. Um so we feel that it's it's time to finally make that jump to digital ticketing across the board uh for for all of our events. We've been playing with it and implementing it uh for some special events such as our play. Um then Graham March utilizes it. Uh and we all feel fairly comfortable with the program and the app. Um I've been working a lot with Brock at Cassiden. They're also going to be implementing total digital ticketing next year. And as we've kind of planned and looked over this, what initially we'd like to do is spend the first three

037weeks of next year's games utilizing both a cash box and um digital ticketing, reminding people, hey, this is coming, this is coming, this is coming before full implementation of it. And we have signs, we have people that are ticket taking, you know, giving these reminders. Uh by doing it for three weeks, it gives us a couple weeks of soccer, a couple weeks of volleyball, and then gets us through our first uh full football game uh before changing over. I really there there's a lot of benefits to this. A lot of the behind the scenes time and effort. I don't always feel comfortable with the money exchanging hands to four different people before it finds its home locked up for the evening. So, and bookkeeping measures and cash box is always uh evening out at the

038end of the night doesn't doesn't happen very often. So, it's this to me is is a no-brainer. Uh September 15th is kind of a target date that Brock and I have talked about of trying to trying to move this along. Uh now, again, that that may change by the time all is said and done. uh by the start of next fall season, you know, we'll be offering our season passes that are already only online. Uh our student passes that will be that $50 charge not into the high school which will also be available online. The only caveat to that is our 65 and older group will still have their cars that they get from community ed. So they can still show that at the cascade uh to alleviate some of our our older generations that

039don't don't want to utilize the technology. And kind of what it will look like if you want to just kind of look at a visual for a football game is, you know, we'll have two ticket takers at the front gate that'll be clicking everybody through. And for anybody that didn't know that it was digital ticketing or didn't buy their ticket in advance, you know, we'll have our QR codes uh out in front as well that they can always scan. But we will have one ticket window open that will have two iPads with uh card readers as well, so they can utilize that that form as well. So, I don't know. I've talked to a lot of different agencies. The good good you schools has gone to this uh all this year and they they love

040it. They kind of did a soft roll out half and half last year and they've gone to total digital techniques. So I've worked with them a little bit at good hue to just kind of troubleshoot with Brock as we kind of look at this for next year. Uh the what what's the negative? You know, it's always hard to have positives on both sides. Uh it's a very big positive for our school. The negative is yeah, there are some other fees. uh any fee for us. So, season passes, anything that's over $10, uh Goof Fan charges 5% plus $2 for that one uh that one transaction. And then as far as single tickets, uh we're currently at eight and $5. They up charge $1 per transaction. So, really, you're looking at fees for our games going

041to nine and six. Um and then I don't know what the 5% depending upon what season pass they would buy. again there would be that five 5% plus $2 on that on that one purchase. So that that is a downside. Um I think it is fairly minimal from everybody I talked to in Good Hugh and then the majority of the city schools it's been it's been great. So so that's kind of what we're looking at starting starting next year. So I just wanted to give everybody just a little insight as to what we're thinking about and Brock and I will continue to look at that. I met with Go fan again today uh and they'll send some they do a nice job with some publicity stuff and extra QR codes and we'll be able to

042announce this ahead of time going into buying your season passes and again there is that change with the $50 student pass from that I think I can't remember off hand it was K through eight or what we decided if it was first grade that'll be that $50 pass for those kids. Um, one thing that will be nice is in our literature, we always ask that eighth grade and below are accompanied by a parent, uh, which we know does not happen very often, but maybe at least K through five parents won't just drop all the kids off for the evening. Uh, they'll actually have to have a phone to to scan it, which which could help our, you know, policing during the games. So, and if you guys have any questions and have to answer anything,

043I can or I can get back to you on that. But again, I just want to kind of give you a heads up what we're looking at. Are the fees passed on or absorbed by the school? No, I don't I don't believe any schools will be absorbing fees. So, no, that that that up charge all as it is now gets passed on. Yeah. Perfect. All right. Thank you. All right. Well, uh, Jen Edgar and Ryan Todd with our AI technology presentation. Yeah, I'll drive. Nice. I caught it. Amazing. There we go. I was not a All right, let's see here. Um well, so I met with all of you uh a few weeks ago and um we just wanted to present kind of where we are with the task force and it was just part

044of our part of my DOP, but part of the process is to be like where we are. So um I'll I'll introduce myself. Um I'm Ryan Todd. I'm a social studies teacher at the high school. I like to fancy myself a storyteller because that's kind of what I get to do every day. Um, we decided to make ourselves a little bit of an action figure. I've already had a couple requests from high schoolers to get one. Um, I teach world history. Um, I kind of have dabbled a lot in a AI tech tools. Um, which is why I'm a part of the committee. Um, I'm an avid curriculum writer as I have my masters in curriculum and instruction. And next year I take on post high school planning as its new teacher at the high

045school. So, I'm pretty excited. And my other love other than my family is coffee. So, that's why it's on there three times. Um, Jen Haggnet, tech director Byron Public Schools. Uh, you know, I've been around here. This is my will be the end will be the beginning of end of 28. So, going on 29 years. Um, of course, lots of devices, lots of, you know, cyber security, all of those things. But, you know, it's what, um, kind of brings it home is when I started, we had one computer hooked up to the internet. Wow. Um so now 29 years later I'm at the board talking about artificial intelligence. So um by the way this was created with chat GBT and as we and as we um think about our new guidelines you know we use

046uh chatbt and other AI bots to kind of refine things within this presentation. So we just want to give you a notification on that. So why call to action? Um the World Economic Forum just announced uh the 2025 um job outlook and AI is expected to replace 92 million jobs globally by 2030. Um that would be this next year's 10th graders 10th graders I believe. Um so 92 million do jobs by 2030. But the report also suggests that AI will create 170 million jobs. So the idea of students that can upskill, students that are self-directed, um is going to be incredibly important because things change so quickly that they're going to need to have those kind of foundational skills to be able to um you know, navigate this new um forum. What happened there? I'm

047not sure what happened. Where did you go? I don't know. Oh, go back to dad's missions. Yeah, I don't know what happened through that. Um, this will also impact every single career. Um, I don't know unless it's some kind of a career, you know, off the grid kind of career. Um, but honestly, it'll impact every single career. I was actually listening to the University of Minnesota present at the Senate level. I believe there was some kind of Senate committee level um earlier this year and they were talking about how they were working on um climate um what was it seeds that would avoid like climate would impact the seeds and it's just we're going to see mindblowing things you know climate resistant seeds um to you know especially when we had the drought last year

048and stuff. So it's going to impact every single career field which basically impacts a lot of our school classes. The other thing is more Moors law shares that microchip capacity doubles every two years while the cost decreases in half. That's why we have these kinds of devices. Very powerful tools. Um but AI is doubling every three 3.4 months and it's hard to understand like what that means. And so we're just going to look at like the evolution of chatbt for the last 2 and a half years. When it came out here, when it came out in um early late 2022, early 2023, it scored maybe a one or two on the AP exam, it was the 10th percentile on the bar exam. And then you go to, you know, mid late 2023, it was passing

049the bar exam at like 90%. it's, you know, um, comparable to some of the medical licensing, um, you know, passing these exams. And not only is it the test performance, but the writing and reasoning has improved significantly. They now have tools like deep thinking, um, deep research. I actually did a did a fact check with Google's deep research on something chat GPT you know and I it's just incredible. Um so not only is it just performing it's also thinking thinking or reason not thinking reasoning. Um here's an example of the three-year evolution in gener genai imagery. This is um a application um like I said that use AI from somebody I follow on LinkedIn. But if you can look at what February 2022 looked like compared to April of 2025, it's incredible. And when we

050think about deep fakes and all of these things like it is a realistic issue that we are going to face um and thinking about that the videos are just starting to come, but you know they're talking about how you can basically have a full feature um film that's going to be generated completely by AI. So it's just uh evolving quite quickly and this also shows like the jobs. So here's where chatept was announced and then all of a sudden like all of the manual jobs that were starting to shift they did some research. I believe this was HBR the Harvard Business Review. So you know as soon as these tools came out how does it shift the market? So of course you know um we always hear about you know manual intensive jobs things I

051can easily automate but I was super it was super profound to think about the image generating jobs and how they are also starting to shift. Um and that really hits a lot of the things that we start to look at with core skills in 2025. What are kids going to need when they graduate? And you can look at that core skills graphic and you can see that there is one thing that focuses on technology which is number six technological literacy. Uh if you look at the top 10 fastest growing skills by 2030 out of the top six are AI based uh and are going to be AI and big data as well as networking and cyber security which is going to be increasingly important as we start to collect data and all these things and

052it's banked places. How do we help people protect that? As well as technological literacy, but we also have to consider that our creative thinking and our humanization of those things are also extremely important, which is why the teaching part has to be a part of where we're going to be going next. Not to mention that earlier um in or late in April um there was an executive order that um um putting AI literacy in K12 schools. And so what does that look like? We're not really sure right now. Um, but that was something I think it was like at least eight hours. Um, it doesn't give any guidelines um or anything like that, but it's it is probably on the attention of every country because of the drastic amount of change that AI is going

053to require. So when we come when we think about our profile of graduate you know thinking back doing a little retrospective of you know six years ago when this was created you know this generative AI did not exist but what we did is we looked at what are those human skills that you know are super important that you know as technology advances you know it's it's not able to be replaced well this was very forefront I'm going to tell you that this is probably was and still is the best work for us because it wasn't just about these skills but also how can students display them authentic learning experiences that you know what AI can't do that all it does is looks at looks at data they don't know like theory I can say here's

054a here's a work or a a report that we're going to give to the board but they don't see what you're looking at if you're engaged or any of that so so it's super important this was the right work then the right work now and the right work to come and I think That gets us to why this matters and why this committee started meeting in the first place. The idea was revolving around a ton of questions and I think we probably have more questions than we did answers when we first started. Uh and the timeline will show you how fast we were able to progress as a group of people as well. But this is going to matter. It's going to matter to our teachers. It's going to matter to our staffs. It's going

055to matter to all of you in this room. It's going to matter to our students because it's their future. Um and honestly, it's going to matter to the wider community that we're all a part of. We want to make sure that we have a solid foundation that when we start developing this literacy, when we start teaching these skills, that we have a solid implementation point. Uh we want to make sure that we know what our student prior knowledge is and how they're using it so that we can say that's great that you know how to use it, but really ethically this is how we should be using it. How can this help you as a skill and not just a getaround? Um and that's super important. and then creating the continuum which you guys have

056all seen um and expectations which helps us as teachers have a common language to use from all the way through K all the way through 12 when they graduate and go out in the real world. So that was kind of our dilemma um last year, you know, how do we how do we teach these skills? How do we prepare our students? But then also really thinking about academic integrity and all of the things that you know we really hold close to our institution. So that was the that was the dilemma and the task force really was the result. You know, we needed to get this isn't just something at the you know top top down kind of thing like we need our educators to be um helping with us and helping us with this work.

057So this is kind of the the plan. um form the task force, do needs assessments, you know, come up with some deliverables, do feedback loops, implement and pilot and finally come to you all and say this is this is the work that we did and this is our task force, the two of us along with these amazing people. Um and I will tell you that there is a variety of perspectives especially from our English department about the use of AI and how they have to fight that battle or have fought that battle. Um, but also some really cool ways that other teachers are looking at using it. Um, especially when we look at our special education staff, uh, as well as like writing lab reports, um, or helping out with the business department. Um, and

058between Mr. Berg and Mr. Bernards and Jen Green and Cody and myself, Jen and Stacy and Brooke, we did we had a lot of good conversations and a lot of healthy conversations about what this looked like and how comfortable or uncomfortable a lot of us were in the space with AI, which was important to work. So, here's just a snapshot. there was a call for the task force um and that was basically an all call specifically to secondary but we did um call you know K12 um just because you know students really start utilizing uh chat GPT and some of these other tools maybe a little more inappropriately. So, you know, we needed to to come together. Um, the task force um formed, we had speakers from higher ed, we had speakers from other schools,

059we had tons of conversations, deliberations. Um, and then, you know, then once we came up with kind of the draft guidelines, we needed to get feedback. We wanted feedback from our secondary teachers, from our community, from our students. And then finally, um, being here to to kind of go over that data and then report to you what we found. And again, this the onepage student AI, uh, usage continuum is something that's already up in my classroom. Um, and it's something we talk about freely. Um, and we'll talk a little bit more about how I've utilized it in my classroom and other teachers have utilized it in their classroom because some right now, um, as we talked about flexibility, some are in the red. They don't want it used at all because they're not comfortable with

060it. And it's very hard to teach some of those processes if you don't know what you're doing. Um, some of us are in that yellow and some of us are even jumping into the green, which is AI enhanced. Um, and the goal is to continue to educate everyone and have some development and have teacher support and other support to help people uh use AI and power to get to that blue level depending on the classwork that we're looking at and the teachers that are going to be teaching it. So one of the things that I just have to put a nod to is once we started talking about this you know at a bigger level the innovation within the classroom started happening which was really great to see and a lot of that with this

061task force and the continuum as our driving force uh we decided that it was time for some data collection um which helps us collect the more important information from our students as well as teacher input, community input and just general AI awareness so that we could present this information not only to you here but also within in our individual schools and across the district. Um, and that's kind of leads us to what we learned and what we are continuing to learn and where we're going to go from here. So, first off, I want to talk quickly about the student survey. Um, we wrote a student survey, uh, and it was given to grades 7 through 11. And the main focus points were what the grade level breakdowns, how often you're using it, your purpose and

062reason behind using AI, um, how often or how much do you trust the information that's given to you, and is it important to actually have AI literacy? So, uh, that'll lead us into a little snapshot of our data. about 470 students across 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11 um took our survey and some of the big key takeaways from that were nine and 10 students have already have tried it and 55% of them use it weekly or more. Self uh rating understandings average of 3.6 out of five say they feel moderately confident with how it works, which is that that's pretty confident because it's more confident than some of the staff um at this point. How much do they trust it? I like the healthy skepticism word there. 5.7 out of 10 they rely on

063it but most of them are also going to check to make sure the information is actually valid and valuable and uh doesn't have some sort of uh skewed bias. Um and then a facteing habits 43% uh verify a output almost all the time which is great. Uh I wish that 11% number was not 11%. Um that never verify but sometimes you just got to go to go and you hope that it's right. Uh and then the perceived importance of AI literacy which is kind of our driver moving forward. 55% of our students already rate AI literacy as super important, which is great. Um, but 32% we can move them to that 55% with a little bit more time. Um, and putting in some AI literacy standards. Uh, this graph shows how they're using it. So,

064uh, I don't really need to go over all of it, but if you look at it, the top three are really for searching, for brainstorming, and for grammar and spelling check, which is what I would honestly use AI for in a lot of things that I do. Um, so it shows that they're moving towards that higher level of thinking and how they can actually utilize it. But there's also, if you look at the bottom, we have 5.3% are using it for coding and programming, which is a great job skill. Uh we can also look at e essay or prompt formation as kind of in that middle. Um and now with video and audio, they're definitely being able to even record themselves or say, "I want this." And it can spit out like a historical figure

065uh answering questions on an interview from them, which is great, but we still have 13% that don't trust it and aren't using it at all. So we have a wide range of skills and kids using it. Um some feedback that we got from the guidelines that you have all seen already. Um 87% of our students labeled it as very or mostly clear which is good. They like the straightforwardness of that language and I think that's a lot of what we talked about before we even uh put it out. They like the balanced approach that allows for students to brainstorm to have revisions to use independent study and to establish an academic honesty policy that allows them to still explore and help them. And I'll talk about some of that in the teacher insights later on.

066Um, and then focuses on obviously on responsibility and giving them, you know, fair things. And I think the student guideline, uh, some comments that were made, uh, one 11th grader, which I've read this four or five times because I think it's just great feedback from an 11th grade student that says, "Yeah, I do agree that it's more important to understand how AI works and why it's important to fact check." In this day and age, it's everywhere and it's increasingly hard to avoid it in an academic setting. students will continue to use things like chat GTP to complete assignments instead of trying to force it away. I think it's important instead to teach students to use it in a way that acts like a tool instead of a free pass uh to have robots do their

067assignments. I think that's an amazing way to talk about that. And our eighth graders are even looking at that um looking at accuracy, bias, or other things and making sure it's not done for them, but a way to like access more information. Uh and then we go into our teacher survey which we had about 60 responses K through 12 and from there we had about 15 responses from our secondary staff. Um and then breakdown of that selfrated familiarity. 90% say at least they're somewhat familiar which is good. I hope they would be at this point. Um with but we have plenty of awareness to build on because we have about one in four teachers using it weekly and I will say I'm probably one of them. um and another 1 and a3 dip in once

068a quarter while 42% are still like I don't know how to use this and that's where we have to build that 42% to get that to 22 to 12 so that everybody at least has a frequency and know what the benefits are and that's where we get into interest in professional learning 60% want more professional development that um with 28% highly interested which is great because we want more people to learn more to decide whether they want to fully implement it within the continuum. And then preparedness. That's the one where we're I think we're really going to have to focus on next year is 27% of our teaching staff that filled out the survey are confident in teaching the ethical student AI use. Um but we all agree that it's extremely important for us to

069use uh and to to talk about. And then there was the teacher curiosities up there. Uh we broke it down into K5 and then 612. Um student ownership and skill building. It's always those foundational pieces are super important. How do we implement AI but still get genuine learning and understanding of those foundation pieces? Um can it be and how can it be a day-to-day uh instructional strategy use and does it have benefits? And I think it does. I've seen it in my class. Um and then data and privacy safety which is always most important and paramount for us is how do we keep those things secure? Uh same thing with secondary. um the main focus point a lot was academic integrity um as well as student ownership and skill building. But also I think one

070of the most important things that I've realized is that if I know what I want to do as a teacher and I can put it in a prompt and they can build a lesson I can rehumanize that lesson to my students which makes it even better because then I focus on teaching and not on building lesson plans all the time. Um and then we get into our the guideline feedback which is uh the majority 53% say that they feel the rules are clear enough to act on 13% are neutral and 33% probably just need a little more time to review and go over which I think is is all right. Um, I also think that the day-to-day practices, twothirds of people believe that we can work these can work in a classroom and a lot

071of data collection will probably happen over the next year with that whereas 47% are that middle and 20% believe they're not sure or it's an unrealistic expectation. Um, hopefully we'll be changing some people's minds. And then obviously the teachers appreciate the clear guard rails. Um, the alignment with our values. Um, and I think the connection to our PG is like the most important thing and the most valuable thing. That's one of the things that we've talked about quite a bit and why this is important, but it's also the flexibility for teachers. Um, and then some of the other things is making sure we look at misuse and overreiance. Um, we want to make sure that they can't write a lab report in 30 seconds. We want to make sure that they humanize things and that

072they're understanding data and why it's important. um and a consistent application which is why the continuum is there as well as making sure that we check and help students grow in understanding accuracy of information um and making sure that there aren't any um ethical or biased concerns that come out of the usage of AI for certain things. All right, so here's just some other feedback that we've received which was really helpful for the task force is like what are the things teachers need? you know there's there is some kind of apprehensiveness about this. So what are some things that they need and they talked about short short targeted professional development practical lessons exemplar lessons exemplar prompts um you know best practice playbook flowcharts easy access tool and monitoring tools. So these are just kind of

073a highlight of here's some things that we could use right away. And then we also discussed like what do our students need? You know, do they know how to site um you know chat GBT correctly when they're presenting. Um so um here is the community survey. This survey was in the district newsletter for two weeks. It was shared via Facebook and was also shared via the Facebook group page and we had 21 responses. So, um, there's some, you know, thoughts to that. I don't know if it's just not high on on our parents' radar. Um, but, you know, we did get some good feedback from the people that responded. They appreciated the language. Um, you know, the balance view and benefits of risks and then defined expectations for both teachers and students. Um there was

074a there's a actual format issue that I I worked on so that when they were on the phone and if they're not a Google Docs person it was kind of blurry. Um but one of the cool things is we said hey if you want to take if you want to be part of this and be informed you know we sign your give us your email and so I would say 70 maybe 80 85% of the parents said I'm very interested in this. So, we'll probably use that in um the in the uh year to come. So, stories from the field. Um Marie uh Kennedy and I, we have um uh this year went to almost every building and talked about how we could use this to better personalize learning for students, specifically um special ed

075students, students of need to accommodate or modify um their lessons. But through that um they also learned some foundational prompting skills. And so it was a really cool way for Marie to get her message across and for um us to start building some really foundational level skills. Um and it's and we also got a little dose of like the jobs and this is happening just so that they understand how important this is going to be to their students futures. Uh here's an example. I was working with um Miss Sorum, a fourth grade teacher uh on a media literacy lesson and I in fourth grade and I was one of the questions we ask is how many of you know about AI. I was absolutely astounded how how aware aware our younger students are of AI

076and they talked about Siri and they talked about Alexa and if you didn't know Alexa got a huge upgrade about a week and a half ago that's almost like to where chatbt was you know at the earlier onset so it's changing even the tools that they're using at home to you know is is changing um I also uh worked with Mark Sangler in his um eighth grade careers class and he wanted to make the lesson or the uh experience more AI enabled. So previously students would research a career and then they would present um you know few weeks later kind of their four-year plan going into high school. But we added key questions like how is AI impacting your job? What challenges or problems you know are people trying to solve? you know, the idea

077of what do you want to be when you grow up is kind of shifting to what problems do you want to solve when you grow up because we just don't know what we don't know. Um, so there was three different lessons. By the way, raise of hands. At that time, 75% of um the eighth graders said, "Yeah, we know all about AI." But there's three phases. One was um foundational AI literacy, learning how to prompt. The next one was more about ethical implications, deep fakes and some of these other things. Um, and then the last one is storytelling and AI where they actually use it to brainstorm to present a better story, a better presentation um during the uh what is it called? Um, middle school showcase night. Yeah. So, just showing them different ways,

078learning how to site and that kind of thing. And it was super fun experience. Um, I made another action figure. Um, I had a Tarbell who was a social changer. Uh, I just kept playing with it and I showed my kids actually after their test and they thought it was cooler than mine. So, that's good. Um, but it's just an easy way for them to play around. It's a thing that we have done talking about villains and heroes of the Gilded Age and they could actually make that something they could see, which is kind of amazing. Um, we also talked and one of the stories that I wanted to pull out was the community connections. Um, I taught human geography to 10th graders and I brought in Ellingsson group which does a lot with both

079agricultural and urban geography and it was it's been an amazing um process to see them talk more and more about how they're utilizing AI and um having these computers that literally scan a 3D scan a building so they can figure out where they're going to put drain pipes versus drain tile out in a massive field and how they can collect a bunch of data and soil samples and then that spits out where drain tile should be to best drain a field so they can grow the maximum yield of crop, which is insane that that's happening. And now they're talking about how they're sending all of these texts that have been doing this by hand to these AI trainings to help them write prompts and do things in a new way that allows them to actually

080like give solutions to farmers or cities or buildings a lot faster, which has been been kind of an amazing thing to hear. Um, I also have students who have asked me, "Is it okay if I take this um really hard reading thing and throw it in AI so it can give me a summary so I can actually know what I'm talking about?" And I say, "Yeah, thanks for asking." And I've seen an increase in learning and then an increase in honesty of, "Hey, I don't understand this. What can I do to help me learn something better?" Um, and it allows for that individualization when I can't be everywhere at one time to say, "No, try this first or hey, let's get this group together. Use this summary to help you understand it." And then they

081can go out and they can actually share that with other uh students, which is amazing. Um, knowing my writers, um, and humanizing writing is also important. Um, as one of the departments that does a lot of it, I think it's important for me to start with small prompts and text and see how they actually write in the words they use because then that's an easy check for me when I get to larger uh forms of text. Um, and I also think it's great as we are all going into new standards, especially in our social studies department, um, to be able to take those benchmarks from the state and say, "Hey, I think I want you to put together three potential uh, essential learning outcomes for this unit." and then we as a staff can sit

082and actually debate which ones are best and rehumanize that to help build a foundation in our department. Um, and that can be done in almost any department. Um, one of our members actually gave us a couple of examples from the field in translating the Mayflower Compact into high school freshman verbiage. Um, and saw a great deal of understanding that wasn't there before. as well as finishing up with a progressive era um presidents talking about Taft and Roosevelt and Wilson and being able to use AI to help them build a script so that they're focused on the presentation aspect of it after gathering the information and putting that in a prompt which I think is just a great way to help teach kids skills. So what's next? Um so our last meeting I was just I

083was just ecstatic like just so excited. So at our last meeting task force meeting um we talked about literacy you know um they had just had shared that the uh executive order like it's coming is coming and they and when I say they our high school task force members have determined um where every student next year will get a dose of some form of AI literacy and because of in it's going to be in the core classes as well. So, um, which is great. So, I just I I have goosebumps right now just thinking about it. So, that is just awesome and some of that will go into what us, uh, what as teachers we're going to be looking at and I know the building principles are also looking at how to implement those through

084uh, whether it's through their DOP or if it's connecting to other DOP goals. Um, and I think that having dedicated professional development and conversations that connect not only to AI, because that's a big scary thing, but connects to the six Cs uh into career fields and paths is a a movement forward to get more buyin from staff across the whole entire district. Um, and I think that's going to be extremely important as well as having teachers um that are on the task force or that people we can go and pull and say, "Hey, listen. I want to try this. I have no idea what I'm doing. can you help me? Um, and that builds more continuity, that builds more um connection between staff members in interdisciplinary um areas which will allow us be like, hey,

085if I need something, who can I go to and we already know those people are there and that's super important, I think, in building this. And then the last thing is just expanding the task force um inviting parents, potentially students, and then working um this summer before school starts. We want to create the toolkit to kind of help lift this um next fall. So, are there any questions? I mean, a million of them. I No, I just thank you for all your work. I think you've done a really good job and I love that you included it was comprehensive like you included bias and privacy and all those things that are important and applied to other more analog things in our life too. So, thank you. How will um what will be the measure of

086um the checking on student misuse or over reliance? Like how will we measure that? I think we're going to have to have probably have some feedback loops from our our students and our teachers. Um so that would definitely in my mind, you know, and I think it's also we may see a shift. I don't know. You know, it's kind of hard to predict where people will be. Um, I would definitely say the feedback loop loops would be good. The nice thing about the guidelines though is it says if a teacher says no AI, that means no AI. So, it's not just a freeforall. Um, and there might be some activities where it's very AI enabled and some that are not, right? Will this be something where they use Turn It In or something to check

087for? Um, there are there are I know that the English department and other departments have ways to check for those. Um, and it it'll be part of that toolkit probably to have like some specific resources. Um, cuz I know when we first started this, it was like try all these different things. No, we want to narrow that down to specific things where it is either, you know, chat GTP or Gemini. Um, I use co-pilot every once in a while, compare that to the other two to see what comes up with. But I think having that resource and that toolkit will be super important for our teaching staff because then it's a go-to and they're comfortable with it. So, it's not searching and wondering if it's right, right? They they have a background in knowing that

088it's correct for them. And then having conversations with kids about it, too, which is I I think is also important. You can't just be like, "Yeah, I checked it. You're uh you're going to fail." It is sitting down with them and talking about what it came up with, why did it come up with that, and how can we rehumanize that even if you didn't use it, why did it show up that it's 80% or 60%. I think those are conversations that have to be had. I've always wondered that though, like when you get to a certain point, something's always going to already be written. Yes. At some point. So like at at some point everything will look either copied or Yeah. And a lot of that is using using quotes correctly and how do you

089block quote things and how do you make sure you're citing your sources? What is common knowledge versus what is not? And those are conversations that always are had at an educational level. I would like to add though when we, you know, interviewed the higher ed folks, you know, they their guidelines are like don't rely on these fact checkers because they're they've been known to be wrong or AI checkers. And so that's that's the thing I I I want to be very careful that, you know, we just over rely on to catch catch a, you know, a cheater or whatever. So, I think, you know, it's just going to be a lot of innovation and learning next year, figuring out where those challenges are, new ways of teaching, too. Like, starting with those smaller prompts to

090see how they actually write. So, you know, how like kids speak like they write and they write like they speak sometimes. So, knowing those kids at the forefront will also help avoid some of those checkers that come back that say it's them, but it's not, or that it's all AI and it's not all AI, right? Cool. Um we did include some uh resources some of them were used that you know U of M testifies to the Senate jobs and economic like that's if you have an hour and a half of time just to sit listen to professors talk about AI it's pretty cool but um Oops. I didn't want that one. That's must be what I did. Hardly wait to write policies on all this stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you could just let AI do

091it. Are we planning to like shifting to some tools versus others like Gemini versus CH GBT or is it that we that will be one of the topics for consideration? So I've at the middle school I've said let's use Gemini um because it's under our Google work or work you know work um it's it's has some extra guard rails in it. they say, you know, it doesn't use the data that you put in to train their models. Um, they are really working hard to kind of make it, you know, more available. Um, so that's something that, you know, but I tell the kids, especially that those eth graders, I said, "Does that mean you're going to put your phone number in this? Does that mean you're going to put your social security number?" Like, you

092still have to always wait to like, um, so that would be definitely one. And then, you know, chat to PT um or co-pilot depending on teacher. Yeah. and they actually spit out very similar things which is kind of interesting because I've done a lot of comparison. I think it's just a lot of it is that flexibility for for what the teacher would like versus what the student is is comfortable with too. But I think those three seem to be the go-to for most of the students. And what's really nice for Gemini is the pro version is free for education right now. So Chad GBT you have to pay for the you know so that would be but you know it's hard to say where it'll be 3 months from now. Oh, they don't have doubles.

093So, they need to get off Todd's lesson plans first. [Music] So, thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. All right. We will move on to our discussion item behind the CE for CC for the pool expansion. Yeah. So, um I know we talked about this with our facilities meeting we I um Al Roa from the city came in and we talked about at our financing facilities um that we would look at you know different land and and we look at the land behind the CEC. So Tom is here. He's here for Al come on up. You can just sit there in case there's questions you have to go from the back. Go over on this one over here. Okay. There we go. Um and so um there isn't anything to really uh discuss

094or I mean not discuss but u approve tonight but and I also want to start with this um Jen Heg or Jen Dole and I met with Tom last week. I just want to put this to right now. This is not the plan. Okay everyone, this is not the plan. Okay, so but it does give you an idea of what we're we're talking about. So, as you if you remember, I brought up to the board, it's just kind of a FYI in the past, um, that the, as you know, the city Al has said, El Roer has said that the pool is probably on, uh, the present pool is hard to get approved all the time and be able to get used. So, they're looking at redoing the pool. Um, but they want to make

095it bigger because Byron's getting bigger and they want to make zero depth. And by the way, that's not what the pool looks like either. Okay, so nothing in here is really what it would be happening except for where it's going to be. So, this air and and tonight what we're going to do is just kind of explain where it's going to be at and the the partnership between the school district and the city and what that entails because before we go and do the exact plans, I think what needs to happen is Tom and Al would like to have some sort of a idea or uh at least verbal type thing to say yes, we are interested in looking at this plan um because what in the end the school district would be deeding the

096land to the city you know um to be used for this project uh and and it's um so I'm just going to explain then how you can jump in when when you need to. So here is the um the present community education building that we just remodeled um that has our preschool in it. There's the playgrounds over here. Um, right in here down in this area where the parking lot is, there is a small T-ball field, but we can move that little T-ball field over into this corner. This would be all green space. Right now, this is all green space back here. Um, we have a parking lot that is is in pretty rough shape right here. And right now, you know, we don't have we have street parking out here in front. And then

097on the side over here, we have some teachers who are parking over here on the side. And truthfully, when you come out of this road on first to get to seven, it it's hard to see cars and so forth because we don't have a lot of parking. We don't have a lot of parking um for our community members who are using this building as well as our staff um from August, the end of August or so or um 1st of September when school starts to uh you know through school. So through the end of May, we don't have a lot of parking. And so we're looking at um this is just one rendering that the pool would go pretty much in the same spot but be bigger and then they would be in this parking

098space here and then we we would utilize this parking space for our building and then during the summer when there are less activities during the summer at the CEC and so forth they can use the street parking here because we don't have the preschool drop off right now you know for certain four different times during the day. It's a preschool drop off, bus drop off. We won't be having that during the summer. So, this would then become we don't we we can park more cars up here and this here would become all the the pool activity, the pool parking and so forth and uh can keep cars off streets and so forth like that. But then again for 9 months out of the year it would really be school parking that we would um we

099have talked about uh you know different layouts. When we met last week with Jen do we talked about may maybe moving this here. We're looking at parking spaces as a city needs so many parking spaces and and just redoing this parking lot here. Redoing this. moving this down and opening this up, you know, so this would still be green space from this far down. That's why I mean this is not exact, right? The idea is here's where it's going to go. We want to hear any questions or concerns that people might have. And then the other part is, you know, is this something that you as a board would want to go into partnership with the city and and and look at going through the, you know, making the contract with the deed, moving over,

100you know, what that would mean um future upkeep, how do we share that, you know, those sort of things, uh, moving forward. So again, we they just want to before they go any further with any more planning and paying for that, they wanted to make sure that we uh you knew what was going on and see if there was any concerns moving forward. So again, it could it may not go out as far as this. It may only go out as far as here, but then we may move this as parking lot as well. Tom, was there anything else that you wanted to add? No, I think the one thing I just want to point out is where Byron Avenue there is, that existing road, that 66 ft rightway continues all the way across there,

101right? So, that is a non-buildable area already, but we can put parking or pavement surface over the top. Um, but like Mike stated, you know, this is very just generalized, you know. Um, I had mentioned to him that, you know, our first plan is to just see what your guys throw feelers out for the board here to see is it is it worth going more for or is it just no and we'll figure something else out. But, um, as far as the whole D thing goes, my recommendation to Mike would have been is let's get our final design to see where that actually is instead of saying, okay, we're going to take this much and we only need we shorted ourselves this much, you know. But it's one of those where, you know, for us

102to move forward, we just wanted to find out, you know, what your guys's thoughts on something like this would be. And, you know, I've met with Jim prior to this, too. And it's one of those where parking lots are the most expensive wasted space there is, you know, and when she needs the parking lot, I don't need the parking lot. And when I need the parking lot, she doesn't need the parking lot. So, rather than both of us paying to bring parking, you know, is there a way we can work this through? So, Yeah. So, this is like I do want to reiterate what Mike said. This is this is nothing other than the the bo the outline of the outside of it. Everything all the pretty stuff in the middle is pretend you don't

103see it cuz it might it's probably not going to end up that way. Okay. So, is there a storm water treatment area required based on this? We will pond. Yep. Okay. It'll probably be a modified smaller version of one more like a rain gardenish type thing. Okay. You know, and that's what that kind of that circle we're showing in that additional green space. So, I think my concerns are the same as they were at the facilities meeting. First of all, I think it's a great idea to collaborate with the cities and I, as a mom, I want a new pool. So, just to be very clear, I support the project. Um, and my dad would never talk to me again if I said, "Yeah, let's give one hand away without asking a million questions." So,

104but one concern I had first of all was about green space around the community building. Um, Jen thought that there would still be plenty of green space for playing. Now that I see the retention pond, I also have a safety concern because those are young kids playing in that green space. So, I think that's something we need to think about and address and maybe a fence could take care of it. Yep. And that's, you know, and that's kind of where I was when I met with Mike and Jenna is, you know, I'm not, we had talked about access points and sidewalk and I'm like, I I understand where that's at, but I need to find out are we going to that, right? You know, cuz if we're not, then we're, you know, we're just kind

105of talking here. But I do think there's going to be a lot more discussion between all of us as to far as what what is it going to take, right? you know, to cuz we had talked about fencing earlier on and, you know, trying to differentiate so people aren't driving randomly, you know, keeping them on the flow of traffic and things. And I just want to point out if you think about if you've been over there, if you remember, this is the end of the this, you know, the one furthest north side of the building is right here. So, it's about goes there. So, there's still quite a bit of green space and so forth over here. If we build, you know, do this part here and then shorten it, then that even gives more

106green space to move forward, right? So, there's flexibility, right? Um, right now, I can say that the only thing it's used for, there's a little preschool playground there. And like I said, there's a small little T- ball thing here that's only used slightly. And we can also move that over into this this corner and be just as as good as well. So, does TE still get played at Valley View? I don't know. I don't know what there there's people down there sometimes. I'm not sure who it is, but um it's officially community. Yeah, I think from if I remember correctly, what Jen had told me was is they do like a T-ball. It's like a three-day t-ball thing. Okay. That's you can actually see the other field. It's right right there. Yep. Your cursor is

107right on it. See that box that's modeed out just to the left of your cursor there is that the other little field that's there. So the other concern I had was future proofing. Like we use this this works perfect for the way we're currently using that building, but is that how we will always use it? Will our parking needs stay the same? Will they change? Um I I like I I personally feel like the decision we have to make is like I do think we need to be good stewards of our community's tax dollars, right? And the city's also our community's tax dollars and yet we are separate entities and we need to protect our entity as well. Um I I am uncomfortable giving land away. Um I and I know that it's saving us

108a huge expense. Um I mean because maintaining the parking lot is a huge expense, right? Um but that is that's like the only sticking point for me I think is giving something of value away even though I know it's to another, you know, yeah, tax entity. I um I don't know if there's any way we could like lease it to a long-term. Is there's any other options like that? like some kind of something where we would have like a sunrise date where we would have an option to get out of it in 10 years if we I know that probably isn't realistic but um but even with that right so we're planning to use that space together right because we will be using the parking if um but we may or may not want to

109be saving that parking so if we do some sort of a you know co-development co-ownership right where we use the parking but ask the city to maintain it. Um, and that those are all possibilities that I can take back. My initial response to that is is been, you know, is the initial build going to be all on the city, right? And and that's where ideally I mean I I agree, but um I mean that's the hard part of the city to spend, you know, that's probably a couple hundred,000 to build that parking lot on land they don't own, right? You know, no, I understand you're sitting in this exact same position. Yeah, it is. Yeah. And at the end of the day, our job is to do what's best for our community, right? But that

110will be like lease improvement type of thing, right? I I would say for the whole maintenance portion of it and Mike and Jen and I talked about this, whatever's on, let's say that did get deeded over to the city, hypothetically, that's my responsibility. What's on your property is your responsibility, right? Yeah. And maybe it's best to keep it clean. And this is yours. This is ours. Yeah. I don't know. If it's clean, then why would we just give it away, right? Yeah. So, I don't know if we need to speak to like a real estate lawyer or someone to figure out what our options are if we I guess the first question is, are we open to like looking into it more? Maybe it it would be like something like long-term lease to where bar

111schools at least the land to the city with the agreement to the city will develop it and then we'll allow bar schools to utilize this. I mean maybe we lease it for a dollar longterm lease, you know, it could be like even like a 20-year lease or something or 50 year. I don't know. Um, yeah. I just I don't love I don't know. Tom, do you know what the total acreage is for the I wanted to I I think that additional part was like 2 acres. Yeah. And so we can I can continue to look at it and bring it forward. We just uh but is there am I hearing there is some interest though and at least looking at different options to move this forward right um I think some I think reason that

112Tom brought it up u is is that that easement or what right is that if you were to ever say okay in future we need a bigger building than the CDC or new building you couldn't build it on top of that easement going across right right so there's not a whole you go this way a little bit and even so you can't go much this way and again that's a I will be honest I they did the remodeling that's a 195750s building or whatever it is and it has good structure we re they said instead of building a brand new one you could build it you could do it's still good for 30 years or more so you know you could remodel it so forth but I don't know if you again just worry about

113uh trying to make that bigger um and having that space. I get you don't necessarily want to give away the space but if it also helps us and helps this district in the future when it comes to parking because that's the biggest need right now and the only reason another reason we bring it closer and move it up to this area is so that it's a closer walk. Right. There is a door here um and there's also a door here. So we would and there's parking right here now. Like I said, it's pretty beat up and and the school district would have to pay quite a bit of money to to redo that parking lot right there. If we said no to the city, we'll just redo it ourselves. It might be several years before

114you're able to do that to find some money to somewhere else. So, could an option be to make the dilapitated right where your cursor is to make that parking lot green space and you know and then just utilize all the parking down there? It would that would be a pretty far walk that we get into the building like in the winter for like you'd have to have some probably access that's for robotics and that would be a longer window would this enhance our ability to turn would that make a difference with like that more tournaments? Uh, I mean, make it easy for like Robot when they do their things. They they do sometimes do them in this gym. You know, if you think about the gym that's being used all the time, you have all

115the parking out on the street and so forth. By having this parking here, that certainly will will help that, you know, um because there is a door that can come in. It's not too far from the And it looks like there's not space there. Like you don't envision the city doing anything that like add adding on to making it like a recreational complex that they would use year round where you need the pool area. There's no room there, right? No. No. I mean that's maxing out that whole place right there. Yeah. I think it's a perfect location for a city pool. I love that it's accessible and it feels equitable. A lot of kids can easily get there. M I like the idea but I think we need the logistics same as you do just

116to what is the actual space what is the actual thought process of yeah like so maybe if you had a proposal I think any creative you know options or if or maybe if you had a couple options would help I feel like we need to do our homework too I just don't know what that so if day and then the city parking lot and then we get to use it once open in the summer. What are we being protected with to be guaranteed that we actually can use the parking lot? Like I'm just this is a hypothetical but that would all be like I would suspect we would have some sort of a signed agreement. The language would be that they have to be the language would state that from for infinity but for a

117very long time. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Yeah. And then if another hypothetical, if the city no longer needs it as a parking lot, the city couldn't go change it into something else without Yeah. If something happened to the pool or something, okay, let's move something. Yeah. I mean, those are that's all in the in the agreement language. I would suspect that that'll all be spelled out. And that's where I was when I had said earlier about us meeting more frequently or meeting bringing this back forth would be is to clear that kind of stuff up, right? you know, but if if you guys are looking for a monetary value for the land, then that's what I would need to take back to I think that would be helpful because I one option and I

118don't know that this is a viable option would be to like for us to keep the land essentially put you know write put in writing that you're allowed to use it and we split the paving cost or something. I don't think that's going to be realistic for us, but you know, but yeah, and I don't think the land's going to come back at a high value, but we obviously have to figure that out. Um, and we should probably talk to a realtor, too. So, if you could let us know like who you're using to assess the land value and then I feel like it would just be Well, we would Yeah, we can I can see where that's at. it'd be prudent for us to talk to a different realtor or land expert and and

119I I believe that like you said the land would be undervalued just because there's nothing on it. Well, and there's not a lot we can do with it, right? Honestly, and so for us to improve it, I mean, it's got to be, you know, we're not going to spend x amount of dollars to buy a piece of land and then put this amount of dollars into it and then basically donate it back for eight months out of the year. Right. Right. you know, right? Um, so those are right, but yeah, we can get some of that information. Well, yeah, and it would be helpful for us as we make our decision to show the community why it makes sense if we do end up dating it. So, question on the layout. So, the CEC sits

120on the corner, but this shows all that there's a space. Am I looking at it wrong? North is uh north is that way. Yeah, cuz over what Jeremy and I were talking about is Isn't Seventh like right here? Nope. It's right there. It's right there. But the school is like right at the sidewalk. So take this picture and like it over like this and it will represent what? I think there's more field there. North is to the right. We're in this building here. Right. That's That's the one on the bottom. The Methodist church is up here, right? Wait. Yeah, it's clear there. Yep. Okay. And then so this goes here, but there's still part of here. There's still part of the school here. Yeah, it's up here. No, that little piece on the bottom. So,

121this is where the robotics is. All right. So, this Yes. Okay. Got it. That makes sense. So, maybe you and I and Jen and Al can meet together and do some more and I can get some of these questions answered as well. No, but human, but there isn't an absolute what we're hearing is there isn't an absolute no. Don't even look into it. Not interested. We're trying to do that. So, okay. Yeah. Donut. We're going to have a change of face. No, no, I'm good. Thank you. No, I think that's Does that sound reasonable? That's that's reasonable to me. And I think it's going to be, you know, we once Al apologize. He's not here. He's having some family things that he's taking care of. So, um, but we didn't want to lose the date.

122So, I just wanted to just to find out where where are you guys feeling that you're at somewhere, you know, so it's if it's a possibility is what I'm getting at um other than language that we got to work out and then we'll bring something back for then we'll check with our lawyer or whoever about needing what that would mean for us, right? And Tom, could you also if it's possible if this supports this long-term city plan? Um, I think it's going to show the community that we're acting to support this. Yeah. That it's a win for both. That's that's our biggest thing is how does it benefit from both parties, you know, cuz we are one but two, really, I still think that like a long-term lease would be the best option. Yes. Like

123$1 per year or something. So, back to that long-term lease, if you don't mind, real quick. If if you're saying $1, are you seeing a dollar a year for 20 years? Yeah. Mhm. So, what's the We have the right to land after the 20 years. Oh, yeah. Okay. So, we would actually own it, but you can use it for 50 years or something. So, you're building the parking lot then? No. Thought I'd just throw that in there. See? Have you heard the news? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So after 20 years, school could take back or whatever you decide makes sense for you for the city. Yeah. I don't think I mean I'm just a realist here. I don't think it's reasonable for parking lots are expensive. Yeah. So, it would be the city funding a ton

124of money that we can't afford to go to the parking lot, right? But then also probably the maintenance if that's what we're asking too, right? And then it's okay after 20 years, haha, it's ours. Like I just something we need to think about is after if it's 50 years that parking lot might be shot and the pool might be shot. Who knows? So then they might be happy to give it back to us and we might not want it. So, I think that's something we have to think about too, right? Like there's unintended consequences with everything. Yeah. Yeah. It might be better for us to just more discussion. Thank you. All right. Thank you guys for All right, moving on to discussion of policy 522. Yes. So, we're just bringing this back. Um remember on

125January 8th, uh we had brought forward about policy 522 tal 9 policy. Uh we the board the previous board had approved it on recommendations from MSBA. I think it was in November December the f of last year. Um and then in January 8th there was a federal court issue that it um would revert uh or would change the title 9 policy 522. So it was recommended by MSBA and their lawyers that we should revert back to the uh title 9 policy of 2020. And at that time there were just some questions and people wanted to think about it. Then we got into the time where we had to do reductions and it just got to be like, "Oh, this is a a lot." And uh so we thought we would just come back to it.

126So we're coming back to it tonight. Um and then uh you can vote on it and you know on the next meet and the 19th. So yes. So again it is title 9 uh deals with the non-discrimination uh policy. there is procedures that follow with title 9 and things that we need to to make sure that we follow if something were to come up um with this and the first person I call is a lawyer and make sure that we follow it. I think my my time here in four years we've had one um area one type of case where we had to follow through and and go forward with it and there's a long process that goes with it. the policy 413 which is next on the list is uh the harassment uh policy

127that we have um and so that would be um what would also be in place. So, and um when we checked with uh our lawyer, our attorney uh with some questions um some of the answers were there, you know, what happens if we leave 522 and she said there's really no liability. However, the policy will not legally be accurate or consistent with the current interpretation until 9. And um I know Ann went to a conference a week and a half ago and Terry Mororrow from MSBA who had recommended that all districts go uh back to 2020. Now has pretty much told everybody you should be at 2020 by now. Um it's really important because the 2024 policy is really because of the inaccuracies is not something you could really enforce. Um, and she, you know,

128the recommended policy to protect, uh, protect the classes is in policy 413. And so, um, I just wanted to bring it up again today if there's any questions or discussion and then we could bring it for vote in two weeks. So, I'm just going to open it up to you at the board to discuss. I don't have any questions. I would like the record to show that um if we do approve this, and I think we probably have to because it's the current law, this only the only change there's changes to the language to this that I personally think is harmful to students. Um and I just want the minutes to show that we are only changing this to be compliant with the current federal law and nothing will change inside our school walls. And

129the Minnesota Human Rights Protection Act still gives every single student in our building protections. And we will still they will still have a safe um and they'll still be safe and supported in our school walls. Any other comments regarding 522? Okay. on the policy 413. So 413, we went through some of that tonight in our policy committee uh because it was going to be coming something we cover every June as well. Um and so I know there was some questions about uh making sure that protected classes when it came to protected classes, harassment, violence, and bullying. um you know so I see I know that there was a question regarding sexual orientation and that's in in there as well but but what other opt what other questions or things do you want us to look

130at for the next meeting as well because I I'll double check it with legal and so forth as well I think we need to add gender identity to the purpose um and that's just to keep it consistent with the rest of the policy it's written in parts of the policy but um I I think it would be helpful just to have it in the purpose as well as a protected class. Um, so then by adding gender identity in the purpose, Yeah. you think that'll that'll cover then the 522 and you'll feel okay about that? Yeah, I think it I mean I this this policy and because of the Minnesota Human Rights Act, the policy specifically already outlines protections for gender for students expressing their gender identity. Okay. Um so I don't see any reason not

131to include it in the purpose as well. It just that's basically likely introduction. Make sure there's Um, one thing that I did just have a question about is part of the policy said that the school district shall conspicuously post the name of the human rights officer including mailing addresses and phone numbers. Do we have that posted on our website anywhere of the human rights officer? I think it's I think it's our superintendent, right? The superintendent is the human rights officer under our policy. I'm not sure if it's I mean for tell it's listed but I'm not sure if it's listed and you know if it's listed out there just to be otherwise otherwise we'll make sure that it's yeah maybe add it right we can we can add that well on page 13 contact Mike

132Newman new or human rights officer right okay there is just it talks it just said that you need to conspicuously um had it posted and it says or Malia Schroer principal and then um what number is this? Is that nine? Is this harassment or our so our policy currently says sexual harassment or violence and the MSBA um recommendation is for it just to say harassment I think just so it's encompassing all what section are you in? Um I think except nine, right? Yeah. Okay. So what what are you recommending? Um so the MSBA policy recommends getting rid of the word sexual in front of harassment. So the title is just harassment or violence as abuse. Okay. Instead of sexual harassment or violence as abuse and they would agree to that I think so. Yeah. I

133think just it's more we don't want any harassment. Yeah. I think that was it. All right. Well, then we'll double check and we'll make those changes and then we'll come back on the in two weeks and approve those. Okay. Okay. Thank you. All right. Financial update for 2526. [Applause] Do you want to drive or do you want me? Oh, he's getting what what joke you got for us tonight. Tell you um I I golf I used to golf with this guy a lot. He's I think he's passed away now, but he was really craggy and no one liked him really. But he golfed all the time and his wife about golfing all the time and he so one day we were they were playing we were cutting on the screen and was kind of in

134town. Excuse me. and and uh this funeral procession goes by and all these cars are going by real slow and he was getting ready to putt and he stopped and took his hat off and waited for the possession to go by. I said, "Get really nice and respectful of you." He said, "Well, least I could do. We were married for 35 years." It's a true story. Well, good evening. Um, yeah, the financial update tonight is well, you'll see that we've been working on the budget and um we pretty much have the next pretty much have all the um the revenues figured out. Um, so work continues on the 2526 preliminary budget. I got to thinking as we were listening to AI that I could probably just chat GBT the budget and see what it comes

135up with. Um I don't know if there's more work to put stuff into it to see if it come the right numbers or just do it myself. Um it's about 3 4,000 lines and this it's not too bad if you just parse it out. Our budget selfwash was about 30,000 lines so that took a while. Um, so we've looked at all the general fund. I've looked at all the general fund revenues. I've calculated them. Uh, revenues are usually pretty easy to get. Um, the things you're waiting for are the legislature, but it's still in session. Constitutionally, it's supposed to adjourn on May 19th. Um, they don't pass the budget. They're author call special session to pass the budget. Um, we know the basic formula increased uh 2.74% and that's set by statute. So, we're not

136waiting on anything with the formula with the state and I really do not see any major increases in funding in sight that we could really jump on. Um, there might be some mandates coming in that might cost a little bit more, but nothing shattering. Most of the mandates I've been seeing are have to do with, you know, operations, not so much the budget. Um, we kind of are are getting ready for the unemployment tax for unemployment. We're getting ready for the the paid leave tax and things like that. Those pay tax will be in the budget. So, tonight we'll just I just let you know how the revenues are looking. Um, and I just looked at the last presentation that was given about the budget and I they broke down the revenues into the levies,

137uh, local revenue, state aids and grants, special education, which is a state aid, but we break it out separately, it may be easier to understand, and federal aids. So estimated as of today as I look at um all the reporting information we have and the thing we can get from the state uh we're looking at uh total revenue budget next year about $29.2 million. This year's budget is about $28.2 million. Um so overall about a 3.4% increase in revenue. Um, and I'll break out each one so you can see where we anticipate some increases. And I do feel this is is conservative, too. Um, but we'll keep looking. If anything comes up between here and June 30th, we'll make sure that we don't miss anything. Uh, so I'll just break it into the different categories.

138Levy, um, we're looking at an increase about $286,000 in our levy. Um, about 8.8% 20% mainly due to um the ANI levy that's that is coming in this year and it wasn't didn't come nothing nothing came in last year I don't know if it was applied for right or whatever but that's an increase CTE levy has gone up and that's a reflection on really what we offer and who we're coding there and then enrollment adjustments under local optional revenue Um, I'm just assuming that when we send the enrollment projections to the state, they don't have to be exact, but they like to know every year you got to put the next two years in. They like to know so they can do their financial u calculations. They're always going to pay you on how many

139kids came to school. Um, but they like to do projections. They like to see how much money they need in the future. Um, so they'll do the levy uh calculations based on what you put in for projections. And if you're projected a little low and you have more kids, you're going to see that money come a couple years later in your levy. So that's one reason the levy went up about 8.8%. On the local revenue side, we've seen an increase about $70,000 and that's about 7%. And a lot of that is due to the budget adjustment process in which some of the adjustments that were approved by the school board were for increasing like pay to ride both for um open enrolled kids and um those that live under a mile. Was it a mile

140or two miles? Two miles. Um K8 um Brad talked about it tonight admissions to to games and then also increase in the sports passes. Then some of the other revenues I I um budget a little bit more than Julie had just because of we've done better this year than we had anticipated just so based on this year. Those are the local revenues and they include everything from admissions to interest to uh what the students pay to play act to do activities um things like that. And then the state aids um it looks like there's an increase about 465,000 about 2.1%. Um due basically to the increase in the basic formula some various aids have been adjusted. Sometimes it's a combination of some of your funding is a combination of levy and aid and depending on

141where you fall into the formula you might have more aid and less levy. Sometimes you have more levity, less aid. Um, the state aid that that I'm proposing to budget is determined using enrollment of 2,39 ADMs. I know I should use acronyms on a PowerPoint. Um, but it's Google, so maybe it's not PowerPoint, but um, ADM is average daily membership, and that's just an average of when your students are enrolled in the district. Um, and then they take those ADMs and then they use uh a formula, pretty simple formula, but to get to adjust the pupil units. But we're just when I say ADMs, you can just pretty much counting heads. And from what I determined, the 2425 revised budget used 2320 ADMs. So, the enrollments picked up a little bit more. Um in the

142last report we looked at I used I used 137 kindergarteners and then we took off a few in um I think it was third fourth grade in or somewhere around there. Um and then also this isn't you know if you look at the K12 enrollment it wouldn't be that high. We also get paid formula money for ADMs of our early childhood special ed. Not the whole prek, just the special ed portion. And he usually generates, you know, like we take like four students will generate 180 because they don't go to school that many hours um because they're preschool. Um, so when you see those numbers, when I have to figure out the budgets, I had add about 28 for special and then special education. Um, this one's kind of a wild card. Um, this is

143shows a 5% increase over last year's budget, but I'm we're looking at and after, you know, looking at projection models and especially it's a little tougher one to project. It's gotten easier and easier over the years, but there's what's called a tuition adjustment. And what you pay in tuition for your students going to a different district and then vice versa, they take off special ed aid if you owe money for tuition or if you got money due. So that kind of always scares me a little bit, but I um projecting about three $3.1 million in special education revenue. Mainly it seems like a bigger increase over the 2.9, but mainly because I think we'll come in better than 2.9 this year. We'll probably come in over 3 million of special ed revenue. And there's a

144bigger increase in special ed this year because of the addition of the access intervention program that we started. And those are nonsp special ed licensed teachers who we can get special ed funding for because they're doing this intervention program. So we added more people to the formula what we did. And then of course it's going to go up based on how much teaching costs increase regardless of whether it's their salary or their benefits or more staff because your revenue is based on basically reimbursement of those and then federal aids I didn't do anything just because uncertainties what's going on you don't have a huge pot of money from federal funding it's not really worth going on a limb and say it's going to increase it, you know, it could decrease, but you know, I don't

145know, 5% whatever. We just don't know. And we might know more in a couple weeks. We can easily change that. Been thinking that for a month. So, it's just a recap of what we're saying, what the revenue is going to look like next year. So, then as we're working on the expenses, just a few notes. Uh, so basically, you saw the revenue go up 3%. So in theory we want to keep our total expenses and no more than a 3% increase. Now that total is going to be a combination many many many different expenses. Um but when I look at the bottom line you know if you 33 you had a balanced budget you should be balanced but the fire needs more than just a balance. They need to start building up their fund balance

146too. Um, so we had to reduce expenses as the board did last um, you know, two months ago for this year's next year's budget and expense wise about 1.5 million. So that's about 5% of the expenses were reduced. Um, and that also factored in some of the extras you had to pay cover for that mostly overloads. Um, just bear in mind that salaries and wages are 78% of all your expenses. Um, so you can look and skip and save on your services and your your salaries. You can't really do much about your utilities. They are what they are. You hope they don't go up more than 3%. They probably will. Your insurance seems to go up exponentially. I don't know. At some point, work comp, same thing. So those three categories alone, you spend $1.3

147million. Um, but it goes back to salaries and wages, which is most of your expenses. So that's just we'll just leave it at that. Contract negotiations are very, very important this year. Dan, did this the bottom line here with insurance? Did that take into account another 28%? No, this is property insurance. The 28% is the the benefits. Okay. Sorry. And I will tell you, we don't we haven't got our final numbers in. Okay. Um, they were supposed to be in last week. I had heard from our insurance company, but we met with them a week and a half ago, last uh, beginning of last week. And, uh, we were tracking that more. Well, we were tracking that 13%. Uh, but you know, they always put a little buffer in there. So, he was thinking that

148we would be more in the 15 16% not the 28 29%. We still have some ways to go yet in order to get there. Um but um they were waiting for some bids cuz they've been out for a couple to see if anybody else would do it. And so I should know within the next week what a better idea of what that what what those came back at but they they're not he was hoping they would be 15 to 17% not 20 to higher percent but we'll see. Thank you. So, what are our next steps? Um, we'll hopefully be ready to present the 2526 budget to the finance committee at this next finance committee meeting and then presented to the school board either on May 19th or June 2nd. Um, you'll also hear about the

149community services budget which be presented to the school board on June 2nd. Um, school board will approve the budget on June 16th. Um unless yeah till June 30th we got that meet special need to do that. We'll include the school nutrition budgets and the debt service budgets. Um we'll keep working on our five-year projection models and so you'll need that information as you make referendum decisions um which has to be done 75 days before the election. So your last chance you can really, you know, have a referendum bot question drafted or approved would be in August meeting. You can do it earlier if you want, but um we'll use these five-year projections to help guide you. Um and that's a lot easier to do once we get this budget established. And then of course you

150have an operating levy reference in November. Uh we prepare for audits. um revise the budget in January and as with budgets go and finance and school finance it's just rent we keep doing the same thing every year working on three budgets but that's where we're at right now and hopefully if through those um expenses we should be pretty close any questions do we have an enrollment update today or is that less just last week or like two weeks ago. Um, so my question isn't related to what you presented, but the post bulletin reported that Calar Township or Rochester absorbed like 300 plus acres from K Township and they're going to build a huge development and in the next 3 to seven years potentially we could have 300 homes added to our district. Um, so where

151what's the best place to get specific information about that? Do we reach out to the developer? Do we reach out? Do we talk to the city of Rochester? Well, it should be at the city planning. Yeah. Right. And then and then we can talk to the developer and see how fast actually they plan on putting them putting them up, right? Yeah. And then the other part is how fast the development here might go up. There's a developer that owns all that land south of the high school too. So that and that will definitely help in the future. But again, that's three or four budgets out. No, I understand. I just I'm just wondering who like who do you talk to them or who should do that? Should it be a board member or No, it

152probably would be uh probably what should happen is when Mr. Walre gets on board and goes to meet people and then he go put get that information together. So, yeah, because there isn't a whole lot you're going to do right now besides, right, um you know, future planning. Um it's good to know at this point but um you know again 3 to 7 years might be some time out. Well it could be 20 it could be good to so but that would be something that Mr. what we're good could could certainly be looking into and and playing with the facilities um committee that meets you know and say okay if this if this does come out this way what are those options what are the what's u the facilities needs are you going to need

153more needs that both of them come in in the next 5 years right and then you're going to have to look at that again that was always that asterisk when we did the demographic study was housing right housing development was always the not the unknown So, okay. What we would do up up there and kind of join is we would meet with cuz they were growing super fast. We would meet with the city the plan city planning okay department give us the update on building permits. Okay. Until the permits are set, you can't count on anything, right? And not diversity. No matter how how long you look at it, you generally get maybe a quarter of a kid for each house. Like a good triple takes like four houses. Okay. All right. Thanks. That's helpful.

154All right. We'll look at uh our uh 2024 audit recommendations. Yes. So um I was asked to bring this forward and as you know um our audit was not a great audit in 2024 and they're they look at the year of 2324 and then they make recommendations um to to us as a school district and our business office and so forth and so um I was just asked to have a review uh kind of update where we're at. So, the first recommendation that was stated was that the business office should make that all student accounts comply with MA EPI and um and maybe Dan can help with all these uh alphabet stuff and so forth, but in in because one student account did not have a signed purpose statement. Student accounts are pretty much run

155by the students. They have an adviser, but they kind of decide where the money goes and they have to have officers and they sign off. Um and we did not have one act one of our activities. Uh actually I think it was the senior trip and didn't have that. That's considered student activity. Um and so that that form has been sent and signed by the students with their advisor um for this year. So that's that was the one that we didn't have. Well, we have a lot of different student activities. We always send those out to have them be sent and sent back. The recommendations uh second recommendation say all expenses associated with title one especially in the areas of homeless students receiving benefits have proper documentation and follow the guidelines. So we have worked

156with uh this is the area with our um with our social worker who works with the homeless students. Um some of the things that were being u paid for um she thought uh and was under the uh assumption by what she read in statute that she could pay for some things for our homeless students and then when that came back said no you can't you can pay for this but you can't pay for that. So, okay, just went through that with her, make sure this year it's been much better for the the homeless students that we have um of what could be paid for and what can't be paid for. Um the third recommendation is uh to review the segregation of duties with regards to counting and financial duties. Uh you know, we are a

157smaller district. We don't have many people in the district office. So um so we can have maybe some better efficiencies but some duties have been altered and uh this will be and u we'll continue we'll work with um our new executive director of finance and operations when they come in. I know Julie and Dan have u have made recommendations how to change things in the office here um for more efficiencies and and oversight and so forth. And uh but again this is from and maybe Dan can also um say that I know that I've been told that this is not uh unfamiliar type of request or recommendation especially for smaller districts to be able to do that but we are are working on that. Um the fourth one was a recommendation to review accounting procedures

158with the goal to ensure oversight and financial reporting. This was very evident as we went through and we have added more people to viewing the access to our bank accounts including our treasurer um our board chair um and then also myself um who's uh the superintendent has as um I've been going through and pretty much looking every day and and working and then when things need to get transferred they come through me as well. Um the district has also started a district budget committee that will meet throughout the year to review financial information and give recommendations. And then also um as you've been seeing a more detailed monthly report of reconciliations which will be happening at the next meeting every month now and then also that revenue expenditure updates is given to the school board.

159Um and so there are more people that have more eyes on on the budgets moving forward as well. The fifth recommendation is that um is to ensure that correct UFAR coding is used and that the finance director receives training in this area. Um and so you you have to remember that at this time when we went to go do the the audit there were a lot of things that needed to be changed. There were a lot of things that Julie Synync and our business office had to go through almost line by line and change because of the UFAR coding and and so forth like that. um for different reasons. Uh but partially is because the person that we had in in the summer um you know was new to school finance and that you coding

160that is very difficult to understand and and put in and and there weren't some of the um you know programs or some of the things that were coming in they weren't coded correctly to begin with. So it was hard for that person to to figure out where that was and so forth. So um however um if you approve when you approve the the new executive director in finance operations they have they have experience in school finance and uh and then also as um received additional training in all areas of finance through MASPO so that's great um also our business office personnel have received much more uh more training attended trainings within the last year around you codings And um and so when they start, you know, talking about codes, they sell my outside my office

161and they're talking about all these expense codes and revenue codes and so forth like that. And I I will be honest, um I have not heard them speak like that in the first couple years I was here because because they were because they were told they didn't have to have that train that the person that was here would take care of it and and just say put it here. Well, now when you say put it here, they know to be able to ask the question and and make sure and be able to work with our schools to say this is where it needs to go. The air, excuse me, the other part is, you know, we do have our new spending uh you know, our spending procedures and credit card procedures. Um it's and everything

162is through our um through our POS's purchase orders and this the administrator either the building principal or director or and myself have to take a look at those and so sometimes it's happened where when it comes to me uh you know it's yellow the the what they want to buy says how much what code it's yellow well that tells me that there's an issue with it. So then I go to that I go to the business I go to Jen in the business office or whatever and say hey it's yellow why is this yellow and she helps look it up and then sometimes there's reasons for it and because it's fundraiser and there's money there but other times it's called maybe use the wrong account code so we go back and we're fixing that. So

163those are things that are happening now that maybe weren't happening in the past. So can you remind me where those policies are posted for employees to see the spending policies? So the the when with all it's on the front page of our handbook and it's or not a handbook of the website and the staff. Okay. Okay. And you'll be able to see those there as well as um on our finance and operations web page as well as we when we did those we finalized them with Julie Sync this fall and then they were sent out to all staff members and then the and administrators went through them u with the uh during their staff meetings in the fall when they first came out. So great. And then the the last one is the recommendation is

164for districts to follow the guidelines for collateral for its accounts, the First Security Bank. And you know that uh you know each each week I put in how much we have in in each of our accounts and so forth. Um the bank when this came out um the first people we work with at First Security Bank talked to the auditors. They wanted to leave the collateral where it is. There are a couple days where maybe we might be above that 900,000 because payrolls went out. Um, so but that's what we were told was okay for us to do, but I'll double check that as we move forward. But, um, again, as you we really try to keep the First Security Bank under that $900,000 limit for for use to pay bills and so forth. But

165th those were the recommendations and that's the where we're at. Making sure that we follow those recommendations for the next audit. Great. Any questions? No. Sounds like they've all been addressed. Thank you. Yeah, there you go. All right, take a look at the uh 2025 2026 schoolboard calendar draft. Excuse me. So, you can um to see that this is uh put together for the first and third Mondays of each month. Um they're listed as regular set meetings. Do you want to go back and remember we did this because um you know we thought we'd have to make a lot of decisions at very diff you know very fast time or you know um so do you want to still do do we want to go back and list the that first meeting each month as

166work sessions uh again will you try to like we do tonight try not to do uh uh you know voting on something approving something unless it needs to be and or there's a reason for it as and we can do that as long as it's supposed to ahead of time, but they're considered work sessions. Well, what's the drawback in leaving it as regular meetings? There's really no drawback as long as you uh know as a board then that uh you know, you may not be voting as much at the first meeting of the month and so forth. I don't think there's a big drawback of having one listen their meetings. They're listed meetings. It's just might give it might give the community a better idea that maybe not as much as we're going to be

167voted on during this meeting. It's just a lot of discussion. As a community member, I liked the clarification. So, if there was an issue I wanted to learn more about, I would know when the discussion because I actually preferred to come to the listening or the work sessions because that's where the discussion usually happens. But isn't this saying that we can vote at all of these meetings? Well, you can vote even during the work session. You can vote at it as right. No matter what you No matter what, as long as you have it posted. The problem, if you remember in the past, last fall, we were being questioned about that because we were last fall and or last year and into this year with all the reductions, they were we were making voting almost

168at every meeting and there was very long list. We try not to do that. Um so that's why probably said okay well to make it meet more um you know regular for people to understand we're probably going to be making a lot of a lot of actions during these meetings. We're going to make them regular meetings so that they understand that. But now we're getting back to um having work sessions be more the discussion part more than action. you can still have action as long as it's posted ahead of time, but these are the dates and you can see on Tuesdays, there's some Tuesdays when we can't meet on Mondays, right? Labor Days and other types of holiday holidays. So, you'll meet on a Tuesday instead of instead of the Monday. And Lisa, just I'm

169just going to speak because I just went to a conference and we had Dary there was questions about this, too. Um, so every meeting you have, if it's a standing meeting, it's technically a regular meeting, but you're just allowing the public to know like t we typically do work session or work study. Okay? And you're just telling letting your public just know that typically you don't do a lot of voting at those and you try to reserve that for your third meeting of the month. So, but you can vote at any as long as you have a form with the board, you can Okay. Okay. any discussions and then does anyone else have a preference between work session and I don't really have a preference. I mean I I still think it's good that we

170let people know that we're planning on that the first one is more so of a work session and then the last one is for more voting communicated. Yeah. So, do you think we should change this then to call it a work? Yeah, I think it's cleaner personally. I think it has more clarity so it's not so confusing. Yeah. So, we'll do that. This will be approved. Then if there's any questions about dates or whatever, let me know and but otherwise we'll change all the first meetings of the month to work sessions. Great. And we'll vote you'll approve it at the next meeting. And now we were just talking about July. We normally only have Yeah. Now that's the other question is um it's July July 7th. In the past you've not had a work session

171in July. He just had a meeting in July. So um we can check with Mr. Walch if he would like to have it because that's his first week, second week on the job or whatever. So will anyone be in town? Yeah, that's the thing, you know. July, that's the 7th. That's Monday. So, July 4th, right, is Friday. So, well, people taking the longer weekends and that's why we that's why we haven't had one in the past. We've just done um gone to the 21st. So, can we um Nate did talk about maybe doing a board retreat. Do you remember the date that he just like over the summer? Okay. Sometime. Maybe you should ask him what he wants to do. I would be remote or absent at a July 7th meeting. And how far in

172advance can we cancel a meeting? Does that require 3 days if it's posted as a meeting at least? I mean, unless there's an emergency, it is advised to um which we don't have on any of our agendas, but you might want to consider having me added or putting it on our website to put like in in the event of inclement weather, we would plan to meet the following day because then you don't have to do the three-day notice as well. Yeah. for I mean we we've had times in the past I do recall when you know when there's a snow day or something that we've had to cancel for for that type of situation but typically it's and would you say is it better and help me out is it better that you would leave

173this up there and cancel the July 7th meeting sometime in the next you know or is it better to take it off and add a meeting at a work session notice we can we can amend this at any time I mean kind of like we have done throughout the year. We've added as we go. I mean, it's a little bit easier to add meetings, I think, than it is to remove them because it just looks like why are they canceling it, right? So, I can I can definitely take that off before it goes to the And then if um I think that'd be good. Yeah, I think we remove that and then if Nate wants to meet, we can add it. Yeah. I haven't seen many districts that have termin but December you have to

174taxation. Yeah. like the 15th or something and then July you have to do LTFM has to be submitted by July 31st. Okay. So we kind of moved our Julies to the middle because it gave more time afterwards doing filing. Yeah. Mike, do you mind asking me if he has I can ask but I think I think you're also fine because you just need a three-day notice to add a meeting, right? you know, so you're better off doing that is take it off and add it and because what will happen is somebody may print this off or see it somewhere and say, I remember they had a meeting and then they find this piece of paper and see there's a meeting and then you they don't see the updated one, right? So, well, and I think

175if he prefers to meet the weeks before, I think we could maybe make that work too if if he didn't want to wait so long after he started. But he might like that too. It might be nice to have a couple weeks. Again, there's not a whole lot that's happening in July either. So, I think but and then but it here I will say this. Here's a caveat is if you might have to have a a meeting to talk about um the referendum, right? And what the plans are for referendum and what you know looking at but so that may be what is added but that can be added you know the week after. I will ask him how he wants me to go. Great. Thank you. Okay. All right. We'll uh review the draft

176handbooks starting with the preschool. Well, what we'll do is um I know there's a lot of reading and a lot of I know some people probably were pretty busy and there's a lot of reading through all this. I didn't get get to all of it. It's there. Is there any questions that you might have for me to start? cuz otherwise what you can do is send me questions and send me and the principal questions and we can get those back to you and then we would approve them and at the next meeting. So we have some time but if you got through some and you have some questions I can try to answer otherwise I will get them from the principles and I didn't have any pressing questions. Um I have a suggestion anytime we

177use he she pronouns I think we should add they them pronouns as well. Um, and then I also as a parent find these handbooks difficult to find. So if we couldn't I don't know somehow and it might just be the new a function of the new website if we could somehow make them more accessible. Um, and then another thing I noticed is I feel like the the three um like I think it was high I might be misremembering this. I think it was high school, middle school, intermediate, maybe even primary felt like they were written like they they had a different tone. This is very picky, but I care a lot about writing. I think it's important. Um, they they seemed like they were they were written by a different person than the than the

178preschool and the student activities. I don't know if that's a big deal, but that's, you know, a very picky editing thing. if we wanted it to be more polished and sound like it all came from the same voice. I think there could be some editing to the other books. Um, but the content I thought was fine. I very picky. Um, and these handbooks are adaptations from like MSBA's guideline documents or something, right? It looks like the three or four of them. Yeah. Um, some of them Yeah. more the the you know you would find that from the primary intermediate middle school and high school the you know the preschool one I don't think MSBA would really have a preschool one or the athletic one those are just things that the activities department puts together right

179and so forth so those aren't necessarily MSBA ones but um we really focus on the deep the um building ones are and there have um certain things in there by statute we have to add um in there and so forth. So, they're they're in there. So, um and I did not see an AI section in the middle school. I don't know if we should consider adding that as it gets developed. Um and I thought it could be really nice to link the activities handbook under student activities. I heard from a few parents this earlier this fall who um had questions about the like the student activities policy and when kids, you know, if they're not getting they're not meeting the requirements to stay active in activities, they we're looking for that. Oh, so you mean

180in the high school? In middle school and high school. Yeah. Maybe just so it's easy to access the you know um and do we still have a bullying report like Google doc? Yes. Yeah. Maybe if we could link that in the bullying and harassment or anything like that that we have for other things too. Um just so it's super easy for people to access. Um and in the student activities handbook um it said that there the when they're talking about cutting kids from teams it said the decisions were due to state roster sizes but we know it's not true for seventh and eighth graders. So I think we just should just clarify that. Okay, I think that's it. Anything else? All right. Okay. First reading of the policy is start with 214. So um 214

181is the out of state travel by schoolboard members. So if um there was a training that uh that you would want to attend or should feel like you want to send a person to that you know you have to get that talks about the appropriate travel the reimburseable expenses. Um, I don't know. We haven't really had many board members who have traveled um out of state and so forth, but uh it just talks about if they do, here's here's what they get reimbured for. Here's the process to follow. Any questions? Okay. Um 423, employee student relations. Um there's some legal reference changes in this one, but this one again uh really is a strong uh you know policy when it comes to relationships between um employees and students and and um and so we want

182really want to make sure that this one is you know um written well and and u there are no like I said the only changes are some of the legal references but a do them at the end. So, but this would protect the district and if there were issues between students and staff, any questions with this next ones are guidelines for implementing awarding credit via assessment. Um, this is not an MSBA policy. Um, when we read it, we really didn't have anything. Um so what this is for grades 9 through 12 mostly. Um so if a if a student wants to take a class in in my previous district students would take uh the next level math class over the summer online and then want to skip that go and take a higher math the

183following year in school. um they would have to go and take it and then come back uh take their class, show that they've taken the class, then come back and take a test and be assessed to make sure that they have the same knowledge that they would have if they were taking one of our classes. Um so that's kind of what this is talking about. If they want credit, how they do how do they get credit? Um via using assessments and it would run through our counseling office and our and our department. So any questions regarding that sorry testing out. So okay the next one is public participation at meetings. The only thing that we changed at this um is that thought we had changed it in the past but um it wasn't there so

184we wanted to make sure I right um yes so we said that the ones who could speak are um because in in a lot of areas it's you have to you have to be u a resident of the of the school district but we have come on a I thought it said right here andor but we we're adding andor parents of students enrolled in public because we have 500 students in our school district who are open enroll it would only be fair to allow those parents to be able to come and speak as well we had guardians as well please parents and guardians thank you so yeah I thought we had a long time yeah so that is but there so we We will add that. We just thought that was uh the only fair

185thing to do is add them as well. So that's the only other change that that's the only change that was made to this policy. Any questions? Okay. Um if you want to know about how we handle headways, this is the one that deals with headways. So we deal with it and it's handled appropriateness, right? Yes. All right. It's assume there's no questions with headlights and the wellness policy. So, we do have our wellness. We do have a wellness committee. Jen Dole is the chairperson of the wellness committee. She does have a committee that meets with staff. Um she does bring in outside community members to help as well. Um there there are some recommendations when it comes to food and so forth. Um and we try to follow and we follow those um but again

186some of them are recommendations you know we um ask parents to bring in certain types of foods and try to do healthy foods as best as possible. So um any any questions regarding this one? And then the last one is um employment um background checks. So we do have all of our employees that that we hire have to have a background check. Um anybody who is going on a sharon overnight trip or whatever have to have a background check. Um if they're if if a person's just coming in for the day and they're not going to be uh and they're volunteering, they're not going to be left to only serve kids and I think we don't usually require a background check for those. But anybody who's going to have some be paid by the school

187district or have extensive um access to kids without maybe uh the staff members around them, we do um require back background checks. Okay. Any questions with those? Okay, thank you. All right, recap of the listening session. We did not have any attendees this evening. That's easy. Now, we will take action on the executive director of finance contract, Sean Ellbury. Yeah. So, um I just want to introduce everybody to Sean Ellbury. I I told him it might be a longer meeting. I told him we could we could we could bring him in in two weeks, but he wanted to come meet everybody and be here. So maybe he learned a few things. I hope he did. And uh but as you know, Jason will be much longer. Yes. Well, as you know, um since the resignation

188of uh the one finance director back in, um February of last year or January, when we were told we'd been looking for a a finance director, we and we hired one. Um and and we really was kind of, you know, you ever go out for one? as you can see where school finance is so difficult to understand. You try to find some that have uh finance school finance experience. Um so we posted that and we had 10 candidates that year and nobody had finance experience and but we brought somebody in and and worked you know for five or six months and and then ended up having to um you know go back out and and post again in November. um we had one that um had had applied and wasn't going to be a a

189good fit unfortunately. Then we've been having some that um you know people have applied and most people that applied have not had school finance experience and so um to be able to find somebody that has school finance experience that lives in southeast Minnesota and uh would like to come join us and so forth like that um is is awesome. And so we have Sean Ellbury who has u and and and uh he can explain you know as you get to know him kind of his background but he has been uh an auditor um for cities and c cities or county students cities counties uh state agencies basically any nonprofits including school districts. So so what's helpful is he's done audits on school districts and other places. So he he knows the other side of what

190they ask for and what how they're going to do that. So that was uh for us that was a huge bonus and and so forth. Um he's also worked in school offices. He's coming to us from Pine Island where he started out doing a lot of the work that you'll see our business office people are doing the payroll and so forth like that. That's where he started. And then when their finance director um resigned the same time our finance because it was the same person resigned then uh he took over at Pine Island as their finance director. So for the last uh year and a half or more he's been the uh finance director but before that since 2020 he worked in with Pine Island in their finance department. So he has um school experience

191and he has a experience and we're excited to have him join our staff. Um and uh so uh you I have his contract there and I'm just asking and the reason why we're asking to do that tonight and not wait is because we um we would like Shawn to be able to say yeah he's coming and be able to tell Pine Island that he officially resigns from there because if we didn't wait two more weeks we wouldn't want him to officially resign until we approve this contract. because we're I guess we're trying to help Pine Island out also, I guess. Right. And also to welcome Sean to our our community. So, I'm asking us tonight to take action on his contract. So, do you have any questions? Discussion. Okay. Would entertain a motion to take

192action on the contract? I'd like to make a motion for the hiring of Sean. Okay. Motion on the floor. Do we have a second? Thank you. Second. Motion and a second. Any other questions or discussion? All in favor say I. I. All opposed. Motion carries. And we have a new executive director of finance and operations. Welcome. Congratulations. Well, on a good note, then I would entertain a motion to adjourn. So move. Great. Second. Motion and second. All in favor say I. I. We are ajourned.