Byron School Board Meeting (4/7/25)

001School District number 531 to order on April 7th at 6 PM. Can we have attendance, please? Jeremy here. David here. Lisa here. Carrie here. Kelly here. Nadia here. Alicia here. All right. Our vision, Byron Public Schools, a community of learners committed to making the world a better place. Mission is to learn, share, innovate, inspire. 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. Do we have any questions or discussion on the agenda items? If not, make a motion to approve the agenda as presented. Okay, motion on the floor. Do we have a second? Second. Motion and a second. All in favor say I. I. All opposed. Agenda is approved. Uh administrative reports.

002Were there any questions on uh any of the reports as you reviewed them? No, it was fun to hear what's going on in all the buildings. Yes. Great reports. Wonderful. Um then I guess not hearing anything for discussion there, we'll move on to our discussion items and we will turn the floor over to Jen Hegna for our technology presentation. Thank you. All right. Um first of all I just want to mention highlight uh in my board report that um the Byron AI task force has been working on some guidelines and um the task force or sorry the guidelines are in the report um and this will be eventually in our secondary schools in the handbooks. So the guidelines aren't necessarily board approved but the handbooks are. So we just want to be want you to

003be aware of the guidelines. Um but I'm really proud of the team's work and um looking forward to um getting them up and running and getting some feedback on them. So today I'm just going to discuss our aging infrastructure and growing needs. These are essential investments that I think we need to talk about um uh with uh you know operations and safety and learning. So the first thing is is um I consider technology um one of the bloodlines of of uh you know a digital landscape. Um if you don't have infrastructure we're pretty much um you know blacked out from operations to learning and learning to safety. There's so many things that are are connected to technology. Um, and in the event of of not having the adequate infrastructure, we could really be in a

004in a pretty rough situation. So, I'm going to share some of the things that are um up and coming um you know that we need to consider for the future. Um, and unfortunately some it's pretty coming up very soon. So um basically infrastructure the overview it's it's safety and security uh network connectivity and classroom technology. Um there's there's a term that we use in the tech field and it's called end of support. So we have you know discontinued products where you can no longer p purchase them. Um but we also have something called end of support. So it's beyond the um end of life. It's it's where they are no longer going to be giving updates. Um there's no more patches. Um for instance, we're we're working right now to up upgrade all of our

005computers from Windows 10 to Windows 11 because in October basically Windows 10 is sunseted. No more patches, no more updates. And as you can understand, when you don't have patches and upgrades, that's a cyber security risk. So end of support basically means there's no updates. um it leaves systems vulnerable. Um they can still work and some of these things will still work. It's just to think about some mission critical items and and needs. So of course, you know, um over the years, I've been at this gig for 29 years and over the years like cyber security just plays into everything. Um we want to make sure we're protecting our systems, making sure we're protecting our data and keeping our systems updated. So if you ever wonder what keeps a tech director up late at night,

006that's it. Um and it's postco really. Um once people really started getting online, that's where challenges came ahead as well as artificial intelligence. So um the actors, they call them bad actors are becoming more um I guess smart utilizing AI. So we actually implement tools that use AI to combat these bad people who use AI. So, but this is definitely something that I'm constantly thinking about wanting to protect our system, our data, so on and so forth. So, a little bit about safety and security. The the number one um one of the one of the big I would say um expenditures coming very soon is our phone system. And it's not just our phones, but the actual system itself. Um this will be end of support in 2025. So that means there will be no

007more patches, no more updates. Um, you know, and it leaves us vulnerable because in the event of something happening, we'd have to scramble to find um hardware support for them. We do have a vendor that can still provide support, but as things go on, it's it's just a risky kind of situation. Um, the system we have right now is called Mel, and it only works with phones that match the system. So, if we change the system, we have to change the phones. Um, there are some cloud-based um technologies that I think are very attractive. Um, they're easier to manage. Um, they open the doors to new possibilities that we're not utilizing right now. Um when we initially um received some pricing from a vendor, some of those cloud-based systems were like $10,000 a month. But

008after doing some investigation, we can actually replace everything, including phones, for about 80 to $100,000, but we would be on the cusp for an additional $5,000 per year for maintenance. So there are some more attractive um um items. The other thing is security cameras. Um, so our security camera system is made up of cameras and servers. Right now on each at each school we have a server um that basically networks all of the cameras. Well, we have two servers right now that are looking at end of life. Um, and so some of the considerations are, do we replace these servers for probably more cost than potentially centralizing all of our servers, which again is something to consider districtwide for management, um, efficiency and improved oversight. Um the only downside of any of these centralized things

009is in the event of internet being down, network being down, fiber cut like we had last um July, you know, that would cause some problems. Um ballpark cost for servers around 25 estimated just the servers would be about 25,000. And then we have um 28 cameras in our primary school that were installed um at the onset of bringing that building online back in 2006. So they are 10 years old. Um so we estimate those around4 to $50,000. Now I'm going to get into network and connectivity. Um so one of our one of our main controllers for our Wi-Fi um in the district is we have a couple of wireless LAN controllers and basically it's a centralized system that manages all of the other systems and as you have patches or updates you can push those

010out through that system versus manually trying to update one of the 250 access points we have in the district. Um, so we initially did some pricing this uh earlier this fall and I was pretty shocked at the at the at what the pricing came back just for the network um land controllers was about $111,000. Um I then went back to the drawing board and said okay that seems super high to me. Um and uh you know it's also somewhat archaic technology. it's on premise um you know and the other thing is is that's just 111 just for the wireless land controller when we have access points that are also um starting to go end of life. So option one was just getting pricing on that. Um so option two was well what if what if

011we replaced all access points districtwide with next generation cloudmanaged APS. Um, basically it takes the wireless LAN controller out and um, we essentially it's all cloud-based. Um, we actually dabbled in this. Um, we have some of these um devices on premise on the in the district because when we um built or went into our um uh the the b the building referendums um at the time because of COVID, we couldn't get certain access points um just because they weren't in stock. So, we got these cloud-based systems um here at the um district office as well as the athletic facility and we found out we really like them. Um they're, you know, very easy to use. They're cloud-based. Um you know, and and so what would happen what would happen if we said instead of the

012wireless LAN controllers, what if would what it would look like if we replaced all of our access points? Um, and ballpark was the entire fleet. We could get the access points for $140,000. That's $30,000 more than just the wireless land controller. So, hence why, you know, and that's that's what we have left to do. By the way, we are also um looking at the next generation of wireless, which will take us at least seven years. So, it's also thinking about the longevity. I can go ahead and I can get um access points the the 6E access points which is less bandwidth but you know they're you're going to have a a shorter window and when before they go end of life. So the other item for network connectivity is our network switches technology like access

013points, phones, cameras are all powered with our network switches. They're actually called power over Ethernet. um as the ne as we introduce the next generation of these technologies um the existing network switches that we have in our wiring closets don't have enough power to um to power those devices. So we need to think about um you know uh improving our speed reliability and then future scaling. Um a ballpark cost for um switches would be around $100,000 18. And again, this is all just ballpark. Um there's also some challenges with pricing, too. Um I just want to share. So the nice thing about network connectivity is we um qualify for -ate funding. And this is federal funding that um provides discounts or reimbursements to schools. Um and you can get reimbursement for internet access which we

014do as well as um it's called category 2 and it's all about communications so networking services um switches APs we've actually done a couple of wiring projects that um we qualify for and each school is allotted s a certain pot and allowed to spend that over some time um and funding is applied to funding is applied applied for annually. So, every that's some of the quotes that I re that I gave you around access points and wireless line controller. I actually threw it into this year's um uh annual um bidding process just to see what came back to see if we could potentially afford it. The way it works is it's a match. So if for instance network switches costs $100,000, we would get back $50,000 from um -ate. Access points are $140,000. We would

015get a discount of $70,000. So the total cost we get a reimbursement for 70,000. So we really want to make sure we take, you know, um take advantage of those um funding sources. you know, there are some caveats. Um, you know, it's federal funding, so we want to watch and make sure, you know, funding continues. But, um, in this I've given you this is like the the big price, but we also can potentially get services for that. The last, um, item is classroom technology. Um, so our primary interactive classroom TVs are nearing 10 years of age. again in thinking about um when the building came online in 2016, they will be 10 years old in 2026. Um we just need to think about a a replacement plan for them. Um you know, as it could

016potentially happen where you might have one or two fail or you could have 10 fail. Um, and just those being um, such a critical part of the classroom. Um, you know, especially with our youngest learners, we have to think about a replacement plan. Um, here's another ballpark cost of $125,000. So, um, I have in this presentation like here are all of the different prices. I did include the wireless land controller, but I think you know a sa a safer future ready route would be going looking at um wireless access points and depending on uh -ate um you know I'm looking at a $445,000 to $565,000 in the next few years. Um there are some renewable costs you know like the added yearly for the phone systems and then wireless access points would also need a

017license renewal every 5 years but that is also irradiatable. So um so considerations so a lot of times what we've done in big purchase purchases is we've leased them. Um we currently lease our Chromebooks, our iPads. We ha um are leasing a TV project where we replace all of the projectors in our high school and middle school classrooms. We're we are also leasing our staff um our staff uh laptops. So leasing is an option. So instead of you know looking at 450 to 550 you can take things divide it and get a little bit of interest added to that. Um the other consideration is cost of hardware can fluctuate. We've seen this in co there's a lot of unknowns with potential of tariffs. Um so you know this is the best guess kind of you

018know right now um you know if in the event we actually went through something you know the courts would of course be more official. I mentioned about you know the questions are you know is those federal funds going to be available? Um, I hear that there's positive talk about that, but you know, it's just a it's just a potential. And the biggest question is, should I be included on the ballot? I know um you know we're talking about an operating levy um come November and any considerations for adding some of these capital projects to the ballot whether it be included in operating um question or uh you know specific tech question um and that's not to decide today I'll be visiting visiting our budget committees I'll be visiting our facilities committees but I just wanted

019to be aware of like here are some big projects coming up that you know are pretty significant that we need to think about. So, do I have any questions? Do you know how long it takes to get the - reimbursement? So, yeah, usually the way it works is right now we had some projects go forward and we're looking at usually the following year. So, July of 2025 is what we'll get for the 2425 school year. Okay. So they're a little bit behind, right? Yeah. Y So whatever investments we're going to be making, what will be the term of those investments? Is it like 10 next like are those technologies going to be useful or usable for the next 10 years or is it all different based on Yeah. And that I think I kind of

020went through that quickly. So I kind of have on that. Oh, this one. Sure. I have, you know, like phone systems are 10 to 12, cameras 5 to seven. And and here's the deal, like even our, you know, right now we're at a 10-year for our cameras in the primary school. Like we can push, you know, some of these are eb and flow, right? You can push them further depending now in our, you know, middle school and high school cameras play, you know, a different role. So, um, but we we just got to be careful when you go beyond that kind of threshold. Um, so we make decisions like that all the time, you know. Um, but it's kind of sharing the whole the whole idea. That's that's where we're at is, you know, the

021difference between the land wireless and the um cloud-based. Is there any difference in security? No, there there really isn't. You know, I would say like I said, the the cloud base is just a more modern system. Um, it gets things off premise. Um, you know, but the the challenges is when you go to the cloud, then you're dependent on internet. I would say we're, you know, our internet's pretty good. If anything, it's the power outages that we've had in the past. Um, but, you know, I really don't see a significant problem with that. And security-wise, they're actually they're the same, you know, vendor. It's just like why would people invest in that? Um I have no idea. Enlightening. Thank you. There's your techie techie uh presentation. There's any other questions? I just want to say

022thanks to Jen because um she puts in a lot of time. She does have a lot of sweetful snakes because she'll text me in the morning say, "What do you think about this?" and hey, we got to know this. And she sits at our admin meets and kind of lets us reminds us about things like phones and those sort of things that it is, as you can see, a big price tag. Yeah. But as you said, there are some ways that you can, you know, with leasing or or put into the operating referendum and try to figure that. The other thing we can look at um is I know that for a capital improvements uh levy um it's it's done differently for the taxpayers than is for for the operating. So you have you kind

023of have to balance those and you do that one question two way. Those are all things I think need to come out in the next couple months as as you start looking at that um referendum in the in the fall and then you know how do you space it out over the these next few years when those have to be replaced and and the cost right. So um but thanks Jen for all the work in keeping us online. I appreciate it. You can probably leave it right there and probably get uh cuz food service will be next and Malia will come in and and get us all set up. Thank you. Thank you. Come on, Debbie. So, we have uh Louis Sharter here and Debbie Franks. Debbie is with Taher. She's our lead uh person

024that runs all of our cooks and all of our food service. And so, they are here to talk about um to give a little update on the food service at the high school. So just um good evening. Um I'll get my presentation over here. Here we go. All right. I'm Malia Schroeder and I'm the high school principal. Debbie Frank, the district's food service manager. Okay. We were asked to come here and share some information related to how the high school operates um the food service program because we are not on the national school lunch program. Um the other buildings are but we are not. So we we've been asked to just give some background some info um as to why the decision was made and how it's been going. So I put together some historical

025slides with Debbie's help. She gave me some info um and you can see here that Taher has been with Byron for 17 years. uh they did run a survey. The survey though does include uh sixth, seventh, and eighth grade kids, but we um tried to just give you some data later on here in some of the slides. Uh the reason that we made the switch to go off of the National School Lunch Program was because our kids reported to us at the high school that they were hungry, that the food that comes in the National School Lunch Program isn't enough food to keep them full. So that was one of the main reasons we pulled out of that which was about seven or eight years ago. There was also a large amount of waste that

026was noticed um as the foods that were provided from the federal program was not foods that our kids were eating and a lot of it was being thrown away. So that's what got us um off of the program and now to where we are today. Um here this slide talks a little bit about the same meal that a 180 lb boy receives is the same calories a day for a 100 pound girl. And if you've been in our high school, I have some 230 40 lb boys who look like young men and that's not enough food to keep them full throughout the day. So, um, our kids definitely get a great option for food to eat during the day. And we provided some, uh, pictures here for you to take a look at as we

027as we get, um, into this a little further. So, you can take a look at what they have for options to eat. Um what Taher does bring to our school is we have a chef on site and he provides um what's called our chef line the furthest line there and then it's the most expensive meal but it's a homemade meal that he's created for them um a lot of times based off of what the students are interested in eating. Um like we said he takes a lot of input. Um we have a a fax class, family consumer science course. Uh Ryan Radkkey teaches that. He taught her Debbiey's crew and uh Ryan's class. They partner quite a bit uh learning how to work uh with food, serving food, finding food that customers would like to

028eat. Um so there's been a great partnership with that. Um and they've been with us through the long haul. Yes. Some of the data that we pulled out of that survey is that 75% of the students eat school lunch three three to five days out of the week. Um, and then 73.8% of those kids are also very satisfied with school lunch. Their top choices of meals provided, which is probably no big shocker to any of you, are the the meals up there. Here's the one piece though that I don't know if that's on anyone's radar. We have a food truck. It's called the Byron Beastro. Our food truck cannot operate and sell food to our student body if we go back on the national school lunch program. So, if that's what the board decides to

029do, we can we can cook the food in the beastro. we have to go off of property and we can't sell to our student body during school hours. The the dilemma with that is that that would be a major and it's in shouty capital letters because our student body would be significantly disappointed in the fact that they can't purchase the food that their peers are are all of the kit all of the meals provided by the bastro were developed by our student body. They made those recipes themselves um and have developed them over the years and then sell them um to our community. They sell them at our homecoming event which I'm sure many of you have experienced before. But they also sell them during the school day in conjunction with working with Debbie so

030that Debbie is aware when are we selling. So, and we have a large group of kids that'll go out there and purchase the food that their peers make. So, it is one thing I would really like you to consider thinking about if there is a decision that needs to be made related to whether or not um we stay on it or we go off of it. Um a major part of the revenue for the Byron the Beachtown beastro is selling to our student body. Um so they are a sustainable food truck program based on the revenue that they bring in. Uh and so right now um that would be a major hit to our food truck program. So we do have some students on educational benefits which was the old term free and reduced lunch.

031Um right now how that process works is those students can walk into our cafeteria and they can have any choice they want. They can pick from a burger basket, pizza, graband go items. Um, if they choose to have the chef meal, that's just going to cost them $1 total. So, in a sense, Debbie put it in a nice way, it's as if they walk in already with $4.85 in their hand because they can go grab those things. If they want the option that's being provided by the chef, they just pay an out- of- pocket $1 to get that. And all of those things come with a beverage also, water or milk. Right now, Taher is currently covering the cost of the educational benefits, which I believe Dan could correct me, but I'm thinking it's around

03212,000 to 13,000 estimated maybe per year for a high school cost of free and reduced lunch cost. Yeah, I somewhere around there. We probably use more a higher number, but Okay. 20,000. Well, then I'm I'm standing corrected. Thank you. I appreciate that. Um, so in talking with Debbie, the number or the that TAR is currently covering the cost of the students um who are who are on educational benefits at the high school, which would be something you would need to consider. So, here's here are the comparisons right here. The meal with the beverage, the 485 meal, those are our kind of our graband go items. There's salads. There's subs with chips in there. There's wraps with chip bags of chips in there. There's single sandwiches. There's fruit cups. There's hard-boiled eggs. There's yogurt. Um there's

033fresh fruit cut up with dips. And then the other option here would be what basic the middle school and those the other buildings get, which is the USDA free meal. Here again are some of the other basket meals that we offer. There's there are some that are $410 and some that are $4.85. Um, you can see and on a regular basis we do offer uh slices of pizza and basket meals on a on an everyday along with those grab-and-go cold items, salads, um, options for kids. This is one of our chef meals that Chef Jay provided. It's uh you get two soft shell tacos, uh rice, um and then beans are also underneath there, your two condiments, and then you have your your beverage, the water, the milk, and then we also have that next

034to what would be a free meal if we were to switch over. Here are a few others of his highly popular meals um available for our high school students. Um, as you can see, the the amount is significantly different and um, they definitely are full. Now, do we still do have kids that will bring their own cold lunch and eat a chef meal? I mean, we have some big eaters. Um, in the end, if you're asking what what I would what my recommendation would be is that we don't switch to the National School Lunch Program. I think we need to feed the kids and give them the foods that they want to eat. It reduces the waste. Less of less kids are hungry. Um I have provided three industrial microwaves and a toaster available for

035all of them who do bring um their own uh meals from home to warm up. I would have more but we don't have any other circuits available to plug them into and it draws a lot of power. So we have three. Um, and then we also have, you know, like water and they if they maybe do like a little mac and cheese cup, they fill it up with water and then they'll microwave that or like a noodles cup, they'll do that. Um, so we have lots of those options in that entire cafeteria area. Our food truck program is a massive success. We are one of the only food trucks in the state of Minnesota. Um, and it's been it's been just an awesome class for our kids to take. That would be sad to see

036them not be able to service their own student body during a school day. Um, and like Debbie said, you're always welcome to come up come anytime and and eat lunch or could just come and see what it's like in our cafeteria. We serve about 700 kids come through there in three shifts. Um, and we're happy to show you kind of what it looks like if you have more questions or you're just a little more curious um, and or want to know a little bit more. Otherwise, any other questions for me? I know the the food truck is just uh amazing and we're all very proud of the the food truck. Um you mentioned the revenue that it brings in a lot of revenue. What kind of things does that support? It supports the the food

037truck program. So, all the other groceries are going to they're purchasing. Yep. Any new um equipment they might need, but it just tries to keep that program self- sustaining so we don't have to keep putting in curriculum new curriculum money into that course. It keeps the course self sustainable. Thank you. Yeah. Is there anything that you can put out to like the high school parents and middle school parents to let them know about all of this because feedback that we've been receiving is well we didn't vote on it. I didn't vote on it and because it's been it hasn't been done for a while. So maybe so the survey was the kids taking the survey. So you're right. They haven't they haven't taken a survey. We did give a survey out. It was actually Terra's

038survey that they did with their students to ask them about lots of things like service, you know, the friendly friendly. Yep. Client tell all that. Um so are you asking me to put out um like communication about what it is or you want them to have a say? I think communication first to just say, you know, everything that you said about the food truck and how valuable that is to our school. Okay. And um what else would we put in there? Um I think we could another thing we could do instead of um just so you don't have to do it is put it in our like the board could write a blurb in the van buzz and just say that we talked about we could just link her presentation maybe. Yeah, actually that would

039be a good idea to link that just so parents can know that, you know, we're talking about this, but the kids really the kids and parents seven or eight years ago really wanted this option. Yeah, most definitely. And I would say although you I understand their their voice isn't heard as parents right now, but I would tell them if they came and watched those kids eat, they're full. you know, they're they are they are fed well. They have lots of options. Whether do they have dessert options? Yes, they do. They have dessert options, but you know, they're they're going to be adults here soon. So, make that choice. If you if you feel the need to eat that piece of cake, okay, maybe don't do it every day. Okay, that's right. And if you want

040to eat the chef meal and and there is, you know, maybe mom and dad say only two chef meals a week. That's what we're we're willing to pay for. And then the other times, you know, I've had two daughters now through the program and we talk about, okay, you're not going through the all cart line every day to buy your lunch out of that. You can bring some things from home and then go supplement it with other things. So, we talk about that too as at our house also. So, but it the option for them to have a chef who listens to them and then all of a sudden they have boneless buffalo wings that are buffalo sauce, honey barbecue sauce, celery, carrots, French fries that are baked and their beverage of choice with any

041with the dipping sauces on the side. They're pretty happy because they know they can't go to Buffalo Wild Wings and get that for $5, right? So, so they're pretty excited and it's and it's a lot of good. It's good food for them and and I think that that keeps them satisfied during the day but less waste then there's definitely less waste in according to the other principles who watch the other meals from the trays be be tossed. Speaking of waste, do do we have any kind of second harvest is do they is there or can do you have to throw away food at the end of the day? we don't necessarily have to throw away food, but I haven't seen like, you know, I will say like not a milk carton that isn't unopened, isn't

042being tossed, like I don't see things like that. And a lot of times if someone bought an apple, we'll see that. And if they don't, and our apples are sliced up and then they they can get it with a little yogurt cup to dip it into. If they don't finish it, they're usually passing it to somebody else and somebody's finishing it for them. There isn't a lot of uneaten food unless it's been touched. Does that make sense? Yeah. Going to maybe share that. Let's hope. But they're kind of coolers. I just want to say it's it's nice to hear you put your mom hat on too because you are living it. Yeah, I'm not hearing from the parents as much as others, but when I had a number of students work with me for me,

043their comment was when you have the educational benefits and it's that specific line, it creates an unfair stigma to the kids that are using that line because they were saying that it was very obvious and it might not be at the high school, it's other schools, but they're saying that there is an unfair stigma associated to those kids and that's not how we want to represent ourselves. But they're also saying the chef's meal is like going to their favorite restaurant. Sure. And it is well worth every bit of it. And I had a couple of those big eaters and and they mentioned like I if I don't get full, I just get something off the olive carts. Um I'm aware it's it's not overly expensive, but it's not free. But at the same time, like

044you just said, I'm not getting that meal at Buffalo Wild Wings for $5. So you have to put I think constraints and I would do this with my kids of okay look here's your budget for the week how you want to spend it it's up to you but uh just my compliments because the compliments I've heard from the kids are glowing thank you so much to um address the the stigma piece we used to a couple years ago have a line that when you came in on the right hand side where kids with educational benefits would get a tray and get kind of the the basic choice for the day. We took that away because of the stigma and that we don't have that anymore. Now basically the kid walks in with like how I

045said the 485 in their hand and they can go get what everyone else is getting. So there is no one can see or tell what that looks like which is amazing. Yeah. So we made that change but yes and that's a good point for that reason to get away from the stigma behind it. Yeah. Thank you for the presentation. I'm really hungry. come to the high school tomorrow. Thank you. So like may I summarize something? I just like wasn't maybe 100% clear for me. So the meals that we are offering right now to the kids in the high school would have been for the same price to them if it wasn't the government program. Right. No. But but like except for the chef's meal, right? That that's additional. Yeah. There would be there would be

046no chef's meal. There would be no chef. Right. Right. Right. There will be no everything would be whole grain. Um only 2 ounces of protein allowed a day. Okay. Uh one grain a day and the major focus is the fruit and vegetables. So that's the problem we had where the kids just throwing away the fruits and vegetables. And they are hungry. I hear a lot seventh and eighth graders, they're hungry because they're not, you know, they're throwing their fruits and vegetables away cuz it's not keeping them going all day, especially the sports and stuff, right? So, but pretty much like our kids are paying for those better meals, right? Yes, ma'am. Okay. Um, and Yes. Right. $5 for those meals is really not not um and then so was it like the the free and

047reduced rent lunch for the whole year is 20,000 meaning that's equivalent of what we would have paid or what would have been free what you would not have been free right correct um and we we effectively are getting the same benefit from taffer right for those it. Yes. Okay. Yes. Um, so pretty much it's should be the choice of our high schoolers or their parents, not high schoolers, right? Their parents to decide whether they want to allow their kids to pay more and have better meals versus go back to the government program, right? Yes. Okay. Thank you. Clarify. Mhm. I would say though that the if at someday the Taher decides not to pay the 20,000 Yeah. the board will have to make a decision. Is that something that you feel you can afford so

048that you can stay off of the national school lunch? That would be something you'd have to consider. And what's the like the national school lunch uh for high schoolers? How much would that cost high schoolers? Oh, what would the cost of that lunch be? Oh, it's been so long. I think it's around the reimburseable meal is like35 3.90 or something. So we're doing $4 to $5. And Malia, you feel confident if we went back to the NSLP that the the beastro goes away because there just I don't think it would go away. It would be tough. I I think it would be I think I jokingly No, we're not going to say that about the um I think you'd have a loud voice from the student body stating that they want it back the option

049and the only way to do that would be to stay off the national program. And how many kids uh benefit from that track program? Uh we make kids go through that education go through the line to buy the food or in the course in the like get educational piece from that. Yep. I would say and they're not getting paid, right? No. No, they don't get paid. Nope. It's just the course they take. Um anywhere from 24 to 30 kids will take the course and we run the course approximately twice a year, but that course is in collaboration with a business course. So that we have the business side of running a like a little food truck and there's another 24 to 30. So I only run two sections of each. So we got four sections.

050You know, you could get any. It It fluctuates a little bit, but that'd be about it. You guys go straight from like farm to table, right? Yep. All of that food is either grown in our greenhouse that they use. They do have to supplement some of it from some of the ingredients from like Hi Ve, but we get a lot of donations. We work with um the company in Rochester uh for all the cheeses used and dairy products and then we um source all the beef from local farmers, pork from local farmers. Yep. Mhm. So it's 60 kids per year out of 700 on the on the food truck side. On the business side it's a little less than that. Yep. Okay. You're welcome. Is there anything that the board can do to help this

051narrative? Um, it sounds like maybe more communication will be helpful and maybe, um, whether it's putting this in the buzz or if you decide that maybe you need a summary of that, just let me know and I can work on something and I'll we can run it together and we'll come up with something. Maybe just more communication, especially for the freshman, new freshman. Yeah. Coming in, parents. Yeah. Well, I think right now, last year and this year, remember, it was free. It would be free for everybody. So even the ones that are not on educational benefits, they would be free. And I think what you're hearing sometimes is people saying, "Well, I'm paying sometimes for one or two kids. I can be paying $1,000 a year for lunches when it could be free." But they

052don't realize that when you go to free, you have other their kids will have other options that they probably don't want. The other part is they know I I've been at the middle school. They kind of work the system because you have to pay 60 cents or whatever it is for a milk. But if you go get a lunch, you get a free milk with it. So they'll go up and get the lunch and then they'll grab the milk and then they'll see if anybody wants anything on that. They don't want it. They dump the tray because they just got a free because they didn't want to have to go 60 cents for the milk. And so I think there's different things that people do and maybe it is communication but right now and you

053know at the legislature they're talking about not having totally free lunches. It depends on raising the bar to who would still have to pay and so forth, but that's being discussed now. So it may not be totally free in the future. But right now if we weren't on if we weren't separate, everyone would be getting a free lunch. So that's where people are asking, "I would like a free lunch or I would not have to spend $1,000." But then if you ask the kids, it's it's well worth it every day for 172 school days or whatever it is. So yeah, I certainly understand why people are asking. Um and I mean when you look at these meals, it's not even a comparison, but um yeah, the quality and the um the it's just looks like

054night and day. So, um, yeah, I think it's come join us one day. Yeah, I Well, and I have to thank you personally because I know my mom has emailed me for recipes that my kids have asked for provided them. So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Um, yeah, just thanks for all you do for our kids. Thanks for helpful to see the whole picture and understand. Um, yeah. Good. Wonderful. Anything else for me? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. I'm going to hit escape and then Dan can go to the agenda and then you can pull out the next one. He's on the go next. should make a suggestion suggest. Yes, that they've been holding their warmer since noon. Not so much that part. Well, good evening, Chair Agar, members of the

055school board. Um, Yeah, it's tough. You follow technology. They're so smart. And then you get the fun stuff and then you got finance. Not a lot that can do that's exciting with this stuff. Um, as we're all educators, uh, tonight's session is really just more about some education as we look into putting together next year's budget. as we're working on them as as you'll see the numbers maybe you'll understand a little bit more of how missile missile school finance um works. So missile missile school finance every state does it a little differently. Um UFARS is the main driver of how we account for all our expenses and our revenues. Um they're all tracked using EUARS. Now UFARS is an acronym. You're always supposed to say the acronym before you say the acronym. That stands for

056uniform financial accounting reporting standards. And um every year um I meet with the principles in in bigger meetings and give them a quiz on acronyms and they usually got this one wrong. But remember that one. It's standards not systems. Um the reason we use UAR is it ensures that all school districts use the same system. Now when I was working in county government and doing finance, we must have had you know 10 different systems people use. You couldn't even really compare statewide what was going on. This way you can look up on the MDU website and look at how every district spends their money and in a very similar fashion to the way you do. You can use percentages. There's many great reports and the reason they can produce those reports because we all use

057the same account codes for the same type of expenses. There's only about five software systems in the state that are approved to use to run UFARS. Um the software systems have to be approved before a district can use them. Um districts generally choose among the list based on what's available. Sometimes a new company will come in, but if they can't get enough interest, it's not even worth them to apply. We use what's called smart um smart systems. Um it's very very well supported throughout the state. They have five different regions. We're in region five and um I can't say enough good things about the staff there and the way they support us and um anytime we have an issue with something not going right we just give them a call and they help us out

058right away. So the coast consists of 17 digits. Um the first two stand for the fund. Uh government accounting is called fund accounting not fund. Um this next three digits describe the org organization or the site where it's happening. The next three digits describe the program which is what type of extent are you doing this for? Um, the next three digits is a course code. That's optional. That's just used locally only. So, if we need to break out the food truck from other expenses in curriculum, we use a different course code. So, that way we can sort that a lot easier. But that's not required by state. And then the the next three digits are the finance codes. And those are probably the most important ones because that tells us whether these funds are restricted.

059You hear about unfunded mandates, things like that. That's how they track that stuff. We have to receive our revenue in a certain finance code and spend it in the same finance code. And then the last three digits are are the object on the expense side meaning what's it spent on what type of expenditure it is and or the source on the revenue side where the money is coming from. So, when I talked about funds, um, every school district has these basic type funds, the same ones. We have a general fund. Um, that's basically where all your constructional operations go through, your your maintenance operations. Um, your administration. We have the food service fund that we just heard about. Um, everything that happens in the food service fund stays in the food service fund. The food

060service fund cannot give money to the general fund, but the general fund sometimes have to give money to the food service fund that goes broke. Um, community services fund, the same thing. It's very restricted to community ed and other community services. And once again, the general fund can give money there, but the community service cannot give money to the general fund. Construction fund is there for when we have construction projects. It's an ad hoc uh fund. Debt service fund is one that we run all the payments we need to make to service our debt. When you sell a bond for $40 million and you have payments to make the money collected comes from levies that goes into the debt service fund and then when we pay those bills we take it out of the debt

061service fund. The internal service fund is that's an ad hoc one too in which it's used in case uh we run run something internally like we have Byron has a self-insured dental program. So we run our self insurance the dental program through the internal service fund. We have two other funds that we use that are subsidiaries of the general fund. So they're really general funds but we break it out. We have a couple trust funds. One is for scholarships and one is for um student activities. The org the the site it's pretty pretty basic. It's pretty self-explanatory in this district. It's we break things into districtwide expenses that would go across the whole district. Uh then we had the primary school, the intermediate school, the middle school, and the high school programs. We've talked about

062this before. We break it into different ways of spending our money. We have district support in which they're supporting the schools. We have administration of the schools. Uh we have instructional, which is the main part where you spend most your money. That's both regular, vocational, and special education. We have activities. We have uh pupil support which is like transportation and counseling and nursing. And then we have uh facilities which is self-explanatory. We we can pull up just the facility costs for the whole district and break it down by sites too. Now the finance code that's used for restricted funds. Um there's many many different finance codes and they usually tell us when a new program comes into play. So, you're going to have to use this finance code to track this. All the revenues and

063expenses must be reported with that finance code. If an example would be operating capital, um a certain amount of aid comes in for operating capital that it's can only be spent on capital things. And um we have to run all the revenue through there and all the expenses so that we can show that we did that and they can find out more easily if we did do that. The thing about restricted accounts in the finance codes that unused funds must be carried over. If you're in an unassigned account, if it's just general general fund, that money doesn't carry over. We just start a new. But if we have money left over in uh LTFM, um that stays in a restricted account and can be used the next year too. And then the objects or andor

064the source. The source is different revenues but um basically the objects uh we talked about this before too and salaries are the big one. Then benefits is broken out services, supplies, equipment and then just anything else that we spend our money on mostly um financing um purposes for other. So we look at revenues we kind of look at what's unrestricted. That's basically most your general aid and there's no finance code to that. So there's no strains attached to anything that goes into unrestricted and that's where most our money comes through is unrestricted. Now the restricted ones are the ones we got to watch and that's the ones where we say well they gave us all this historic money but they said we had to spend x amount right here right here only. um we had

065to spend this amount right here, right here only. Those are your restricted codes examples. There's many many examples, but ones that are easy to remember like safe schools. Safe schools, we you levy 90 to $100,000 a year for safe schools that can only be used for safety reasons and um more I shouldn't even say safety, it's more security reasons. can also be used for like counseling services, mental health, but uh when you're paying for like an SRO and things like that, generally that money comes out of state schools, special education, that's that's got a finance code, but we spend much more on special education than we receive in revenue. So there's never any carryover. Staff development, certain amount of money has to be set aside for staff development, and it doesn't get spent, it gets

066carried over. There's many many different ones, but when you when I talk about restricted codes, those are things that have to be carried over if there's money left over and the money has to be spent as the statute states. It's the same with the expenditures. No finance code, unrestricted. You can spend any way you want, but it has to be, of course, by law. I mean, you just can't buy things that are against the law. But, um, generally just all your expenses that you'd see deemed fit to serve the students of our district. Um, and then of course restricted ones, I kind of talked about that have to be spent the way the statute says. Just uh an update on what's going on in the finance department. Um, we're getting our bank reconcil reconciliations caught

067up and that's it's kind of exciting for bean counters but not for anybody else. But it's good to know. Um, yeah, it's going very well. We're getting some help from region five on that, too. As you know, it's a lot different than just balancing your checkbook at home. Um, you can't just stick it into quick and it will balance for you. It takes a a lot of different revenues going in and out and different bank accounts. But um so far we're up through December. We should have everything done by the next board meeting so we can post them all in the um in the agenda for you and have everything balanced out. Haven't run into any issues or anything right now. Um we've been posting the revenue expenditure uh report in the consent agenda now.

068And um if you looked last week um last time we posted it were pretty much right on track. um overall expenditures to date, you know, would be at this point about 56% and we spent about 53 and a half%. So, we're we're ahead on expenditures and revenues, I don't see any problems there. Revenues are pretty easy to predict. Um once the only X factor on revenues is enrollment and we didn't get too too uh risky on the enrollment this time. So you kind of always watch that. Don't don't budget too many kids coming in because that's the only thing that's going to really throw your revenue off. Um budget work. We're just working on it. It's kind of just going department by department line by line. it this takes a little while that the plan

069is, you know, my goal is to have something ready, you know, by April 21st so we can talk a little bit about it, but not that the budget, you know, the idea is to present the budget um first part of June and um but it's going okay. It's it's just takes a long time and u kind of waiting on the legislature. I don't see a lot of financial things happening with this this time around. um that's really going to make or break us unless a couple things that you know could be troublesome if they run out of unemployment money and you have and if they don't like to levy for summertime unemployment that would that could cost you 30,000 or so and then also um if they have to charge a payroll tax for earned

070sick and save time that would what did we figure Mike what did you figure the cost of 80,000 If if we paid for half of the paid family leave um about what the the 888% would be around $67,000 if um we have to pay the whole thing depending on what how things work out. Right now we we would just have to pay half but might be a negotiating thing, but you can double that if you end up having to pay the whole thing, right? So yeah. Um yeah, that's fine. Then a budget committee meets, the next budget committee meeting is April 21st and we start working with some new um projection models and we should be able to have some good discussions about um the amount you would you know want to ask for in

071a referendum next fall and what and whether or not you again mention a little bit about you know capital projects le things like that and just um you know we put out to our staff that most of the spending for the 24 25 school year should be done by April 15th. Um so that way um the biggest reason is because we don't want somebody ordering something late and it comes after June 30th and then you have to pay for it out next year's budget when you think it's coming out this year's budget. So we want to make sure everything's also able to give us an idea at the very end. It slows things down a little bit and so that you can really see where where you're ending your you know according to your budget.

072So, um, you might see that in some of those reports as you, uh, look each month and where Dan's given those reports and so forth. But, uh, thanks Dan for doing that. We always, uh, again, school finance is hard with all those codes. And now as you, um, look at those reports and as we develop more reports moving forward, you'll be able to understand and uh, and maybe you might want to change careers and go into school finance. So, all right. Yeah. I don't have any questions. I'm just really grateful that you're taking the time to give us these basically little seminars every month. Really, really appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks, D. On to our district operational plan, which um as a board we focused on uh priorities uh and seen what that looks like.

073This is based on all of our feedback, but we have not had a chance yet as a board to discuss and edit. So, uh, we can start with board priority number one, financial stability. Um, are there any questions or discussion or or potential edits that we want to make to uh this block of priority? I just want to check, is this the one that you sent me in? I think it was, but I just want to make sure it got in there. I don't think it is. No, it doesn't have It's the wrong thing that I end up documenting. I just wanted to make sure. Yeah, there was a note. have it in my Google. Um, one question that I had just generally have we talked to our building administrators or included them in or

074are did are we just doing these this on our own? This is on our own and then they derive their set of goals from this. Okay. I feel like we should I feel like we're working in silos and I don't like that. I feel like we should I love that Nate talked about a very collaborative approach multiple times and I don't know exactly what that looks like, but I feel like for this um we should consider a more collaborative approach. I don't I'm not smart enough to know what that looks like, but if you don't mind, what I would maybe do is um maybe we could table this to the next meeting or bring it to the next meeting. I will make sure the right one gets in there. And I apologize for not getting

075the right one in because we um Alicia did send some um changes and so forth and that's what we were going to talk about tonight. Um I will answer that that question though Alicia is that um these are what the board from the 20,000 foot level wants to see as a vision and as where the district should as you want to focus on at that level. Um and then when you look at things like the um staff and mental health and our staff and soon profile of graduate um now what's happening is in our buildings they're coming up with their goals for next year. They've been working on some things and so forth but they're going to try to keep those in mind. So when they talk about uh mental health as part of their

076district operation plan, they're going to f figure out a way to deal with student mental health in there because that's your kind of focus. You wouldn't want to be my suggestion, you wouldn't want to be so in line and so in step that they would have to follow to the tea because since they have their curricular work and they have their other type of work that they're doing, but in the same time they know that this is a uh an emphasis for the board and for the district moving forward. So as they meet in their site teams and so forth, what are they doing to to support that that it's not going to be everything, right? So I I do understand that piece. I think this is my just larger concern. I'm not an education

077expert. I think what we came up with is great, but I would just love their opinion. Like do they think we're missing the mark on anything? Um do they think we should renumber the priorities? Is there something that they don't think should be a priority? Um, I guess I would maybe appreciate just their general feedback if they think we're on the right track or if there's something they would like to see added. And also, is that was that an annual exercise or do we It's annual annual. Okay. About this time of year we do the same thing. We ask the board for theirs and then we have them work on on the schoolwide ones. And when was the source updated? Uh well, this would have been from last year, but what happened? And then I

078put it out there. I I changed some of this. Jeremy and I went through it and then I changed it um for this coming year. Um compared it because we didn't have the spec remember last year we had specific goals by this time, by this time, by this time and it became almost too managerial where it felt like you guys had goals. It wasn't at the 20,000 foot level. So when we talked to the administrators, that's what they wanted to make sure, you know, they want to see the big umbrella and then let them do the work on the ground level to to be able to make that happen. Um, you know, I will tell you we we have gone through this. There wasn't anything that they um again that they said shouldn't be there

079because they're all working on that. Again, I think their concern um as is I think in many in many districts is that the board then feels like they have to, you know, be at the managerial level or be at that ground level and not let the administrators do their work. They want to know what you want to focus on and then they're going to do their work to be able to do that. That's why in all these it says um that you'll get reports back in those areas that they'll come and do presentations in those areas to report back to the board what they're doing at the ground level to help u get to your get to the wide the district-wide operation plan that you have set forward and and that would be the report.

080too. Okay. I was just trying to kind of add the next thought is similar to the administrator's input, do we need to ask for the input of our new superintendent here? Oh, right now. Yeah. No, not necessarily. What's the process? Right. It doesn't allow for public comment. We are public. So, not right now, but like in general, how can we do that? That's going to be the work at it. Should we move this to another meeting? Yeah. I was just going to say to your point, it seems like like we are trying to manage what the schools are going to do. I I I feel like I know what you're talking about. I feel like shouldn't they be telling us what the priorities or at least saying like, "Yeah, those priorities seem like in line

081with our needs that we're seeing in the district, too." And I think you're saying that they are though, right? Like yeah, that they're they understand the whole mental health part. They understand the profile graduate is really our north star, right? So we're always going to want to work on that. As a board, you're going to want to know about what's happening academically and so forth regarding the profile of the graduate. Uh but again, your job is at the vision level and at the how to move the district level. Their job is to how to make it work within their buildings. So then that's where your reports come from. And then like Jeremy even asked, you know, um what what can we do to help or whatever? And then that's when you as a board can

082take those reports when they come forward and say, "What else do you need? How can we help as a board?" and then ask questions about what's happening because you should know that if mental health is is something that you're working on or as a as a district plan as something that you want the district to focus on, then the the or the schools and the administrators should be able to tell you here's what's happening in mental health. Here's where we see the down here's where we see the need. Here's what we're trying to improve on. Here's what's going well. and then you as a board can decide, you know, if there's something else and give suggestions at that time or whatever. But, um, again, I I don't know if the board if I will tell

083you that the ones there are things that the administrators are working on are more of the marzano stuff, you know, the real things that you're probably not going to want to you need to see at the at the larger level. So, but I apologize for not putting in the right one. I think what we can do is I'll I'll make sure I send it out if I didn't already everybody and then come back at the next meeting. Again, this is gives our um and and one thing that was added was uh community engagement as number four. So, uh what that does uh again is get I will meet with the leadership team tomorrow and again just they know what those are. They've seen those four and they've been talking to their site teams about it

084and they can start developing their plans and then we'll bring all the plans together. Okay. So, we'll revisit that. Um, move on to our fundraiser for cross country. Yeah. Mr. Larry, you come on. Come on up and Yeah. Awesome. So, I'm coach Ol. I coach the girls team. And I'm Caleb Tro. I coach the boys team. So, we've had there's two items up there for discussion tonight. It's the the fundraiser and our annual training trip and um they're tied together. So, it's it's an expensive trip. We take a trip really that that creates memories that are fantastic, creates uh great opportunities for team bonding, goal setting, athletic growth, um all the things that matter to us as coaches, right? Building people and connections and uh it's like 8,500 bucks to go. We're gone for four

085days, three nights. Uh the the lodge we go to is in northern Wisconsin. It's a a ski resort, but we go in August. Uh until last year, we've always been the only people. Uh last year, they've been trying to grow their summer business. There were some other guests there, but um for the most part, we have the place to ourselves, and it gives us such opportunity to connect with these kids, these athletes, and and kind of set a path Right. And um I've always felt that it's the most important four days of my coaching year. And if I compared it to holiday time, it's my most important holiday, you know, cuz it's four days. It's not one or two days with family. It's it's four days of real connection. So, uh the fundraiser is the

086doughnut run. The doughnut run we did years ago, for a lot of years, highly successful and people run and they eat donuts and they give us money. That's kind of how it goes. And and the whole race is set up on a premise that you get to deduct time based on the doughnut intake. And so you so you pay for it financially and you might pay for it. Um, otherwise I think last year was your first year at a doughnut run. Yep. So I don't know how you felt about that, but we had people running negative amounts of time and Oh my gosh. Amazing. Yeah. So it's it's just super fun. Um we have I had um we do it at the middle school the fundraiser and this year was the first time that I

087had been asked to pay a fee to rent it and I I touch base with Dr. Newck and uh Jen Dole and um we're going to figure that out. We got to figure it out. And uh I do I ensure I'm the director and I ensure I pay insurance for every event I direct. I direct a lot of events. So um so you know there's not liability on the school and stuff like that. Um we've named uh the superintendent as our third party um insured. Byron schools third party insured. the contact is the superintendent and your email and then um so but we do have connections in the insurance there's not a there's not a gap there so to us that's like really important it comes in July and it it's connected to a lot

088of stuff right there's good neighbor days there's the doughnut run and then we take the kids on day trips we travel a little bit and we run a lot. We go to we go to different cities and we run. So, it's all connected. Um, but the fundraiser pays for about half of this trip. And then we ask for parents to pay $75 per athlete. They get three nights lodging. They get 11 meals. It's great value. So, it's kind of where we're at. we have to we have to raise our half to not kind of price people out, right? And so then then there always is the issue and that's in the in the training trip section is what do you do with people that can't afford the $75? We just say get on the bus.

089Okay, it's covered. There's a lot of parents that care and they give her money. So, that's kind of what we're asking for. We want to we want to run, eat some donuts, and then go to northern Wisconsin and run on a ski resort. Um, I don't know. Anything else? You You nailed it. What's the average attendance for the donut run? Uh, probably if we have 60 kids on the team about Oh, for the donut run. For the donut run. Yep. Um, last year was about 150. We really need about 210. That's what I was trying to get to. Yes. Yeah. And so, uh, when we did it in the past, our our first year was like 90 and it took about 3 years to get to 150. This year we started at 150. And so,

090I think we're going to have no trouble getting to our our price point. Okay. um team red who I sounded we have all the equipment and so we don't charge anything because it's relationship deal me with me so it all works out well where are the donuts from the donuts come from Dunkin Donuts and they were um we have our captains you know take the step to make the contact and ask for you know a donation so they're free. Uh last year after we got our donuts donated, we realized 150 was higher than we expected. We thought we'd need more donuts. And so then Garris Remodeling bought more donuts, like on a match, a buy one get one free or something. So we worked with partners to get that done. But the whole concept is

091it cost us nothing to put on the race. It's 100% revenue, right? I mean other than sweat activity, right? And uh but it's super fun to watch and super fun to do. So should do it. Registration should be open soon. But yeah, and and that's why I want to stress the two things are tied. You got to raise the money. You got to make it affordable to take this fantastic trip. And then uh the value at the trip is just as coaches. It's remarkable. Not just the athletic training which is significant significant athletic training. Um it's it's the rest of the stuff. It's the time together. The fundraiser is a really fun idea, too. I love that it involves the community. Yeah. So yeah, we do. So that day there's also you know like a

092free kids smile and we like we just kind of make it all work super fun. So the ask to us is I'm for it would be for next meeting because this is our work session. So if you have any questions during the time you can reach out to myself or Tom. Okay and we can ask. How do we advertise? um primarily through Facebook or uh Team Red website. Team Red's the running club I coordinate. Um race roster is where the registration is and then we will go around after approval and ask local places if we can have flyers and stuff. Dunkin Donuts will put little flyers like you go through the drive-thru. Um they'll make sure people are aware as well. But um we do it all at little or no cost, right? We don't

093I'm just asking because I have not seen it before. Yeah. Yeah. Last year So last year's first time back since about 2017 18 and last year actually we didn't we hit 150 and we didn't decide to do it until about 3 weeks before we did it. Oh wow. Right. So, we didn't plan it. Yeah. Just the kids were kind of mad at me. They had done it when before they were even cross country athletes. They had participated and one of them said, "Why don't we do it anymore?" And I said, "Well, cuz we need your help." And what had happened? Um, some things run their face. Um, parents and athletes stopped helping as much. I said, "Are you going to go get us donuts?" And, "Yeah, we'll do that. which they didn't until I got

094a call. They said, "I'm at Dunkin Donuts. You should call Dunkin Donuts." And I said, "No, what you should do is keep the phone by your ear, stand up, walk to the counter, ask for the manager." And so we did that. And they're like, "Oh my god," he said, "Yes." And so, but anyway, yeah. So, um, we like to keep, you know, our our upper classmen involved in the planning and how we do it. And we we approach them before we decide, are we doing it again? We've had other we raised $3,000 last year. We'd like to raise like 4,500. Um, but 3,000 was great. And then we've had other fundraisers that are more successful, but probably not more tied to running and fun than this. So, if we just keep it affordable and keep

095it going, we don't have to just I don't want to just buy money. Tom, do you guys do it the same day as the the Good Neighbor Day run? Yeah. So, the good neighbor day 5K at 8:00 a.m. The kids smile at 9:15. The doughnut run at 10:00. Okay. Same location. Okay. Are you on the poster yet? Cuz that's the way um I have notified Good Neighbor Days committee. Okay. I don't know if we're on the poster, but I have notified them. Who's on the committee? Yeah. Yeah. Guess what? You'll be on that. Okay. Mike, this is something we could share on by the bus. Yeah, you could. Yeah. Yeah, I could write up something if that helps. And then um but I mean just the biggest thing to stress is that opportunities go away

096too fast. So we need to keep it. And I don't know what your transition has been for graduating seniors from last year, but the parents did a wonderful job of spreading the word by word of mouth last year. So Oh, good, good, good. Yeah. You know, we got our uh we're grateful for our parents and our families. They're amazing. So far, have you ever thought about partnering with maybe a different district in the state? I know. I know. One of my favorite things I know looking at this, you wouldn't believe cross country in high school. Um but but I did run cross country and one of my favorite things is uh we were a southern Minnesota school. Uh we rented out a a a resort up in northern Minnesota and War Road came down and

097we met with War Road every year and we were up there running running dirt roads together and that's some of my fondest memories as a high schooler. So we have not done that. We have um our site for this training trip has changed over the years and uh while there's not a lot of schools that do this at the high school level, um we've run into them, uh we haven't at our current location, we haven't found another school that comes there, but that'd be an interesting thing to see. We've tried to get local schools to just go with us. Yeah. like Pine Island and uh Steuartville and uh they're finding some complexity in the planning and fundraising and I said just tell people about it. We've already planned it. Just get a bus and come

098with us. And that would be the next piece. You know, I know we're we we're always concerned about finances, but I'm a bus driver. We're going to get there. We're not gonna have, you know, all these extra expenses. Um, so it's all gonna be fine. We're gonna get back, too. Good thing for a buck. Yeah. Yeah. Good. So, but but the ask I think you're asking what the ask is. The ask is when you come back next time, um, please say yes. Great. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. Out of curiosity, I do. Um, if I missed it, I apologize, but how many students do usually go on this trip? Yeah, I almost answered that first. You want that one? Sure. About 60. Yeah, almost everybody. Um, usually the people that don't go, they're like uh incoming

099seventh graders. And it's not necessarily the seventh grader that's scared. It's mom and dad because it is it's co-ed and it's, you know, 7th through 12th. And so we we have those conversations. We try to ease them through it. We have um three coaches will be along. We have three chaperoons. Chaperons are nurses. Um we also have a policy where during until bedtime your doors open so they know who's in your room. And so we have a common space where you know you want to be together boy, girl or whatnot. friends. Um, you're in the common space. And so we have a lot of things over the years we've put together to make sure that we're all kind of safe. But that's the the biggest fear is from parents of new kids. You're like, oh,

100I'm sending my, you know, 12, 13year-old girl on this trip. But, um, we've navigated it very well, I think. Yeah. Well, thanks for all you do for our kids. Yeah. Well, thanks for having us. Say yes. Okay, we'll move on to discussion of our board handbook pages 18 to 21. Get down there. Where did we board governance model? Is that where we last time? Page bottom on page 18. Yeah, I think the only notes were related to um how specifically like what self evaluation tool we will use for the schoolboard and also what self- evvaluation tool we use for the superintendent. that still had like just the generic basically it said fill in the blank with the model you use. What model do we use? That's a fantastic question. We do the superintendent evaluation based

101on the goals set. I can just say that when we my first year here, we met with uh actually Barb came and talked about um superintendent goals and to the board at the time and and so the ones that I've been using have been based off of that format have been based off of what MSBA has put out. That was three years ago. Okay. So the board, you know, we meet uh we met at halfway through in in December or January meeting and then we would meet again at the end of June um to go through the evaluation process and the way that it was set up, the way people could add information in and so forth to as for my goals and give input and do that. That's the way that MSB had set

102up three years ago. Okay. So they may have changed it, but again, we had Barb Thornne one time come and talk to the board. The other part was of that meeting is for the superintendent to be able to let the board know what uh he or she needs in that, you know, and and kind of how they see the board functioning. Um but I do know that I think uh this they have MSBA has now come out with more of a self evaluation tool um for the boards to meet and really take a look at themselves as a team and how they would do that. We have not done that here in to use that tool. So it may be something that you could bring someone in from MSBA or use that model, do a

103whole research on and then and then do that yourselves. But I do know that there are districts that do bring somebody in um for and do like a mini retreat and bring somebody in from MSBA to help you start that process of a self- evvaluating model. So the board doesn't isn't currently doing any self evaluation. Correct. Is that okay? Okay. Should I reach out to Barb and ask her to I I I don't know if Bob does anymore, but I do know that there's other people. You can reach out to MSP, but I do know that there was a another person from MSP that would that would come out that came out to other districts. Yeah, Barb's pretty busy. See, I'm sending you the link to MSBA. Yeah, I think um if yeah, if that's

104a service they provide as part of our membership that grow. Yeah. And if they if it's a fee like an all cart option we have to pay for then I would want to know first do they have like a self evaluation tool or model that we could use and then if we felt like that wasn't sufficient we could I think I recall just seeing a survey on their website around that and I'm sure we don't have to use like whatever tool if they do have a tool which they probably yeah and I think we should also talk about how frequently we want to do that. Um, once a year. Yeah, I think at least. Yeah, I actually I think maybe every six months, but I'll ask about the time frame for the board. Like I

105think it'd be good for us especially I don't know also new. I was thinking it'd be good for give us to it would give us a reason to touch base every six months. Yeah, I think part of the reason why you are starting this and going through this handbook is because then that's what you will kind of evaluate yourself on is how all the things you've talked about and put in this handbook and procedures and so forth. Are you doing it and are you doing it the right way or and if it's not if if there's something that's not really happening that the way it says up there and what do you have to do to improve that, right? So I'm glad that this is your first step to that self evaluation. I think is

106because we talked about that in January when you first started is gives you a tool but then um to to know what to do but then also to evaluate yourself that you're doing it the right way. Y and everything highlighted is an area that needs specific information. So that's why it's highlighted is to say it's generic. We need to we need to put our stamp on that. Yeah, I didn't have any um questions or feedback for the rest of it. Yeah, I think that's I'll Yeah. So, I'll send everybody a note when I hear back from MSBA. Jeremy on on page 17 on bullet three. It doesn't sound right to me. Sorry. Finger is not working. Uh duties of the board. Superintendent. That's that's actually a word from your editor. Well, I I was just

107looking at it says manage the school. Okay. It just didn't sound it just sounded like um like we're managing, but maybe I just misread it, Robin. So, it's okay. No, I see what you're saying because we are not managing the school, right? And it just seemed like it says manage the school of the school of the district and I I don't know if that's worded correctly, but we can look at that one. board shall superintend the district adopt rules for the organization government. We don't prescribe textbooks of study. No, let's look at that one. Okay. All right. Exactly. I was too. Well, I was about to just go in the comment section. We don't. All right. Right. Okay. Good. Well, let's uh I've got notes to rework pages 18 to 21. Maybe we can just

108um come back and revisit that before we move on. Okay, we'll get into the first reading of our policies. Yes. So, the first policy um really is of our graduation standards and remember that the policy committee has already went through this one time and and so forth. So, there aren't um a lot of changes. The one thing that we did change here is um the district assessment coordinator um we do not it said before it was the curriculum director but we no longer have a curriculum director and so um we changed it to the superintendent and or design. So it doesn't mean that uh myself or Mr. 12 would be doing the the district assessment coordinating work. Um but we would we have um people in our district to do that but it's not necessarily

109the district assessment coordinator or or the the district coordinator curriculum coordinator and so that that was the biggest change here. Um it does talk about the graduation requirements. Um the one thing that we do a little bit different in vibrant is that we do have um some a course like the post-secary high school planning which is required and so forth but um this is what uh I had run by the high school to make sure that it it also um you can see the.5 credit for post high school planning um and and there are some things that have been changed um you know that is part of our um graduation requirements experience that the state says we have to do and that's the um personal learning or personal finance class and so forth that's coming

110that has started and so but right now this is this is what talks about what you need to do to graduate from Byron High School and again the only change um is that we are move moving to that superintendent and or designate any questions with this one okay uh the use of peace officers. So this was uh there's no changes per se uh from MSBA, but I just want to call out that this was a big question last year um you know regarding SRO's and so forth and how much that they can how much they could intervene what they could and with students and so forth and a lot of um police departments had some real concerns you know because they couldn't do anything really and they but and when they can't sometimes to put

111their their officers and deputies in in danger if they can. But the legislature last year did, you know, again, this was um remodel a little bit last year about they can use um permissible or reasonable force if they need to to to help. And then all of our um just so you know all of our administrators as well as our uh emergency response teams and and coun and special ed teachers and so forth are trained in what's called CPI which is how to deescalate, how to hold kids and so forth if they are having a tough time and so they don't hurt themselves or somebody else. And then when needed sometimes the um SRO needs to be part of that as well. So any questions with this one? Okay, the next one 603 curriculum development.

112Um again this one since we don't have a curriculum director would be the super and the designate. I will tell you that the school board it says here letter B must establish an advisory committee. Um I should probably this time say uh reestablish uh because this year uh without a curriculum director everyone's kind of doing share it used to be uh the world's best workforce where we would have parents and teachers and part of that we called that our talked about curriculum and goals and so forth and so there wasn't one. So, um, without Jessica Dryer, who was our curriculum director, kind of ran that, put all that together, brought that committee together again this year because that was such a late, we kind of were peacemealing together. We probably didn't um coordinate and have

113an advisory committee as we should, but again, there's a world's best workforce, remember, has turned into a different type of title, but you should still have a as you move forward in the next year be looking at um having such a committee to go through that again. So, do we have a plan to establish that? Um, next year. Well, that's what I we're working on right now with our our leadership team is now that we know the reductions for next year. Um, the last three meetings have been put in kind of titles and responsibilities and then who's going to take over these different areas. And so, um, it is something that's on there as when it comes to the curriculum part. Again, it's being shared by many people. So, who who does this advisory? It's

114required by statute, right? So, it cannot be missed. Okay. Okay. Um and the next one it's a it it's a disposition of pharmaceutical waste and um there really is no changes except for um that we are using instead of our buildings and grounds manager because we don't have one but but when I talked to the licensed school nurses they've always kind of did it anyway. they are the ones at the end of the year will go through what's left over and they're the ones who make sure that uh what's left that's there is is properly disposed of. So, but in our policy that we haven't seen in a while, it talked about the buildings and grounds manager, but they've said they were really the ones to do it. So, we just changed that in here.

115So, seems like a qualification thing, too. Like they should Yeah. Uh this technology disaster file you heard about from Jen, you know, we would be in trouble if we didn't have technology. So, this really didn't have any uh changes to it. And it just talks about that if there is a disaster. We do have our emergency response team and part of that is looking at all of our technology and how do you how fast can you get that back up? Where is things backed up? where is it housed and so forth so that we can get those um in and we hope that you never have to use this but if it is then Jen has looked at this and made sure that it's all up to date. Um 2011 is the legal status of

116the school board and uh so really also there's just some legal references at the very end. So, it just talks about uh this is an MSBA policy that has changed the legal references, but it just talks about you as a school board and um you know your members um are you have seven members for term of 40 years. It kind of goes through all of those and some of your powers and duties. But the really only change this is the legal references at the end. Policy 612 again uh development of parent and family engagement policies for title one. And so title one program is a federal program um where we receive funding for um to help kids that need the extra help and so forth. And part of that part of that program, part of

117our procedures is that um we actually have a meeting with parents for parents who are part of title one and so they know what's what their children are being asked. So sometimes they have to leave class to come get the extra help. Um they are they do get feedback from parents and so forth. There's a form that gets sent out saying that you are part of title one and we're having thisformational meeting come and do that. So they try to engage the parents and we follow that. So and uh right now um most of our title one schools are at the elementary level K5 level. So Abro Rotoire is the one who kind of organizes that and and assign staffs so that um when we go to get the funding it's one of our categorical

118funings that we have the right people in in in that as well. So, and then um ones over here, harassment and violence. Um the biggest one here um is uh I'm just looking at my notes here. Oh, that they all what they did was updated the definition of a disability. So, everything else is the same at this point. They just added this for the disability part under investigation. It talks about a human rights officer. Who is our human rights officer? Um well right for me it's also Christina Doto. Okay. Who's our do we um so if someone needed to know how would how would someone who was reporting know who who the human rights officer is? Um usually well a lot of times now they can go on the I'm not sure if it's on

119their website. I know under title nine it's on their website of who who you would report to for title nine. Okay. Um a lot of times human rights officers a lot of times the human resource director human and that's that's right that's the superintendent this time. So but no it doesn't say in here necessarily the exact person. Okay. It'll go to their administrator and then administrator will bring in seven. Okay. Okay. And then the last one is the uh development and maintenance of inventory. Um so this is what was added is what's in red here. just talks about that if we purchase something that's uh with federal funds that's over $5,000 or $25,000 or greater with other funds then it automatically goes into um and Dan can explain better and I think goes into this

120accounting system for the depreciation or so forth into fixed assets. It goes into our books for so long as fixed assets. So, this is just a um an up an update of what that means and when you would use um you know again $5,000 for federal or or $25,000 for others. That's something that Dan and the money people worry about. So, okay. All right. A recap of our listening session. Yeah. You want me to talk? Sure. So, we had we had one that filled out a paper and then we had u one more um that was allowed to talk in the um that didn't fill out one, but that was totally fine. Um we were um at first it was um kind of more directed about the no public comment um from Wednesday night during

121our Yeah. during our deliberations. Um she said that people felt like they were silenced with with that. Um but they um um they they thought that process was flawed perhaps and then um we we discussed the um that as an opportunity to learn from and use it as a tool to grow from. Um we the the most the main concern was rebuilding trust with the community and passing the referendum. Um and um just that there was if I could read my own writing uh there needs to be a better balance. Um I'm not sure where I was going with that. Can you expound on that? I think you ma'am there needs to be a better communication with the community so that we can solicit the opinion of the entire community including people including people who

122have students who go to Byron school district including the people who do not have kids in the Byron school district who live in Byron. Um, so we need to develop an effective way of distributing messages to the entire community that the school serves as well as um soliciting their feedback and opinion on topics that we need to know and we have not we we don't have good ideas at this point. Something we can definitely Yeah. with that upcoming referendum. Some big stuff to communicate. Okay. Uh all right. We'll move on to item six. Action on Nate Wilbrook Superintendent Contract for 25 to 28 discussions or questions or would entertain a motion. I make the motion to approve Nate Wal's superintendent. Second. Motion and a second. Any other discussion or questions? All in favor say I.

123I. I. All opposed. Motion carries. Contract is approved. Leaving us. Yes. With one final item on the agenda. Make a motion to adjourn. Second. Sorry. Motion and a second on adjournment. All in favor say I. I oppose. We are ajourned.