001regular meeting of the Northfield Public School Board today is Monday March 28 2022 and the time is 6 pm this meeting is being live streamed and recorded the recording of this meeting will be posted on the district website as soon as possible before we get started I'd like to thank members of the public for attending this school board business meeting to observe the work being done on behalf of all School District stakeholders we appreciate the time you took to be here this evening Dr Hillman we have some items in the table file we do this evening in the table file we have some legislative update Recaps from schools for equity and education and the Minnesota Association of school administrators we also have a summary of the uh house Omnibus education bill for you as well
002we also have several Personnel items including appointments increased decreased changes in assignments and three resignations okay thank you if there are no objections we will add these items to the agenda as we move forward is there a motion to approve the agenda as presented by Jeff second right Amy all those in favor say aye aye aye opposed motion carries we now move on to the public comment portion of our meeting we do have one speaker and I have a few comments to make before we call you up this is an opportunity for residents business and Property Owners parents Guardians students and employees of the Northfield school district to address the board all comments to the board must adhere to the guidelines set in place by District policy 206 regarding public comment this is not a
003time to debate an issue but only for the board to hear your comments you are prohibited for making comments about specific students staff and administrators the board respects and values input but it but when it relates to a specific individual or to a specific matter this input must be heard by the appropriate personnel including the building principle or superintendent and not during an open meeting of the school board you will be gaveled out of order if your comments are not in compliance with these guidelines please address the board from the podium after being recognized by the board chair identify yourself and if you represent a group we require that you limit your remarks to three minutes you are not allowed to you yield your time to another person it is expected that members of the
004public will address their remarks with Civility and respect personal attacks by anyone addressing the board are unacceptable please keep oh I'm sorry I have an old foreign has allotted up to a total of 30 minutes for public comment at a regular school board meeting I will not begin to call those who have signed up to speak in the order in which they signed in Vice chair Amy gerwitz will be monitoring the speaker's time she will signal each speaker with the time they have remaining at one minute 30 seconds and 10 second intervals again please make your comments as brief as possible but no more than three minutes okay we have Rich Graves welcome right question whether that's one word or two I don't know it's democracy in action um and you guys have done a
005great job the last year and a half under difficult circumstances thank you uh I know there's there's been some minority disagreement with the masking policy which I think was wisely resolved with the last month I think we've kind of hit that inflection point where the science is okay with our current policy I'm pleased to be here the first time unmasked thank you I also agree with Claudio's reservations a few months ago I think about making sure that we have shared goals with anyone like the police that we invite on campus um because I I served I actually served A detention at the middle school on March 1st that the police later said was I'm awful um so and I think that's fine that has nothing to do with the school board I think the school
006board has been great so thank you and uh you and the city council have been lovely the last year and a half of the pandemic pandemic hasn't necessarily been lovely but you know we survived and uh wow what a global study this has been thank you rates okay those are all the speakers that we have for tonight um and this concludes our comment portion of our meaning the board appreciates the time he took to share your perspective we now move on to announcements and recognitions yes I have uh one uh formal announcement this evening and then I'll share some thoughts on some other Student Activities during my update later uh the announcement this evening is around Greenville Park and so Greenvale Park geckos have been participating in a steam that stands the snack room that
007stands for science technology engineering Arts and Music Experience uh excuse me engineering Arts and Music or mathematics pardon me led by senola physics students and professors each class participates in Hands-On experiments between March 17th and April 14th and a team of Greenvale Park teachers Robert Garcia Betsy McLaughlin Ada Lee part and Kelly Johnson have collaborated with Professor Eric hazlitt to organize this effort and it's been fun a fun celebration of Science and learning and so we're really grateful to have the Partnerships that we have with organizations like Saint Olaf and this is an example of getting some of the things back to regular I won't use the term normal because we don't know what the next normal is is going to be but these kinds of events signal that we are getting back to regular
008when we are able to have this kind of partnership where Saint Ola physics students and professors come and help our students at Greenvale Park so we thank Professor Haslet and and his students for joining us and helping our Green Bell Park students enjoy those Hands-On experiments excellent I love to hear that any other comment s or additions recognitions okay all right we move on to I oh I'm sorry no go ahead I thought the rock and roll Revival was fantastic yes thank you okay we're moving on to items for discussion and reports um first we have Dr Hillman updating us on the American Indian parent advisory committee the name of the committee comes from Minnesota state statute correct so um we are offering an update as required by Statute so we barely meet the minimum
009requirements to have a required American Indian parent advisory Community that's the last time I'm going to use that language that's the language that is in statute much like our Hispanic parent advisory committee this advisory committee is meeting starting to meet this year three times per year once we are required to report to you that committee is made up of parents we have less than we we have approximately 10 to 12 families who meet that designation the district we routinely have one parent who attends that committee meeting and across the state these committees are required to provide a vote of what they call concurrence or non-concurrence and this is around the services and the educational opportunities that um school districts are providing to indigenous students throughout the state and so the parent committee either votes concurrence
010that the school district is providing quality opportunities for uh indigenous students or non-concurrents that the work that they are doing does not Meet the Parents expectations so I'm pleased to report you uh that the committee did affirm a vote of concurrence for the school year we're not required to have the board approve that vote we are simply required to report it prior to submitting it to the State Department of Education so that's my report on the advisory committee at this point Thank You board members any questions or comments okay Amy I am a little confused you said there was one parent on the committee or what right where there's one parent who arrived so we are we invite um all families who meet the requirements and we do this in a couple of different ways
011we let people know the meeting dates at the beginning of the year we send reminder emails it's a committee of the whole and so we have had the highest we've had since I've been here I think is three parents attend that meeting but we have one parent who routinely attends the meeting so we have I ideated how can we try to gather more folks to come to the beings and beginning next year it's a small enough group of parents we're going to do individualized phone calls thank you good anybody else any other okay all right our next item Dr Hamlin you'll be sharing with us your um superintendent's operations and covid-19 update yes so the great news is that Rice County after a brief um a brief time where we were in the high range
012as uh indicated by the CDC have now come back down as a Friday back to the low range we saw very few cases across Rice County in the last week I'm really pleased to say that we have really seen a dramatic Dramatics not even an appropriate word um we are actually in a better shape in the school district than we even were last summer when we really saw a the coveted cases receding I update that dashboard every morning as you know and this morning we have only had seven new cases reported to us in the last 14 days so this is really great news as you know in the month of January alone we had over 660 new cases reported during that month so um we are of course always cautious because we know that
013this is a widely virus that can come back at any time but we are very pleased with where we are at right now we have not seen we did not seen a substantial increase in covid um diagnosis in our student or staff population following spring break that was something that many people were quite concerned about with people traveling we just did not see it we've stayed under 15 cases basically since we lifted the mass requirement or shortly thereafter so we are announced in an outstanding position right now which we are really thrilled and once again I want to thank everyone for the work that they have done especially our students who have worked through this very difficult time over the past couple of years we are not foolish enough to think that this is done
014but we are very grateful to be at the point that we are at right now uh I do want to point out that we continue to look at the influenza like illness rates uh those are what we would consider to be our early warning indicators are we seeing people who are not feeling well are we seeing kids not show up to school because they have influenza-like illnesses and so uh just updating I shared in the packet on Thursday what the numbers were the previous week but for the reporting period of March 21st through the 25th all schools had less than a two percent weekly influenza-like illness rate Spring Creek in the highest at one point nine eight percent um and we even uh area Learning Center had no one reported uh during that time frame
015Miss home with influenza-like illnesses and the influenza-like illnesses that we are seeing according to the nurses who I've spoken with really are back to what we would consider the old-fashioned into the ones that like illness more stomach those kinds of things so again this is just another confirmation that we're really going in the right direction so I am thrilled to share that with you one thing I did not put in the um report that I should have another indicator that we are moving in the right direction is that we have reduced the hours at our covid-19 testing facility as you know beginning November 1st we started right next door here doing a drive-through Clinic uh by the last time I had reported to we've done over a thousand tests we were really the testing center
016for our school district within the community we have seen so in fact last week they did a total less than 20 tests total and so we have reduced those hours effective last week um going they used to be nine to two now they're nine to noon it's something we could scale back up if necessary but I do think this is another piece of data that shows uh that we're really going in the right direction it's part of my report I also wanted to share with you you know that we have a commitment to anti-racism work and our continued work especially around racial Equity training for teachers so just last week we continued that work with our partnership with Equity Alliance in Minnesota uh this month we had two new trainers doctors Jessica Murphy and Melissa
017Erickson who are new to equity Alliance they spoke with our teachers about Equitable classroom practices so really thinking through things like how are we making sure that we are being inclusive of all students during class discussions are we being inclusive every every student when we provide feedback are we making sure that we're using Cooperative learning strategies that we know involve everyone as opposed to just a handful of students and so we're all going to continue this uh next month will be our last monthly training for the year and then in may we will do some wrap up on reflection on the year but I share that with you because we've made a commitment to making sure that our staff have the opportunity to be trained and this is just the latest part in making sure
018that we're shifting to the discussion about how does our anti-racism work play out in how we teach and this is just another example and we did get some very good feedback initially on this last training I also want to give you a brief update on the Northfield high school facility task force so as board members know we have commissioned a task force to take a look at the Northfield high school facility they met for the first time last week March does not have any days where there aren't things on it so we were able to get 29 of our more than 40 invited stakeholders present board members know Sal Bagley who's a principal architect with Wolves Architects and Engineers she led the session the board members who are representing you on that committee are Tom
019braniak and Jeff Quinnell we focused on a number of things that evening including educating the task force on what they're expected to complete so what is the job of the task force we did an overview of our demographic study and talked about the theoretical building capacity and so when you think about theoretical building capacity according to our architectural Partners we could actually fit 1706 students in that building quite a few more than the 12 22 that we have there today but that goes and go assumes that you would have 32 students in each main teaching station for each of the seven class periods so right now most teachers have their prep in their classroom this would say teachers would not be able to prep in their classroom under that theoretical capacity but any facility study
020that's an important piece to discuss we also did a detailed review of the expected maintenance needed at the high school over the next 20 years that comes to about 37 million dollars worth of anticipated maintenance and updates and then we also did a summary of The Listening session feedback from staff community members and from the district youth Council and I have given the task force a directive to consider recommendations for addressing the these issues of Maintenance efficiency and educational adequacy through renovation and additions to the existing school and the reason for that is that we can easily calculate what a new school will cost any architectural firm can tell you right now we've studied the last 10 new high schools built in Minnesota here's what the average cost per square foot is and of course
021right now with construction inflation being 20 percent year over year and a near inability to get Maine materials for example in elementary school currently being built in a Twin Cities Northern suburb the steel company just went out of business now they're trying to find another steel purveyor how do you do that it's a it's a real struggle um so we can we don't even know what the actual cost per square foot will be given this 20 year over year so we've tasked the group with coming up with Solutions with the existing facility through renovation or addition doesn't mean that we can't consider a new facility it just means that we want to make sure people do that work we've also given them three targets uh Financial targets a financial Target of 40 million dollars 55
022million and 70 million dollars to work within and the key thing there is that the first if depending on the timing of when you were to choose to go for um funding for a project like this uh we do have around 40 million dollars worth of debt that is sunsetting in 2024 so that first uh 40 million dollars would be tax neutral so it wouldn't cause a tax increase so we've given uh the group what would you do if you had 40 million dollars what would you do if you have 55 million dollars and what would you do if you had 70 million dollars and so we have three more task force sessions scheduled this spring the next one this coming Thursday next item I want to share with you is that uh two of
023our school district strategic plan benchmarks are around Employee Engagement and parent satisfaction I want to share with you that we have launched our annual Employee Engagement and parent satisfaction surveys uh they've been out for 10 uh for about 10 days now they are open until tonight at 8pm and uh last check just about a couple of hours ago we had about 920 or sole parents and we had around 325 staff giving us feedback at that point and as you know these surveys they give us a collective perspective of what employees and parents are looking at from their satisfaction we're trying to gauge their satisfaction we're hoping it is able to give us meaningful feedback that can help us in our continuous Improvement Journey so you can expect a full report once those surveys are completed
024and finally just to play off what Noel had shared Northfield High School completed its run of rock and roll Revival on March 26th I think if you attend rock and roll Revival there you really see all the people who are on stage several of whom I see in the audience here tonight but we also know that beyond the people who are the main leads and who are singing and dancing on stage there's a ton of other opportunities for students to participate whether it be the tech crew I still think it's impressive that they could get that grand piano on stage and off stage for one song right you think about that one of the things that I love about rock and roll Revival is the safe space that it provides our student performers cast and
025crew a an opportunity to feel a little bit of pressure performing before sold out audiences for six nights is a little bit of pressure for that tech crew to make sure the lighting is right to make sure all of those things get to where they need to be uh live I don't I'm not sure there are many learning experiences that are more authentic than that so beyond how amazing the shows are and how wonderfully talented our students are and how hard they worked to prepare for it all of these things come together into what I think is one of the preeminent learning experiences that students can have in our school it's the real thing and students are going to leave that experience like we hope they leave so many other experiences uh prepared for the
026world in a little bit of a different way because what they learned during that is going to be the same kinds of things that will be important to them as they move out of high school so I just want to congratulate the cast The Crew uh the directors and we want to thank the community for coming out and supporting our students there was just it felt regular and it felt good right to have all those people there enjoying and being really proud of our students so I do think it's fair to say it as a signature event for the school district and wildly successful is an understatement so that is my operations update for this evening thank you terrific board members questions or comments no Dr Hillman you mentioned the task force reviewing the school
027the high school correct on balance is it all pretty much positive or is there a negative feeling in the community so I do not think that we know where we're at there yet and all the task force that we've assembled is really uh to objectively look at the facility itself and make recommendations of what would improve the uh how how do we make sure that we're good stewards of the facilities that have been entrusted to us taking care of the maintenance uh even since 2017 when we did not pass the referendum that included both a high school project and the elementary school projects we have continued to take care of that facility so we have continued to do things like paint um because we you know when we didn't pass that referendum we didn't whine
028we didn't complain right we said what do we do next and so what we what we did was we made sure that we keep trying to do what we're able to to make that building a great place as great of a place as it can be to learn so taking lockers out replacing those with counters or benches making sure that we're continuing to take care of the rest of the facility the parking lots this summer uh we have well last summer we retrofitted the district the former district office to be the student instructional space this summer as you know you've approved the renovation of the Maine high school office which includes a substantial upgrade to the woefully inadequate nurses station so we continue to take care of that facility um we're looking at the educational
029adequacy we're looking at the efficiency of the HVAC system creates wildly different temperate climates within the building some places really warm some places cold so that is what we're charging the task force to look at and they're not giving do they think it's a good idea do they not they're saying what do we think that these things are needed and then from there we'll start to take a look at what do we think is appropriate in the community like we said we can easily calculate what would a new high school cost based upon the current square foot uh charge for a new building like that but right now we're really focused on making sure we know what should the facility plan be for that if and when the board were to choose to move forward
030thank you remembers any others questions comments Julie thank you Dr homework for the um great update I was wondering on the covered front when we had voted to to make uh Mass recommended but optional and there was some concern around students who choose to not wear masks and those who choose to and what um you're hearing or your sense for how that's playing out with students and stuff at the buildings yeah so as you know I'm in every building most every week at worst every other week so we see students who are choosing not to wear masks we see students who are choosing to wear a mask I think that it has uh I think we saw more students wearing masks immediately after the requirement was lifted I think we've seen that uh dwindle a
031bit though we do see people who have big events for example we saw quite a few students involved in rock and roll Revival who continued to Mass to make sure that they were protecting themselves not only from you know covid but from the other illnesses that we know from time to time can sneak in so my assessment right now is that while I'm sure that there are some things that are happening every day my understanding is that it's we're letting people do what they choose and and we are proud of people for making those choices and respecting the choices of others excellent thank you thank you anyone else comment question okay we're moving on to our next item budget prioritization update and Dr Hillman and director murder store will you update us so I'm going
032to give a little bit of a frame just to remind people around the why you're going to say Matt why are you continuing to tell us the why we will continue to tell you the why until it's all done because it's important for people to remember why we are doing what we are doing I'm going to ask Val to just talk a little bit about some of the targets that we've given for uh each group and then we've got two of the three groups that have completed four meetings and one that will continue so I'll give a little bit of a frame on that so again we are looking at adjusting our budget our revenue or excuse me our expenditures by about four and a half million dollars over the next two years the reason
033that we're doing that is that we are good stewards of the money that is entrusted to us and we have two factors that we know are weighing in very heavily uh the demographic study was completed and reported in January shows that we are going to have declining enrollment of around 400 students over the next 10 years we also know the reality that for 25 at least 25 of the last 30 years the legislature has not provided an increase to the per pupil basic formula that matches inflation it's important for people to remember that about 70 percent of our revenue is directly tied in one way shape or form to our student count so when we start to see declining enrollment which means we have less students this year than we did last year and you
034have a legislature that does not keep up with inflation for three decades nobody can outrun it and so we have this reality we are starting to put the process from a position of financial strength we have a very strong fund balance we did reserve a significant amount of our sr3 funding that's the covert relief dollars just around two million dollars from that for Budget stabilization so that over the next couple of years that as our budget prioritization committees meet and make recommendations or suggestions that if there's something that we don't think we can necessarily Implement right away next fall that we could say oh we're going to implement that the next year and be able to use some of those stabilization funds to help phase those items in so when it comes back to the
035why it's that we have declining enrollment and that we know that we are going to not continue to not receive uh inflationary adjustments from uh the legislature so those are the main components and we have to be responsible we have to adjust the expenditures so that we meet the budget the impact of the of the reality that we're going to have of fewer students so we've had over 60 people staff community members parents uh students who have participated in three budget teams we have a budget team specifically looking at elementary expenditures we have a budget team specifically looking at District Services expenditures and we have a budget team looking specifically at middle school high school and area Learning Center expenditures and so I'd like if Bowser is going to talk a little bit about the
036expenditure targets and we have two of the three groups have completed four meetings and so that would you share about those targets and how we're getting there at this point sure um so when we started this process we I took the budget and pulled out the things that are um restricted that it doesn't make sense to touch um like operating Capital lcfm that sort of thing and then what was remaining was split into the three packages that Dr Hillman just identified and then based on that total so for instance the secondary total is about 21.35 million dollars um I took them as a percentage of the grand total and then allocated that four and a half million dollars across the packages um so it was proportionate so uh District services and Elementary are actually very
037similar um in nature at about just over 16 million dollars each as their total package and so both of those are looking at about a 1.3 million dollar um reduction and then the secondary package is about 1.85 so we're working through the priorities for each of those packages and building up to that new floor or ceiling whichever way you want to look at it um and then going from there to analyze What's um what's left and so uh the first meeting again was really a lot of Education of the committee about how we spend dollars how it's coded uh the second meeting they spent really starting to talk about priorities and again we really have emphasized prioritizing what people believe would give us the best chance to meet the vision the Strategic commitments and the
038benchmarks listed in the new strategic plan and that was a really tough meeting meeting two was really tough because people are starting to get the their head around wow um they're you're actually using the money fairly well and it's going to be difficult to think through this the third meeting we came to with folks to have them write priority statements and then using a power voting strategy that many of you are familiar with uh individuals will receive 12 dots that after groups wrote priority-based statements they could vote in terms of what were the ones that were most important to them and so I'm what without giving you details what I'm going to share just from the elementary package for example um there was a lot of real consensus around trying to say how can we
039hold class sizes where they're at or even lower them in some cases there was uh as you might know because I've talked about it a couple of times we Face a real conundrum when it comes to special education expenditures and this particular committee uh talked about trying to do everything we could to maintain our current special education spending without increasing spending if that makes sense so these are the kinds of prioritizing high quality early childhood education so in this case we took these priorities and Val did a did some work about basically creating three different potential budget plans that could meet the priorities that the committee came up with in meeting four Val walked through those three potential budget plans people had an opportunity to discuss to ask questions then again using another Power voting
040strategy they had an opportunity to select which of the budget plans was they felt uh met their priorities again while trying to give us the best chance to achieve the district benchmarks District service is a little bit different because District Services doesn't have the same kind of number of levers that can be pulled as at the elementary level and it's very difficult for people to really understand what district services do I like in District services to a good official in an athletic contest if the official is really doing a great job you never notice the referee or the Umpire if they have made a mistake that's when you recognize them right and so it's very difficult for people to understand how efficient our district services are and so by way of example the state every
041year provides a ranking of you can rank different um funding criteria and expenditure piece if you look at 502 roughly 502 Charter Schools or traditional public school districts Northfield Public Schools ranks 36th from the bottom in the amount per pupil that we spend on Administration so when we talk through that with the district Services team it's very difficult to look at how do you put three packages together so in that case we did a little bit of a different strategy we provided a listing of most of the expenditure areas we did use the prioritization statements that the committee had made and we prioritize them groups had a chance to meet in small groups and they said could they live with the proposal or did they want us to do some tweaking and overall they could
042mostly live with the proposal there were a couple of areas that they asked us to go back and take a deeper dive into for example they asked us to take a deeper dive into the buildings and grounds budget to make sure that we really had looked at could we get as much efficiency in that budget as we could and potentially using if there was another adjustment that could maybe be made within buildings and grounds to potentially restore some of the other things that we were looking for so the middle school high school area Learning Center group will meet again this Wednesday night we had to reschedule them because they were they had parent-teacher conferences and there was a rock and roll Revival performance so we did reschedule that group their prioritization will look more like
043the elementary one so it will be more multiple budget packages which one of these um really meet your needs I'll pause and see about any additional reflection she'd like to offer on the meetings themselves and we've been very clear while we're we're holding people to prioritize what they want we've also said we're not sugar coating this there are reductions but we just would rather talk about what are the things you want to make sure that we maintain versus what do we get rid of so I just want to share the next steps here the next steps will be we plan to bring you a budget plan on April 11th so are between this Wednesday and the April 11th board meeting our administrative team are going to take all of these pieces from the budget prioritization
044teams and we're going to make sure that we can operationalize it so the administration is going to take those recommendations or those Concepts that the Committees have put forward we're going to put it into a budget plan that budget your plan most likely at the April 11th meeting but it is possible depending on the complexities it could be the 20 the April 25th meaning we will definitely provide you a budget plan on April 11th the corresponding part that comes with a budget plan as veteran board members know we would put on at this time of the year the recommendations for reductions so if there are program reductions that need to take place we typically would have those shared with you at the April 11th meeting because of the complexity of this it is possible that
045they may not come until the April 25th I mean I just want to be upfront about that we're going to do everything we can to have it but we want to make sure we do it professionally that we are able to communicate these potential impacts tactfully and in a professional way and then from there once you hear that once the one piece that we're still determining is looking at well we know we're gonna have a work session in fact we've asked you um whether April 5th or 6th would work for you as a work session that would be before uh the actual presentation of the budget plan but we'll be able to bring it up to speed further and then between the time that we present the budget plan and the time that we ask
046you to vote on it we are looking at a community event I'm calling it more of a public forum I'm really thinking of it as that we would present here is what the budget plan is then allow people to share their perspectives on the budget plan similar to how we do public comment it's not a time for discussion or that kind of thing it would be more of a time for people to come and have a short period of time in which they could share with the board their thoughts on again another way to get the public involved so that you have a chance to hear what they're saying some of the most difficult part of this budget process is that we don't have things that are not valuable the programs and services that we
047offer are valuable to kids or they're valuable or responsible to the community and so we don't have something that you can just say oh get rid of that that's simple to get rid of that's not the way it works things that we have are valued by the community so it's not a matter of whether or not we value the programs that we'll end up on the program reduction list it's a matter of we can't afford all the things that we want anymore because we are a declining enrollment and the state has not kept up there under the bargain and so um those are the real reasons and so we certainly want to tell folks that you know we believe in the programs that we have if we didn't believe in them we wouldn't have them
048um and they have a positive impact on people but we just can't afford all the things that we want anymore and so we need to be able to make sure that we are continuing to be judicious we've always been judicious we have reorganized a number of programs over the years as board members know um so we have been ahead of the game on that but in this case we have to just accelerate that piece at this time so that is our budget prioritization update for you this evening we'll then of course have you take the final action either late April or early May and then we will make those things official for next school year thank you questions comments okay no I think it's fortuitous that the enrollment report comes together at about the same
049time we're looking at how to evaluate the use of the high school timing I think is excellent thanks Noel Amy so I have two questions for you the first has to do with sort of my better understanding the process of prioritization so we're losing 400 students over 10 years right but we're looking to reduce the budget by four and a half million dollars correct over two years yes so will we since the decline continues for another eight years will there be subsequent decrease instead you know to the budget or um are we ranking the items that so that they can come off over a longer period of time in case we get a bump from the legislature how is that working so that's a great question um and I'm gonna have Val help me weigh
050in on this I'll just start the part and then I'll have you talk about the five-year piece so something that we think is not a great thing to do if we can avoid it is year over year Cuts right some districts when they get into declining enrollment they cut the minimum that they need to cut every year and then you cut every year and that is terrible it's terrible on many levels right because every year you're cutting something and it really damages the culture of your school system so our effort has been let's look at making the adjustments that we need to at the beginning of the strategic planning cycle and then looking at a a maintenance process if you will over a five-year period all Val weigh in next oh I probably set it
051up um so an another thing that I just want to refresh um and bring back to the front is we were going to do this process two years ago and um chose to delay it so we have been deficit spending um already um because of the way the numbers have gone um our our enrollment's been declining slightly for the last two years for sure and so knowing that that is the production for the next 10 we know that that's obviously going to be impactful um and so what we're what we're picturing with this particular process is to readjust the budget now to our current reality um there will be an annual component we haven't quite decided what that looks like um just to assess but we are having all of the items prioritized so if
052there are things that are discontinued and we get a boost of open enrollment where we could add things back there will be an order for which those will be addressed um and then every five years is going to be this big process basically to kind of reevaluate and even if we're not looking at reducing the budget I think that the process in and of itself is valuable for us to make sure that we're spending things on things spending our resources on what's important for the community so whether that means we add resources because we have the ability to do so um that's kind of the vision for this particular process we happen to be in budget reductions um and so that's what it looks like currently but we'll have a process to add back should
053our financial situation change um and then also have a cycle to make sure that we're on top of it moving forward going either way does that make sense that makes sense and it's I hadn't thought of ranking things to bring back as a restoration so the one other thing I would add Amy just to your question is that we think it's important that if people take the budget apart right if you were to take a look and look at the budget in detail that the budget matches the Strategic plan that you have adopted so too often in school organizations if you were to analyze the budget you'd be hard-pressed to find that the budget actually meets the components of the Strategic plan and if it if it is it might be that way to begin
054with but we held a number of means we got a lot of feedback about what the community wants from their schools you had several opportunities to discuss what are the outcomes that we want and if we don't spend the resources that we have to try to achieve those outcomes well then why did we do the Strategic plan process and so we think it's this five-year strategic plan process where we have a major prioritization process at the beginning of it we're doing that now right now unfortunately it happens to be that we have to prioritize based upon with some reductions in mind I'm very hopeful the next time that we do this we'll have right size the budget for our current reality we'll be looking at a five years where we wouldn't need to be considering
055reductions but we're looking at saying we just can't keep spending the money the way we've always spent it how are we spending it to get the results that the community expects all right and I have a second question as well and that is uh it's more I want your comments on it because I we were talking at the beginning of the meeting about the high school project which could possibly include a bond that we would be asking the community for more money and then on the other hand we're telling the community that we're cutting funds and I think on the board we sort of understand how that works but I'm wondering if you have any thought about how we're going to explain this to the community because it seems like we're contradicting ourselves yeah I
056think that that's a really logical question for people to ask and I think that what's important to remember is that we are charged with being stewards of a number of different things including the operational budget each year and then in addition to the resource the other resources the facilities that we have built and maintained and so I'd invite people to think about it from their housing perspective right that you know we have a certain amount of dollars that we can spend on our expenses every month and we also know if we don't reserve and take care of some of those for our home we could actually end up spending more so I would argue one thing that I would share is that I think that the current high school facility because of its inefficiencies is
057partially responsible for our operational budget issue because the utilities and any of the students in the audience know all too well that the h-wing does not have any insulation right so to try to keep that Wing heated is much more costly than for example the new Greenville park building that was built you know with efficiencies in mind or if you think about the new Spring Creek cafeteria an older building but in addition built properly built with the appropriate new glass very energy efficient right those are the kinds of things so we have the simultaneous piece and we are helped from the state we are not able to use in general most of the time funds that we can use for building repair and maintenance and those kinds of things on teachers even if we wanted
058to we could not take money from operating capital or from the long-term facilities maintenance Fund in most years there was an exception during the pandemic early on um but we couldn't take those dollars and apply and pay for staff out of that so there is this line of demarcation that we are not able to cross in most cases is with everything there's a few exceptions that I'll save you the lecture mode for the evening about those intricacies um so I would I would say that we need to keep taking care of this facility and any updates that we were to choose to do to the existing High School would pay back operationally and something that Val and I have worked with a couple of buildings to grounds directors on is anything that we can spend
059Capital Money on Capital funds that save operational dollars we think that that's when most of the time that's a one-time payment to update Windows or to update installation you know things like that update the LED you know LED lighting all of those things have an operational savings that come from the general fund which is what we are trying to adjust at this point so that would be the beginning of my discussion okay thank you great questions any more questions Tom um I have two questions so when you do the prioritization are there items that might actually go up if people are saying that we really want this yes there are why don't you talk a little bit about that um so I mean short of giving you all the specifics um the elementary package as
060Dr Hillman said wanted um was very interested in class size So based on that we can do an analysis um they they put a very specific range of what they would like to see prioritized there are less of things that go into that conversation like actual number of classrooms available in a building for instance but if that is um if we took our current enrollment and matched those targets that they provided um that could result in more classroom FTE than we currently have and so that was the first thing that we would put in to the document to prioritize the budget and then we kind of just went from there to say what else you know what was the second priority um so there is there is definitely that opportunity but that also means that
061there are also things that it currently exists that are no longer funded as a result of that right so that's the point of prioritization it's the forced choice analysis would you rather have this you know this level an increased level in this area but then that means you might lose this particular service or program and that's the work that prioritization does Zero zero-sum game um and so another question and it's the more um and not directly related to this so the legislature just redistricted the state based on population and if the if there's a continue um decline in birth rates at Statewide um will there be a looking at of school districts and redistricting and maybe absorbing some of the smaller ones or ones that are having a bigger Decline and maybe making others bigger
062and when that might happen or yes that's a really great question so I think that um I'll give you my short answer to that is that no the state won't I unless the legislature to take specific action now if we look at two inflection points I would say if you take a look at probably the early 1960s and then the late 1980s is the really when you saw the bulk of school consolidation in the state so we are Northfield Public Schools our formal name is Independent School District number 659 and that independent means just that it is governed there are boundaries right that were set long ago which are not going to change unless Two school boards agree on a certain change in boundaries which nobody ever does or very rarely do they do it
063so most often what you will see happen is if there is really that kind of decline sometimes the state will provide incentives for districts to consolidate as was the case in the late 1980s early 1990s or some incentives you could get some additional dollars to uh be able to to do that um consolidation is incredibly difficult it can really create Rifts in communities for decades um in fact uh I think you've seen that in several school districts in southern Minnesota where Bond reference failed seven eight ten times in a row because somebody else got the high school in 1991 and uh so I think it's a very difficult piece so do I think the state would come in and say uh you have to I everything that I know about the Minnesota Legislature would suggest
064there is no way um that they would be able to come to any kind of agreement on that could they incentivize where people might do some kind there have been some interesting things it wasn't all that long ago uh Governor Ventura uh floated the idea of moving to County school districts right because for example we have three counties within our uh School District boundaries there's been some ideas flow to like other states do county-based school systems those pieces rarely get a ton of traction because people really especially when you get to smaller communities they perceive if they lose their high school they lose their community and people will fight tooth and nail to make sure that that does not happen so I think it's a very difficult conversation I do not see in my lifetime
065unless something we can't even agree on getting some basic things done for school financing I just don't see how they could agree on coming to a place where they could consolidate school districts um no I don't see a pathway okay fair enough thank you thank you great questions anyone else Julie so thank you for all the work and the process that you that you're um that the process you envisioned and and how you've been making adjustments to be sure that that process has been um going well and that people are providing the feedback that that you're seeking so it's going to be very interesting to see these budgets and I just appreciate all the efforts um when you talked about class size one thing I thought about was do you envision um a contingency fund
066um strategy that has worked somewhat well or has worked very well for the district in the past do you see that as a potential without tipping your hand just if that's something that has been discussed or a strategy that you will choose to employ as you review budget scenarios yes um so that particular um amount is included in the district Services budget because we obviously oversee it and so that was included and um I would say that was prioritized but maybe at a slightly lesser level and then my other question is Val I didn't get the um total for the Elementary in terms of the Target that you gave elementary schools um so it's about 1.3 million [Music] um in reductions but their goal is 15.35 million that's what we're working up to and so
067when shouldn't leave was that based on their overall budget or number of students or how did you it was based on their current budget dollars as a percentage of the total um that was included for prioritization okay so when I took out ltfm and operating Kappa and all of those things whatever was left and then I broke it into three groups and then did it as a percentage of that excellent okay thank you good job yeah thanks for your work you know a lot of uh cuts a lot of looking back on things like that and I mean I was believe in looking at something and being optimistic and saying you know what is it we're doing well you know what is it we're really doing well that that we want to keep and also
068what makes us unique or interesting as a community as a school district that wants it's the Law of Attraction The Law of Attraction States first of all you must be attractive so what makes and I mean that in the sense the broader sense of why do people want to go to Northfield and why do people want to go to Northfield schools and I think that that as the population ages and obviously enrollment goes down I mean there's a lot of things and maybe this is more of a city thing that we could be looking at getting in a bigger tax break bringing in uh obviously we're known for a great retirement community I mean maybe there's some developments and things like that so I also think that our location is very strategic not being very
069far from the cities and having 35W out there so I mean I would like to see more of a instead of kind of a Gloom of Doom I mean we've done this before and pretty effectively I mean what is our strength and and what are you know two to five really good points of why come to Northfield why go to school here and what can we build on so Jeff I think we're actually living out exactly what you just said and that the prioritization process is intended to say what are the things that we want to make sure that we keep doing that achieve the outcomes that we look for and um I will continue to Champion uh and and surely for our school district but I have a problem I I don't have places
070for people to buy homes so you know that we as I uh had shared with some folks last week um we are a destination Place coincidentally Val and I were meeting with a potential uh of a potential vendor and uh they asked us about how is the district's Finance going as a financial firm and uh they asked us how it was going we talked about the housing and this person said I can be a case study for you because I've been trying to buy a house in this town for three months can't find one and so I think the fact Jeff is that we continue to I think to do our part in making sure that we are a place that people want to be um however we have to have places for people to
071buy homes and as I've shared with you before the last report I got was less than 35 homes available in the entire School District with over half of them averaging 350 000 or more I'll get that latest update so I can share with it next time so this is that's another part of the difficulty that we have is that I do think we would have a population explosion if we had the housing inventory to be able to support people who want to move here and build um it's some people we've have stories of people buying homes in other communities adjacent to us and then open enrolling people are only going to drive their kids 20 miles to school for so long right that gets old pretty quick and so I do think that we are
072attractive I do think we are applying to our strengths it's why we're doing the prioritization process rather than a traditional cutting process but we are limited in the fact that even if people who do want to move here that in migration which Hazel shared is really declining and she shared very clearly that that is a result of housing inventory thank you great questions any more comments or questions um I wanted to know if you're seeing consistency in the meetings this is kind of the same community members are able to show up across the board yeah I think that that's fair to say we've had a handful of people who have you know their child care issue here and there are things like that for the most part I think it's been very consistent yes terrific
073I'm so grateful for all the community members that are gathering to do this process and thank you Val for all your support um of their um requests of you and bringing that um before them a pleasure um what you just said about consistency um of the comments that people are making in the different groups is there a consistent theme among all the groups or like the elementary maybe once smaller class sizes another one one something else or is their consistency um I would say yes and no there are some I would say broad thing at the elementary it's a little tighter um there's less choices yeah there's less Choice um but even within that group there's certainly some other things that they were interested in um depending on their perspectives secondary is a little broader
074um there's definitely a pretty tight I would say band of themes where in the the power voting strategy there were five or six items that were all voted extremely close together um and so that will be that's what I'm working through right now um so I don't have any details to share yet but that um I there I think it's indicative of the budget so when you're at secondary there's more options there's co-curricular there's you know electives and so I think that's just indicative of those packages thank you good and we're going to move on to the next item and that is a legislative update Mr Hillman yes I'll give a very brief legislative update here um so in your table file today we did share uh the latest uh updates from the Minnesota Association
075of school administrators schools for equity and education and as I said an overview of the house Omnibus education Bill I'm just going to give you three updates one the first one is around targets which is really important so a Target is what the leadership in each body of the legislature decides that the education or other committees are going to spend on that particular area we are still waiting for the target for uh the house and we understand that the Senate is not going to provide any Targets which I don't remember a time when we haven't had targets so that will be interesting to see how it plays out so of course we're getting down to the end of when bills have to be able to come through through committees and be heard in order to
076be laid over to be included in the Omnibus bills as they move ahead so this is a real important time to watch uh there are a number of bills that we're keeping a track on I'm just going to highlight two I'm not going to give you the numbers but uh the number of the bills but of course the special education cross subsidy we've mentioned that many times uh we're gonna ask you to take an action to support full funding of special education services here in just a little bit uh the bottom line is that we are unabashed that we'd like the legislature to set aside everything else and fund the special education cross subsidy so again the special education cross subsidy is general fund dollars that we are paying for required I would consider them
077to be morally imperative services to students with disabilities for which we are not reimbursed in our field in fiscal 2020 that was right around five million dollars give or take there last year's a little bit of a different ball game of course you had six weeks where you didn't transport anybody so that impacted the fiscal 21 but around 5 million dollars um is what our cross subsidy would be to fix the entire State's cross subsidy it would take 781 million dollars this year of which the legislature has 10 times more of the amount of money in their Surplus so I my advocacy is that we tell the legislature and the governor to set aside all of the other education funding pieces and fix this once and for all so that is our main focus that's
078all we're looking at right now at least from our advocacy perspective from that spending perspective and the education committee the other one I want folks to pay attention to is coming out of the tax committee and that is the referendum or the equal Equalization Bill people here know that our taxpayers pay more to generate the same amount of money for a school um than say someone in the West Metro so two two districts that have the same exact operating Levy there's a district who's in the West Metro their taxpayer pays less than what ours do because we are have less property wealth even though we have wonderful institutions like our two colleges and our Hospital those are are generally non-tax paying organizations so if I have much bigger industry that lowers the amount for those
079um homeowners in those communities so we are fully behind the equalization bill that looks like it's got a chance to get done this time or some form of which is great so I'm not going to go through the items that I shared with you in the table file I encourage you to take a look at those I want to share that your legislative action committee uh Julie Pritchard myself Claudia um and Corey we continue to meet we continue about readily 15 people who show up on Saturdays at 10 A.M every other Saturday to talk about how can we make sure that we tell our story to the legislature and so we're very excited to continue that work coming up this week so we'd be happy to take any questions on that at this time excellent
080questions or comments um and I really can't add anything except to repeat what you just said Dr Hillman um that is our state representatives choose to use the say with me nine billion billion with a B 0.23 billion with a B the Surplus two let me eliminate the special education cross subsidy are budget prioritization process we don't have to carry the burden of having to cut 4.5 million dollars from our general budget over the next two years and I just think that needs to be said over and over again um encourage our legislators to move on that absolutely thank you so much for your update yep you're back um I have next committee reports and I don't know that we have any so we'll move past that item and we're on to the consent agenda
081um we will now we'll now move on to the approval of the consent grouping as a reminder there were some Personnel items in the table file added to the consent grouping is there anything anyone would like to pull from the consent grouping for separate consideration I would not like to pull something but I would like to comment on scholarships issue uh this this uh consent agenda includes forty two thousand dollars worth of scholarships I just think that's an incredible recognition by the community of a way to influence a future generation absolutely thank you for mentioning that okay is there a motion to approve the consent grouping by Amy second I can buy Tom all those in favor of approving the consent grouping say aye aye opposed motion carries pretty good um we are moving on
082to items for individual action we have three items to take action on tonight first a resolution in support of the Congressional individuals with disability Education Act full funding act which addresses funding at the federal level for State students with disabilities Ida EA or idea was passed in 1975 with the promise of funding support to States at a 40 percent level of reimbursement but Northfield Public Schools indeed schools Nationwide have not received that level of funding support this lack of fully funding public education has obligated our district to use funds out of the general budget to cover the expenses of providing for all students the full resolution is in the table file is there a motion to approve resolution in support of the Congressional Idea Idea full funding act as presented moved by Julie second by
083Amy board members any discussion comments questions Amy well I think this is a good resolution I'm just curious who gets it what happens with it how do we think it might Influence People so when we take this resolution after it's completed we will deliver it to um Angie Craig who is our representative and the US Congress will also make sure that Senator Smith and Klobuchar get a copy of it we'll also add our name to the list of the scores of other districts in the state who have taken this msba would like us to be able to submit this to them and of course we'll also use it and share it in fact I have an appointment with Senator drayheim on Wednesday morning I will share with him that you've taken this even though it's
084a federal piece of course the federal money flows through the state and so we'll share with him as well so we'll share with our representatives and of course we'll continue to share it through our discussions with the media and through our legislative action committee and another question I have is students with disabilities does that include all the special education students or is it how is that defined so I would say that the yes it covers students with special education and it potentially even could um it would also include people who have 504 um there could be people with 50 who will access accommodations through uh the Section 504 of idea but for certainly it takes these special education students into account truly I just wanted to comment that I appreciate msba um preparing this resolution
085and and offering it for school districts to take action I think that you know we've talked a number of times about our special education cross subsidy and we go to the state level but this is taking it to where it um you know its origin which is at the federal level so um in some ways I'm surprised we haven't done this before but I'm very very happy we're doing it um I know that they're in the history most there was a very long-serving uh congressional representative from this Congressional District Two who a number of times brought this before um Congress to try to advocate for full funding but again I can imagine that if it's 800 million or um in Minnesota what nationally that figure is and that's a daunting figure for anyone to to
086see and to try to wrestle with but I think it's important that we we continue to say this is a huge issue for school districts and I'm glad we are taking this to the federal level as we continue to fight here with our own uh grapple with our legislators and helping them understand what a game changer would be for the district if we are if we are funded um to provide these vital services to our students so thank you for um bringing it Forward Claudia thank you anyone else comments or questions um thank you for your thoughtful comments I'd like to read from the resolution just the concluding segments resolution in support of the Congressional idea full funding act H.R 5984 and s3213 be it resolved that the Northfield Board of Education supports the idea
087of full funding act that will help strengthen the federal investment in special education by authorizing a 10-year plan to fully fund the federal share of idea and be it resolved that the Northfield Board of Education urges congress's strong bipartisan support for and passage of the idea of full funding act and now therefore be it resolved that the Northfield Board of Education remains committed to providing students with disabilities and their families the supports they need we have a motion and a second this is a roll call vote which Anita will facilitate bronyak aye curwitz aye Gonzalez George hi Pritchard aye aye stratman resolution passes we'll get this to our state and federal Representatives thank you board members for your strong advocacy on behalf of our local families we move on to Item B 2022-2025 achievement and
088integration plan is there a motion to approve the 2022-2025 achievement and integration plan as presented moved by Tom thank you second by Julie and uh Claudia I do have uh director of instructional Services hope Langston here to answer any questions that people might have about the plan wonderful hope you want to give us a summary so we um wrote our first achievement and integration plan three years ago in 2019 right before the pandemic hit and we are submitting our second three-year plan uh there are requirements for the types of goals so it's achievement disparity reducing the achievement disparities increasing student access to diverse teachers or effective teachers and then an integration goal so you can see in the plan in front of you we have two achievement goals reducing the percentage of FRP students who
089are credit deficient and not on track for four-year graduation rates we are reducing the number of FRP students who are not proficient on the MC or increasing their proficiency or reducing the number of non-profisions those would be the two achievement goals the the effective teaching goal is related to the number of D's and F's earned by FRP students at the middle school and again this data is quite clearly tied to our current reality coming out of a pandemic for two years and then the data integration goal is a repeat because that was the one goal we did meet quite successfully and that's a student data Summit between Northfield Faribault Tri-City United and Waterville Legion who are our um you know in The Cooperative with us for achievement and integration so we're excited to bring that
090back to our students those are the three goals our budget which you are not required to approve the budget but you are required to approve the approve the plan is about 344 thousand dollars um so that's where we're at and I'm happy to answer any questions thank you hope board members questions or comments okay well Julie yes thank you um hope this is just really um I think a really excellent plan and I think it's it was just really um so so it was gratifying to read through and see all of the supports that we have in place for our students and I was wondering where so the other districts that we mentioned where were the Canon River collaborative what type of communication or collaboration do we have with those districts Waterville Legion Morrison uh
091Tri-City United and Faribault Public Schools so we really collaborate with them on the data Summit only we do I I am in touch with the Faribault coordinator for uh their plan um but we we jointly met and planned out the data Summit the last time we had in December of 2019 such a pleasant memory um and we are meeting again actually in April to to plan this spring and so the that's the the focus of our work together they each district develops their own goals so we're not collaborating on goals because we are using each using our current reality in our districts um which which is really quite different um but the collaboration centers on that data Summit excellent thank you thank you anyone else comment or a question okay thank you okay seeing no
092further discussion we have a motion and a second all those in favor say aye aye opposed okay motion carries okay finally we have another resolution before us 2022 resolution establishing combined polling places um March 28 2022. is there a motion to approve the 2022 resolution established combined polling places March 28 2022 as presented moved by Tom second second by Amy Dr humming do you want to give so yeah I'll just summary give a very brief summary so you know that we take this uh resolution annually typically in December however of course with the um census and the redistricting uh we were needing to take even though we're not making any changes we have been advised just to take this resolution again we're not anticipating on having a special election this year but um in talking
093with the counties they would like us to take this resolution again so it's basically the same resolution in December we just have to do it after redistricting okay board members questions or comments okay we have a motion in a second all those in favor say aye I opposed oh I'm sorry this is a resolution sorry Anita will you help us broniac I bear with Gonzalez George aye Richard hi Kunal hi stratman thank you motion carries foreign we move on to items for further information um Dr Hillman you will be reviewing the March 2022 enrollment report we actually have the enrollment report this time so thank you for board members patience uh from last meeting you'll see that we are um very similar to what we were the month before right around just a couple of
094students less than we had in February at 37.90 uh you'll see the bulk of things just a handful of minor differences between buildings so um really into that mode of the Year where we see some consistency thank you board members questions or comments nope okay thank you and then our next item is regarding our workboard sessions and we're looking at April 5th or 6th from five to seven to focus on the budget prioritization as well as two work sessions regarding the high school plan followed by a session June 13th from four to five forty five right here right before the regular board meeting to finalize those High School recommendations so I think that we don't I don't think we've I need I'm going to ask you just to share if we've established a date for
095the fifth or sixth we have not I've only heard I've heard from a couple of board members so if perhaps we could determine the date that would be helpful so if board members could just be you know either tonight or tomorrow morning right away let Anita know if the fifth and or the sixth will work for you we've heard from a few people that both States work and so we just want to make sure that we are able to provide the appropriate um notifications so if people would be able to do that for us uh you know either before you leave today you can certainly just tell me directly or if you can send an email to Anita that if the fifth and or the sixth would work for you that would be we would
096appreciate that and again the fifth or the sixth is going to be really about trying to prepare you for the budget prioritization proposal we may not have the full proposal there yet but what we're going to be able to share with you is some additional detail on what we've talked about this evening and really start to show you what some of those priorities are so you have a chance to think about them prior to us bringing them to the board thank you okay for our future meetings we have a work session um did I already read that no we haven't done that part yet for our future meetings we have a work session Tuesday April 5th or 6th at um 5 PM in the boardroom regular board meetings on Monday April 11th April 25th and
097May 9th at 6 PM in the boardroom okay is there a motion um is there a motion to adjourn okay move final second by Amy all those in favor say aye all right opposed okay motion carries we are adjourned