001foreign I called this meeting to order this is a regular meeting of the Northfield Public School Board today is Monday May 23 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 the school board business meeting and to observe the work being done on behalf of all School District stakeholders we appreciate the time you took to be here this evening I'm Dr Hillman we have some items in the table file yes we had several items in the table file including the table file as the presentation narrative for the uh 2223 general fund budget presentation I did add a legislative update
002or I suppose I should say a lack of a legislative update uh to my operations report and we'll go through that there are some additional uh items in the consent agenda including appointments increase decrease change in assignment a leave of absence and two resignations I've also provided an updated recommended motion uh for approval of the contract with Arcadia Charter School based on feedback from the Minnesota Department of education's review preliminary review of our draft contract okay thank you very much if there are no objections we'll add these items to the agenda as we move forward is there a motion to approve the agenda as presented um moved by Jeff second by Corey all those in favor say aye aye aye opposed motion carries and now we move on to the public comment portion of our
003meeting the board is reserved up to 30 minutes of our meeting for public comments this is an opportunity for community members to address the board after being recognized by the chair each individual will identify themselves and the group they represent if any each speaker is limited to three minutes you cannot seed your time to anyone else this is not time to debate an issue but for the board to hear your comments the Minnesota Government data Practices Act prohibits comments about specific student or staff matters in an open session even without naming individuals this includes the public comment portion of our meeting the board respects and values your input but what it relates to a specific student or staff member or to a specific incident such input must be heard by the appropriate personnel such as
004the building principle or superintendent and not during an open meeting of the school board Corey will monitor your time and will indicate your time remaining at one minute 30 seconds and 10 seconds and we have one person signed up tonight and so I'd like to call forward Rich Graves hello so uh sorry I'm a little over addressed I'm coming back from a funeral so I wasn't planning to come here but uh there was a really good joke at the funeral so I wanted to share and also thank you guys for I know you've had a hard couple months especially the last couple meetings so I want to compliment you on the civility that you've maintained in difficult circumstances for approaching the many many speakers I I watch over Zoom the last couple meetings the many
005many speakers who are very concerned about budget cuts um I understand they're necessary I understand they're painful so the joke at the funeral today uh for our friend Dean so I'm I'm I was I was among the distributor singers whatever which is why I have to get up which is really fun was uh there's two kinds of ships in the ocean there are submarines and there are targets so I just want to recognize that there are people around who see the Norfolk Public Schools as a potential Target and I understand that you are not at fault for having to cut budgets and thank you for approaching that with empathy and especially we have students very concerned at the loss of cherished staff that they may not feel as safe um without those staff and you've
006done your best and it's out of your hands as as Dr Hillman said we will we have a lack of legislative update again out of your hands um thank you for your prior service trying to raise awareness of the need that the school district and all other school districts have thank you for your efforts to maintain a budget reserve and stop eating into our Seed corn but now we have to and um yeah when you when you lose things you lose things and you grieve and you move on so um I know that there are people who don't necessarily agree with all the public policy that we're pushing here Plyler veto in 1982 Brown V board 1954. Andrew V Douglas County that was a special ed thing um not everyone agrees with all these things
007um there are a lot of balance you have a hard job of balancing a lot of difficult priorities in a potentially shrinking or at least not physically growing pie thanks for trying and uh I will yield the rest of my time to nobody thanks Thank you Rich for those kind words now I want to move on to announcements and recognitions Dr Hillman yes I just have a couple of them this evening uh the first of which is um from Greenville Park but I'm going to extend it to the rest of the buildings as well uh the first evening music concert at the quote unquote new Greenville park building was held on May 16th I think you just need to stop for a moment let that sink in that you know the building has been open
008for a year and three quarters and they had their first live music concert there just last week and so the Greenville Park choir and band performed for family and friends it was a wonderful celebration of Music in our new school and so I I think it's important we also are seeing it's concert season so there's all sorts of concerts happening there's choir there's band uh there's Orchestra I know Bridgewater recently had some of their concerts I know that there are others that are coming up Orchestra is this Wednesday last week we had band uh and then at the high school and we had choir on Saturday night and I want to take a moment um just to acknowledge that on Saturday night the Northfield High School choirs recognized and acknowledged the service of Ruth legvold
009and so Ruth is a beloved pianist who has accompanied the Northfield High School choirs for the last 29 years and she's a 1961 graduate of Northfield high school and um so there was there was some really wonderful and meaningful video messages from the last five choir directors via video and it was quite the celebration for Ruth um we are so appreciative of the thousands of students that she has impact think about that over 29 years she's played for you know thousands of students and is universally loved by the students who she has played for so it's rare that you have that kind of combination and alumni and someone who had done that work for that long and so we want to thank Ruth for that and again we're just so pleased that in fact Kyle
010Eastman uh the choir director pointed out something that was meaningful that this was our first what he called proper Spring Concert since 2019. and so it is great to have our auditoriums and our gymnasiums filled with music again and we thank all of our music uh programs and uh there are directors for their excellent service to bring the Arts alive in our school district thank you Dr Hillman um does anyone have anything they want to add okay um we're now on to items for discussion and reports and we have several to none and the first is the policy committee recommendations and Dr Hillman do you want to talk about those first or should we just take them in order um okay um so let's start out with the early Ventures handbook anyone have any comments
011that they would like to bring forward on that I think as we just talk about the handbooks I think I will just frame that the handbooks that we brought to you tonight um have very minimal changes uh over last year in fact really uh it was date changes essentially as pretty close to all that was changed I believe that's correct right Anita so these are just just so people know if you're looking through for major changes these handbooks did not have any major change it was very simple updates I thought that was just a good frame for us thank you any comments in early Ventures well if you come up with something we can always come back to it the next handbook I'd like to ask about is the elementary handbook Tom on hey Jade
012at the very bottom where it talks about safety it says Elementary and kindergarten through grade six are required I think we meant all grade through five since this is an elementary book could you tell me tell me the page again uh page eight at the bottom yes um we can make that change in this handbook it is that is a requirement through grade six so I'm sure they just took the piece and added but we we can make that modification thank you for pointing out Tom other comments questions then let's move on to the co-curricular activities handbook any comments questions about that Tom on page nine um under about a third of the way down under category one activities the one act play is still listed Yep this uh we will update that thank you
013and then while we're on that um I don't see that the chess is going to be um letter um eligible or is that still under we are still working through that as we are uh Aaron is uh starting to work through that process and uh we are updating that because there we have also come up there's a couple of other activities at least one other activity that would be similar in that way and so looking at the lettering piece not just for chess but for the fishing team as well okay thanks in first reading so nothing other comments questions if you come up with something they can come back um the next one is for the elementary Portage handbook Tom um on page 10 I think that I'm on the right one um where it
014talks about low-cost health insurance yes um in the elementary booklets the uh the details of it have gross income and the the bullet points were all crossed out um did you want to do that here too we're going to do that here too yes we are we are starting to work with our partners at nuger communications to look at reimagining these handbooks as you know the the handbooks are uh there are 13 of them and it can be a challenge to make sure that when we have similar things in all of the handbooks to make sure that they're all updated appropriately so we are working for next year to reimagine how we do these handbooks and that's an example of something where we felt that we could link to that information not necessarily need to
015include it in the handbook directly so thank you for pointing out we'll catch that and take care of it good job reading these things excellent well done additional comments questions then I guess we're on to the next section all right so next will be the revised 2021-22 and proposed 2022-23 Community Education budget and at the next meeting we'll take action on this event and welcome director of Base good evening thank you for having me tonight you're asking if it's on press the button nope which button 's gonna dude you're good evening members of the board thanks for having me tonight um I'm here to present the budget revisions for our current fiscal year and then the preliminary budget for FY 23. and oh as always I want to start with some reminders about the principles
016of Community Education and highlight a few things as as we go for fiscal year 2020-21 we offered 257 programs through Community Education as you all know covid has created some significant challenges to our department and the Norfolk Community the impact of covid-19 on our Department's budget as you will see will have an ongoing impact from years to come throughout the pandemic we have learned different ways to offer programming and will continue some of these new programming options in the future um and then of course I did share as you know one of our principles of Community Education is access to school facilities and I did share about a month ago just the report of the facilities but as you know we didn't fully rent or use um didn't have our facilities completely open to the
017entire public and non-local user groups for a chunk of time during the pandemic as well throughout the um the last two years ish we have continued to settle into the remodeled Greenville Park um in and really made the Northfield Community Education Center our home due to covid-19 some of our projects were delayed primarily being the work in the former media center with the Minnesota Children's Museum I'm happy to say that has started building has started off site for that so that is um well we'll see a lot of changes over this summer and also happy to report that this year the food shell the on-site Food Shelf has fully opened with access to all of those who live on in Northfield in general but especially those who live on the North End of Northfield so
018if you have not had a chance to see that please stop in and I'd be happy to give you a tour in covid we were especially grateful to be at the ncec it did allow for space um especially last year when we were more spread out to be able to have the space to serve all the students who wanted to be in the building and then of course I just want to highlight some of the Community Education Program components which you will see above um the Community Education Department has approximately 600 employees and this does not include those people or organizations that we contract with for programming so these would be people that are actually on the district's payroll and they are working anywhere from full time to maybe a couple hours a week as
019a seasonal recreation in place so the gamut of who is employed by Community Education is quite vast and then as we start talking about the budget as a reminder for all of you the community education budget is in the 04 fund of the school district and it's not part of the general education fund or the the general fund oh One Fund which Val will be talking with you about later this evening and then of course this slide represents our early childhood programming a couple of things just to highlight on this Slide the graph that you will see um on the right is our screening at age three well it's our early childhood screening data from the Minnesota Department of Education we have made one of the areas that we've made a considerable effort in the
020last few years is to screen children at age three one this allows us more time to intervene if a student is has some needs or areas where they would benefit from Services prior to entering kindergarten on a financial side the state also reimburses us more if we screen children at age three so I just wanted to reflect the growth that we saw in this the state's graph was through 2020. I can tell you that that graph increased at screen at age three last year and is on track to increase this year as well we will screen through June 8th this year and then of course the Community Education Department has an advisory Council that helps guide or guide the work of the department that Council meets 10 times a year members are appointed for three-year
021terms we have two student Representatives we also have a representative from the school board and that's Julie Pritchard and then we have a representative from the city of northfield's Park and Recreation advisory Council this um the budget revisions and the proposed budget for next year was presented in at the April meeting of the Community Education advisory Council and they are who brought forth the recommendation for the school board this is then the budget revisions for this current fiscal year as you are probably familiar with from previous presentations though our overall bail um our overall budget is made up of four funds and those would be the general Community Education funds that would be um the what just kind of the general office operations for Community Education it is Youth and adult Recreation Youth and Adult
022Enrichment drivers education early Ventures Kid Ventures um Youth Development and I think I've remembered them all I didn't write them down that was a good test for me today ECFE is just concludes our early childhood family education program School Readiness includes um Bridges to kindergarten which we have expanded these last two years to anyone in the district that is an incoming kindergarten student that might be interested and we have been using American Rescue plan funding for that but that but does include Bridges to kindergarten are pathway one and two scholarships and hand-in-hand preschool and then unreserved is primarily our early childhood screening budget so while it appears as one ending fund balance these funds actually cannot be mixed so we do have to keep them as for separate funds so as you will see there
023is a pretty um dramatic swing in between what was proposed in the budget last year and what you are seeing is revisions I will say um like many Community Education departments in the state covid-19 has has caused some general large swings for many of us as the impact has changed over the various years so as you will see the one of the largest swings was in general Community Education and there are primarily two reasons for this large swing one we did see an increase in Recreation enrichment and drivers education from what I predicted it was pretty difficult at this point last year to know what the pandemic was going to do and it was pretty conservative in what I expected for those programs to kind of have as an output for the for the rest
024of the year they I will say people have been much more comfortable with programming that has been outside in large settings gyms cafeterias things like that so those programs have done um really quite well and have in in some areas have almost returned to pre-pandemic numbers so that is one part of the the increase from what I had originally proposed the other is um federal funds so we have received a significant amount of federal funds in the area of child care and then is where we've applied them so we have received pretty steadily for the last year two different they've come in two different grants one is a financial hardship Grant and one is a child care stabilization Grant so some of these funds are just meant to offset losses we've experienced in child care
025settings and others of the grants 70 percent is paid as an Inc as a stipend to staff who work in those programs and it's paid based on the number of hours they worked in that payroll and then 30 percent of that Grant is able to be kept by the organization so the employer so there is um not only has these Child Care Grants benefited us as an organization but they've also been key to increasing wages that staff who have worked in these settings throughout the pandemic have seen um so those are the primary we have received just over three hundred thousand dollars in federal funds this last fiscal year so that is a primary um swing in those areas so as you can see the initial proposed ending fund balance was 19 119 the revised
026is four hundred and twenty seven thousand three hundred and thirty six dollars in our uh Community Education budget call does mirror what the district's budget goal is which is to have an overall fund balance that equals 14 of our operating expenses so as you had maybe have caught in the slide before Bel before we are Will and predicting to end this year nearly at um that budget goal here is just a history of the Community Education fund balance as you will see in the next Slide the majority of our budget is dependent on participation fees um and and as you have seen or heard from me say our fund balance often mirrors what is happening in the economy many of you can remember what was happening in the economy in 2008 2009 2010 and as
027we've worked through this this um this would mirror what you have seen so there are a few budget assumptions I made as we as you start to see what the FY 23 budget is those assumptions I made in revenues is that we would have a slight increase in revenue for fee-based programs over this current fiscal year uh while federal funds we have been told will continue through June of 2023 there are no federal funds reflected in the budget that you are about to see we know things can change and we obviously have learned that quite well in the last couple of couple of years so you we have we anticipate that we will likely still receive some federal funds I do anticipate it'll be a reduction of what we've been seeing as they try to
028start kind of taking away what or if you want to say weaning off if they want to start weaning off child care centers for the federal funds that they have received so those would be again the financial hardship and the child care stabilization funds we do know we'll have the continuation of the pathway one and two early learning scholarship funding and then of course we have several Grant applications that are out there in the expenditure areas we've allotted for the appropriate increase in salaries wages and insurance as you also know the um everyone who almost everyone who's in the community education budget is negotiating contracts right now so we will of course do the cleanup of this in budget revisions next year and then appropriately staff having staff support for all children as you know
029the goal of the Northfield Community Education Center and the programs we have there is to have kids ready for kindergarten and to reduce the cost of the general Edge to the general fund budget by providing children with supports that they need prior to entering kindergarten this does mean at times we have extra staff to support students with a higher level of need with unique needs who might come into our setting and we haven't um fully had evaluation time to know what their needs are but we need to apply provide appropriate Staffing to keep them and others safe and to be have time to do those evaluations and of course that has some cost to it because we are at times over what DHS would say is the approach the required ratio in order to meet
030those needs and we will continue to do that to meet the goals of being ready for kindergarten and to support the on those students when they do enter K-12 and then of course we will continue the hand-in-hand preschool section which is a full day five day a week section it might be easier to actually see this on the next side this is just reflecting where our Revenue sources are coming from for this next fiscal year and as you can see the majority of our Revenue comes from fees um 67 percent impact comes from fees the other local sources it includes payment from the city of Northfield for recreation programming different sponsorship opportunities that we have advertising in our brochure as I always put a plug-in for why the census is important the um Aid levian
031entitlements is based on her census numbers around students that we have in preschool adults that we might have in the in the county and so this is where census is really important because those formulas are established by the Minnesota state legislature but they are based on populations that we have in this in either the city of Northfield or the Northfield school district or the county so then here's the proposed budget for next fiscal year um as as I mentioned you and you will see again there is a swing in the general Community Education fund balance again we are not um we have not accounted for any uh federal funds to be included in that and I will say Child Care is one area that we have not seen a return to pre-pandemic numbers um to
032give an example we uh Kid Ventures for this summer as of right now it will average approximately a hundred students a day at um each day that that for the entire summer pre-pandemic we would have averaged 135 students per day so this is just an example of kind of why we have seen a return to normal Pro normal being pre-pandemic programming in Recreation enrichment and driver's education we have not yet seen that same return uh to normal in some of our child care settings with that said we do still um we have students that have high needs in those programs and we have students who have not sometimes have not been in a setting um prior you know if they were if they were born in the last two or two three years they might
033not have had an experience outside the home um and we and also children who are in our Kid Ventures program too we are just seeing kids who are coming in with some higher needs at this time so there is an additional cost to with that with supporting them so that is what is reflected um in kind of what you will see as a swing kind of an increase in funds for this fiscal year and then a decrease in funds for next fiscal year um so overall I'm protecting an ending fund balance for FY 23 at 223 462 dollars of course there are some variables um actual program enrollments fee collection I will say we made a software switch as a Community Education Department this year um to Elio which is is used by a number
034of Community Education departments in the state this will allow um will this will improve our fee collection it does allow for automatic withdrawal it does allow in the child care settings it does for allow for credit card payments I think it's what people expect at this point in time they expect that they can you know schedule their bill pays and plan their monthly and family budgets that way so this we are looking forward to what Leo will mean in the area of fee collection for us of course federal funds available to programs we don't have Clarity yet um what that may look like for this next year and the covid-19 pandemic and program enrollment and then lastly I always want to reflect um the Greenville Park Community School uh because that is federal funds it
035actually can't be reflected in the community education budget so just always want to give a space here so that it can be reflected and you know where we are we are completing our eighth year of the Greenville Park Community School um this is this we are in our second of two 21st century grants and we're finishing up year three of that Grant and so you could carry over the first couple of years but by year three you had to spend down to nothing so you will see um that we are we we have a larger balance heading in into this and so we are we um did not draw from the from just the general fund this year or some of our other funds because we have to spend this down to zero um which
036we will make sure happens the fed this grant runs it doesn't follow the same fiscal year so we have throughout the summer to spend these funds and then you will see as we're reflecting next year the um this contribution that we had had from the general fund was out of compensatory funds for Greenville Park which were part of the budget reduction process so we will be using them the money that we received through the 21st century Grant to fund that program next year and as you may have heard a little bit about who we are um set to expand Community Schools at Bridgewater and Spring Creek this fall and this will be using American Rescue plan funds that must be used they are solely dedicated for out of school time programming so this will be
037an exciting expansion at those two sites to mirror some of the great things that are happening at Greenville Park and with that I'll take any questions or comments thanks director Bailey um do we have any comments or questions not Corey thanks for the report Aaron one quick question and maybe one that requires a little more answers uh concerning the revised budget numbers are those as of the April 26 advisory council meeting correct okay yes so um yep we've received a little more federal funds since then so it is as of the April 26th and concerning the expansion of Community School how do you think that may impact engagement do you anticipate you'll lose families who are going to Greenville and they'll just fill in the other spots or I assume the hope is that just
038increases overall correct that that's of course the Hope primarily we've only served Greenbelt Park families at Greenville um I think the pan this is one area in the pandemic that allowed us to serve because we did some virtual programming we opened up a few programs and then so that was really what when we started to see how much interest there was both from Bridgewater and Spring Creek we did start this last year we've run a bus from the CAC over to Greenville and we're seeing significant interest there kids would like to be at their home school though too and so we really want to provide those opportunities at their home school so why I don't I we've had some of those students come to the to Greenville I it it's not an overwhelming number that
039it's not the vast majority of who participates at programming there other comments questions so I think that if you take a look at that graph that showed us going back to 2009 and really to emphasize how Community education's budget does rise and fall with people's disposable income in the economy and to have managed uh this budget in the pandemic is nothing short of exceptional and so Aaron uh has just done a fantastic job along with Val of monitoring the budget making sure that we are taking advantage of all the federal funds that are available to us um this is a situation that could have been dire and yet we are nearly at the fund balance goal um I'm not going to call it a miracle because it was planful and these two directors have done
040an excellent job making sure that we are able to communic keep Community Education competitive um and the services that are provided are essential to families think about the child care you think about all those different pieces where we play a central role in the community in those in those areas I just we just have to take a moment and pause and thank these two outstanding Financial managers for their work so this is exceptional all done thank you well I was going to say thank you to you as well so um thank you because I know this has been a crazy time for all the school district but especially for your area and I appreciate all the Care you've taken into making it work and making the money work and I know I remember a year
041ago you were in reporting it was a little a little more dire and this seems much more Rosy so thank you for that I do have a question in general um of the kids who end up in kindergarten at the in the school district what percentage you think of those have either been to preschool or ECFE or somehow interacted other than the screening program with uh with the community at so this looks a little different Amy pre-pandemic versus mid pandemic so we were always in the 90-ish percent of kids who'd been somewhere so that would be preschool child care regular attendees of ECFE Library YMCA programming we did see that drop I believe it was around 65 last year so we saw a significant which would mere what what we would say is Community Education
042and almost every other child care center and preschool would say I would say average for us and the community we saw about our 30 30 reduction in people that were in Early Childhood programming so there is this little blip we had been quite high before the pandemic we saw obviously pretty significant we haven't seen a return to entirely normal numbers I will say we are for this year and we essentially full in both hand-in-hand preschool and early Ventures and um registration is open for both for next year and full morning preschools are essentially full we can't take an infant or toddler until I think next march in early Ventures um so we we're certainly seeing a return but we do there is a there will there is a to your group in here that we
043saw significant reduction in children having an experience prior to entering I mean they might be picking it up now but there's going to be a group here that has a different had a different Pre-K experience than what um was a little more predictable pre-pandemic does that make sense yeah that makes a lot of sense I was also wondering about what connection you have to the Portage program in kindergarten Portage do you help with that bundling into that or how what what connection did this so last year we ran much like we run Bridges to kindergarten we last summer ran a jump start to first grade program so for the those students who had last year done kindergarten all online we did allow time for them to come it was modeled exactly like Bridges to kindergarten
044so they spent they had a week they spent half day um in the building with teachers that were going to be first grade teachers to learn routines build that systems um and and model that we ran that at all three elementary schools so we had enough children that were interested in doing that otherwise we are probably I mean we haven't had a we've certainly helped to try to get children as ready for kindergarten as possible we did run a virtual preschool section last year but once they've kind of gone into kindergarten we've let Portage manage them from there I just didn't know I'm just any sort of then yep just the natural other than we did also run an online preschool section last year too and then I just want to ask a favor of
045you yeah when the indoor play area opens up will you please invite me I want to see it I'm very excited you can hold a board meeting there if you'd like yes yes so this um the first if you want to call them there's kind of five exhibit areas the first is being I've been advised it's not good to weld in a school building so the first is started to be built off-site with because the welding is happening off-site but um others will be going in so we are open and there all summer if anyone wants to stop in this summer and see anything but we'd be happy to have you all there when it's completed as well thank you very much Aaron yep thank you we have one more question I'm sorry Jeff yeah
046thanks for your report just uh kind of out of curiosity and with your comments obviously there's a lot of kitchen table talks going on now with uh Rising gas prices inflation a lot of things um along that line but also because you're so much uh fee driven on that I mean where do you see I mean these talks and people are trying to figure out what they can afford what can't they afford um it must be the value of a lot of families putting a high value on their kids education to make sure that they can meet these fees I mean because it's you know we're looking at a struggling time now and we've seen some Peaks and valleys on that so where do you see that as a prioritization that you see coming back
047from families yeah so I think in the child carrier area it's it's twofold I mean employment is high right now and so that often keeps Child Care High I think the shift there is we have people working in you know people work from home now there's a different work style in families and some people adjusted their life enough when in covid that they may not adjust back to a child care setting or their children have somewhat aged out of there and we're talking about new children that might be coming in so in the child care setting um when unemployment goes up that's when or unemployment increases then we will start to see we often start to see a decrease in child care um when expenses are high that's where uh and unemployment being high that's
048where people might choose one less Recreation program one less swimming lesson you know those those things that are extras that's what we start to see then scale back um because that that is what becomes the extras right in a family's budget and so when that when we have a kind of a combination of higher expenses for our economy then we'll see the dip there too we do also just for people to be aware we provide a hundred dollars in scholarships per year uh per child who would be on for your reduced price lunch so we asked them to provide a small portion of the fee but we do provide scholarship dollars for those that um would want to enroll in a community education program and and financially it might be a struggle for them we
049also help facilitate that for the Youth Sports collaborative too and so when families want to play youth baseball youth soccer through the association we will help facilitate that they can receive scholarships to participate in that as well thank you Mills okay I think thank you very much and now director murder stork will present the proposed 22 2022 2023 construction fund budget followed by the proposed 2022-2023 general fund budget there's no action on either of these items tonight board members will ask your questions after each presentation well welcome director murder store thank you we are going to do the construction budget first because that's the easier one and I'm hoping it'll oh I think it's just in order here there it is I will eventually figure out this technology so the building construction fund um is
050very prescriptive from the Department of Education so we are required to run anything that costs more than two million dollars as a project through this separate fund just to ensure that all of the um Bond proceeds and everything are tracked separately um and that they fully support the fund so they're not intermixed with general fund dollars so the Middle School roof actually um exceeds the two million dollar threshold so that's what's running through here so we will have you adopt the budget um for next year to make sure that that is consistent so it's pretty straightforward um similar to how we ran the projects in the past years so the revenue is the bond proceeds and any interest associated with those and the expenditures are just the project costs so um it's pretty easy to
051follow and numbers that I would I'd love to present this all day long so the 2122 budget is implicitly approved when you approve the bond right and so you'll see the bond proceeds came in um I want to say in April so we got about 3.1 million dollars interest rates aren't uh fantastic right now so we're not expecting a huge amount on that and we did actually um we've already paid our first materials um invoice so about 1.2 million dollars was just materials and they have started work on that so we're expecting about half the project cost to be done by June 30th um and so that one point six seven three million is what we have for starting July 1. again we'll earn a small amount of interest on it um because it should
052be all wrapped up by August um Cole would probably want me to knock on wood and make sure that it's done by August but so that's really um how this fund works is the project costs come in and we spend them this one will be done by August and so there won't be any fund balance remaining which is the goal um to spend all of the funds on the project and that is it so that's an easy breezy budget to get you started hey um any questions or comments I think you're really good at explaining it so thank you let's move on to the next budget so this one's going to take a little more time um so this is the proposed general fund budget for next year and again I appreciate your patience while
053we worked through all of this with all of the changes um and the things we've worked through through the last few months so I want to point out it was in the table file just for people yes yep it was in the table file and I'm going to go through in probably a little more detail than I maybe would have typically um just because you haven't had that same amount of time to review it and there's just quite a lot happening in this budget and so I want to make sure that I'm covering all of it thoroughly um so enrollment as you're aware is a significant driver for our budget so about 70 percent of our total revenue is enrollment driven formulas and so you can see the 1819 school year we peaked at about
054Apu is the weighted student calculation so that's what our revenues generated on the total column is um more equated to actual students so just so you understand the difference between those two I'm going to talk a little more about the Apu column today um just because that's where the revenue is generating from so the 4000 460 was um our last high point so we have seen declining enrollment the last three consecutive years and as you can see we are projecting that to continue um consistent with the demographic study and what we're what we're seeing take place with enrollment so the difference between 1819 and the 2122 is a five percent reduction in enrollment and that is significant for our district and I'm going to talk a little um I don't like to go really Nitty
055Gritty into numbers when I'm presenting because I think it's hard for some people to follow and I'd rather show it on the screen but I actually just did this while I was sitting over there so um you'll have to bear with me on this one so the legislature um did a two percent increase in the basic per pupil formula so we're going from 6728 per weighted student to 6863. so we're getting a hundred and thirty five dollars more per student and so if I just take the 4156-51 that we're projecting for next year and multiply that by 135 dollars um that's an additional 561 thousand dollars and so to be clear um the the per pupil revenue is 47 to 50 percent of our total revenue so we're getting 561 thousand dollars on that Revenue
056which would be great if we weren't declining um so we are declining from 21 to 22 projected to decline 71.3 weighted student units so if I take the 71.3 and multiply that by the 6863 that they take with them that's 489 332. so we're getting an additional 561 but we are losing 489. um so that's a net of about 72 000 um that's pretty difficult when you're talking about 50 of your overall Revenue getting a 72 000 increase um at 60 million dollars or 59 million dollars um so I think I I cannot underscore enough how impactful declining enrollment is to the budget so I just wanted to walk through that just kind of to um just to show the impact of that and how that plays out um in the coming slides so um
057some of the revenue assumptions uh we know we're getting the two percent increase from the state um that they're in their second year we know we have declining enrollment special education we will get an increase there because that is based on prior year expenditures our prior expenditures were actually um down and we did not actually meet MO and so we're working through that I have no concerns that we'll be able to meet that there were several reasons during the pandemic that we had less special education expenditures um but that piece will be going up and then um you'll see an increase in the well you won't see it in the revenue because it's a high level but you'll see it um in the expenditures for sure we're projecting an increase for the Career Tech Levy
058that is based on the conversations we had about um the egg program qualifying and in that conversation I actually found out that some of our other existing programs also qualify so we'll be getting some additional revenue for that as well which is a great um great thing to have property taxes is a known it's one of the easiest budget points for me because we certified that in December and so we know that the operating referendum has the inflationary increase which is helpful but again a lot of that is offset by the decline in what it's calculated on and then Federal sources as you can imagine um vary by the day but we are holding all of our what I'm going to refer to as our regular Federal so our title our special ed the kind
059of 1.4 million dollars that we've kind of seen year over year we're holding that flat uh we haven't heard that it would necessarily decline um but we also don't expect more from them based on the other things that we have but there is a significant amount of the additional um Federal stabilization dollars that are included in this budget and I will talk through that on the next slide and then local sources is all the kind of other miscellaneous stuff so participation fees um some ma Revenue interest all the kind of just Little miscellaneous things that is um interest is projected to continue decreasing and we uh do have an assumption in for increasing participation fees to generate under traditional fifty thousand dollars of Revenue that we talked about during the priority-based budget process and then
060we have seen a pretty good um bounce back of participation but it's not quite back to pre-pandemic levels and so the um the revenue is projecting the participation to be the same as it was this year we obviously hope it will come back um even stronger but that's the current um assumption that I have in the model so this is the revenue projection so you can see the last two years of audit results the current revised budget and then what we're proposing for 22.23 the levy is about the same we know that that was certified in December I did include a slight increase for what I'm anticipating for the Career Technical Levy I'm estimating probably between 75 and 100 000 there um for additional revenue for expenses that we were already incurring so that is
061a a good bonus to come out of the budget reduction process State sources um you'll see is 3.8 million again 28.5 million dollars of that number is just the basic formula that I talked about on the enrollment slide so 71.6 percent of our state aid is just the basic formula um and so that just gives you a frame of how impactful the state budget is and how their decisions impact our budget the other big component um included in there is special ed that's about 7.5 million and so those really are the two bigger components in the state sources Federal you'll see is a pretty significant increase there is I would say about 1.8 million dollars of additional Federal funding that is supporting some of the one-year items that were continued um in addition there's just
062multiple federal grants and programs there's um the program that Aaron talked about that's going to support the expanded Community School there's some specific summer funding that's included for this coming summer we have probably 21 separate Federal budgets just for pandemic related covert relief things with all their strings attached so the 4.4 million is an estimate um we're constantly monitoring that and making sure that we're using those funds in the most effective way but that's the current estimate and then local sources is estimated to be about 1.1 million the revised budget does include the sale of the iPads this past summer and so there's a amount in there that is a one-time it included the sale of land and I want to say there was one other thing in there that is not coming to the
063top of my head right this minute but the 1.1 is um I would say pretty consistent to what we saw pre-pandemic just slightly less so the expenditure assumptions salaries and benefits are 79 of our total budget and so we are currently negotiating with all of the other off-year agreements um we settled with the Northfield Education Association last year for a two-year agreement and so now we're working through that with all of the other groups so I have a production in for what I think that that will look like um but as we work through that um those numbers will get updated and brought back with a revised budget in December um like we've done each year benefits we have we're in year four of a um statutory tra increase so we have seen an increase
064of 0.21 percent in our employer mandated tra contribution so we are at next year will be 8.55 of the total salaries um so what that basically means is in it's a percentage of their salary so we increase our Tre contribution in the same percentage of their salary and then there's an additional two and a half percent on top of that with this increase so it's just a compounding impact and this is the fourth of five years so next year it will be at eight point seven five percent um and they intend to keep it there for a while assuming that the fund is still um going strong as you are well aware we've talked a lot about health insurance and so there is um increased costs in the budget for what we have currently approved
065as a district and some ongoing considerations so the million dollars that we contributed covers January 1 to December 31 and this budget will cover July 1 to June 30. so there's another six months of health insurance in there that is currently unknown um but we obviously are expecting an increase to the district contribution so that's included as well um we also are expecting our work comp premium to increase fairly substantially I don't have the exact dollar amount yet but um I would guess probably in the 75 000 range um based on some experience we've seen over the last couple of years so the non-salary and other operational um we have a negotiated Transportation contract increase that we negotiated probably a year ago now I think we brought that contract back I will say um we
066have the fuel clause in that contract and so we as a district pay for whatever the cost is above 2.75 per gallon which is a little more significant right now than it maybe has been in the past and so that is a consideration for that amount as well the utilities um we are planning to look at ways to control that and reduce that overall but just so you're aware the franchise fee that the city implemented in place of the um oh what's the word assessments thank you um that was really significant for the district um I would say that was close to ninety thousand dollars that we saw um annually that we were paying on top of our regular utility bill so just be aware that that's included we did get a refund from the
067city for um all of our kind of historical assessment payments is my understanding but that's a one-time thing is what um I currently understand so just know that that's included as well and then the building discretionary funds that was a pretty significant part included in the priority-based budget recommendations and so I've worked through that um and that will require some creativity from our buildings and our departments but still in a way I think that will be manageable for the coming year and then the updated fund balance goal of 14 is included in those assumptions as well so um the expenditures but I'm going to show the expenditures two different ways like I have historically this is by program these program categories are required by the department of Ed and so every school district in the
068state is required to report their expenditures in these categories I realized when I printed this that um all my labels aren't showing so they're cut off a little bit but I will walk through that so again two years of audit results the revised budget and the proposed budget I just need to say in this space that the 1920 and the 2021 audit results were during a pandemic so in 1920 we had three months of no one in our buildings um a discretionary spending freeze um no sub costs all of those things utility savings and 2021 was obviously a lot of different um models and experiences so I almost think it's difficult to even look back at those two budgets and say that it's going to be comparable for this year or for next year um
069that's been probably the biggest challenge for me in managing um the budget is just not having that kind of consistent historical experience to go off of so the proposed budget incorporates all of the federal funds and all of the items that were included and approved through the priority-based budget process so you will see various ones that go up and some that go down the regular is supposed to be regular education that is obviously our largest that supports all of the regular Elementary secondary learning um and so that goes down that includes things like compensatory El um all of the the secondary programming that's not specifically listed elsewhere under like vocational or special ed and so that's where you're going to see the biggest impact from what was recommended The Vocational um is that Career Tech
070piece and so you'll see that actually increased so we are moving some of the dollar amounts that were originally included or historically included under regular education down to vocational after the conversations that I had with um the department of Ed about what qualifies and what doesn't so we're shifting some dollars down um and then we will get a little additional revenue for that so that's not necessarily an ad but part of that shifted down um special ed we are holding that as tight as possible um that's obviously one where we kind of just have to go with the flow and meet the students where they're at but that's the current um estimate instructional Support Services is that next line that is things like the media centers that includes all of our technology services our instructional
071services um and a handful of other smaller things um so you'll see that that one decreased and that is primarily related to the district-wide media change and the combination of the network manager instructional services or the tech director and the network manager combination so those are the two big things that were impacting there as well as some staff development pieces and the um there were several budgets in there that just were reducing Tech subscriptions or things like that that are included as well pupil support you will see is actually basically seeing the same or slightly higher and that includes the counselors the police liaison contract and some of those ancillary Support Services the nursing budget is included in there and transportation so all of that is staying the same we um we prioritized the three
072counselors and so that's why the budget is basically the same the transportation is going to be a year out any changes that we make for that and so there's federal revenue included to support some of those expenditures but that's why that one is um basically seeing the same or slightly higher due to the increases in the contracts sites and buildings you'll see is a reduction a couple things are playing into this one so there was a 1.0 FTE reduction of a custodian at the middle school so that is included in there the utility savings is included in there but I've also changed um in my system the way that I'm accounting for Capital and um ltfm and sort of the kind of one-time restricted account pieces instead of having them all throughout I'm putting them
073completely in the capital outlay so they're not influencing those other totals and so you'll see the capital outlays a little more significant than for sure than this past year and that's because I pulled some of it a lot of it out of sites and buildings and included it in capital outlay but in addition there were just some items through the priority-based budget that were impacting that budget as well and the fiscal and other is basically our property insurance and our scholarship um and Student Activity funds I think I'm remembering correctly and so our insurance is increasing um not substantially but there is a proposed increase to that that actually renews in December for January 1 but the Student Activities and scholarships have been pretty stationary for the last couple of years which is nice to
074have that being consistent and then Capital outlay includes all the operating capital and ltfm expenditures that were already approved for next year as well as the five hundred thousand dollars for the um the cameras um which actually I just remembered should probably be like 3 30. I think that's what the bid was approved so I will adjust that for the revised budget But it includes all of those items that are kind of one-time not ongoing necessarily and so 61.3 million is the proposed expenditures and this is basically the same exact totals just shown by um how we're spending them instead of where we're spending them so salaries and benefits like that is 79 our total budget you will see the benefits number is pretty significant compared to our historical sponge and that is primarily due
075to work comp and the health insurance and the tra increase the salaries are actually going down slightly and that is accommodating some of the changes that we made through the priority-based budget process purchase Services supplies and dues and memberships are all impacted in a variety of ways mostly due to things from the recommendations that we made purchase Services I think the bigger one is transportation and nope because that's still budgeted at the current year um the technology scholarships and then the other thing that's happening is the way Capital outlay so some of our Capital expenditures are actually purchase services or technology subscriptions show up under supplies category based on the definitions that the department of Ed requires us to use and so I pulled all of those out included them in capital outlay this year
076to help isolate that when we're projecting forward so that we're not extrapolating on a number that's really a one-time expenditure and Do's and memberships that that decline is really just a budget primarily for all of the Student Activity funds I had budgeted about 350 000 and we've only seen about a hundred and fifty thousand dollars and so I reduced that to match kind of what we've seen over the last year that was a newer um a newer piece with Gatsby that switched where they became part of um like truly Incorporated in the general fund rather than a separate statement and so we've kind of been getting a feel for how they operate and where where that spend level will be it is not back to their pre-pandemic level of fundraising and activities that we've seen
077so again the same dollar amounts just a different way to show them and then this is the summary so pulling together the revenues and expenditures and the fund balance so as you can see the 1920 we ended up with a million dollar Surplus again that was related directly to not being in person for three months and the spending freeze we had a deficit budget last year of about 400 000. we are projecting to be about two and a half million dollars deficit spending this year I do anticipate that that will be better than what the budget suggests but I don't have um an updated amount yet due to the way the the year-end things come together so 59.78 million for revenue and 61.3 million for expenditures is still showing about a million and a half
078of a deficit and so with the way uh the 2122 is projected to end at 16. um since this is still projecting a million and a half we are projecting to end at 14.18 which I was not super thrilled when I was pulling this together to see that we're already projecting that again I do think we're going to end better this year um but I won't have that data until probably closer to October um where we're our final numbers are landing after the audit and so part of my biggest concern with this budget and the way it's projecting is really the impact of the health insurance and the premium um we we've talked about cutting four and a half million dollars and a million dollars is supporting our health insurance and that's a pretty significant
079impact to this budget and so that is um as you're aware Molly and I have been working with our consultant on ideas we actually have a meeting on Wednesday with our benefit advisory committee to talk through a couple things but that is a pretty significant impact to this budget the other thing that we will have to look pretty closely at in the future is the the recommended Elementary Staffing levels um are are actually because we are now seeing an increase at the elementary which is not what we had been seeing historically that drove up a little bit of the Staffing which I think is impacting this as well but we will be taking all of this and doing an updated forecast that will be presented in July once we know what the legislature does if
080anything and um projecting that forward to make sure that we are on a good trajectory because I'm not going below 14 and so I want to make sure that we're planning ahead of that um as much as we can we are still um in a a great position there are several districts that would be excited to be at 14 percent um I'm not but that's because we've had a great history here of having a really strong fund balance 14 is still really strong and there are a lot of things that will happen between now and October that could change this um but I don't want to sugarcoat what it looks like we know the health insurance is significant um and so as we get through it I will bring an updated Financial forecast in July
081which is off of our normal um kind of financial cycle but I think it's important to make sure that we're well prepared for if this is really how how it's going to continue projecting I want to make sure we're ahead of that so um I think that is all that's a lot of detail a lot of numbers um but I'm happy to answer any questions you find out thank you very much do we have any questions or comments no I don't want anybody to misconstrue my comments but I think the Northfield school district voters have a greater command this special education than the state and the federal government and I wish that the uh we can't move we can't waive our responsibility but I do wish the federal government would step up to the plate
082and do what they had promised which is what percentage I believe they promised 40. right that's right the support special education for the district at 40 and they're both they're supporting it at what level um the the federal is maybe around 10 percent um the state is our is our larger component so overall um I can't remember the percentage off the top I had an 18. it's uh dismal when I say it every every time this budget issue comes up that the current government does not support special education the way they promised that is true but they do like to mandate it other comments questions Jeff yeah thanks for your report and your hard work um on the insurance issue are there other kind of floating variables out there that change a lot or is
083that pretty dynamic or static or what do you see going into the this fall um in terms of like the self-insurance plan and kind of what we're projecting in that kind of all of the above because that's obviously a major issue yep so we are um I will say unfortunately I'm going to call it probably static um the claims that we're seeing are not ones that we anticipate um not what we would consider like one and done where somebody had knee surgery or hip replacement where it's clearly expensive but it's a one-year deal the things that we're seeing are ongoing chronic um and very expensive and so we are anticipating this trend to continue um I will say the amount that we increase our premiums so that 25 increase that we took did actually we
084had one month um I want to say it was February or March where the premiums were more than the claims uh which hasn't happened for quite a while and so that's a positive um that the amount that we increased it was actually sufficient to help regulate that a little bit and so um my hope is in combination with that increase that we did and some of the things that we're looking at with one digital to we're looking um kind of at a prescription rebate model that's that's different and newer to the market that would help offset some of our um really expensive prescriptions and save the plan I'm hoping with that combination and some of those other changes that are increased for next year would not be as significant I still think we'll need to
085take an increase to make sure that we're at least continuing um to keep up with inflation the 25 percent was really to get us in a in the right place and then we need to make sure that we're responsible with that moving forward um we will not follow the state's model of less than inflationary increases um and so I do think that that's going to be I think the claims Trend will be consistent My Hope Is that with the premiums and the other things we're looking at that it will be a little bit more manageable but we're still in the we still need to address the fact that the district contributed a million dollars so that the staff didn't have to take as significant of an increase and so when we get to December either
086we're going to have to recommit to some form of that um I'm anticipating stepping up their increases as well and getting back to kind of a more balanced contribution level but that's still an impact to the general fund um at the end of the day so I I'm hoping it won't be quite as um continued catastrophic increases like I'm not expecting a 25 increase again but again we're gonna we're only a few months into this um plan year so we're still kind of waiting to see how that shakes out but that doesn't maybe answer your question but that's the information I have for today other questions comments Tom thanks uh for the report um I heard or read or something that part of the reason for the formula shortage is that there was an uptick
087in births in the past year um and I see that for like the kindergarten and one through uh grades one through three and 24 25 the numbers are are going back up and so potentially in six years the numbers can continue to be going back up but um that's to be yet to be seen I was curious um how much typically do our expenditures go up each year as percentage it looked like they went up about four percent now and I mean it's hard to tell for these last couple of years and then how much do our revenues typically go up and again it's yep so um there's a few different ways I look at this um because if you just look at our total expenditures I don't think that that gives you an accurate
088picture because that includes all of our one-time Capital purchases and things that really aren't um you know they had a restricted funding source that was only for that so I don't like to include those when I'm considering like operational increase um I would say four to six percent is probably pretty normal um between transportation and salaries benefits and all of the pieces um revenue on the other side I would say it we're lucky if it's a one percent one and a half percent increase because a two percent increase from the state is on 55 of our Revenue and so the only other places we're getting increases is the Spud formula which we do typically see an increase but again we know that that's already there's already a significant cross subsidy there and so that's usually
089just exacerbating that um if we increase fees sometimes there's additional Revenue there but that's such a small piece of it that it does not actually equate into a significant percentage um Federal almost always has been held flat and so we don't see I mean if you compare right now and look across at the federal that's a huge dollar amount but that's obviously a special circumstances right now and so I would say on average um the other thing that impacts it is is our enrollment so if our revenue for our enrollment's increasing our revenue is going to look like it's going up faster um and so there's a lot of different components to it but I would say on average all things standard um and consistent which never happens um one one to two percent if
090we're lucky so year after year we're losing money and by you know 20 years from now we'll just be broke well we are we've been talking about the lack of uh inflationary funding from the state for the last 30 years and this is the mathematical problem so you can't expect to keep staff with competitive wages on a one percent Revenue increase so thank you you're welcome Corey I hate to follow that picture but uh I have a small budget question thanks for the thorough review so concerning local Revenue sources you had mentioned one not one item pieces like land sale and selling tablets or iPads yep trying to teach my children difference between tablets and iPads they're not the same necessarily um what typically is part of that and then a couple years ago looks
091like we had twice as much revenue from that did we unload a bunch of MacBooks or something that year so um you will see probably every other year an increase for a one-time sale so we have um typically four-year leases and so our iPad lease and our MacBook lease are two years apart and so basically every other year we're either selling MacBooks or we're selling iPads and so this last year was um the MacBooks I believe um and now not next year but the following summer pending some other changes um we'll be selling the iPads again and getting renewed devices and going through that process the um so if I go I'm just going to go back and look at the actual number here because I think one of the other things that gets included
092in that number um I'm not a fan of the way that the accounting rules require me to present it but um because on on my side it shows as an ex basically an expenditure so when we issue a capital lease it's showing as um and other financing source and so I include that under local sources so if we issued a one million dollar lease contract we are showing a million dollars of Revenue in that line item but then there's an offsetting million dollars recording that lease in the expenditures so it's an accounting requirement but it's not real dollars in terms of like physically what happened um like I didn't deposit a million dollars and spend a million dollars um and so I don't love that so I would um have it in front of me
093but I would bet um that the 2.6 includes one of the the least sales um and then the other thing that happened I want to say it was in 1920 but I'd have to look as we sold um or we did a lease purchase of the shop and that was about 606 um I want it off the top of my head I want to say 606 000 but I believe that was also in 1920. um and so it depends it could have been in 2021 but I'm pretty sure it was 1920. um it happened like July 25th I just don't know which year um so those are the kinds of things that really can swing it but if you if I gave you more history prior to when we were selling because we didn't um
094I would say we're we've sold devices two maybe three times now and so we had not done that before like we gave them back to Apple and got new devices um but financially we did the math and it's advantageous for us to do that and so we switched that but if you look historically I would say one million to 1.3 million is pretty um consistent for what we would see for kind of the normal fees you know participation fees interest admissions ma revenue and all the kind of donations there's just a lot of little things that are included in there so that was probably more than you were hoping for but okay other comments questions well I have a question you mentioned that we have to pay the fuel costs if it goes over 275
095a gallon and I'm wondering if you have a sense what that might mean an actual dollar amounts I don't have that off the top of my head but I can um I can look at some of our latest Transportation bills and get you some information about that and it may be impossible to really predict but uh the fuel prices increasing significantly and something we need to watch yeah um and thank you for your presentation did you want to add anything uh Matt outstanding as usual thank you very lots of lots of numbers very clearly organized thank you thank you I'll have one more oh no I'm not sure we can I'm sure we can debate the cost of the fuel we can't not transport kids and as the fuel costs goes up we have an
096obligation to Transportation pay the bill yes yeah I think we're just trying to determine what kind of potential budget impact will that have for us yet thank you okay now Dr Hillman will present the proposed 2023-24 school year calendar yes so we have a proposed 2324 school year calendar several years ago we did two school year calendars at one time we continue to get feedback from families uh wanting to know the school calendar well in advance we know that many companies require their employees to bid their vacation quite a bit in advance and so um believe it or not we have already gotten calls and questions about the 23-24 calendar even though it's well more than a year out we have taken some additional time this year normally we bring this to in February obviously
097we had some other items that were on front burner for that point we took a little bit of extra time so what we're proposing for the 2324 school calendar is based on our conversations with the meet and confer committee uh from the Northfield Education Association Vice chair gurwitz and uh chair Claudia Gonzalez George or part of that so we met we discussed us the new contract language that's going into effect for this coming school year and how to place days on the counter so you'll see that staff will return on August 24th of 2023 for the beginning of that school year I will we're proposing additional Family Kickoff conferences for the 30th and 31st of August of 2023 with the first official school day being September 5th what you'll notice that's different about this calendar
098versus the one the revised version that you adopted for 2223 is that rather than having two teacher preparation days at the end of each quarter we're going to have one teacher preparation day roughly per month uh four of them or three of them I should say a line exactly with the end of the quarter so you'll see that um we don't have a teacher preparation day uh after the beginning of the school year until November 6th then you'll see that we have one in December just prior to winter break beginning then you will see that we do have two teacher preparation days in between the first and second semesters we do not have a teacher preparation Day in February we already have a staff development day plan we have a teacher preparation day coming out
099of April or excuse me coming out of spring break on April 1st and then we do have another teacher preparation day um on May 24th book ending Memorial Day weekend as we looked at Distributing these teacher preparation days remember that there was a one of the key learnings that we had during the pandemic were teachers specifically really feeling um that those what we called the pivot days if you remember in between learning models were really valuable a point to stop and actually really think and plan and so as we worked with the meet and confer committee this coming year we have two days in between the first quarter and second quarter second quarter and third quarter and third quarter and fourth quarter their request was could we potentially try to spread those out so there'd
100be more frequent opportunities for that so we will end on June 6th I want to reiterate that uh the way that we get to this is that we have brought the we have brought several days that used to be considered off calendar so those were days that were part of the 187 days that weren't reflected on the calendar they were to reflect some of the other kinds of things that the work that happens outside of school but again trying to put those days on the calendar to identify and specify uh when that work is getting done so uh this calendar represents that conversation with meet and confer it represents our next iteration of continuously improving the calendar and uh we offer it this evening just as your first reading any questions or comments Corey I
101have a question concerning what's in front of us but also the calendar for the coming school year and I apologize if we did discuss this previously but I'm curious about moving the family conferences at the beginning of school year ahead of Labor Day can we talk a little bit about the reasoning behind that is there concern about less attendance for that and remind me I know this past year as a parent in the district we were able to do that in person is there going to be a virtual option moving forward yes Corey so great question so this year we moved the family conferences uh in the revised calendar before the beginning of the school year when we came to the agreement with the Northfield Education Association about the increase or moving the teacher preparation
102days from off calendar to on calendar we had already adopted uh a 2223 calendar in order to move those days into the counter and give those two teacher preparation days in between the quarters and not to extend the school year right because we had already identified we know people really look at what is that last day of the school year we did not want to adjust known breaks like winter break or spring break because we know people have already made plans and so yes there are people who have made plans for that last week in August as well for that addition but when we looked at all of the different options we felt that that was the least intrusive to the most people I certainly want to share that we've heard from people who are
103disappointed um because they had plans already for our own staff we'll certainly work with those folks um you know people using personally you know things like that that typically you know wouldn't be something that would happen during a workshop week so it was intended so that we could capture those days and not change the rest of the breaks we do think that we will have very good attendance at those family conferences because if you recall prior to the pandemic we we have done a version of family conferences at the elementary schools for nearly a decade um it was called Ready set go day if you recall that and so the tradition of the elementary schools having those days before the start of the school year was a long-held practice and then really it does it's
104it's on us to make sure that we make that those events meaningful for middle school and high school families for them to attend we've had very good attendance at the middle school any of our conferences at the high school have been challenging um just as kids get older we do see the participation drop we've been working with the High School administration to really think through how we can reboot those days we had High attendance the first year of the pandemic and we're continuing to improve we're looking at some ideas like you know to follow your child's schedule so that you'll be able to meet every teacher that's very hard at the secondary but you can't do that with one-on-one conferences but you can if you follow your child's coach I'm not saying that's what we're
105doing I'm just going to say that's one of the ideas um that we're looking at and then will there be a virtual option I can't recall if there was this past year eight months ago was a long time ago yeah one of the things that we continue to work we of course prefer to have people in person but we are continuing to leverage and find what is the right place for virtual options within our parent communication one of the things you'll be hearing about in the next couple of months is we are doing some dramatic changes to what we would consider parent teacher conferences current parent-teacher conference model is outdated it's a relic of the past to think that we can meet with parents twice a year to explain how their children is doing is
106just not acceptable in a modern society so we right now have a teacher work group who are challenging to say we need to have a different process for updating families and touch points is the term that we're really using how do we make that an ongoing conversation through the year you know rather than just a couple of times per year so that means there has to be virtual options in that place to begin the year we are going to really push people to come in person we think that the virtual options are best after we have had a chance to meet face to face and start to develop that relationship that this this uh combination of virtual and in person we're all learning what's the right way to do it so would we turn someone
107away who wanted a virtual option at the beginning of the year at the elementary or possibly the middle school no it's difficult to follow your kids schedule virtually if that's how the high school ends up doing it um but the fact is that we are certainly looking at virtual options but we want to see people in person to start the year we think that's the best way to develop relationships then those virtual options whether it be a phone call whether it be a zoom conference things like that those things become more meaningful after we met in person last question yes considering those family conferences how are Portage families dealt with for that Portage families do a virtual option obviously there yes other questions comments okay um we'll be voting on this next time right okay
108thank you very much and now we're going to move on to Dr Hillman's superintendent operations and covid-19 update so here is the good news is that the good news is our Cova data is starting to decrease so as you know we've really had a steep drop off or a a strong drop off between the end of January and just recently in the last month we we did see our cases in previous 14 days get to about as high as around 150 um when I updated the dashboard this morning we were back into the 70s and it's continuing to go down so we really think what I'm really hopeful is that um Minnesota and specifically Northfield is kind of the nation Leading Edge of this latest increase so that's what we're really hoping for uh again
109what we've seen is that influenza-like illness rates are well within that five percent area and in the report I provide I write this report and make sure that I have the data available as of Thursday um I wrote in my other report during the week of May 9th through the 13th six of seven schools had average less than three percent of their students absent due to ili systems in all schools were below five percent when we look at that updated data from last week we looked at five of seven schools were below one percent for the week average of ili and all schools were below three percent so we're in a very good spot with our ilr ili rates um and so we're very we're hopeful and we're seeing some positive movement in terms of
110the Copa data dropping back down again and again we really hope that that is a good indicator for our community moving forward that we had that Leading Edge of what we're reading about nationally now in a in a spike here in the late spring so we thank people we we did have a return I would say for probably eight to ten school days we had a return of a very difficult time filling substitute positions again thankfully to our uh full-time substitutes and then some uh really hard work by people water buildings we are able to put things together so that we are able to obviously run our programs but we did have about an eight to ten day period where it started to feel again like it was January and so it was very tough
111and I think our principals and our teachers and everyone who steps in on our HR department who really helps make sure that we were able to weather that um mini spike it wasn't anything like what we saw in January obviously in terms of the number of cases but there was some impact in terms of the substitute situation for a short period of time and part of that was also impacted by the late arrival of spring because we had so many athletic competitions that were canceled early on some full day competitions where right when we saw that increase in covert we also had you know things like the track team being on for a full day which takes out a few staff members with it and so there were a combination of a number of things
112that that came to that but we won't sugarcoat that coven was an issue uh there and so again we're hopeful that we have moved past that or they were going in the right direction I want to highlight again a couple things that we missed terribly and I'm so happy to report to you that we did have our Middle School and High School career exploration day return for the first time in a couple of years as you may remember this is a day for middle school students and some high school students to get exposure to Career and Technical or technical careers if you will and we had 38 different companies present you know students had a chance to to visit with people who drive snow plow trucks for Dakota County EMTs they had folks with lots
113of Ag Equipment the Civil Air Patrol was their post other some other engineering firms and Technical firms there talking about their careers and I love listening to people who love what they do I could have spent the whole day they're just listening I don't even know what it's about but passionate people sharing their love of their vocation with our students is big and the reason is it gives kids an opportunity to have a positive vision of their future self as it relates to employment and so when kids see people thrilled with a technical career we think that that helps kids have that positive Future Vision and then uh as an example of our commitment to continuous Improvement a few years ago um after one of our events we talked about how could we help companies
114immediately hire some of our students on the spot so what is now happening is our high school counselors are looking at this time of year which students have a plan already for next year and are there students who don't yet have a plan for those students who don't yet have a plan they're invited and any other people who are interested as well there are several companies that interview High School seniors right on the spot at the end of the day and will make job offers for students to be able to enter the workforce immediately following their graduation so I think that's a great example of how we continuously improve and again we want to thank John Stenson Heather Lacroix from Force America they had a lot of people on site that day because they are
115the driving force behind get it driving force force America the driving force these are the jokes people um the they're really the key player in that particular event and then of course Mark enzrud and Mike O'Keefe are always just instrumental from the school side and Candace Godfrey and uh healthy Community initiative strategic partner supporting that event so it was a thrill to be there uh and see all of these different technical careers represented and for kids to start to have some of that opportunity uh then a few days later we brought back the student data Summit which is part of our achievement and integration plan so this brought together uh student leaders from Northfield Faribault Tri-City United and Waterville Elysian Morristown these young leaders started to develop new relationships with others from across different districts
116and they started to look at their own School District demographic disaggregated data around grades and attendance and ideating what action steps could could they do to close those gaps and so again thanks to Hope Langston and to all the folks from our district who put that together just great to see those young leaders together thinking about big problems and offering ways that they could help solve them so really an excellent event I had a chance to be the opening speaker they're always super fun gotta love the Bridgewater Boosterthon Fun Run right it's a just a wonderful event every year that's their PTO is main fundraiser of the year it's really unique uh in the fact that Bridgewater is the school that does this Boosterthon is a partner a company you partner with they have a
117program really related to the sponsorship of students in the fun run but there's also a kickoff video that some of you might have seen each class identifies a name based upon the theme so one of my favorites was Mrs Cade who's the one of the kindergarten teachers that was the okayed Corral this year that was their name because it was a western theme they have a number of things that involve some character education instructions part of this and then they finish with this Fun Run they had anticipated they would potentially raise around forty five thousand dollars and they raised sixty four thousand dollars so congratulations to Bridgewater and all of those folks who participated in that important PTO event there and they got perfect weather the day before it was pretty darn cold it was
118not a very nice day at the day before but the weather recovered uh High School task force uh we have concluded our initial meetings we are working with Wold and Knutson uh to begin our to shape their report that's going to be presented to you during a work session prior to the June 13th board meeting um we've talked about this before you know we they will be able to calculate um they're going to calculate what the will of that committee was in three different ways they're going to have an option that would look at a potential renovation of the building 40 million which would be the tax neutral option because that's the amount of taxes that will come off the district tax rolls as we retire debt in 2024 they're going to provide an option
119that would be at 55 million dollars and then one at 70 million dollars that 70 million dollar cap was based upon the recommendations of the school district Finance advisory committee now of course this does not preclude the board from determining that you would like to consider moving ahead with a new building because world knows how to calculate that right they know what's the going rate for a new high school with so many students they do a per uh square foot calculation so I just want us I want to share that that is still an option for you to consider but we've asked that committee to really focus on the renovation portion of the existing it could also include some additions uh we do know that our athletic facilities are falling behind our peers uh significant
120we were behind for a while now we're seeing some other districts who have invested in that and when we talk about declining enrollment we do have to understand that people are looking at those kinds of facilities when they choose a community if we choose a community south of the river we will look at that we are now not quite as up to Snuff in terms of other school districts and their athletic facilities um so that's going to be you're going to see that's going to be a part of what their plan will be to share with you as a part of a man Master facility plan and then the final part I want to just share and talk through just briefly is that you may have read that the city of Northfield has shared publicly
121that there is a potential buyer for the Northfield Ice Arena that's on record it's Aurora Pharmaceuticals um first of all the thing that we have to say is how outstanding is it that we have a high-tech company who's been in norfield who is expanding who is looking to make Northfield its home we've talked for years about how do we increase our industrial base with that specific piece of looking to get more entrenched in the high-tech industry and so we're very grateful to our Aurora Pharmaceuticals for choosing Northfield as the place that they want to expand as you may know they bought the old Northfield news building they have quite a bit of other property near the ice arena part of what was shared is that they are also interested in potentially making gun contribution toward
122the relocation of that ice arena and we are in discussions with the city that the school district I may need to think through what is our role in that ice arena moving forward we discussed it with the facilities committee uh last week they have a few understandable reservations about that but we continue to be a partner at the table does that mean that the school district ends up being more responsible for the ice arena than we have been in the past it's a possibility there's a number of things and financing ways that the city can look at this and we are a strategic partner in that effort and how strategy how strategic of a partner are we will wait to see we have hockey programs that have been very successful we also know that uh
123even without the potential sale of the Ice Arena we know that there are going to have to be substantial upgrades to that facility for a variety of reasons including the fact that the current chemical that is used to make the ice is is going to be banned from use in a few years we can still purchase it but it's just something that is not going to be available for purchase for a tremendous amount of time longer so this creates a dilemma for the community that we will be a partner of the table and you can expect to hear us talking about how does that potential ice issue impact what we are looking at with a Northfield High School plan if they're going to move that facility we need to talk about where would that be
124is it is it something that is partnering in the city is would it make sense to be put on our campus somewhere does that make sense it would from our perspective right since we're now the primary tenant there's a number of different options we don't have it all for you tonight but the city did talk about this at their council meeting last week um so I wanted to make sure and we did talk about the ice dilemma with the high school task force as well just because we knew that there was something coming that we were going to have to either be involved in some way shape or form in the potential renovation of that Arena and now with the potential sale again we come back to for years we have wanted to increase we
125have been saying we need to increase the tax base and we we have a high-tech industry that is going to continue to add really high paying technical jobs to this community in the range of 75 to 90 000 per position that's good for Northfield and then if it means that we have to think about how do we partner what is our role in the ice arena relocation that is a good thing it's a good place for us to be because when we increase the tax base that helps the rest of our taxpayers as well in the long term two other items one other item before I get to the legislative part I just think it's important for us um to acknowledge when when things happen across our country that do have an impact and I
126just do want to take a moment to acknowledge the mass shooting victims um in Buffalo New York and specifically when these kinds of uh issues happen the perpetrator of that has been very clear in terms of what was published that that was unequivocally a racist Act and when those kinds of things targeting uh people of color happen in our country I will tell you I've talked a lot scores of students over the last few years and I'll tell you is those things impact our students here locally it makes them Wonder are they safe thankfully our high school administration able to talk through that assure people that they're as safe as they can be our technician here the impact of our technician who is who is recording the the meeting tonight Tim Drake he's from Buffalo
127New York that impacts us right here and what's most disturbing about this is this 18 year old young man um is someone who is sitting in a classroom 90 miles from where I graduated from high school and he was sitting in a high school classroom last year so it is incumbent upon us to make sure we continue to teach our children that every human life has value and that every person has Merit and so while this might have occurred 700 miles away we cannot ignore the fact that these kinds of incidents we have become a little more desensitized to these but these are folks you know who um were grocery shopping right think about what we do when we grocery shop and so I think that these kinds of things prompt all of us to
128just take a look and remember that um this young person was sitting in a high school class or most likely somewhere last year and again not too far far from where I grew up and uh it certainly has impacted people right here locally not only as Tim Drake a Buffalo New York native but we know there are several other Buffalo New York natives in our community so we just needed to take a moment and I think just as a community we need to reiterate and double down on our piece that every person has value and every person has Merit and as public Educators it's our responsibility to make sure that we continue to reinforce that message to avoid those kinds of things happening here and other places so I just felt it was important for
129us to take a few moments to acknowledge that now shifting from that to um a very different topic is our legislative update and what I want to share is my disappointment is not the right word but that's the word I'm going to choose to use right now in in this space so we had a 9.3 billion with a B dollar Surplus the legislature has had several months to figure out how they were going to leverage us to improve the state a grand bargain that seems very reasonable was reached well over a week ago probably almost two weeks ago now in terms of a mix of uh appropriate tax cuts for money coming back to the people who paid it uh some investment in the the states what I would call human infrastructure including about a
130billion dollars for education and then leaving some on the bottom line for the next legislature to use and we couldn't get it done we being the big we right I mean we couldn't get it done these are our elected representatives so what is so disheartening is that all of the work that went into this and we get no bill now people are hopeful for a special session um we are hopeful for a special session as well we understand uh that things got pretty close um to a deal on the e-12 bill but not close enough and in fact over the weekend actually the leadership in both the house and the Senate not even the chairs they were doing the direct negotiation because the committee was not able to get their the conference commuters were not
131able to get their work done by Friday how does this impact us here what it impacts us is that uh the Senate proposal the original Senate proposal in which the Senate very clearly listened to the hundreds and hundreds of people who had asked them to address the special education cross subsidy and when I talked with both folks who lead those uh conference committees in fact uh house chair Jim davny told us on an advocacy call that oh he knew that Northfield was all for the special like subsidy because he had really heard from people which shows that our legislative action committee had done their work what I'll tell you is that the Senate Proposal with a small amount for the letters program which we've shared with you is something we have an interest in would
132have been around 1.7 million dollars for Northfield public schools to reduce our cross subsidy just under that I believe you saw a deficit spend of around 1.5 million tonight so anyone who doesn't think that the special education cross subsidy is it's not it's not like it's the Gap it is the gap so I implore the legislature I implore the governor to call a special session I implore the education committee to come to a reasonable settlement that gives us the money to help offset this unacceptable problem that has been a problem for decades we had the chance to take care of it now and we fail but we do get a second bite at the Apple so we hope that that comes this week anybody listening if you'd like uh information on how to Advocate the
133special sessions called please email me directly I'm happy to give you uh that information um but the issue is that we just need to get this done because we had the chance to do it and we just cannot waste it so um I didn't read what had been written which is always a bad thing um but I think people can uh hear where I am at this is just it's not responsible that's what I'm gonna say it's just not responsible so with that I would ask uh Corey who's also a member of our legislative action committee if you'd like to share any of his insights on the failed negotiations I think you covered it pretty well I will add that I saw late this afternoon that while the leaders in the House and Senate didn't
134comment publicly it sounds like they're going to have a cool enough period before maybe a special session is called so I think some would hope that maybe they'd come back this week yet to finish the work because it's close in a lot of cases there's a number of ominous spills that have to be finished but they're close so I don't know I mean they technically have six weeks I hope they don't wait till the end of June but maybe in a few weeks we'll see them called back by the governor I did want to add because we are having new Representatives next year so I just want to add that representative Lippert is retiring from the house and Senator drayheim has been redistricted to a new District so thank you thank you to them for
135their efforts this year and for their communication with us I don't know if you want to add something yeah I do just I mean I thank both Senator Graham and representative leopard and I exchanged quite a few text messages with representative Lippert on Sunday and I want people to know he was really curing our message um to try to make sure that we were getting a bill done so again I'm I'm very grateful for representative Lippert and for senator greyheim who has given me uh countless hours frankly in terms of listening and hearing and I think that he really did hear about the special education cross subsidy as well so regardless of what happens here with the end of the fiscal year uh we'll have new folks next year so Lac will be back to
136work developing new relationships uh we did have 15 every other Saturday and routinely Corey probably 15 people show up to that meeting and taking action so this is really good um you know the state government is a participatory sport you got to show up right and so people in Northfield did show up and I'm very proud of them so thank you to those members absolutely that's all I have for legislative I do have a comment on the question though unless others have legislative questions okay uh just an update for the board members because I know the packet was put together before numbers are updated considering covid uh just because the last number is a high number on this chart it is back down to 85 so it has been cut by more than half so
137just want to share that for folks who might be looking at that timing doesn't always work out with the packet obviously yes the packet is tight with that time frame and so I thank you for pointing that out and then considering the high school a few meetings ago I had asked about the current assessed value of the high school just to have additional contacts when we're talking about adding 40 or doing projects for 40 55 or 70 million dollars I is a building worth 20 million is it worth 100 million I don't know if we have an answer for that yet and I'm sure we'll find out more June 13th but just want to make sure that's going to be addressed I'm sure it would be at that meeting do you want sorry um do
138you want the value that Rice County has it assessed at or are you thinking like an actual appraisal an appraisal because I know the county would probably be low okay and I'm talking specific to the building not the whole property okay because if we're going to invest 40 million dollars into the building I want to know if sure we're adding to a 20 million dollar building or a 60 million dollar building because if we talk about the potential not them in favor of it of a new building I want to have the full picture of what those numbers actually mean okay all right thank you any other comments or questions Jeff yeah a lot of information on your last segment thank you um one point that I wanted to make is on the vocational interests
139of our young people and years ago you know we had talked about the main thing and the main thing in a sense at the age of like seventh eighth grade and sixth is just the exposure to these to what's out there just to get people thinking kids thinking about what you know what are their talents what are their skills what are industries of the future and I think that we're doing much more of that in fact I put on I'd like to make sure that I could be you know see some of these things that have gone on I'd like to see that it sounds like that program's a neat deal and I think that that's just really something I'm happy about seeing that we're doing and it's just uh exciting to see kids getting
140involved and get excited about their Futures and what their talents are looking for you know obviously get out of school and get a vocation going is uh is just you know one of the funnel reasons why we're here so thank you and again this is a unique um week every year we since we've started it well actually probably after the second we've had other districts visit to see how could they replicate it and we did have another District another Local District here last week looking at it wanting to replicate the program and like the second what Jeff said that um I know in past years we've been notified when it's happening and if I could just ask that in the future you'd let us know because I'd love to stop by too any other comments
141or questions thank you for the update Dr Hillman and now we're going to move on to committee reports and we have one tonight from Tom so I'm with the uh on the liaison to the Human Rights Commission um after months of due process the Human Rights Commission passed a motion to recommend to the city council approval of an ordinance amending and I just wanted to get this all done specific and rundown amending Northfield city code Chapter 30 health and sanitation to add a new section 30-1 prohibition of conversion therapy for minors and vulnerable adults the tentative timeline is June 7th for the city council first reading and for those who don't know from Wikipedia conversion therapy is a pseudo-scientific practice of attempting to change an individual's sexual orientation from homosexual or bisexual or heterosexual or
142their gender identity from transgender to cisgender cisgender using psychological physical or spiritual interventions and the other thing is the commission also voted to authorize a Festival of Nations Community picnic for Saturday July 23rd details to follow I think it's supposed to start at around noon and the intended location is Greenville Park area so that's it thank you Tom and if you do get an official invitation for that or more information we'd love to hear about it all right the next on the agenda is uh proving the consent agenda so we'll now move on to if I can just make one comment before you take the I do want to note in the table file that we do have a resignation in the table file from Dr Lear the high school principal who has served in
143that role for the last 16 years and we congratulate Dr earlier on his appointment as a faculty member at Minnesota State University Mankato Mankato where he will advise doctoral students and teach future administrators so administrator that long of a tenure I just felt was important to point out prior to the board taking action can we turn him down I don't believe that that's an option okay uh so um well as a oh no go ahead I called Dr Lear and expressed my appreciation for what he's doing that he has done a temporary job in Northfield but all of my education courses I never took an education course for anybody who ever watched in a public school and I thought that was an astounding I would say an indictment on what they were trying to do
144and I I celebrate Dr lear's and goal to be able to teach in in what is the significant position of responsibility other comments so as a reminder there were some Personnel items other than Dr Lear in the table file and that would be added to the consent grouping and is there anything anyone would like to pull from the consent grouping for separate consideration is there a motion to approve the consent grouping moved by Corey second by Tom all those in favor of approving the consent grouping say aye aye opposed motion carries all right we're now on to the items for individual action so we have two items to take action on tonight first we have the Arcadia School contract which is up for approval yes so let me just pull this one item back up
145thank you so uh we do have a modified Motion in the agenda so if you go back to January you've been hearing about the Arcadia Charter School contract renewal we are proposing uh an uh an extension or a new contract if you will from July 1 2022 to June 30th 2027 has been has been our practice um after we introduced the contract to you we send it to the Minnesota Department of Education for a statutory review uh the statutory review was successful on all fronts but just a couple of pieces there are a couple of bylaw items uh that Arcadia has to make some modifications to to align with current statute so what I'm asking you to do and they are planning to do that yet this week it's around their Admissions and some things
146are on that um so what I'm at I just have modified the motion to say motion to approve the new contract between Northfield public schools and Arcadia Charter School pending the Minnesota Department of education's recommended changes to their bylaws for the time frame July 1 2022 through June 30th of 2027 so I just want to point out that um it would be contingent upon them making those changes which talked with director stelter last week they plan to actually call a special meeting later this week to make those they're fairly minor but they're just to make sure they're in alignment with the current statute all right do I have a motion to do just what Dr Hillman said okay I'm moved by Corey is there a second second by Tom any discussion comments questions no okay
147all in favor say aye aye opposed motion carries all right the next item up for individual action is the policy committee recommendations so it's the best way to do this today and get a general motion for all of that I think that's a good way to do it could I have a motion to approve the policies as presented the recommendation motion to approve okay I'm gonna say move by Jeff and handbooks too policies and handbooks and second by no okay so let's start out with some discussion um maybe we can just go through them in order and if anyone has any comments or questions just let me know the first one is the areas Learning Center student handbook and there was one question I just wanted to address from the last time around honor roll
148and the three secondary buildings are coming into alignment in terms of uh changing the way that they recognize student performance so the traditional honor roll model they have a concern that that did not recognize uh enough enough students in different ways for their achievement and so they have been working uh to ideate and to activate different ways that students are congratulating for their academic achievement and achievement other areas so this you'll see will be aligned with all three of the secondary school handbooks does that mean no more honor rolls in the Northfield news that does and actually they haven't had the honor roll in the Northfield news my understanding is for at least over a year and a half now any other comments okay let's move on to the next handbook then which is the
149Middle School handbook any comments or questions moving on to the Middle School youth center and blast handbook uh plus handbook any comments or questions on the plus handbook any comments or questions on the student citizenship handbook I'd like to address one question that came to me from a board member who a couple of questions from a board number who could not be here tonight um and that those questions were surrounding bullying so I thought this was really I'm just going to describe so the student citizenship handbook calls bullying out um and Frames it in the way that it does all of the other potential infractions that could happen that are governed by the student citizenship handbook and so the questions are around the who sends it to the principal how do people really investigate and
150understand the situation you know what is follow-through like and so this is one of those times where we um we put in brief if you will because we're trying to keep the student citizenship handbook reasonable about the how bullying is handled but we just want to remind people we have an entire policy policy 5 13 that governs uh uh bullying and so the piece is about what the time frame is very explicit in terms of who can make a report if anyone who can receive a port report what happens when a report is taken the definition of bullying what is actual bullying there's a lot of there's bullying like behavior that might not actually really be bullying right because the definition is that it's a repeated Behavior where there's an imbalance of power between students
151so there's a difference between the kinds of things that's bullying like behavior and bullying by definition of that policy so the questions that had come through from a board member were really just about you know who reports it you know how does a teacher or another staff member understand the situation to make that differentiation is it bullying or is it bullying like behavior um at what point does bullying like Behavior become bullying and so that and then the factor out what's the follow-through like all those pieces are outlined in the policy and they're time driven once a report is given there's a certain three days three business days that it takes to be able to speak before you begin an investigation so I just wanted to point that out that in the student citizenship handbook
152it looks like bullying is one entry like everything else but it does point to several other policies that really delineate what those processes are thank you and it's actually 5 14 not 5 13. sorry about that okay moving on to policy 504 the student dress in appearance comments questions the next one is policy 513 student promotion retention and program design policy 520 students employees and or District data including research requests policy 526 hazing prohibition and I think we've got through all of them so I would just like to point out that we had spirited discussion about several of these at our last meeting and we shared uh responses to questions that people had both at that meeting and follow-ups tonight thank you so we have a motion on the floor um to approve all these
153handbooks and policies that I just went through and so all of all those in favor say aye aye post uh motion carries Now we move on to items for information do we have any items tonight we do not okay that's quick then uh number 10 future meetings um we have three meetings uh that I want to point out on June 13th um we actually have two meetings um one it from 4 to 5 45 a work session right here in the boardroom and then after that we'll move right into a regular board meeting at six o'clock again right here and then we have Monday July 11th 2022 um 6 p.m regular board meeting and I just before we go can I just ask you to remind us about the graduations we will and we'll look
154to Anita to help us with that just give us one moment like where we need to be and when you got it I can check with the height to find out exactly what time you need to be there I don't know that I do know graduation high school graduation is at two o'clock I believe in the past you've met at 131 130 in the principal's office correct and then I will confirm that that would be great and the graduation for ALC is a little bit earlier than that so if you just give me a moment I've got that in my email here okay I'm going to email you the date for the alc graduation is Wednesday June 1st at 6 p.m at norfield Middle School at the middle school so that's a nice spot different
155location yes the alc graduation continues to grow so if you remember years ago it was in the in the gymnasium right here upstairs then we moved it to the high school auditorium which really has not been sufficient of the last couple of years for the number of people who want to be there to celebrate so we're moving into the Middle School auditorium this year excellent okay well um any last comments or questions from the board do I have a motion to adjourn um move by no I mean second by Corey all those in favor say aye meetings adjourned