001foreign I call this meeting to order this is a regular meeting of the Northfield Public School Board today is Monday February 14 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 to observe the work being done on behalf of all School District stakeholders we appreciate the time you took to be here this evening as a reminder Northfield Public Schools requires all people over the age of two to wear a face covering while inside a school district facility including during our school board meetings Dr Herman we have some items in the table file yes we
002have several items in the table file this evening we have an updated operating capital and long-term facilities maintenance budget narrative and presentation we had several additional Personnel items including additional appointments increased decreased change in assignment and we did have a retirement in the table file as well we also have an additional item for individual action about the updating the 2021-22 covid-19 safety protocols those are the items in the table file this evening okay there are no objections we will add these items to the agenda as we move forward okay is there a motion to approve the agenda as presented by Amy second bye Jeff all those in favor say aye aye opposed motion carries we now move on to the public comment portion of our meeting this is an opportunity for residents business and Property
003Owners parents Guardians students and employees of the Northfield school district to address the board all comments to the board must adhere to the guidelines set in place by District policy 206 regarding public comment this is not a time to debate an issue but only for the board to hear your comments you are prohibited from making comments about specific students staff and administrators the board respects and values input but when it relates to a specific individual or a specific matter this input must be heard by the appropriate personnel including the building principal or superintendent and not during an open meeting of the school board you will be gabbled out of order if your comments are not in compliance with these guidelines please address the board from the podium after being recognized by the board chair identify
004yourself and if you represent a group we require that you limit your remarks to three minutes you are not allowed to yield your time to another person it is expected that members of the public will address their remarks with Civility and respect personal attacks by anyone addressing the board are unacceptable please keep your mask on when speaking from the podium the board has allotted up to a total of 30 minutes for public comment at regular school board meetings I will now begin to call those who have signed up to speak in the order in which they signed in Vice chair Amy gerwitz will be monitoring the speaker's time she will signal each speaker with the time they have remaining at one minute 30 seconds and 10 second intervals again please make your comments as brief
005as possible but no more than three minutes our first Speaker tonight is Lindsey Briskey welcome hello all my name is Lindsey Briskey I'm here tonight to show my support for the proposed covid policy changes many of us gathered yesterday evening to watch the Super Bowl where we witnessed 70 000 people stand elbow to elbow in a stadium unrestricted then this morning we masked up our kids and sent them off to celebrate Valentine's Day I've spent hours and hours preparing to present the underreported side of the science and data to the sport in the past months but what I have to say tonight comes from the heart regardless of your opinion on Covert protocols we all share one opinion and that is that protecting our children is a number one priority I say that because flags
006of concern have been raised by both teams surrounding masking and bullying I think particularly of the seven middle school students who were told last Thursday to leave the building and go outside in the 15 degree weather because they chose to take a stand to spend their day maskless just as a majority of us adults do day to day on the contrary Bridgewater students were able to feel comfortable in their choice to be unmasked and were politely dismissed from the school for the day I would like to wish a personal thank you to Mrs Antoine for her professionalism if the first step toward receiving an education is that you must comply and forfeit your bodily autonomy then perhaps all value is lost moving forward this is an opportunity to teach our children about tolerance to build
007our students up with confidence and ability to work through their school day without an ounce of fear as to what their peers and teachers think about their personal decisions to break the Divide within the hearts in this district and love all humans equally we have one week to teach our children to do what frankly most adults can't and that is to see with no filter and accept all beings for who they choose to be let's give these chance to flourish in their Futures to this board I ask you please give our kids the opportunity to heal together thank you the next speaker is Jessica Libra my name is Jessica librock um first let me start out by saying thank you to Dr Hillman and all of the school board members for your continued leadership um
008I also wanted to take a minute to thank teachers and staff across the district who responded kindly and respectfully to the children and their families that chose to participate in last week's No Mass Thursday event um to date we haven't been made aware of any stories of disrespectful behavior from any student or parent who participated um and we also have heard from several parents who were very appreciative of the kindness that they were shown teachers and even principals told students that they were proud of them for standing up for what they believed in and I know that the recommendation you are voting on today within the works before that event but it made our kids feel like that they had a voice so thank you for that and it was truly a great lesson on
009peaceful and respectful disagreement this hasn't been an easy road to get here it has been said that throughout this pandemic that we are all in the same storm but not in the same boat each of us has experienced the last nearly two years in very different ways some of us have lost family and friends to this virus others have had family members die alone in the hospital because of safety protocols related to the Cyrus there have been students who have regressed with their speech saw an increase in anxiety and depression related to safety protocols while other students want to choose to be masked to increase their sense of safety no one's experience has been exactly the same and it is never a one-size-fits-all approach we have differed on our perspectives on how to keep our
010children and communities as safe as possible and these have not simply been ideological differences they have been around policies that physically cover a child's Faith or keep them out of the classroom for extended periods of time we've seen many emotions come out of this and the vote on today's recommendation will likely not be different for many people Dr Hillman has laid out his his reasoning and I ask you to vote in support of these revisions to the covid safety protocols this is a huge step in the right direction for our district and most importantly for our kids this isn't the end though and we will continue to keep asking for all parents across the district to have the right to choose what is best for their kids and that includes preschool ages at the Community
011Education Center we hope that this will happen very soon as you may recall in December I stood up and showed you a picture of my eight-year-old daughter that she Drew of her in a mask and she took down to show what was underneath well tonight she asked me to bring this in it's her Valentine's Day box from school and she was excited for you all to see her smile and she's really excited that she gets to share this really really soon so please vote Yes on the recommendation thank you [Applause] thank you Jessica Lori Williams would you like to share good evening uh I don't envy you you all here in in your elected positions I have to say um I I don't make scripts and speeches I just want to get up here and
012and speak from my heart and and say that I I understand that there's you know major setbacks you know decision delayed on shots for young children which is interesting when you when you when you focus on the fact that hmm what's the big rush to to say that this is safe and effective for six months to five years old well because then the Pharmaceuticals never have any liability issues ever until the end of time so so they want that push through get it done you know so they're not too happy schools roll back covid-19 policies in response schools are dropping mask mandates easing covid-19 testing um you know rolling back on you know Wall Street Journal Saturday two days ago John Hopkins study just came out says oh by the way meta-analysis holy Moses unexpected
013consequences from the whole covid you know experience you know lockdowns and from a business person's perspective this has not been an easy Road this has been a takedown this has not been a downturn this has been a takedown of small and middle business 500 new billionaires last year it's been a great success from a very small percentage you know of the population's perspective billionaires trillionaires are up 35 percent in their wealth are you kidding are you kidding meanwhile our cultures robbed our kids are having problems and we have to thank you Amy we have to adjust my question to you is the coveted relief money can we give it back our founding fathers they anticipated this day our our government structure is is is aimed at this day where it goes back to the small
014to the small County local to the township to the government to the state then to the feds we elected you to be leaders and if if the leadership that you're you're having to listen to because you're taking money from them is not good for our children then give the money back that's what I have to say thank you Lori I see we have some president who are not wearing a mask we now respectfully ask that you put on a mask if you need one we have them available for you in the back we will pause and wait to proceed with the meeting until everyone is wearing a face covering that fully covers their nose and mouth I see that there are some who are not yet masked at this point the board will recess to
015give you more time to put on a mask if you continue to be unwilling to comply with the district's face mask requirement you will need to leave this meeting this meeting is being live streamed so it can be viewed from a remote location okay so I'm calling a recess for 20 minutes until um and give you some time to mask up thank you okay we're back from Recess and foreign who are still not wearing a mask and we asked respectfully that you put on a mask if you need one we have them available in the back of the room I will call for a recess if we don't have everybody wearing a mask and wearing it properly covering the nose and mouth okay I will move for a 10 minute recess to allow everyone present
016to fully mask is there a second second all those in favor say aye aye opposed motion carries we are in recess for 10 more minutes okay we're coming back from the recess and I asked everyone to please um adjust your mask if it has fallen below your nose so that we can continue with the public comments section of our meeting tonight good okay next speaker is Adam Becker welcome Adam thank you uh good evening my name is Adam Becker I am a father of three children in the Northfield school district um it's not hard to find things that we have screwed up and done wrong throughout the entirety of this pandemic of the forest masking of our children is the last thing that needs to go in addition to the arbitrary rules that we set
017forth earlier such as uh six foot distancing uh and all sorts of craziness that that we imposed upon ourselves uh via the government um I sent out an email to the board members uh and Matt Matt you and I have uh conversed the email I I look forward to our further discussion um if you did not have a chance to read it yet I I urge you to do so uh what I believe is very convincing data and statistics that shows um that what we have been doing is wrong um so I'm not going to bore you with data and statistics today what I have is an interesting letter that I found this is from chap Peterson who is a member of the Virginia Senate um and I'm going to read to you some key
018points to that that I think really drive home the points that what we are all trying to make here today to the best of my knowledge no scientific basis has ever been offered for Force masking rather parents are asked to assume that these policies save lives after a year the data on student masking is easily founded it is overwhelming the force masking of our school children has no correlation with Community Health let us examine the data points first of all there are major states around the United States example Ohio Florida and Texas by the way does anyone remember when Texas got rid of their Mass mandates the Gloom Sayers and doomsayers were out on Twitter and the streets telling everybody how everybody was going to die and this was an extreme catastrophe well guess what
019that didn't happen everybody's fine uh which have they have had no Mass mandates for at least the past year when vaccinations became widely available there is no meaningful discrepancy between the health outcomes of their children and those living in States like New York and California or jurisdictions like Fairfax County which have strictly masked children according to CDC data numbers regarding health child health in these states are functionally equal an outcome which reflects the fact that covid-19 pandemic over two years has had no statistical impact on child mortality rates the residual question is whether the force masking of children is beneficial to others again the data shows the opposite that masking has no meaningful impact on community transmission in a comprehensively researched article public published January 26 in the Atlantic magazine the authors who are infectious
020disease specialists concluded that no real world data indicate that these Mass decreased Transmission in school settings numerous other settings by impartial media confirm these same findings I will and I will end with this okay I'm sorry thank you thank you Mr Becker hey Rachel trinka would you like to share [Applause] Rachel trinka you're you're next hello good evening my name is Rachel trink I'm sure you guys are not surprised that I'm here and I'm uh glad to hear that you guys will be voting on lifting some of the mass mandates and Protocols of cover 19. I had a big long thing written up but I won't waste anybody's time anymore and um you guys have all gotten my emails I've spoke at board meetings um and I just really encourage you guys all to really
021please pass this so I appreciate it thank you for your time thank you Rachel all right we have Diane Miller you're our next speaker oh my name is Diane Miller I'm an attorney and director of Law and public policy for National Health Freedom action and National Health Freedom coalition as a national leader I am extremely familiar with the politics and litigation regarding countermeasures against covid I am a resident of Northfield and raised my daughters here and they both attended Northfield public schools and are now grown and live away as a parent and grandparent I'm opposed to Children wearing masks that cover their faces and obstruct their airways when I learned that my own Northfield school system was requiring the masking of children I was very upset I'm very involved in the National efforts to protect
022the rights of all people to make medical decisions without coercion and to protect parental rights when it comes to medical decisions for the children because it was happening in my own Hometown I worked to accumulate the research regarding the issues of using mass as a counter measure I gave a packet of This research and information to my former neighbor Noel stratman um because I knew he was on the school board the worldwide research that I gave him show us why you would not want to have children put masks on their faces I was hoping the masking would stop now I understand the masking has continued and I didn't realize that there was a resolution to lift the masking and I'm so happy to hear that didn't know that when I Was preparing my remarks tonight
023so hope that that happens I know I've heard from and talked to numerous parents who have removed their children from public schools to keep their children medically and emotionally safe around the country Mass mandates are being dropped last week 170 schools in Illinois sued the school board over mask and testing mandates and the judge ordered a temporary restraining order against the school boards and the mandates were halted I brought a copy of the opinion for your review the judge said that Governors do not have the authority to delegate their health emergency powers to school boards schools are not Health agencies they are education focused if my children were still in the Northfield school system this is what I would be considering if you review the research readily available you will find many reasons to not
024mask the child mask adversely affect respiratory physiology and function masks are ineffective as a counter measure for children mats have a negative impact on Child Development social Mass can contribute to the lowering of IQ and mass policies have become politicized with financial and political party conflicts I joined with my northfielders tonight and ask that you immediately stop any requirements for children of Northfield to wear masks over their beautiful healthy North Fielder faces in order to attend school and honor the parents of children and their parental rights to make medical decisions for their own children I am committed to working with Northfield parents to remove the policies of masking any child thank you Miss Miller hey we have Iris Lee Iris Lee you're our next speaker is that Iris Iris okay thank you welcome public schools
025in the United States have been ordered to public schools in the United States have been ordered to violate girls sex-based rights in favor of a neo-religion called gender ideology which also indirect violation of the U.S Constitution is being caught in place of science-based biology and Anatomy even the enrollment form has been changed to satisfy the high Priests of the Church of Trance not only is there a separate box devoted to gender identity but where it should say sex now says gender I demand as a taxpayer and a parent of two children in this District that the district pay at least lip service to reality and change the enrollment form accordingly I sent my children to school to learn reading math history and Civics I've always supported teaching basic sex education in schools because I trusted
026the public school system I shouldn't have done that instead of using science reality-based material schools have been indoctrinating kids our kids using propaganda materials the gender bread person supplied by the church of Trance gender ideology has no base in reality it is a pernicious neo-religious puppycock that the Biden Administration and Democrats and I've always considered myself a Democrat by the way have illegally forced on Americans and worst of all on our children the French left of center Weekly Magazine lost Quest published the letter signed by over 50 medical professionals and prominent academics including doctors legal and educational experts and all kinds of fancy people excoriating transgender ideology it was entire almost entirely ignored by the international press they say it is now urgent to inform all citizens about what could Well appear tomorrow as one
027of the greatest health and ethical scandals which we would have watched happen without saying a word the commodification of children's bodies the true theory is coming and she's not looking happy thank you thank you Miss Miller okay our last speaker for tonight our last speaker for tonight is Julia Klein welcome Julia hello I am a student at Northfield public schools and I just wanted to speak out against the motion removing the mask mandate today I am very concerned about catching covid for me as well as my two sisters and all of my friends especially since masks do not just protect yourself but also all of the people around you I strongly support keeping the mass mandate in place at least until the end of the school year with potentially some exceptions for special cases such
028as elementary schools where children are much like much less likely to both catch covid transmit covid and to get severe cases of a Cova that can result in permanent injury or death as well as for cases such as special ed classrooms in which maybe contact tracing as is more is easily more well done as well as cases in which students need masks removed for Social Development reasons I'm done thank you Julia okay that concludes the public comment section of our meeting tonight all right we move on to announcements and recognitions board members do you have any and one more thing calling you first okay Dr Helen would you like to share yes we have several announcements this evening first we'd like to congratulate the following student athletes on earning their trips to State we want
029to congratulate our gymnast Julie Harris on the floor and Sydney Peterson on the floor and Paige Meyer on the bars congratulations to our Raider gymnast for earning a trip to the state uh competition uh we also want to uh sorry we would ask you to be careful with the side comments and the talking in the audience we can hear you up here and it's impeding our our meeting thank you so much we also want to congratulate uh Sam folland who is going to go to state as a Nordic Skier uh these students really work hard in earning a trip to state is a pretty prestigious thing in these events so congratulations to Julie Sydney Paige and Sam on their trips to State and we want to congratulate two teams who have really been dominant uh
030the raider wrestling team just won the big nine conference Championship in decisive fashion and we want to congratulate congratulate our boys swim and dive team who won third place at the True Team meet at the state event and that's where you it's a true team event where all the points are counted and it's not in it more of an individual competition which swimming is in often uh time so congratulations to our wrestlers and our swimmers and then uh the Northfield area all school art show has returned for 2022. the show is titled better together and runs February 9th through March 12th The Gallery hours are Wednesday data Friday noon to 5 PM and then Saturday is 11 A.M to 4 P.M the public reception the celebration will be held on Saturday February 26th 10 a.m
031to 2 p.m with the district art teachers on hand to greet you throughout the event and we hope that the community can find a time to see the gallery work and just the incredible art that is completed by our student artists so we strongly encourage members of the public to head down to the Northfield art school to see that amazing display of student talent and those are the announcements that I have this evening very nice thank you so much sweet have any other announcements and just interrupt quickly if your mouse has slipped below your nose I ask you to please adjust it before we go on thank you so much Amy well I am excited to announce that our own superintendent Matt Hellman has received the Masa which is the Minnesota Association of um of
032Minnesota sorry um the administrator of Excellence award for 2022 and each year this award honors an administrator from each of the nine massive regions the person selected is representative of the Leadership Excellence found in NASA members exhibits of willingness to risk possesses strong communication skills and is a progressive change agent and has high expectations for self and others so congratulations Matt we're very proud of you thank you thank you any other announcement recognitions I wanted to bring up I saw in the paper that Miss Olivier the Middle School music teacher I know she was recognized or she was uh recognized back in August in the paper featured her again recently and so I wanted to just recognize her and celebrate her for teacher of the year yeah and she'll find out um in May I
033believe is when they hand out that award so just uh proud of her and um we're very lucky to have her in our community any other announcements hey we are going to move on to items for discussion and reports board members the first two items for discussion and reports are the proposed 2022-2023 operating capital and long-term facilities maintenance budget followed by the long-term facilities maintenance 10-year plan and our next meeting will be asked to adopt the budget and approve the ltfm plan so that it can be submitted to the Department of Education Bell murdersoff Director of Finance and Cole Nelson director of buildings and grounds will share tonight's presentations and can answer any board members questions Val and Cole will you please present on the proposed 2022-2023 operating capital and ltfm budget good evening so
034I'm going to talk a little bit about the capital and long-term facilities maintenance budget proposed for next year so just a reminder of what we consider Capital our operating Capital lease Levy and capital Levy are all restricted in our operating Capital fund operating capital is a mix of Levy and Aid it is a student driven formula least Levy is the amount that we are authorized by the state to Levy for very specific leases that we have for example the ice arena or the boys and girls what oh there you go sorry a little bit closer um and then the capital Levy is our voter approved 750 000 Levy that we use for technology and some other allowable uses long-term facility maintenance is in its own restricted account that actually began in fiscal year 17 and
035replaced the health and safety and deferred maintenance revenue streams that we had the long-term facility maintenance just for reference is roughly a million dollars more per year than what we were receiving with um health and safety and deferred maintenance so these are presented separately and approved separately for a couple different reasons um the first being that the department of Ed requires us to do so and the second having the approval in February actually allows uh director Nelson and his team to get ahead of the game get quotes and bids for all of the projects and things that we're going to work on to make sure that we're getting the best rates and schedules because all school districts do the vast majority of their work in the summer so getting ahead of that has been really
036helpful for the past several years when we have done that so these funds are both restricted not only in the sense that there are very specific restrictions to what we can spend the funds on but they are also in their own accounts and tracks separately so we can only use those funds for those purposes and they are part of the general fund so while we're presenting it separately approving it separately you will see it in the journal fund budget as well and we'll talk about that when that's presented and then each year we do have a capital committee that prioritizes a small portion of the operating Capital this is a group of stakeholders across the district that looks at all of the needs and comes to consensus on what needs to be prioritized District One
037so this is the total revenue it's about just shy of 3.3 million dollars you can see operating capital is about 770 000. least Levy is about 407 and then the capital Levy the voter approved Levy is 750 000 and then the long-term facilities maintenance is just about 1.3 million the operating Capital will um be declining over the next couple of years while our enrollment is declining the long-term facility means is also a student enrollment driven calculation we will see that decline we have also taken off a small percentage for the Middle School roof bond that was approved at the last meeting or the meeting before so that's what's driving the most of these changes so specific for the capital fund um these are the expenditures and you can see two years of actual history our
038current revised budget and then what we're proposing for 22.23 the label on the second line got cut off somehow so I apologize for that but it is the leases for both Spring Creek and the shop you can see that's a consistent dollar amount for the last couple of years the lease facility space is the total for our leases it does not match the total for the revenue because we are not allowed to Levy for any operating costs are included in the lease total so there's a small percentage that the district case for out of the operating Capital that is not reimbursed by the lucky technology leases covers our iPads and laptops across the district schools and programs is the allocation that allows each building to have some discretionary Capital to choose how they would like
039to spend that in their buildings as well as some specific programs such as our Technology and Engineering Department music activities that sort of thing textbooks and digital curriculum is managed by director of instructional Services hope Langston there is some upcoming instructional implementation so that amount is increased you can see it to 250 000 for next year I believe it's science but I could be wrong about that Network Administration I included on here so you could see this is the only group of salaries that we are that is eligible for this fund we have used this historically to help offset expenditures in the general fund as needed we do not have it proposed in the 22-23 budget because we wanted to ensure that those were included in the priority-based budget process in total and then the
040Gleason property was a one-time expenditure in the 1920 school year and that was to buy the um three acres that are adjacent to the shop lease you actually have to drive through that to get to the shop so that made the most sense and then the capital committee allocation obviously can vary from year to year depending on what is available in 2021 the number is quite low primarily because we did not do as much as he had planned because of the pandemic there were lots of other things that we were attending to during that time um so you can see for 22-23 we have proposed about 613 000 that the committee allocated and then for ltfm these are the the numbers are the actual codes that the department of Ed requires us to use and
041categorize expenses so you can see what our plan is um by the different categories um basically from uh three six three and above those are the old health and safety codes so there's still a structure in place to continue those very specific expenditures that require our annual um elevator inspections and all of those kind of standard things that we're required to do and then the lower half of the expenditures are the projects that director Nelson and myself prioritize across the district based on the funding we have available so you can see there is a very large one million dollar project um and I have the projects listed on the next page and so we'll talk through some of those um but about 1.6 million is what we're anticipating um oh I skipped the slides I
042forgot about the pictures um so this is just a couple of snapshots of what this money does accomplish for the district I know it's not very glamorous to look at the numbers all the time but to see the actual results in the building I think is a good way to wrap that up so we actually remodeled the old district office and renovated that into the shared mcss and torch student suite and then the other half of that space is now for the technology Services Department we also updated eight of the bathrooms at the high school which I'm sure you are aware was much needed and so those clearly look beautiful now we also replaced the Middle School pool windows which I think were original to when that was built and resurfaced the Middle School tennis
043courts so lots of good things around the district um so our upcoming projects in the capital side of things a science room Edition at Bridgewater and I want to be really clear we're not adding to the building we are using um likely remodeling a room in the media center or adding a room within the media center to make sure that that space is comparable to the other two elementaries and has the appropriate things that we need for silence um we'll be replacing a large plow truck updating radios for the district replacing a riding scrubber panel sander for high school wood shop and a CNC plasma table um there's lots of other little things but those are kind of the big ones you can see there's quite a wide variety of recommendations there and then for
044long-term facility maintenance we will be remodeling the High School main office this summer we've been working with golden knusten on this project and that is currently estimated at about 950 000 so that is the vast majority of what we'll be doing um but then like I referenced with health and safety there's annual inspections and testing um we'll be replacing some flooring in the music and media rooms at Bridgewater resurfacing the Trek and then um just our kind of annual patching and repairing of pavement so overall those are kind of the upcoming projects um and so when you pull that all together you can see kind of where our fund balance has been historically our goal as a district has been to maintain at least two hundred thousand dollars in the operating capital and six hundred
045thousand dollars in the long-term facility maintenance so for the proposed 22-23 we are um projecting to deficits and the operating Capital but the anticipated fund balance is still 478 000 which is well above the goal and then for long-term facility maintenance again projecting to spend that down as well but again ending at 704 000 which is above the goal of 600 so feeling very confident um with the strong reserves it allows us the flexibility if something really did come up um that was unforeseen that we could respond to those as needed and then this is the ltfm 10-year plan I think this is a second item on your agenda but we're going to kind of talk about them together um and then director Nelson is here as well to answer any other specific questions you
046have so this is a requirement of the ltfm revenue so we have to submit a 10-year plan to the Minnesota Department of Ed to receive the funding they do not come out with the forms for this until about July and so we have the last probably two years done it as a part of this meeting when we're already presenting the budget and talking about it and then we basically transfer these numbers onto the forms in July when they're available and then submit that um on behalf of the district so as you can see the 21 and 22 spliers um obviously 22 through 2032 are estimates at this time but you can see what actually happened in 2021 and then the 2023 are the numbers that I just presented ending with about seven hundred and four
047thousand and then it just goes through a forecast of the major Replacements we're anticipating um obviously anything past three years is a pretty big estimate at this point but we want to make sure that we're on track for the larger items such as roofs and that sort of thing so overall pretty consistent expenditures throughout we do know that we're going to have several things with the high school that would qualify under the long-term facility maintenance and so some of that is planned for as well but that's what this document is for so I think that is everything so if you have any specific questions um Dr Nelson or myself would be happy to answer them thank you so much board members any questions Amy I think I'm repeating back just what you said to me
048but um the reason why our ending fund balance is going up and up is just to save it for a new roof if we need it do we do we have an expectation of when we need another new roof or we're just saving it at the sort of a rainy day fund um I think really any amount we can save and not have to bond for anything is um the best strategy because then we're not paying all of the interest and the fees for the processing do you know off the top of your head what our next roof on the schedule is good yeah I think air handling units in particular can be a little expensive depending on how how you replace it so um it's really just sort of a a long-term strategy to
049make sure we have a very thing to cover it we look I would say more intensely at three year to make sure that we have enough for the projects that we know are coming in the near future that makes sense great thank you yeah thank you yeah all right thanks for the report can you explain a little bit on how you know the money that we have and I know we have 10-year plans on facilities versus going out for a new Bond for something I mean how does that work where we can effectively use you know our 10-year plan to update or whatever our needs are obviously they're like say the high school or whatever it is um and then is there a difference between going out for a bond for maintenance and a bond
050for building I mean it's kind of like because you know what I'm saying I'm sure there is and it's just kind of like how do we leverage that into our best plan for um let's say the high school for example and I was here talking to Matt the other day and it sounds kind of geeky but I those pictures of the school up there all of them I think we should have because not many people come into this office or are in here but I mean it'd be nice to have all of those pictures up of the whole um you know all our all our buildings somewhere I don't be at the senior high or something else because it's just I mean I think it's kind of neat to look at it but I'm still
051amazed when you look at that picture how well built and how nice looking especially after the improvements that this building you know has done and that's just that's just a you know kudos to Quality Construction when they built it but anyway I'll let you comment on that so um a couple different questions in there um that I'll that I'll talk to so um if you recall when we did the bond for the elementary projects we had a set scope and a dollar amount and then we actually infused about 1.8 million dollars of our ltfm to enhance what we were doing because the contractors were already going to be there and on site and it was a way to save money we could have done those projects separately but it would have been at an additional
052cost so we created is the term that I would probably use the funds together to enhance the project so that is one option that we could do with whatever the decision for the future of the high school is we can choose to ask the voters for an amount of money and then supplement it with ltfm to kind of maximize the um the things that we could do there another option is the ltfm bond which is what we did for the Middle School roof that I would say is a little more limited because we are committing our ltfm revenue for an extended period of time we are currently at about 17 percent of our total revenue um I would be concerned about doing much more than that because it really limits what we can do annually
053um year over year but that is an option that the district has so those are kind of the two Avenues I would see um as a way to support the um whatever the decision is for the high school and that's true of any any of the district facilities Julie thank you Val and um Cole for your work I a couple of things that I appreciate about the plan is how there's always been um a awareness of how the different buildings might um be different in terms of the facility and and the example of that of course is adding the science space at Bridgewater and and um that's that's that's really good because we're just providing that you know Equitable opportunities for those for students in those buildings I know we've done that before with music
054in the past and certainly drove a lot of the plan around the new buildings in terms of making sure those spaces um were Equitable um the long-term facilities maintenance 10-year plan the revenue um that you're forecasting I'm assuming is revenue that you based on where you anticipated per pupil count and that you likely use Hazel reinhardt's demographic study to to estimate that and knowing you that was probably conservative correct okay yes I actually used my enrollment projection um but I verified it against Hazel's and mine is more conservative up front um but in total we came out pretty close and so I I stayed with my numbers because that's what I presented um so that that decline that you're seeing is partially enrollment based and partially the percentage of the bond Revenue that comes off
055the top okay then I was going to have um Cole speak a little bit about the capital committee and the work that that they're charged to do who's on that committee and I know there's always a lot more projects than can be funded so it's um the committee work is great we don't highlight enough and so if you just want to speak a little bit about their work and um you know how they determine to spend you know those limited resources yeah absolutely was uh being my first year being a part of it I thought it was a very collaborative way to kind of gauge the needs of the district and and to kind of understand what the needs are in the buildings they know their facilities best so it's a group of all the
056admin from across the district and and and the other leadership team so you said there's a lot of projects that come onto the list and we all kind of sit down and go around the table to kind of discuss the needs and and hear hear the needs from all the different buildings and then kind of as a group we determine what what is a very important to the district and what kind of goes back to our true needs for the year and and then start to zero in uh what projects we're going to take on for the coming year and and like I said it was a very collaborative group work and and uh at the end of the day everyone walks away I think happy with all the decisions that are made so great
057thank you thank you so much I just I'd like to just add and point out if you take a look at the upcoming projects that Val had in the document I think it really does show for people who are watching it does show the breadth of what we fund so it isn't just I think when we think of capital it we solely think of facilities right so people think of remodeling and things like that but if you take a look at the list you know we're talking about enhancing instruction as well by modifying and making sure that Bridgewater has a science room that is similar to what Spring Creek and Greenvale Park we have a science curriculum science Specialists having we've always prioritized having similar facilities like that across the system and that's something that
058in a lot of cases our own people can do some of that work at least to get started um also people forget that we have vehicles so replacing trucks is an important piece we always buy used I mean we're never buying something brand new um communication things like radios but then also investing in careertech Ed by replacing equipment in the high school shop that can only come from the capitol I mean it's too expensive have to come from the high school fund right so the CNC plasma table and the panel sander those are things showing our dedication and our updating of the equipment in those areas so I think sometimes people only think they only see the tuck pointing they only see the patching and the repairing but they don't see some of these other
059kinds of things that have instructional um impact so and I'll also take this as the time to remind people that uh the long-term facilities maintenance Revenue law has been a game changer for school districts AS Val said it made a big difference in what we were able to deliver on for the community with the elementary bonds and I'll take it as my annual reminder that that the chief author of that bill was Senator Kevin Dahl who is a teacher at her high school during his time in the Senate and that single Bill had a significant impact on every school district in Minnesota and their taxpayers and so if we don't believe in what the power of legislation can do the ltfm in my career is probably one of the most significant changes that have been
060made for schools and we're getting the results from it stick board members any more questions or comments Amy I'm curious about two things um first how much is a used plow truck cost and secondly what's the million dollar project you told us you were going to tell us about it but I I never figured out what it was I did it is the high school office remodel at about 950 000. the difference is a few smaller projects that um I didn't list out specifically okay yeah uh plow trucks well as you can tell if you've searched your vehicles are kind of a it's kind of a game at this point but we're looking at about I believe it was 55 000 and we'll also be trading in a couple a couple of our trucks that
061we currently have that are older um and this to get you know a used plow truck for the grounds team so thank you any more comments or questions all right thank you so much thank you we'll move on to the next item which is a great segue for Dr Helman and director murder staff will take us through the budget prioritization process yes so in your packet you have an overview of the budget planning and prioritization process that we'll be conducting over the next couple of months and again we always start with a purpose we always start with the why and I've written the purpose statement to say that the purpose is to adjust Northfield Public Schools expenditures to align with reduced Revenue resulting from declining enrollment at the last board meeting you heard from Hazel
062Reinhardt if people in the audience are watching on TV have not watched that from the last board meeting I strongly recommend you go about to the 18 minute 25 second Mark and watch Hazel's report it's fascinating on a number of levels and in addition it really lays out that we are going to see around a 400 student decline over the next 10 years and just to remind people that 400 student decline is really related to birth rates lower birth rates housing limitations within the community and so those are the two main items that we're seeing for the reduced uh enrollment over the next 10 years in fact as you know know Public Schools across the country last year saw a decline in enrollment and I just want to reiterate what Hazel said is that Northfield
063Public Schools got our students back from Matt blip right the the 2019 or the 20 20 21 blip that saw many schools across the country lose enrollment our students generally came back this declining enrollment piece is not about that this declining enrollment piece is really around birth rates and it is also about housing inventory so that is a significant piece we also want to share that we do start this position from a or this process with a position of financial strength the stewardship and the planning that this board has done over time has put us in a spot where we can be very thoughtful and purposeful about how we just our expenditures to re relate to our new reality declining enrollment is a terrible thing for school districts because it is a year over year
064it's the death by a Thousand Cuts so to speak in terms of that every year we lose a little bit more there are some declining enrollment revenue from the state but it does not cover what you lose not even close and so starting with the position of financial strength is a good place to be it allows us to be thoughtful it allows us to be thorough and it allows us to meter out some of these adjustments over the period of a few years so we also want to share that we um have our financial oversight has been validated numerous times by our auditing firms and most recently once again with standard and poorers validating our top six in the state Bond rating double A plus I share this to set the stage that we are
065at a point where we are well managed financially and the issue with our expenditures has to do with declining enrollment with things that are beyond our control we take ownership of that and we have to take leadership of the district through it so Val and I are proposing a slightly we're going to use the work that the district has done over the last 20 years in terms of a program-based budgeting process but we are updating it to what we call a priority-based budgeting process and a typical budget cut within a school system you just identify what you would like what you say we're going to get rid of and we don't think that that's worthy of us this time around we're going to take the new strategic plan that you just adopted we're going to
066give that to three different budget teams a team that is going to govern expenditures from our elementary schools a team that will govern expenditures from our middle school high school and area Learning Center programs and then a district Services team and we are going to identify what are the most important things in alignment with the Strategic plan that we should fund first so rather than just saying what you want to get rid of you say what are the things that are most important to be able for us to achieve the benchmarks that we have identified in the Strategic plan and so this discussion in this process could be a little bit messy to start and we think that that's okay again coming from a position of financial strength we have the ability to take the
067time with these particular discussions um so we have four meetings set up we have a meeting on February 20. I've outlined those in the packet of February 24th March 1st March 15th March 24th I've outlined what we're planning to do we've been recruiting people to participate in these budget teams we want to have uh budget teams that reflect the community so we want staff members of course we want students from our district youth Council and other interested students we want parents we want community members without children to be part of these systems as well and we would really we really seek to have these teams also reflect the demographic reality of our system as well we'll be providing some translation for some Spanish-speaking parents to participate in these teams we've had some response that last
068time I checked about 22 or 24 people total that had responded we need a few more than that so the official application piece or excuse me the official interest form uh closed today and then we'll look at where we're at and then I will then specifically recruit additional people to participate in these teams each team will be given a budget Target they'll be given all of the information for the budgeting areas within that team's purview and they will start to talk about what are the most important things that that team should fund they will do so and then we will do the mathematics and once they hit the budget Target the remaining items are the items that would be either put on on a uh unrequested leave of absence or depending on other circumstances if
069we have probationary staff or other things it could be that that non-renewal of probationary staff is also used anytime you talk about any kind of budget adjustment people will always say well we need to do stuff that's outside of the classroom that is not possible in Minnesota because we have been underfunded chronically there are no schools that have a bunch of stuff remaining you can't cut your way to this with copy paper just doesn't work right the things that um are outside of the classroom are long gone and every school in Minnesota I don't care which one you look at 80 percent of their budget will be salary and benefits you cannot make budgeted adjustments in public schools in Minnesota without impacting the people who work here that's a reality it's not intended to sound
070harsh it's intended to be transparent and so we are working through uh what we think the number will be uh to start and I'll have Val talk a little bit about that if you just want to give a little bit of a heads up as to where we're still finalizing that but if you want to just talk about how we're getting uh to that final number that we'll have available for those committees um starting a week from Thursday sure um so I have been working to update our financial forecast with our updated enrollment um after the demographic report was presented and just concerns about the inflation rates we've been seeing our current Staffing contracts and all of those pieces that come together and forecasting that basically over the next five years to see with the
071decline in Revenue where does that put that put us and how quickly um and so my current um recommendation is going to be about four and a half million and I do um I do think we have several strategies where we could um phase it in so that it doesn't have to be all for next year we can use the federal funds for Budget stabilization and so that is the strategy we can use as well as a couple of different things that we've been um talking about internally to help make sure that it's not um it goes as smooth as possible I guess would be our goal so four and a half is kind of where we're Landing right now depending on the different Financial components and how the legislature comes through or does not
072come through it could be the potential that two years from now we'd be looking at maybe a little bit more but again I think any any way in which we can stay here and make sure that it's um providing enough stability for the buildings and the students to bring us to where we need to is really the goal so that's the current estimate um but again there's there's several things that are at play that we won't know about until after this process is done the free lunch for students for breakfast and lunch plays a pretty significant role with our ability to qualify for things such as title or compensatory Revenue and so all of those things I have estimated but if there are significant changes in um whether or not we qualify for those funding
073streams that kind of has a trickle effect later in the budget so that's a lot of kind of estimates but four and a half million is um currently where the number is and I think that that's the for those of you who are veterans of the board and you remember the project-based budget or the program-based budgeting process the concept of what we called restoration packages so this does that in Reverse as well so when we go through the process we will have identified the next most important things and if we were to see additional funding we would be able to add those things um we've been really working hard on our legislative action committee and I do think that something that this process is helpful when we go to St Paul often and we talk
074about increased funding we talk about it in more Global kinds of terms right we talk about it that we can reduce class size we can do and with a priority based budgeting process when we go to our legislators we will say if you gave us another two percent on the formula we can add these three teachers in this these particular area so it's going to give us a much more concrete way to be able to Advocate and make what those additions would be real to people when we're talking about it so again to our knowledge this is not a we are putting our approach to this to think about what do we there's a different mindset of what do we fund versus what do we get rid of and at the end of the day
075you still have a cut we're not trying to sugarcoat that but we're trying to get a better way of budgeting to say we're going to fund the things that we think have the greatest chance to help us achieve those benchmarks that we adopted as part of our strategic plan uh what can board members do as part of this process so board members are able to observe these committees uh the Committees will be running simultaneously we'll post them kind of like you would for a work session right so there's no decisions being made Adam but board members will be able to attend and be able to observe if they so chose uh when we're done with this we'll bring you a report we will then talk about the next steps I do Envision this potentially including
076a public hearing where we lay this out to the community and have people be able to share their perspective with the board finalizing those decisions uh most likely in May is really what we're looking at in terms of being able to get those processes going for any positions that might have to go on unrequested leave or the probationary non-renewal process as well so we wanted to share with you our vision we've been talking with you about this for some time right we've it's been one of our goals for this year I do want to point out this is a process we had intended to do last year and we just did not feel we could do it effectively last year in the middle of the pandemic and I think that goes to the stewardship that
077the district had that we did have enough funds in reserve to be able to take one more year so that we could really be able to engage the community in this process so we'd be happy to answer any questions I do want to emphasize um we have a good plan here but this is also not something that we've seen a Playbook necessarily before on so I just we need to ask up front for your grace we are able to work through this in a very professional way but we we do think that this discussion could be a little bit messier than what a true just cutting process would be and we're comfortable with Messi for that particular purpose for now thank you so much board members any questions or comments see me um so superintendent
078Tillman I was wondering about um in the past we've had a commitment to hiring a diverse Workforce and I assume that that would still be important but I don't quite see how it fits in with our benchmarks and our other our official commitments that we have in this plan so how do you see that working well one of our strategic commitments is equity and part of equity is to ensure that we have a staff that reflects the student population so I would argue that that is part of the Strategic commitment of equity and that more diverse Workforce is going to help us achieve those benchmarks so I don't think it's a benchmark so to speak as opposed to hiring making sure that we have a more diverse candidate pool is a reflection of that core
079commitment to equity and I would say it's beyond the what parts get cut and what part don't that that should have some weight in the decision and it shouldn't be based entirely on that but it should be considered well and Equity is one of our strategic commitments so that's a lens in which we should look this process through but when we say Equity we just say we ensure that every child has a fair opportunity to reach their potential so it's very general that's how we Define it really well thank you for process together I had a few questions um when will these teams meet uh yes so in the packet we've got they'll meet on a I understand the dates I'm sorry I meant time of day I am sorry about that well I wasn't
080clear 6 p.m to 8 P.M excellent happy to hear that I know in the past we've done 4 P.M and I'd like to hear that at 6 p.m that's excellent um then special education or special services would be student services would be a part of the district committee right District services or where would that fall so that's actually um one of the I would say one of the two major changes that we're we're doing with this process so we're actually including special services in the elementary and secondary packages as they are right now um they are gen ed students first and so we wanted that comprehensive look at all of the secondary education and all of the elementary education for all of the students it will be clearly identified which expenditures are special ed with
081obviously an explanation of Maintenance of effort and that they're restricted but there are Avenues where we can adjust some of it but it has to be obviously very carefully considered but we wanted to make sure that that was a comprehensive conversation rather than kind of of its own Untouchable yeah that's really excellent that's a huge improvement over the way we have done the process so I appreciate that Julie if I can just add to that um I think the other part that's important is uh we know that the legislature is going to be talking uh there's a bill I believe it's 3224 in the legislature that would fully fund um the special education across subsidy and so one of the other reasons that we felt was important to include special education as part of the
082elementary and secondary teams is for people to actually see what does that cross-subsidy mean and so that I just to be very truthful we wanted people to see the reality of the Cross subsidy and how it plays out in budgeting at those levels and I would encourage anybody watching to contact the legislature and fully support 3224 that would um really basically eliminate her pretty close to it the special education cross said if we got that bill that would take care of our budget reductions because that is what our Gap is is the special education cross subsidy thank you Julie for letting me interrupt your second question no no that I I'm so happy to hear that's how we're going to look at at those expenditures that's excellent my last question then would be co-curricular activities
083where that falls is that within each of the buildings yep we are yep we'll match up the secondary activities and any Elementary activities um with those packages because we didn't want it to feel um adversarial we wanted it to be a comprehensive part of what we're offering that's an excellent change as well from from the way we have done it in the past okay I have one last question so when we talk about um previously it was restoration now we were able to talk about that as additional would we are is there any thinking around the 16 fund balance and then here's what it could look like if we went to a 14 fund balance kind of be able to to look at that for the board to review yep um so that is one
084of the strategies um that I've considered and I do think it could also just be a temporary strategy to phase in the expenditure reduction as well so that's one of the ones that I've been considering I also think there's Avenues to consider the way in which we calculate it so maybe keeping 16 but choosing different expenditure categories so we know ltfm has restricted revenue and expenditures but right now all of those expenditures are included in that calculation so um it's clearly the most conservative way to do it which I appreciate but there are some other avenues and I think that that's worthy of a discussion so there there's lots of different things we can consider that would certainly be a board decision and not a committee decision so that would be bringing all of that
085data back together and presenting it to the board and saying here's the different ways in which we could roll that out um excellent excellent I mean clearly this is a reflection of a lot of work then and thought that you have put around making that a making it a really good process so I appreciate it thank you so much Tom um uh to sort of follow up on what Amy was asking if we want a diverse Workforce budget we're going to maybe cut the the select better description lower seniority would and um my guess is maybe the diverse Workforce tends to be because they're just new getting into this that they may be in that lower seniority are there Union rules or is there flexibility and and how we can staff that uh there is
086not so the the uh the rule that we have is uh uses people who are hired most recently basically what you do when you look at so the first thing you do is you're going to look at the area that you're looking at the reduction if you look at that area that you're looking at the reduction and you would look at are there probationary teachers who are part of that uh area to begin with you will always look at non-renewing uh those probationary teachers first then what you would look at from there is you would look at the lowest senior teachers in that area and our contract outlines that that is the way that we would need to do that reduction in force okay then uh one other question are all the meetings in person
087and not for uh but all of them are in person well um so I was wondering because you're you only have 22 people and what we learned from the pandemic is that Zoom meetings um work and they they bring in more people who may not otherwise be able to get especially young families with kids that they can't leave so I don't know if there's any potential for a meeting like that just to broaden it I would say right now at this point if we had a weather related issue for a meeting that we would move it to zoom what I will say is that this kind of work and I'm a big believer in using Zoom meetings as well um however this kind of work is relational it's very much about people and so you're
088going to bring people together who don't necessarily um that could be that some people who don't know each other you know quite yet and what I have learned um in close to 20 years that's shocking almost 20 years of facilitating online groups I've used some of the earliest video conferencing software well before people knew what Zoom was and I'll tell you my experience is this is that those kinds of digital meetings can be incredibly effective in a variety of different ways especially if the people who are part of it have had the community building opportunity before you move to that not always I want to say this is not always but so I think Tom as much as I would like to say I think I think you're right we could probably get some more
089people and frankly it would even be a little simpler from the translation perspective if we did it via Zoom but this part about looking each other and sharing that same space when we're talking about these really important things I think to begin with anyway um is where we need to be and so I understand totally and and really valid validate what you're saying I do think we can get some more people in that way um however I just I don't think it would be as effective initially thanks Jeff uh yeah you mean I'm not against Zoom meetings for you know for whatever reason but you know as we kind of coming out of this pandemic um and to understand that you know communication is about 60 non-verbal so it's not what you say it's how
090you say it so I mean having people in the room and getting some good robust discussion and kind of getting back to that is is uh obviously a good idea but you know also zoom's always an option so yeah and I think we could certainly use it for weather related pieces to keep the process on track and and some other pieces where I could see that if we did need to do some additional pieces or maybe that we want to get some additional feedback on the process I could see us um augmenting it you know with some other kinds of things but I think this initial part I think you just need to have people in the room and hearing that emotion you know and be able to see people's body language directly in 3D
091um which is not as easy as doing um right now on on Zoom as well so anybody else Cory yeah I have a couple questions concerning the 16 fund balance I may be misremembering I feel like last year we're going through some of the budget pieces one of the strategies I know value just said this is one of the potential strategies but I felt like there was a strong leaning toward going to a lower number because we realize we're keeping a pretty high threshold is that getting more consideration as one of your strategic points here or is that just still a per debate um I still think it's Up For Debate that is that has been the board goal for a a long time based on the situation the district went through um that was
092very difficult in oh 506 somewhere in that range and the I will say it is higher than our peers um like similarly sized peers and that again is a product of the situation that was here but I also heard very clearly the um recognition of what it has allowed us to do as a school district and so I'm happy to to walk us through that discussion um I think there's valid points both ways and it's it's not permanent we can always go back and forth um it's much more difficult to go up than to go down I want to be very clear um but that is um at the end of the day the the board's um discretion you alluded to my second question uh when we look at our comparable districts where do they
093fall I know I'm asking you to pick a number out but are we much more higher than them I would say the average is between 8 and 12. thank you yep yeah and I think that you know we also discussed that didn't we during the Strategic plan Benchmark adoption processes we did adopt a benchmark of 16 however again that's a benchmark that can be changed it's something that we could look at Julie yeah I just thank Corey for bringing that forward that discussion again because it's I think it's a discussion that has a lot of Merit and I will you know appreciate when we can have that so thanks Corey and the final part that I just want to make on this uh is that some people as we get this process going will ask
094can we find more Revenue and there isn't I mean we just have to be straight up about that is that we have the highest operating Levy Allowed by law for the longest time period along Allowed by law with an inflationary Factor so our community has stepped to the plate every time to make up for what the state hasn't done and so the issue is that that's another part I mean we and that's why I want to be super thoughtful about the fund balance because we we do not have any other vehicles so we have some very limited vehicles I should say in which we could raise additional Revenue um we're doing some of that through things like a Portage program where we're trying to be able to recruit or not recruit but offer up people
095from outside of the community another way to open enroll we're doing some of the but those revenue streams aren't going to make up for the declining enrollment and The Chronic underfunding so I'm I'm all for looking at the fund balance as well but we just remember we can only spend each fund balance dollar once and once it's gone you know then then we could be so we want to be very thoughtful about we don't have any there's nobody better to be at the helm for making that determination than Val murder store so we've got a team here that we're going to be able to give you a good recommendation on but we I just want to urge caution when it comes to that discussion about fund balance um um along the lines on the The
096Levee so we have a levy that is coming to an end is that right relatively soon and if that isn't renewed that would uh be a big impact on us right yes the capital projects Levy um expires in in 2023 which is revenue for the 20 23-24 school year so that is 750 000 which is significant I do have that in the production as falling off and not being renewed so that that is being like obviously that would our hope is that it'll be renewed but that is how I'm projecting it just so that we are very clear up front and again if that's renewed and or increased like Dr Hillman said we will have those restoration packages where we could choose to add things back um should that be the case and we also
097just remind people that capital projects Levy almost could almost do does almost no uh general fund work right the capital projects Levy is really about the kinds of things that you heard in capital tonight or the it's not long term because we can pay for technology Services salaries out of it so that is the that is the one way if you were to look at expanding the capital projects Levy you could cover all of the technology services staff members salaries and benefits with uh capital projects let me say that's the only real Revenue voter approved Revenue stream that we would have uh to be able to make that so that's it's just to be clear that it does affect the general fund but it doesn't necessarily talk about the positions that were that we're going
098to have to discuss except in this very limited way but the the renewal would result in a general fund absorbing all of the current expectations that it does fund anyone else questions comments yeah yeah Matt kind of took the well she taken but he said proceed with cautions I mean obviously we're moving into that period and we've got inflation it's it's a hard time and and and uh you know I think we want to be very um realistic about the odds of things passing and not passing but at the same time we want to be you know have a a good fun balance there and not necessarily make that decision um you mentioned you know eight to twelve is the the uh kind of the ballpark but I mean I give us a lot of
099credit that we've gone through all of this stuff we're still we still have 16 there so I mean that that is you know for lack of a better expression a little bit of our pot and gold and that's some money sitting there that we could really figure out if we get in the crunch where we need to go so at least anyone else I'm Dr ham and my question was about how big the groups you're hoping the groups will be in it and if I heard correctly you have 20 people signed up so far and it yeah about 24 signed up so far and we're really looking for about 20 to 24 people per group now we could do that with less right but what we're trying to do is we're trying to for example
100we're looking for three administrators six teachers six parents couple students you know so we're looking at those stakeholder groups we could do it with fewer of each of those if we need to but we're going we wanted to we felt we needed to wait until people had a chance to weigh in whether they had an interest and then we will start to recruit people here this week we have a list and it's so significant what you said about the house bill um on Cross subsidy if it was funded we wouldn't even have to go through this whole process is that right that is correct goodness so that's a great point of advocacy for all of us in our community especially these committee members that you're Gathering and especially with a 7.7 billion dollar Surplus right
101potentially 10 is what we're hearing now right thank you all right we will move on to our next item which is um superintendent operations um and covid-19 update yeah I'm going to give this a very brief update here today because we will talk about it a little bit more and uh the items for individual action um but I do want to just frame how far we have come uh in terms of uh just the right the decline in cases um so in the packet you see the graph which clearly shows that Omicron did exactly what the expert said it would do significant rise quick drop off you'll see that um really how things affected Us in January 332 total positive cases on January 1 940 on January 31st let that sink in I mean we
102had nearly three times the number of cases in one month that we had the entirety of last year let's think about that but the good news is that that was a quick burn right and so now we are on a great pathway um I I can't even believe it but when I did the count last Thursday for this we were at 1024 total cases this year and today when I updated the dashboard this morning 1033 I cannot recall a weekend where we had that few cases in a long long time so the public health situation is rapidly improving this is very good news and the influenza-like illness rates have really returned uh to the levels that they they're I'm not going to say that they're normal but let's just point out that in six of
103our seven buildings that we uh look at uh each week uh six of those seven buildings were below two percent of students out on average for influenza-like illnesses and two buildings were below one percent so that is really good data showing that we are going in the right direction so that is the basic part of that report this evening uh give you a testing update again we have seen the testing also be reduced at the district testing center uh earlier today I heard what we did we are now at 14.92 uh 1492 rapid molecular tests again we have now expanded the ability for people who are asymptomatic and we have also expanded the ability for people who live in the same household as one of our students or staff members before we limited the cube
104drive through testing center uh to symptomatic people who were students staff or children of our staff what we've done is we've been able to expand that so that people have an opportunity so it is now for people who are students staff children of Staff brought anybody who lives in a household with one of our students or a member of our staff so we've expanded that ability for people to access that and then of course we still have a tremendous amount of Rapid antigen tests available and then the final bright spot that I want to share today is I just cannot say enough about our partnership with kmim and radio the one downtown Northfield of course you know kyman has always been a great Ally in helping us get the local news out whether it be
105city news or School District news they give us a lot of time to be able to share with the community what's going on just have an outstanding partners and most recently they have really taken the mantle on how to stream Raider Athletics so they've always done radio over time but they now have been able to by leveraging their streaming ability on the internet to have more than one game happening at one time they've added some video components to it so that people at home can also see some video components and so we're really excited about where this is going some of this is still kind of the Wild West because there are some rules with the State High School league for example around post-season activities that you're not allowed to do the video streaming so
106there's a lot that's happening and learning but uh Lance riester and the team at Kym and are just doing an excellent job of being able to make sure that our athletes have an opportunity to be heard and seen regardless of where you are on the planet and so this is a very exciting development we anticipate they're going to do more of that next year so that is the operations update for this evening thank you members any questions or comments um would Kym and live stream our graduation they already do or do they yep they they do the radio portion um so they have not done a video portion yet but I do think that they potentially would okay great anyone else and Dr Emma did you want to talk about the two grants in the
107consent agenda sure I can do that right now so uh there are two this is part of the consent agenda coming up there are two grants uh the first of which is a DHS Grant and so that's a Department of Human Services grant for child care centers to help offset some of the Lost revenue and other costs associated with the Kobe that's a I believe a director murder stuff that's about a seventy six thousand dollar Grant is what I think that I saw in there so that is something that all child care centers in the state as long as they mean certain criteria have access to so we're making application for that uh the other one is a very exciting mtss Grant and so this is multi-tiered systems of support we love our acronyms multi-tiered
108systems of support and this would take what we have already been doing with mtss and go further really around coordination and training so the grant would pay for a half time mtss quarter within the instructional services department they would cover substitute teacher costs to provide training during the school day for licensed staff so they could oversee math and literacy interventions it would do training outside of the contract day for educational assistance so that they can become more proficient delivering math and literacy interventions teachers participating in summer work teams so that we're aligning instructional practices as a high impact approach that we've learned in the summer work team piece specific this would be specific to science the science of reading and math we've talked with you before about letters so it would also uh pay for
109some letters facilitation training it would also do some contracted services for a data integration specialist to be able to help automate some of the non-academic and classroom level student data so that we can get that into our data and analytics system we do some contracted services for social emotional learning intervention training um there's a a really interesting tool we're trying called closed Gap it's a student emotional uh checking and tracking tool so it's almost like the old local collaborative time studies where students can some students who participate get a randomized how are you feeling now and they answer a handful of questions and then this gives us a better data set to take a look at how are students doing socially and emotionally so we've done some piloting with that it's very exciting um and
110then it would also very rarely can you do this but would also pay for some meals for family engagement and input sessions as well as parent participation on an mtss District leadership team so it's a 250 000 competitive Grant and so we will see where it lands but it's part of the consent agenda as just how we um that's how we do Grant applications fantastic that's a lot under one Grant what is I don't know if Julie you're gonna ask this question too um the timeline on it how many years or school years I think it's if I'm right it's a four-year Grant I believe is that correct Val do you remember that's okay thank you Julie would you like to no I just really appreciate um the opportunity to hear more about these two
111grant opportunities and I just really applaud the district for always being tenacious about pursuing these all of these opportunities because this is significant revenue and the financial hardship um just roughly around seventy six thousand dollars that money would go into the um Community Education Child Care budget line correct it because as I read at first I was thinking it was for families but it's really for to stabilize our budget yeah it is to stabilize the the Kid Ventures in early Ventures but should it we had to apply by sight um so it would be um divvied up based on those allocations and the mtss grant is for fiscal year 22 and 23 is what the application says um not really sure how it's for fiscal 22 um so my guess would be two years starting
112July Walker thanks though so we have a such a strong track record of getting competitive grants so we will hope that's the case um Val how competitive is the financial hardship Grant or do you perceive that pretty optimistic about getting that slightly less than eighty thousand dollars um I think we have pretty good um odds on that one they're they have it um scheduled where you can apply every three months so I think there's enough funding um I think they're anticipating it will all get spent this first round but um my my sense is we would have a pretty good chance of getting the vast majority of it if not all of it excellent thank you all right anyone asks questions or comments okay thank you we're going to move on to consent agenda we
113will now move on to approve to approval of the consent grouping as a reminder there are some Personnel items from the table file as well as an item for individual action 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 great motion carry okay items for individual action our first item is approving the revised 2022-2023 school year calendar is there a motion to approve the revised school year calendar for 2022-2023. move by Julie second by um thank you okay Dr helmet would you like to make any comments um I think that if people have any questions about the calendar we've this is
114the second time that they've seen it so we can certainly answer any of those any discussion question comments okay we have a motion and a second all those in favor say aye aye aye opposed and we have a revised calendar for this school year for the next school year 22 23 yep yes that's it okay we have four policies next and this is the second read of those policies um so they are grouped and I'm going to call for a motion um to um approve all four policies okay moved by Corey second okay thank you Tom is there any discussion on any of the policies or any questions any comments I just do want to point out in the um we did make one change about the school meals piece the based on the board
115talking about just making sure that we're keeping confidential as we changed it from the word minimize uh focusing on um students who with insufficient funds to keep confidential so that was the work that we did with Child Nutrition to accommodate what the board had said the last time thank you I don't see it anymore um discussion so we're going to move on to vote on all of the policies all those in favor of policy all those in favor of policy four 503 524.2 and 534 and please say aye aye all a post yes foreign policies pass and next we have a resolution a resolution approving the purchase agreement and authorizing sale of property the board had previously approved an option agreement with rebound real estate by which a small parcel of school district property would
116be sold to rebound if it exercised the option to acquire the policy and rebound has exercise that option to purchase the property on terms and conditions set forth in the purchase agreement attached this is a resolution with a role called vote is there a motion approving the resolution approving purchase agreement and authorizing sale of property moved by Jeff second by Julie okay Dr Hillman or Val do you have any comments I'll have eldest talk a little bit about why we had to bring this back to you for a second time yep so we um based on the approval of the option agreement had worked with rebound and signed the purchase agreement before December 31st the attorney that they work for or work with um has some very specific requirements in the statute that we we
117had actually talked with our lawyer um or our attorney and he felt comfortable with the process we had gone through but their attorney really wanted the additional um very specific board action on with the resolution roll call vote so that's why we're bringing it back okay thank you okay do we have any comments or questions Tom I'm sorry okay Amy I just want to just double check that we're just reapproving the same thing we approved before so it's pretty much all the same okay good question okay Tom and I'm going to abstain again if I could do the first time around because my son while he was in a schoolwork for um rebound Enterprises and still has a connection with them and I don't want any uh any misgivings sure appreciate that Tom any other
118comments or questions so like last year I'm going to be a no honest vote um I have some real concerns with the developments I found out recently that they have now eliminated the three bedroom apartments which was a big draw for moving forward because it's a place for families to grow we just had Hazel Reinhardt here three weeks ago with enrollment updates and projection for us and it looks bleak and as we know Apartments produce on average 0.11 children per unit which is about I believe one-sixth of a single family home uh we do have a housing issue we need to have more homes I don't know what this project is the correct project it's not for me to say I know the council tomorrow will be voting on it and we'll see what happens
119there but just to remain consistent with where I was last year I am still a mill thank you appreciate that no pull your mic down there too I I live near that a questionable piece of property and I think I can explain a couple of things it is a wedge-shaped piece of property that's probably 100 feet on one side of the Block it's a black white and probably goes to a wedge on the other side and the advantage how about this the advantage of letting the proper selling the property I think it's twofold one it's a nuisance for the school to have to maintain that property and secondly it allows the development to put a sidewalk across the south side of Lincoln Parkway where they probably wouldn't be able to do it otherwise so it
120gives the residents of that new development an opportunity to be able to walk through the school there will be crosswalks across Lincoln Parkway uh I'm sorry the sidewalks will have exits to match up with the crosswalks on Lincoln Parkway so there is a safety attitude that I I think is really important and is why I'm supporting it I think you know any other comments or questions okay we have a motion and a second and no further discussion Anita will not facilitate a roll call vote Veronia abstain Butler no Sherwood hi Gonzalez George hi Richard aye quinoa aye stratmone okay thank you resolution passes okay our final item for individual action is the approval of changes to covid-19 protocols so we'll take a motion and then we'll have discussion is there a motion to update our
121covid-19 protocols a move by Jeff second by Julie okay Dr Hellman will you share on this item yes so um from the beginning of the pandemic we have continued to use the best information that we have at the time to make decisions um this year uh as of unlike last year school districts all 332 school districts across Minnesota were forced to determine their own pathway forward without any Statewide requirement or guidance and so the Northfield school district did what it had done always we used the best information that we had at the time we talked to experts in the field and we made the best decisions that we could at the time for the public health and for the health of our students let's go back to August 9th and think about what is different
122today versus then August 9th we're hearing about the Delta variant that was starting to become an issue that was something was an unknown we knew that it was much more lethal than previous variants of covid-19 that was one factor that we took into account another factor that we took into account was the fact that students ages 5 through 11 had not yet been able to be vaccinated and we remembered very clearly the disruptions that shifts to distance learning had on our community so we adopted a universal masking approach we adopted other safety protocols contact tracing quarantine for students who have been close contacts to students who with covet who had been diagnosed or diagnosed with covid-19 because we wanted to prioritize uninterrupted in-person learning and I'm very proud to say that we have withstood the
123Omicron variant thanks to the hard work of our staff in an incredibly difficult scenario that we made it through that push in January but the public health situation is improving it's rapidly improving as I shared with you just a few moments ago our dashboard which had gotten up over well well over 300 Active cases over a 14-day period in January is now dropped back to 55 total only nine since last Thursday as we talk with people in our community who we have always talked with our epidemiologists talking with other medical professionals within the community our incident command team that is representative of stakeholders from within the district and the community as we're looking at the pathway ahead we believe that we are able to do what we had always said we would do that we
124would go ahead and remove our protocols when we felt we were in a position where we could safely do so without jeopardizing our commitment to uninterrupted in-person learning and what we do know is that our approaches did work and they did help us maintain that over time but we also know that now appears to be the time where we can do this safely and without jeopardizing that goal of uninterrupted in-person learning I do think we need to acknowledge the toll that having to implement these kinds of protocols have taken on our community we've heard about this from people at public comment we've heard about it in our conversations with our staff who have been tasked with making sure that these things were implemented and followed through people have not always been kind they've not always
125been kind to our school nurses who are just doing their job in terms of making sure that our environment was as safe as practicable and that students who needed medical attention or to get a test did so our teachers worked very hard to build relationships with students so that they would also follow the safety protocols this is difficult for everyone it has been incredibly challenging and we are pleased that we are able to safely move and transition to this new phase of managing the pandemic the pandemic is not over there's a technical epidemiological term for when the pandemic will end but we have shifted into a different phase where we believe for the foreseeable future we will to be able to manage this differently and I think it's important to take stock of where we
126have been right so we know that in Rice County there's been 167 deaths we've heard over 900 000 world or uh Nationwide so our progress has not come without pain and people have experienced that pain in a variety of different ways but we also need to heal and as a school district we have the power of convening and over the course of the next several months I will utilize the school district's convening power to help try to move our community forward and to heal the wounds that people have had for a variety of different reasons whether they lost someone to covid-19 whether they are experiencing some real anxiety as a result of the lingering pandemic whether people were for or against a certain set of protocols we need to move forward together and I think
127it's important that the school district use its convening power to do just that so with that frame of what we have lost and what we have to gain and the things that we have learned um I am I am satisfied that we are able to make this recommendation to you this evening I'm going to briefly cover the recommendation the recommendation would modify some but not all of the covid-19 safety protocols it would actually modify most of them the most uh I think the one that we all everyone is is interested in is the face covering so be moving face coverings from recommended or excuse me from required to recommended but optional inside of Northfield school district facility except for the Northfield Community Ed Center our youngest Learners ages uh 0 to 5 are not yet
128eligible for vaccination we are looking at some changes to protocols within that building we just worked with some pediatricians last Friday afternoon to look at quarantine lengths but at this time we're going to recommend that the ncec protocol stay exactly the same so that is where it's at um again everyone two and older would have to wear a face covering inside the Northfield Community Ed Center so the face covering procedures that we adopted we didn't adapt as a policy if you recall the procedures that the administration can make modifications to which would be done based upon our adopting of these protocols and so those would still cover the ncec um and then the other part we just need to make sure that people understand is that the Transportation Security Administration is in charge of all
129over the road transportation and the TSA still requires all people ages two and older to wear a face covering while riding on a school bus and so for school districts that have not used um or have had very limited safety protocols even their students this year were required to wear a face mask on a school bus so that's a TSA piece we do hear that that could be coming in to an end in the next couple of weeks so it's very possible that that could end as well our physical distancing will remain the same as it has been cleaning and hygiene remains as it has been I want to point out a couple of things in the how we would handle uh students with influenza or covid-like symptoms and I want you're going to start
130to hear that more and more we're going to be talking about influenza and covet-like symptoms covid-19 is not the flu but it has it manifests itself similarly in some ways to the flute and so you're going to hear us start talking about influenza and covid-like uh rates and you'll see that there are three bullet points in there that we will still ask people to self-report if their student has symptoms or if they've been close contact we still think that that's important for us to know um students with influenza-like or covid-19 like illness symptoms must stay home if you are sick stay home and to come back you'll need to come back with a negative covid-19 test so this is now readily available so if I have those kinds of symptoms that could be consistent with
131covet I need to stay home I can come back with a negative covert test and my symptoms improving or resolving if that makes sense so again that's a safety factor to make sure that we can mitigate people who are positive for covid-19 coming back into the school environment so that's again symptomatic people who are sick should stay home and if you've got symptoms that are in conjunction with what covid-19 would be get a test we've got all sorts of tests for you and then we will welcome you back once you've got a negative test and your symptoms are improving and then we also want to point out that the district covid-19 coordinator will continue to report cases of covid-19 to mdh it's important that people understand we're not just saying well we're declaring this is
132over that's not what we're doing we're saying that we're able to safely modify some of our protocols at this time it's also important you'll look at the section on isolation and quarantine and this is remaining the same so isolation is still required for anyone who has tested positive for kova 19. so they must stay home until all of those five options or those five items are true and they can return with a negative rapid antigen test on day five or later they can test as if they test on day five and they're still positive they can test again on day six if they want to wait till day seven and test they can do so the maximum amount of isolation time is 10 days at this point so handling a positive case of covid-19 is
133no different than how we've handled it in the last few weeks we have reduced quarantine excuse me we've reduced isolation times to align with mdh and CDC protocols um so that's that five day piece again with a negative test coming back on day five or later again we emphasize again it's so important we put it in the isolation and quarantine area too about students who have influenza like or covid-19 symptoms stay home we're then saying this is important as well quarantine is not required for K-12 students or staff who've been in close contact with someone who has tested positive for covert 19. we had virtually eliminated quarantine through the test to stay program virtually eliminated it um however we're we are eliminating at this point with the exception of the ncec so the ncec will
134still use quarantine for close contacts again we are doing everything we can to keep that child care center open and so maintain those protocols at least for right now are an important strategy for us to do that and then our visitor and volunteer pieces are remaining the same so those are the protocol updates I'd be happy to take any questions that people have at this time thank you any questions Jeff uh just curious on the volunteers [Music] um why isn't the volunteer policy uh the same as employees and um students yeah Jeff great question so from the beginning when we first adopted that volunteer policy that volunteer part of this is that we love our volunteers and we wanted our volunteers to come back there are still many districts that aren't allowing volunteers to come
135back quite yet right and so we wanted volunteers to be able to come back and what we do want is to be able to make sure that we're surrounding our students who so now now many of whom have had a chance to be vaccinated but we want to we want to limit the interaction with with either people from people outside of the school um who are not vaccinated and so that is our goal it's we're going to keep it that way for right now but the logic is again the staff have to be there right the students have to be there the volunteers do not we love the volunteers we want them there but we're trying to again to make sure that we can prioritize uninterrupted in-person learning so maintain that volunteer component for right
136now is an important part of our strategy do you have a time frame when you might reconsider that no not yet all right well that's a good answer thanks and more comments question Amy so in general I support the idea of changing the from a requirement to recommended but I think it's also important as we do this if we end up voting that way that we promote a culture of choice and make it Choice actually be something that's allowed and try to minimize peer pressure for the students who for whatever reason still choose to wear a mask and I also think it's important to not turn the teachers into the mask police um so a lot of the families will have to work with their students and explain why they feel strongly about wearing a
137mask and I'm I think that's great but the teachers though they're not mask beliefs they also have to create an uh acceptance of of the fact that people can wear masks I think they will I'm just throwing that out there and I think um after seeing so many letters from high school students that we received it gave me hope that they would also be very much open to promoting a culture of choice and that choice is allowed and you're not you don't have to not wear a mask to get rid of that peer pressure so um that would be my hope um one question I have is I um will people get notified if someone in their kids classroom has covid without doing contact tracing but just the fact someone in the classroom came down
138with covid you should know yeah so I think that I do want to clarify that too in my message to families on Friday I the power of language right so I use the word should um that that we should or I excuse me I'm sorry we had said we were not going to do the general notifications anymore we were talking about General notifications that was a whole nother layer of how we had set up that notification how we envision this changing is that notifying people in an Elementary classroom um would really be more like they would get a notification for strep or influenza so uh some kind of communication and we're actually looking at or considering we're looking at using talking points for those kinds of notifications um as we move ahead so uh Amy
139we would be still notifying families in those Elementary classrooms that becomes much more difficult at the secondary level we typically have not notified people at the middle school or High School of a classroom that had influenza um but what we will do is we'll be maintaining our dashboard so we'll put the actual number of cases out there and we will also be able to to have the influenza-like illness rates still posted on the dashboard each week so that will help people make that choice I think the other thing that we can encourage for our Middle School and High School families is because we do have access to Rapid tests we can also encourage for people who have a concern if they would like to test regularly they certainly would be able to do so would
140it be possible to near tooth of reporting by like in the Middle School reporting by the wings of the school or or reporting by the grade somehow or is that too fine so the problem with reporting by the wings is not everybody stays in the same way right so there's people who move through the day I think that at this point we would not want to go to that level of detail at the middle school in high school it could quickly become unwieldy in that way and that is one of the things that we're trying to avoid moving forward is it something where the teachers could kind of I guess that would probably violate HIPAA but there'd be a lot of problems of having teachers talk about that with their questions not here today I
141won't tell you why I don't know but um it just seems that I could see my parents would be very interested in having that information and and knowing if their child might have been exposed and and we'll continue to ideate ways that we could potentially report that effectively um we can look at especially with reduced cases it's possible we could look at some of those things um so that's something we can certainly take on that's not necessarily a protocol-based piece that's our reporting component right those General notifications and how we contact race weren't necessarily part of the protocols in terms of how we administrated it so I look at what you're talking about as more of an administrative component which we can certainly look at ways to continuously improve notifying folks then my last question
142is about the ncec and just I understand why um you're recommending that we can continue them the way they are now and I get that but I'm wondering if you have any future vision of when we would re-look at this policy because while I understand it's still very important for the younger children um there it's also harder for them to wear masks so yeah so I think there's two things Amy I think um one of which goes back to what I said about one of the rationale that we're able to remove the protocols across the rest of the district right now vaccination has been widely available for people uh ages five and older for some time um we had Omicron in January which is what delayed our ability to have this discussion but we know
143that vaccination is not yet available for those under five and we know that we want to be able to provide one one way that we could bring forward a protocol changes when that vaccination for children under five becomes available um we did think that there was going to be a move where that was going to become available this week we understand some of the vaccine was actually shipped to locations where they would have been able to provide that but we now see that the FDA has pushed that back until it looks like early April so the next round of discussion that we will also have is what is the appropriate for those Child Care settings which are different than K-12 settings when we look at those Child Care settings what what is the metric or
144the level of viral activity in the community where our local pediatricians would say yes there's a comfort level that should limit any kind of spread within the building and we're still seeing some higher numbers uh per uh person at the ncec versus other buildings and so that's an area because there it's not just about the students right the deed yes that most of that building is governed by the Department of Human Services and the ratio factors for those child care centers are significant and they don't mess around we just had a Kid Ventures uh DHS site visit which we passed with flying colors but believe it or not we were cited for not listing not an allergy but a sensitivity to avocados on one child's fact sheet it was listed in another place but we
145didn't list that they had a sensitivity to avocados and so we got a ding for that I share that example just to share how tough the DHS stuff is and so and they have uh the ability to shut those kinds of programs down we've read all the stories about how important it is to keep child care open so one would be is the vaccination available for children ages six months to five and then the second one would be if we are able to identify a low level of viral transmission that we think could keep that Center open with confidence thank you and I just have one last comment and that is three weeks ago when we were here we were at the height of Omicron and it really is amazing the difference uh with the
146numbers three weeks ago and now so where they're going I think that that's the most important thing for people to understand um we are not making these decisions based solely upon what we're seeing right now but we're basing it based upon where the trajectory is going and what uh our epidemiologists and other medical professionals are seeing that's coming down the pike so um as we've said by the other part I want to share is that we would consider reactivating these protocols if we were to see five percent influenza or covid-like illness rate in any one building over a week it's not an automatic but we would look at it then and do a little bit of a deeper dive and we might Implement something like masking for a period of a couple of weeks to
147make sure we could keep school going but making sure that um we are able to interrupt viral transmission or if we see a rapid decline in public health circumstances we of course would make the decision uh to be able to protect our community again thank you so much oh I want to express my appreciation to the leadership of the district I think they've done an exemplary job and I'm speaking of Dr Gilman but also principals and the teachers the custodians coaches bus drivers volunteers um I think Dr Hillman is told to walk a very great Tightrope on this issue and he's done so excellent has provided the leadership to the district to be able to follow and walking that typewrote also so I expressed my appreciation to the leadership for the district and we can't
148talk about this without talking about Cheryl Hall who has done an amazing job as our covid-19 coordinator so we've on top of her regular job mind you thank you for the update thank you staggering any other comments or questions okay I'm gonna call on Julie okay okay I'll go actually had your hand up first um so I want to sort of echo some of the things Amy said um and acknowledge the high school students who contacted us all of whom were in favor of maintaining masking and they're the ones who have to you know they're the ones in the school and they have to live with it and um and many of them had uh they all had excellent uh reasons for um why they one of the main main way they wanted to maintain
149masking and I also wanted to um make sure like Amy said that there is no bullying there is no peer pressure there is no I mean it's in the student handbook and everything how people are supposed to react but um it doesn't always work that way so I think the uh everybody has to be on board with that uh and so I have a couple questions um so we're all the medical professionals that you talk to on board with this decision Dr Hillman so the the folks who I talked to um I would say supported the direction um I think some had a little more trepidation than others or at least understood the direction okay um some people were wondering why uh starting the next week so we're wondering why not today some um later
150maybe after spring break is there any consideration to perhaps the the week following spring break have masks required just for that week yeah Tom I think that once we take this off and we use the ili rate right that's what we're going to use right what we do not want to do is one of the things that we have been successful with is consistency right and so I when it comes and you're right I would say that I think that's important for the public to know I think we all unfortunately in this time frame we are able to talk with people who generally agree with us right just the way it is right now it's just the way things have manifested but what I'll tell you is for every person who we've had talked with
151us about waiting several weeks or today we have a range of people asking us to wait until the end of the school year um to people who tomorrow is not soon enough and so we have that range and we look at all of those things and we say what is reasonable you all know I subscribed to the reasonable person Theory I do not think that if we're going to make this decision based upon the Public Health Data that we're seeing um I do think it's fair to have a time frame from when the from when it has been announced to when it is implemented because this is a major change for people and psychologically for a number of people this is going to be a hard change and I think that we owe it to
152our friends and neighbors to give them a chance to be able to adjust to the mind have their mindset adjust to what it's going to be like um when they go into an environment where it's not fully masked after having been in a fully massed environment for a couple of years now then a reasonable person can disagree on what is that appropriate time frame what I'll tell you is that once we make the decision getting some feedback from my secondary administrators is that to be able to keep this enforced from the time that we say it's going to happen until the time that it does a week is probably about what we can do right to be able to get people to continue to comply and I think frankly that might even be a little
153bit of a stretch but we know that our high school students can and our middle school students will see the end coming and we I have great um confidence that they'll continue to comply so two weeks three weeks out worrying about spring break all of those things are valid right the recommendation for one week is because we want to give people a reasonable time to adjust to a different way of coming to school and thinking and be able to handle that and then Tom I do have to share your concerns about spring break and one of the interventions that we'll be able to do is to really ask people and provide people with free testing so that when when they go away they can over winter break we had people pick up over 1600 rapid
154antigen tests I have no reason to believe that they wouldn't do the same for spring break and so I think that that's an important component is that um we do have that testing which we have not had available really on mass before the last couple of months so I think that that's the ying and the Yang of coming back from spring break and so um I think that as long people understand right that the five percent ili rate is what's going to would potentially have us kick it back in and so what I do we just need to ask people is you need to help us out right we've all said we're all in this together we're all say we're moving forward together and so if I'm going to go somewhere else for spring break
155when I come back before I go back to school um we'd encourage I'll encourage everybody to test before they come back and make everybody test but I think if we're really talking about having choice and being responsible for one another I think the reasonable person says that's a responsible thing to do to make sure we can keep going with minimal safety protocols um okay thanks and uh if if things go south fast can we react quickly or do we have to wait for the five percent ili or are there other things that you know if all of a sudden we have a hundred cases do we go on that and can we respond quickly like the next day require masking or is does that require the board's action again or how would that go no
156I mean in August you took an action that allowed me uh to make interim decisions based upon the public health circumstances and um I have stood behind every one of those decisions that I have made um they were made with the best interests of Public Health and of our students in mind if we've had to make an interim decision and we stand ready with our team to be able to do that with me being the person that has to make the final call we'd of course talk with public health we would talk with our epidemiologists we would talk with the other medical professionals in the community and we would not take that decision lightly right that would be a very I mean there's going to be there will be some times where there's a little
157bit of pressure think back to when we brought our middle school and high school students back in person full fully in person to start the fourth quarter of last year if you recall there was a little bit of a blip and understandably so people got nervous and we held the course right because we had good information and we knew that we could make it through it I think if there's I do think that I hope that we have earned uh the trust of the community that we do use that data whether you agree with our decisions or not right we use the the the data and we have been decisive and so should that condition happen Tom um Willie will use our expert judgment to be able to make that call okay uh and then
158one last question do you know what the ili typically is in January February like pre-covered so I think it'll be different year to year because remember the flu is different year to year right so what I would say is that it is right now in January it was different than normal because in the old days if you hit five percent they would ask you to close the building for a few days right and we hit 10 in some buildings for a period of time uh and they said nope keep going because this is different right as we keep adjusting to this right the five percent is a a catalyst for discussion about what do we have here so I I don't have the data in front of me time but my Sid what I would
159suggest is that what we're seeing right now is actually a little bit lower than what I would say would be a normal February yeah but that is uh totally anecdotal yeah okay thank you hey Julie so I have a couple questions and a comment um the ncec well they they will continue to be able to do a test to stay program so uh we are working on that so the problem with the ncecn test to stay we have not implemented tests to stay at the ncec yet thanks for that correct a couple of different reasons we did just meet with two local pediatricians in our epidemiologist on Friday uh to talk through uh is there a version of tests to stay that we might be able to do for the CDC does not recommend test
160to stay for children under five okay um but we are working see if there's some kind of version of that that we could work through and so we're just we're still processing that information that we uh talked with them about on Friday okay okay thank you sorry for that um my other question then is if if I'm a parent and I call my student in um to be absent and then and you have to provide a reason of symptoms Etc what is the follow-through then by the either school nurse or School administrator or someone at the building level to say you do need to have this test before you can come back how will that flow of communication work so that would happen just like it's been happening for the last two years right so
161that same kind of conversation would take place just as it has up until now excellent thank you and then my last question is I I know you touched on it but I wanted you to to maybe further expound on where we were in terms of looking at immunity rate and case rate to now where we are if someone you know today the Rice County case rate I believe was right 570 for per 100 000 which isn't anywhere within the metrics that we had originally looked at so just wanted you to articulate um further about how the Omicron has changed that and and how that's really um helped to advise this new exit protocol strategy yes great question thanks for giving me the chance to refocus on that so case rates as we talk with uh
162experts in the field are becoming more and more difficult to use as and they're going to become more and more difficult to use as a a metric that can help us make the best decisions um part of that is that with the Advent of the rapid tests uh there are more and more positive cases that are just not reported right so there's some Under reporting the other part that we have in our own Community is that for much of the pandemic norfield was not too terribly far off of what rice we were fairly representative of what rice County's numbers were not perfect right but we were fairly representative as we've been looking at the difference over the past same month the difference between the Rice County number and the local Northfield Dundas number has been
163striking and there's a few reasons for that some of the congregate living centers that we have in other cities within the county uh when they experience outbreaks that can artificially raise that number you know it doesn't raises the number in the county but doesn't necessarily reflect Northfield so when we were taking a look at how the the numbers that we had used with the original exit strategy were really based upon Delta right which was a little bit lower rate of transmission but of course it was more potent and Omicron really did turn that on its head so as we started to work through what would what would we raise the number of cases to or to where we think we could feel that we could exit um we really struggled to be able to find
164a number that we could align with any kind of other um research because again everything was so new so we we did look at going back to the ili rate because case number case rates across the uh County are just becoming more difficult to use as a decision made metric locally we also did look at the immunity rate is an interesting uh part as well so when I calculated the i in previous meetings I had surely I thought that the immunity rate which just to remind people was the um percentage of students who had had both doses of the vaccine plus the students who had had covid-19 in the last 90 days I'd estimated we might be around at 74 range and when we went to do the complete dive we were really at about
16569 Point well not about we were at 69.26 um we do have a fairly decent number of students who got the first dose but did not get a second dose and so our definition of the immunity rate was both doses of the vaccine um and so we look at our the immunity rate throughout the whole District I want to point out now when you look at Northfield high school for example where we've had some feedback from the student population Northfield High School is an outstanding shape from an immunity rate perspective 88 so that's eight that 88 reflects the number of students at that school who have had both doses of the vaccine plus the students who have tested positive or covid-19 in the last 90 days so when we think about the students that we
166heard from and again I applaud their engagement in the public process and really have tremendous respect for it um Northfield High School is nearly as good as it's going to get you know in terms of an immunity rate and so that population is is really well protected overall so if I could just make a comment like if I could just make a quick comment um so so as I was thinking about the proposal tonight and and the opportunity that you know we we have to to vote on this um I was thinking about from the onset of the pandemic that how as a board we have been Resolute in prioritizing the health and safety of our staff and students um you know we find ourselves now well into the third year of managing the challenges
167of the pandemic yet we've never wavered from this commitment you know and I as as uh Dr Hillman um describe the process that has has led to the initiation of the protocols and where we're now at now you know in in August we did demonstrate this commitment and we took board action to require masks in all district buildings you know at that time with the emergence of the Delta variant that was an easy decision for me when the Omicron variant arrived it was critically important to keep this requirement in place when we put these safety protocols in place the board acknowledged we would continue to monitor monitor the progression of covid-19 and adjust these protocols accordingly with the Omicron surge behind us I believe we're at a point in the pandemic we can adapt our
168protocols the data and other key factors that support that this move at this juncture is that we can do that safely we can do this safely and the conditions are rapidly improving um the exit strategy um reflex and ongoing commitment to prioritizing the health and safety of our school Community the district will continue to closely monitor our school's influenza-like illness rate there is an availability of high quality mass and readily accessible testing in August when we implemented the protocols I knew that ultimately the decision to adjust them would be difficult so here we are I'm grateful for all the emails the board received and for tonight's public comment um the person excuse me perspectives that were shared were ones I fully considered as part of my decision making process we can't make this decision without
169acknowledging Dr Hillman's leadership and the incredible work that he has done to get us to this place and the um care and and the con Consulting of so many experts and different District stakeholders that that develop this this exit strategy and if this proposal does pass tonight I know the district does stand ready to reactivate our safety protocols if our current situation dramatically changes I hope that that will provide reassurance to those who have concerns about this proposal I also want to thank both Amy and Tom for reiterating the optional masking that this protocol puts in place and really truly hopeful that our school Community will respect those who will make the decision to continue to wear a mask I will I applaud them for making the decision that is right for them so I
170do plan to support this proposal again we we stand ready to reactivate if if the situation changes but we are at a juncture where I think we can do this safely thank you Julie terrific comments Tom did you want to try again uh just a quick question uh Dr Hillman you said it's 88 in the high school of two shots and or haven't had covered what about the booster yeah I did not calculate the booster at the high school there we do have students who do have the booster um what we do what the what we still Define as fully vaccinated is the two doses we do have students who have the but I did not calculate the booster as part of that I can I just didn't do it as of now uh well
171it's just that they're uh saying that the the two shots are are good but the booster is the best and I I can tell you that I in in um I believe there's quite a few students who have received a booster but I don't have the data in front of me thanks anyone else Corey that's good questions tonight most of my questions were answered I do have one more concerning Transportation um I'm curious what conversations you had over the weekend with Benjamin bus obviously that's something they've been enforcing all school year anyhow but similar to the schools themselves enforcing us when students are you know experiencing something else up to the bus and as soon as they get off the bus it's going to be a different animal not only for day-to-day Transportation but also
172for activities what what are the conversations you've been having so I talked with John Benjamin prior to the announcement and we talked through uh they will continue to be able to enforce this to the best of their ability but remember that one of the challenges for bus drivers is that their primary objective is the Safe Transportation of the students so there are times where there is non-compliance on the bus what I can tell you is that when we have known that and we have shared it with Benjamin bus they have been Swift to be able to try to intervene this school year so we anticipate John was very straight up that it becomes much more difficult to enforce this on the bus when it's not something that's at school uh he and his team are
173aware of that um I I don't have any reason but but we've also heard that I believe that that TSA rule expires in March and so we've heard some pieces that it may be allowed to expire this time but we learned not to predict anything from the pandemic but we have had ex discussions with John and and they are aware and are prepared to be able to handle it to the best of their ability thank you a couple comments uh again lots of good things said tonight it's been a long 23 months very difficult months it's been a fluid situation remains fluid nothing's different about the situation after tonight so I just want people to keep that in mind Julie just thought some really nice things about we can quickly move back if we need
174to and it's not a threat that's just a reality for 23 months we've been adjusting day to day week to week by what's happening around the spoken our community and beyond our community one thing I keep coming back to is Dr Hillman writes often about being proud of how we were conducting ourselves and I think at least two board members tonight maybe three recognize the students who emailed us over the weekend and I'm incredibly proud of them for what they stood up for and what they believe in and they're not going to get what they want tonight and I think that's okay it's a lesson but it's gonna be difficult for them and for six months if not longer we've been dealing with people who think this is a two-sided issue and it's not two-sided
175issue we've heard comments for six months and really we're in six months about people who have very unique situations very difficult situations and I think it's important we recognize that I'm proud of those students just as I was proud of the student who was here tonight speaking unfortunately I'm very ashamed of and embarrassed by a number of the adults in the audience tonight who laughed at that student and I just want them to think about how that student may have felt tonight when she came to speak about her truth and the difficulty she's going to be facing on the 22nd of February when she walks in the school in a very different situation so I would challenge our entire community to be their best selves and to treat others with respect this is others have
176expected for 23 months thanks thank you Corey comments question Julie I just have one last comment and that's our our ex extending our uh sincere appreciation to the command team um when I was on board chair I I served on that command team and and Claudia is serving on it now and um to know firsthand and to see the work of that group is truly incredible and we are so grateful that we had an epidemiologist a local physician we had um representatives of the teachers the education educational assistants those boots on the ground who saw these things play out and the local physician who sees things play out at the at the local Northfield level level at the clinic and then an epidemiologist who was able to advise on on overall Trends and and how
177um omocron and Delta were going to play out so the the work of that group can really not be under you know it's it's just invaluable and we can never really repay them for the for the work that they have done and continue to do at 7 A.M on a Thursday morning so thank you thank you Julie Amy I was looking at the clock and realizing they were getting close to nine o'clock and I don't know exactly when I should do this but I I wanted to make a motion to continue past nine o'clock if that's okay with people okay thank you is there a second to the motion to go past nine thank you Julie okay all and then a vote on that all in favor say aye aye all opposed okay we will
178go past nine thank you any more comments correct or questions well it's hard to follow up um everybody's made such excellent commentary um and what I want to share I mean obviously in agreement with with so much of that's already been shared um but just personally um some of the things I and I I'll just shoot them off I don't have a way of sharing this but just some of the things that have helped me process this change is um I know that our community is not shy to come out and and give us their opinion we saw some nights where we had nine ten people sharing that they encouraged us to keep the mask mandate to not change our protocols um and we did get several emails from students um as other board members
179have stated um sharing their opinions with us and their concerns um so that gives me that gives me confidence um to update the protocols having heard and not heard from um community members especially school um stakeholders another thing is um just a recognition that I have held um you know some of my my identity has come from wanting to take care of all of my neighbors and my community you know my community by wearing a mask and wearing it properly and moving on to a higher quality mask but that was really founded on those circumstances before we had vaccines available and so um I just feel like I wore the mask initially to protect those individuals all of us who couldn't get vaccinated but you know now we're in a place where the vaccine is
180available and better quality masks are available so um if I if I am true to holding on and to science then the science is telling us right now that the rates are going down that more people are protected at our school um and then that it's okay um to move into this next phase of allowing people to choose if they want to continue using some of those tools um and just one more um that the data does change so quickly and it's unsettling it feels like we're not on Solid Ground because we accept Embrace and and you know just are so faithful to the recommendations and then they change on us and that can feel very upsetting um but again if I hold truth to following the science when it updates then I need to
181follow that you know it's unsettling as I can feel because the science changes so quickly and it has updated um and Dr helming your leadership throughout these last school years has been stellar you have been able to communicate with staff and community members I see you emailing us our community members our students our staff members and always staying hopeful and positive and listening um and I think that that makes a big difference so I'm just thankful for your leadership through Lisa very very tough years when I what I chose education as a field I did it because I wanted to serve the public and I've been really reflecting over the last several months about public service and what it means and you don't sign up for the public service that you want you sign up
182for the public service that is handed to you so it has been a privilege um not a fun privilege I want to be clear but it has been a privilege to get in this place at this time to do this work here and we're not done we have a long way to go but this is a good step in the right direction and so I appreciate the very kind comments do I want to come just two more items several people have brought up the concern about making sure that our neighbors and our friends are treated with respect that is unequivocal right we know that we are a microcosm of society so we do know that there will be some things that happen as we move to this mask recommended but optional environment I've spoken with
183our building principals who are fully prepared not only to pre-teach right how we handle this kind of change but also to enforce that if we have people who behave poorly we have a student citizenship handbook that does govern that and this kind any kind of harassment or bullying for students who continue to choose to wear a mask or choose not to wear a mask we have to respect that both ways will be dealt with swiftly and done as a learning opportunity a buyer building principles who are incredibly skilled at student management and I do want to emphasize the uh the availability of higher quality masks for people to protect themselves in a mixed masking environment so for people if you have a concern as we move to a mixed masking environment in our school k95
184masks are available across from all sorts of different entities for people who are able to have one n95s are also now available and free and Rice County I didn't even know what such a thing existed but there's apparently an n99 that you can actually get and so the calculus has also changed that people do have greater tools to be able to protect themselves individually so for the board members who I am so grateful for your concern for our student experience and for acknowledging you know students who have spoke their mind about this for for whichever perspective we are trying to get people if you remember our mission our vision says that we are going to try to put people who are ready to engage in their society right and so this is an important group
185of students who are going to remember this this is a lifelong lesson right for how we adjust and deal with systemic and and um really significant disruption so I do know that our educational team is prepared to handle any of those kinds of incidents I'd like to tell you that they won't happen they will I can tell you that for sure and it's not a matter we will do what we can to prevent it but what we will do is if we for in the circumstance we can't prevent it we will intervene and we will support those students so that's what we've got for you so again these are going to effect on February 21st should the board approve them this evening thank you and more comments or questions okay seeing no further discussion we'll
186now take a vote all those in favor of updating or changing the covid-19 protocols say aye aye all those opposed hey motion passes we have an updated protocols we now move on to items for information we have an enrollment enrollment report from Dr Hillman would you like to make any comments now um if you'll just give me one moment to get to that enrollment report you'll see that we did go down by a few students from 3809 last month the 3792 this month um some of those students may have shifted uh to some of the alc programming where it's more of a part-time component but that is where we are at this month thank you are there any questions or comments Corey I see Portage increased by 18 students that they come from within the
187district or outside of the district so my latest understandings would be it would be a mix we did have some students who did shift um with Omicron where they shifted from uh the in-person programming to the Portage programming and then we have still we've continued to pick up a handful of students from other districts but I would say the majority of them Quarry are coming from within the district which is what I expected are they making the commitment for the rest of the year to belong the porch or can they shift back at some point yeah so we asked people to make that semester commitment um that's an important piece for us but it isn't that we can't work with certain individual situations but we're up up front and transparent with people that Beyond ramp
188is that they need to commit for the semester any other comments or questions okay this concludes our business meeting tonight thank you board members for your excellent level of Engagement I'm grateful for your commitment to our community we process a lot of critical issues and topics every meeting and I know that you're please know that your thoughtfulness is always noticed our next meeting where our next meetings will be Monday 6 p.m on February 28th March 14th and March 28th in the district courtroom is there a motion to adjourn okay move final second by Amy thank you all those in favor I opposed all right we are adjourned