Northfield School District Board of Education Regular Meeting 04 26 2021

001I call this meeting to order this is a regular meeting of the Northfield Public School Board today is Monday April 26 2021 and the time is seven o'clock P.M we are present this evening in our new school board meeting room located at the Northfield Public Schools district offices formerly Longfellow School in accordance with the with Governor walls stay safe plan this room has been set up in accordance with the planned social distancing guidelines in addition all those present at the meeting are wearing face coverings tonight we also welcome students from the district youth Council and their advisor Malia Fallen attending tonight's board meeting via teleconference are Aaron Bailey director of Community Education Joel Lear principal Northfield high school and Joel Olson activities director Northfield High School this meeting is open to the public via live

002stream the recording of this meeting will be posted on the district website as soon as possible Dr Hillman there were some items in the table file yes this evening we had an addition to items for discussion on our reports with a report about an agreement between area Learning Center and the adult basic education program for a 21 and older diploma I'll be sharing that we also have an additional committee report we have a gift agreement appointments increase decrease change in positions a leave of absence uh some retirements and information about a senior ceremony so that's the table file for this evening excellent thank you if there's no objections We'll add these items to the agenda as we move forward is there a motion to approve the agenda as presented moved by Jeff is there a

003second second by Amy all those in favor of approving the agenda say aye aye opposed motion carries we now have an opportunity for residents business and Property Owners parents students and employees of the Northfield Public School District to address the board to accommodate the public comment portion of our meeting we made available on the district's website the ability for the public to submit feedback to the board via email by 5 pm today all submissions that follow the district's policy regarding public comment would be read now however we have no public comments submissions we'll move on on now to announcements and recognitions and tonight we have a special opportunity to recognize the work of our district youth Council seniors so I would like to pre uh begin that presentation so I will start and then we

004will have the seniors come up tonight we are pleased to honor our district youth Council seniors for their incredible work the dyc was formed as an advisory Council to assist the district in providing the important student voice the council is made up of 16 students selected through an application process and approved by the school board members serve on nine District committees and regularly attend school board meetings to keep abreast of current issues in addition this year's dyc had their own subcommittees focused on equity and inclusion Communications and connections and well-being at their presentation to the board this past fall they highlighted the work they continued to do despite the challenges of Zoom meetings the board was impressed with their efforts to thank the district's Child Nutrition workers and bus drivers their for their work in

005preparing and delivering meals during distance learning as the school board liaison to the council I've had the privilege of witnessing them in action I come away from our meetings impressed with a passion and enthusiasm they have for their projects most importantly however was how well they worked together how supportive they are of each other and how they freely acknowledge and appreciate the work of their fellow members thank you seniors for your leadership service and dedication to amplifying youth voice for our district we also want to thank Malia Fallen the dyc advisor for her invaluable guidance and support she provides the students we are grateful to Malia and to Zach Pruitt and healthy Community Initiative for the support of the youth on boards program this program places close to 90 students on the city of northfield's

006various boards and commissions so I will now have the opportunity to recognize each senior individually please hold your applause until the end and I can say it's much more fun to be handing them their certificates versus putting them in the mail that we had to do last year so this is really fun so our first senior will recognize is Wendy bollum Wendy has spent three years on the district youth Council her subcommittees have been diversity equity and inclusion and her District committee was Finance advisory and Northfield forward I remember one Finance advisory meeting we met it was pretty complex um questions of course around school Finance which we all know is is complex and Wendy cut right to the bottom line and asked just this really excellent question so always demonstrating how it's important and

007valuable the students are to to our work and she's also part of Northfield forward uh Wendy's future plans are she's excited to be going to Cornell University and majoring in food science and some highlights for her of District youth Council work was the 2019 youth data Summit and the school board brunch that was hosted by dyc for school board members and we all recall how much fun that day was so Wendy we congratulate you and thank you for your incredible work okay our next um on the list is Erica Lowe Erica has this is her first year on District youth Council but has done incredible work on the diversity or I'm sorry the connections in communication subcommittee she was also on the district's Finance advisory committee excuse me facilities Erica is excited to be going

008to the University of Wisconsin-Madison and studying biomedical engineering and I know it was the first uh her first choice for college so it's even more exciting when you get your first choice um Erica had some really insightful comments about her work and working with others to connect students with administrators so she really enjoyed just being able to reach out to other students in her work on dyc so Erica thank you for your work gonna make check here that yes thank you uh we also next would like to honor Nick Lopez welcome Nick Nick has been on the uh District youth Council for one year he was a part of the equity and inclusion subcommittee and worked um on the policy committee for the district so we all know the incredible work that our students have

009helped us do on the policy committee Nick is excited to be heading to North Dakota state to study exercise science and similar to Erica the most highlight for his work on dyc has been connecting and working with fellow students so Nick we thank you for your work and we of course wish you all the best thank you Nick we'd like to recognize next Michael Malika Michael Malika has been on District youth Council for three years he uh currently is co-chair along with Chloe roska this year and he was on the equity and inclusion um and diversity subcommittee for dyc I think he holds a record for the number of District committees he's on Michael is on finance advisory facilities advisory and the district Equity committee Michael is heading to the University of twin University of

010Minnesota Twin Cities to uh in the College of design and we'll be studying retail merchandising and highlight for Michael was the 2019 data Summit and as we all know there was this incredible logo for the summit and that was designed by Michael so we know Michael has a great future in design and Michael was also one of the students that traveled with the board and schools for equity and education to the Capitol in 2019 and that was just a really incredible day to see our students interacting with our legislators so thank you Michael is that right all right next browin is here we'll give her a chance to walk up so we welcome Brown McDermott um she has been on District youth Council for two years she has spent time on the subcommittees and worked

011on mental health and student well-being her District committees are financed advisory and the wellness committee Brown has some decisions to make she is uh committed to majoring in biomedical science and wants to go to medical school and study abroad before college but still considering the Rochester Institute of Technology Pacific Lutheran or Luther so she has some decisions to make before decision day um Brown had some really insightful comments about highlights and working for dyc on the dyc she said she has enjoyed learning more about the workings of the school and how many contribute in their own way she's appreciative of being able to contribute in a meaningful way and believes it's important to have youth representative and she was very grateful for the opportunity she's had as a member of the district youth Council so

012congratulations and thank you for your work Brown good luck with that college decision sounds like you have some great choices so we had three students who weren't able to make it tonight but I do want to talk about them um Dylan Dietz um has been on the dyc for two years he was part of connections and Communications subcommittee and Northfield Ford as a district his plans are to attend University of Northwestern and St Paul and major in nursing and he'll be playing football on the cross for them and he remembers as a highlight the 2019 Capitol visit um with the school board members and schools for equity and education the other student not able to be here is Anders Ripley he was a part of the equity and inclusion subcommittee and the fox advisory District

013committee his plans are to attend Colorado College and hit the highlight of his work on dyc was working on the land acknowledgment statement and our last student is Chloe rosga who served as co-chair along with Michael this year and was part of the diversity equity and inclusion subcommittee and served on Northfield forward and just the district Equity committee Chloe's future plans are to attend Luther College and Mabel and major in global health or political science and play softball for Luther highlights for Chloe was emceeing the data Summit and we know she uh did an amazing job as an emcee and hearing a range of opinions and ideas that came forth that morning for those students and what's probably the most important highlight for her was a number of friendships she made and the connections that

014she continues to have with the students she met that day and that really excellent data Summit so I think I know that the entire board joins me in a round of applause and congratulations for all your work and your efforts it is so we can move on Dr Hillman if you have any other announcements and recognitions for this evening yes I have two this evening uh first we are very fortunate to have had two of our school um two members of our school staff recognized this year by the University of Wisconsin River Falls so I'm proud to announce tonight that Carrie Duba has been recognized as the 20 as one of the 2021 University of Wisconsin at River Falls Douglas K Smith outstanding School psychology alumni the award recognizes leadership service and other contributions to

015the field of school psychology and education Kerry has frequently contributed her time for the field-based supervision of new professionals teaching graduate courses at River Falls advocacy for her community and schools support for colleague growth and thoughtful and measured leadership to so many Carrie is also a champion of social justice advocating tirelessly for bypoc and lgbtq plus persons and we congratulate Kerry on this wonderful honor great to have her as an outstanding alumni from UW River Falls anyone know who knows Carrie it's not a shock that she is an outstanding alumni so great job Kiri Duba we also want to recognize the Northfield high school state champion knowledgeable team members so these students were part of the team that won the state knowledgeable championship and as you know we've got kind of a jug we're not

016going there routinely uh putting multiple teams in the section uh championships and moving on to state so the members of this year state champion team are Colin Thomas Green Saxon eggy Andrew Ryden Wyatt Barber Max Cason Grace Cason Piper morning uh Julian Burnell Owen Riley James shuffleton and we want to congratulate their coaches Michelle sonaga and Ellen muja congratulations to the Northfield high school state champion knowledgeable team awesome [Applause] all right is there anything any board members would like to add all right well we will move on now to our first presentation we welcome uh Northfield High School principal Joe Lear an activities director Joel Olson um and they will present the three finalists for the Raider mascot redesign welcome thank you very much and I will speak on behalf of Joel actually Joel had

017a family uh item that pulled him away this evening so he sends his regrets but I made sure to uh brief him on the comments I would make so his words uh were not left unset but I want to thank you uh members of the board and Dr Hillman for this opportunity to share kind of uh the results of our labors as a uh logo refresh uh committee um Dr Hillman do I have share rights now you should okay I will go ahead and do that [Music] all right so just as a quick uh reminder of the process back last fall uh the board's uh action um directed us to form a committee um and to request among our stakeholders our parents students and alums as well as community members um ideas for a logo

018refresh uh we collected about 21 total that we brought before a a group of student staff parents alums um it's a cross-section of of our school and local community that I feel um within the confines of a pretty uh limited group of people were able to represent as many stakeholders as we possibly could so we were pleased with uh that not only the number but also the representation that served on that group uh and so the process was a bit of a uh back and forth once the committee looked at those designs they they essentially established a series of concept preferences so rather than looking at necessarily the the 21 logos that uh were submitted as part of the process looking at components of those logos to say what pieces can be combined which pieces

019were important uh if you remember as a board you had asked that we pursued something that looked uh to be as as uh many of these as possible that it'd be easy to reproduce that it'd be gender neutral that it'd be race neutral that it be um kind of Representative of what it means to be a a Raider and focusing in on uh the bank raid uh more than the previous logo did uh so with that I'm just going to share um the names of the committee members so this was the group that served um on the committee we met three times over the course of the last couple of months to review and so I mentioned the the process of back and forth so we took those Concepts uh and and uh nuger Communications

020representatives from new Communications um received those uh from the committee and then put together some prototypes of logos based on that feedback those initial first drafts were designed to be first drafts and function that way and so uh Joel and I brought those uh drafts back to um back to the original committee and we reviewed them from two standpoints one that you know how accurately those Concepts that we had talked about were important from the first conversation were represented in those drafts and then what changes if any uh were we hoping to make and those those conversations over the next two meetings were substantive uh and the the folks at nougat were very Cooperative in terms of their ability to kind of receive that in some cases very detailed uh in some cases very picky

021uh but we really felt that that process was part of uh what allowed us to get to this point tonight where we can share these these designs with you uh so what we have is representative of those multiple conversations come together in uh in three designs essentially you will see more than three pictures uh in the coming moments um and I will tell you that the first three um are independent of one another the last two you will see is a very obvious connection that um the the first one is a standalone the second and the third um are are uh are connected to the fourth and fifth and I'll get to that in one second but I did just want to share that the order of the first three the order of these three

022logos is in priority order uh from the committee so they're not presented to you at random they are presented in the order of preference uh that that committee determined um prior to moving them forward to the board for review and subsequent vote so without further Ado I will share uh the logos and this is logo number one and I think just for the purpose of our uh of summarizing the conversation that the committee members had I will show you all of them and then I will work my way back through them uh a little more briefly uh so they can share those comments with you so again number one number two and number three so all three obviously distinct similar in certain ways different in others um the last two illustrations I want to show

023you is that what nuger uh did was essentially create a two logo package of each of these Horse and Rider combinations um so that you could actually this is going to sound kind of graphic but you could remove the head and make it a logo in and of itself so I will just flash back to this one the second and the third and then you will see what I mean that they essentially uh represented the logo as a separate entity with just the the head like that first uh front facing logo and then the head of the second and so what uh the folks at Nuka talked about was you could you could essentially um you could have a single logo that is more than one logo and design a system where um where say

024for example on a t-shirt perhaps you would go with a with a complete Horse and Rider and perhaps on the the logo of a hat or the shoulder of a hockey sweater or a helmet uh something less detailed and something rounder if you will all right so I will just kind of talk you through a general summary of the conversations that we have regarding these and how we ended up at the them being in this particular order of priority and then I will certainly open it up to questions so there were a couple of features about this that stood out um for our committee um first of all the committee felt that this was was representative of the board's request to keep things gender neutral and race neutral um it is not a discernible gender

025or a discernible race um you'll notice that the the the horse people so the the logo person uh in this example in this example and then obviously in this are all three wearing bandanas this first one is the only one wearing it below their face and so the committee thought that that was important for two reasons one that the true Spirit of a bandana over the face at least in terms of how we how we represent in logos and such is that if it's over the face you're covering your face like you are a bandit whereas to be representative of the townspeople who defended the bank against the uh the Jesse James Gang um the committee uh believed that to have the bandana below the neck or excuse me below the chin was more representative

026of a factual account of of our community history um there were this particular logo underwent some iterations that that sharpened actually uh I just like to say this because I think it's funny but made the hat look meaner if I showed you the original draft you would actually say you're right it looks kind of meaner or more ominous because it it was sharpened there were places where it was rounded one of the pieces that we've talked about bringing back to nuger for this piece is just perhaps to de-emphasize the size of the of the neckerchief um but again uh the gender neutrality the race neutrality um and then a little bit of a kind of a mystery if you will of who's behind the Hat who's behind the the neckerchief um and then uh wanting

027to incorporate the the Raider n into the logo that could then be lifted off uh and be used in in other components of of our uh of our Raider Nation decorating so um so again that was kind of put us at Priority One um this one was priority two um and I'm going to distinguish between this one and this next one on a couple of bases and I'm going to toggle back and forth Just so you can see them one the committee really believed that this also kind of kept the spirit of the race and gender neutrality a little more than this third one which uh the committee really deemed was was pretty masculine and also uh particularly right around the the eye of a very specific in terms of its race the depiction of

028its race um obviously when you're talking about a drawing those things can be up for interpretation they can also be up for uh discussion about is it meant to look like all of our students and and our community members or is it meant to represent them in theme or in idea um so certainly those were all conversations that we had um the committee in general um while there were people who liked the Horse and Rider um in general if I had to say what is that was the General consensus of the committee was that the they they were less preferential to the Riders on the hook to the the Raider on the horse in these second and third images than they were specific to where it is just representative of the of the human in

029the logo um with this one with all three actually all three are are uh we have been told by professional Consultants that they are uh easy enough to reproduce in in whether it be screen print or embroidery um we did also have one of the discussions that put this as preference one uh was that it was indeed a little simpler a logo and perhaps a little more easy to produce than the complexity of the other two also I did want the board to know I in it as a simplification of the process given that we are marooning gold um I'm sharing each of the logos with you in those two colors um there are some uh there's a rendering of the second and the third so this one and this one that uh I would

030describe as multi-color um where some Grays some blacks uh and other colors are mixed in um they flush out the color of the designs a little bit they are also more expensive to produce so if you think about the volume of production that's in that's going to be involved in transferring our um all of our materials to a new refreshed logo there is going to be a significant difference in cost when you start talking about multiple colors Above and Beyond two so for the sake of this presentation we we shared uh what they would look like in the maroon and gold also a person a personal note also a note about color um there are actually identified Pantone colors for the maroon and gold for Northfield High School um I did not verify whether or

031not these were those colors so um you know I ask you to consider the designs but not necessarily that these are specif the specific to Pantone colors that are our school district or excuse me our logo has historically been thank you with that I will open it up to comments or questions excellent thank you Joel so a lot to absorb some exciting books um anxious to hear board members comments and questions if you want to take a few minutes to gather your thoughts there's a lot to review Corey Joel I'm curious about the committee feedback was it unanimous for the prioritization of this order yeah great question Corey thank you for asking that I would say that um I'm going to say no I'm hesitating because our our committee really um it really wasn't about

032saying I like this one best this one best this one best there was a lot of discussion about people who liked all three um and I would say that that while short of unanimous I would say that the the full committee uh was very comfortable living with that as being first priority but I will say that I think that that in general while we prioritize them in order for some specific reasons um there was a lot of discussion about about all three of the designs that nuger created from the feedback that well from the original 21 illustrations but also then from the feedback of the committee over those meetings um that really did a nice job in terms of kind of representing those ideas across the three foreign thank you Tom you had your hand

033um just a comment on the the third one when I looked at first looked at the picture of just the head and that thing sticking out in the front I thought well that's like a big nose or something so it just you know if that were the taken off of the off of the horse it seems out of place but um put your explanation helped um and then uh on the on the the horse again both of the Riders have the um bandana up over their face um which which I like in the the first one where where it's not I also like the just the simple design of the first one um the second one uh looks busy with all the uh just like the the red parts of it to to form the

034the clothing and the horse um so anyway those are my initial thoughts Julie can I add just one piece of course and I apologize for this one of the things uh and I apologize for not mentioning this before but in addition to the idea that the bandana over the face is a little more representative of the Bandit if you will um one of the concerns I think this is just the reality of our current our current situation that there was some concern about having a mask in uh in the refresh of a logo during a pandemic where we're all wearing masks and that would that somehow negatively impact kind of the the the overall development not uh adoption of that so that was another reason that people were were drawn to this as a as

035a kerchief or a handkerchief underneath the chin as opposed to covering their face you know as if they're protecting them from themselves from covet I know that you know 15 years from now that would be irrelevant but I just wanted to share that because it was it was something the committee talked about now thanks for sharing and and feel free to jump in as as we move through discussion here Amy you had your hand up I believe uh thank you Joel for the presentation and exciting kind of fun to see all this coming together um I you know this is the first time I've seen these and when I look at the first one and maybe the pandemic has been going on too long but I see the Kirch of under the neck but I

036also see something over the nose and mouth it looks like a mask like they're wearing two purchase I don't see a face there so I guess I'm wondering if it if there was any talk about putting more of a face on that one because it it just looks a little odd to me right now so part of that and it was actually it's more defined than it was in its original version I think what people were drawn to there was that the ambiguity of that left in the shadow um and kind of unclear was was kind of a way of of keeping that neutrality of character that we really don't know who's who's there even though I mean it's it's a little tricky when you start talking about a face revealed but also trying to

037be gender neutral and race neutral and so I think what they were trying to capture was just this idea that you know so if you think that the sun is shining down there's a shadow cast across the face and so the who it is and what they look like is the little uh ambiguous so I think that was intentional um you know particularly the students initially talked about the detail lines of this one were a little bit too obtuse and so this second uh rendering of it brought some of that detail in the bandana you see here is a little more detail the Hat more so um and the face left like I said purposely ambiguous so that that it can really be who you want it to be or what you want to be

038um so that was intentional but but I understand your point yeah so I like the hat and I like the bandana it just seems like I'm missing part of a mouth you know this if if they're if it's all in the shadow there might be some mouth in that yellow blob otherwise to me it looks like a mask but it's really you know it's fun to see all of these um I like number two a lot because I think it's it's more clear what you're looking at and I think it can be gender neutral and I think you're right about number three definitely looks more male and it actually is kind of a three color because it has the white on there too so I'm not sure how that would affect reproducing it in the

039design I don't have any more questions so thank you yeah other questions comments Claudia thanks Joel of her taking this important task on I'm very excited to see the update here how many students were on the committee I recognize a few names so I'm I'm getting at um was a pretty even students to community members or how did that break down yeah so we had we had six students participating am I doing this right five students participating one of whom um was one of our last year's Alum so four active students across kind of a cross-section of activities um uh groups and Athletics and then Nikki hosterman who was actually the individual who uh is a first year college student he was the one who actually brought from the student council the the request to

040the board or at time escapes me a year plus ago to ask the board to consider um changing and updating the logo the first one um I like the handkerchief around the neck area and the and the big end displayed prominently there um I think the second one the the second and the third one on the horse I I think it's on that it's there's a lot more details and all the shadows and that but also the horse seems more competitive if you will in the third one and not as competitive in the second one um but yeah I think that the first one has a lot of great qualities so great job on that thank you other questions comments board members have it's Corey let's all piggyback on what Claudia and Tom said I

041think number two is a little busy I'm not particularly a fan of the bandana either in the end it just seems oddly placed there like they had to find somewhere to put it I think it's more cleverly used for the harness on number three but I more strongly prefer number one as well um I think the necro Chief and the logo stand out pretty well I don't really share Amy's concern because I think about the face I kind of see it but the ambiguity is there but I guess my question about the ambiguity is I appreciate the effort going into the neutrality but given that we're looking past to the past of the 1860s isn't it kind of implied who's under the hat and behind the mask I mean is that a concern at all

042about using a human because I I wasn't on the board when this decision came forward to go ahead and I guess I didn't know what to expect for tonight and I guess I didn't even think about a human being used for the logos I guess I was a little surprised to see humans used for all three logos I thought were maybe gravitating away from that so with that in mind with the neutrality idea I'm just kind of curious about the thought process behind that if the implications still there even though it is gender neutral it's race neutral sure and I can just tell you uh Corey what the conversation you know how the conversation unfolded with the committee that I think that that for those that were participating in the process um felt that it

043did uh that it did kind of speak to those those components of the requests that the board gave us in in moving forward toward a refresh of the original 21 uh there were actually a number of uh non-human um entries into the process the the committee as it reviewed those ultimately settled on on having a human being a component of all the concepts that they move forward to um to nuker for that even in that first that first iteration so as an example the idea of of a rater being um a cow so our theme of cows colleges and contentment so an image of a cow being the the the the independent logo or the image of a horse if you think of the Bronco of the Denver Broncos that those types of images um

044were shared in that initial process of reviewing the 21 but the committee the committee was fairly ReSound in um in wanting that representation to be in human form thank you no no thank you Joel for making the presentation you're welcome number one I may read too much into this but the first time I glanced at it it looked like Northwestern a clever way of displaying the n and a w so if the stylist could change that a little bit to look more like the left side of the bandana rather than uh and a w on the side just a net um and I if we go to number two or number three I would like the horses to look a little more sinister and competitive was your choice of words more com more sinister and

045I think that can be done with a few Strokes of a pen thank you thanks Noel other questions comments foreign do you have any feedback you want to share uh not really foreign I'm sorry did you not hear that I'm sorry maybe I'll start over I was complimenting you on the excellent committee that you put together and I really appreciate the broad section of stakeholders that participate and then obviously did a lot of work to get us to this point so I was saying that in my mind this mascot and and the logo really likened to thinking about the University of Minnesota and the strong M um as a logo and obviously Goldie gopher as the mascot so you alluded to um something where you said maybe that n the font on design number one

046would be the font size that or the font that we would use going forward for the N right now I think it's sort of de facto block and is that uh something you would see then as the new n for the logo here's what I would say I probably misspoke a little bit Julie what I would say is that that once there is a final end the committee had a real strong uh notion that that as you look at all three logos with the m that that appears there that that be the end that is truly the Northfield end so it wasn't so much saying that that first logo was the one but that whatever you know and and nuger's process newer was aware that we were interested interested in having that kind of Marquee

047Northfield end being something uh I mean obviously sometimes it's hard to be unique when it comes to an alphabet letter uh but is as close as possible to have an end that is this is my own term kind of a trademark and for Northfield so wherever it's used so baseball hat might not use the logo but they might use the letter that that is the n that you see on the logo or if you see a hockey sweater that uses the N instead of the the head or the the ultimate logo that that you approve that it's coming off of that logo so that it's not just you find an end that works online and you throw that on a t-shirt that it would be very intentional that whichever logo it was that we would

048finalize that end to be a font that we all accepted as kind of the approved uh North yellow that's really strong I appreciate that a lot and you talked about the Pantone colors that we would give so basically we would have nuger develop a identity guide so that you know anyone who wanted to reproduce either our mascot or our logo would know the guidelines for doing that so we would have consistency exactly exactly um I think that um uh what did I understand kind of to say is the the number one that was really preferential for the committee and number two that those two um really could sort of be used um as sort of one and de facto number one or number two depending on you know the the size of a logo that

049some or mascot that somebody wanted so those were sort of one and two and in some cases if you if someone wanted to do the horse that that would be also deemed as the preferential if if a horse were to be included in the mascot design so if yeah if ultimately the board wanted the horse to be attached or to be attachable that that second option would be the priority over the third but uh you know that bearing in mind that there's been some conversation about the how the horse looks or how the horse doesn't look that ultimately it was the rider uh themselves that that was you know kind of representing that preference so again the gender and race neutrality so if it were about um you know if the board wanted to move

050in the direction of saying we want to horse and a writer combination it would be the second image and the fourth that would work in concert and the third and the fifth so it would be the same head so you wouldn't have two different heads functioning um as the Northfield logo the idea being that we are consistent across the board with with the only variation would be that again this sounds kind of funny but the horse and the writer are together or that Rider is separate but it's it's not a different writer altogether I wanted to share your screen again sure explicitly Point those out please foreign so again so if if this this logo is a standalone so there's no horse that goes with this one in the interest of having a combination of

051a Horse and Rider what what we could do is create that usage guide that says which uh situations we use the full Horse and Rider in which we use just the head so like for example this would be a lot to put on a football helmet this would not be and so those two would be used in concert and this one and number five would be used in concert but if it but the this that these uh the committee said their priority was this logo and this logo would be a a single logo it wouldn't be something that you would combine with with another image of a horse oh okay so the other thing you know I know that the committee he just spent a great deal of time and effort to get us to

052this place so can you talk about the discussion around how they felt the horse should should look you know menacing versus um you know just maybe the conversation around so we can understand what where what brought them to the point where the the facial sort of features of the horse sure and I would say that I would say that ultimately uh design number two and design number three [Music] um here's what I'm going to go this direction that if if it were a choice between two and three the main focus of priority here was about the rider themselves so the writer and the the The Possession position in terms of gender and race neutrality and that it was more representative of the full community so if if uh and and quite frankly the committee's tendency

053was away from um a rider on a horse that their their priority was without the horse um so so in in most cases they were you know what we talked about and I'm gonna skip over the horses for a second and go through the three heads if you look at this one you jump to the the second head and the third you know the the size of the head the detail of the head is going to you know it's going to look good on a on a pocket it's going to look good on a helmet it's going to look good on a hockey sweater uh the shoulder of a volleyball Jersey um and so I think that that in general that the the committee's perspective was was they weren't as crazy about having the horse

054in it they could live with the idea of having two options one with the horse one without but if if they were going with a single logo the the horse was a was was was less of a priority than having a strong logo that they could live with and move forward with in terms of the horses themselves I would say that you know Claudia's word uh competitive um that was noted there was some expression of this particular horse uh perhaps looking a little more Hobby horse-like and this one looking more like it was you know on the Run uh and again no I'll use the word menacing but more kind of intimidating um uh in their look and again those are you know if if it's if it's the board's request that we move back

055and and work to alter something with nuger obviously that would be the board's perspective to make that decision as well um you know the committee has not the committee is not in a place where where they have said you know well we just can't take this anymore so I mean they've been been very uh involved in inactive in the process and I think everyone wants to get it right so um that's it's an important piece that that they feel the process has played out in an appropriate way okay yes I agree we are we really do need to get this right so again we continue to um be grateful to the committee for their work and um they did some really great work to get us to this point so I just wanted to refresh

056um our memory as as a board when we gave the direction to Joel Lear and the committee in terms of how the parameters of Designing the the mascot and the parameters were will not be a specific person but an embodiment of the townspeople who defended against the James younger Gan gang cannot include any weapons or weapons must be relatively simple to recreate needs to appropriately represent both male and female students and may include a background so just so we recall what what parameters we gave the committee um I I think I agree with Corey and that the mascot the first mascot I think the beauty of it is it it you know the the facial features the lack of the facial features does give it some ambiguity and I don't think that you know a

057mascot always needs to be a completely literal um interpretation of a person I think that um you know it it it is you know I I actually like that it doesn't have the facial features I think that's one of its strengths and you know if you look at it you know you could reproduce the bandanas you know it's Standalone in terms of increasing you know the school identity and and one thing we've never been able to have really is a mascot running around on the football field or any other field of competition or academic event you know knowledgeable or whatever having as often as Goldie gopher appears everywhere on the University of Minnesota campus it would be easy to have an actual mascot so I think that's that's pretty exciting as well so I think

058we have to decide how we want to move forward at this point um honoring the the work of the committee and their recommendations and then deciding as a board what seems reasonable to ask them to go back to consider Dr Hillman yeah so I think the key thing is to get this right this is something that's going to last for a long time so Mr Lear and Mr Olsen uh tag teamed this one of the key things that that Mr Lear has not mentioned is that there was some real uh feedback about making sure that this mascot represented all activities as opposed to just Athletics I think you think about the rise of typical mascots it was really around Athletics but we've gotten feedback from students that they would really like to see this mascot

059represent all of the activities and the school itself so I think that that's an important part I think that as you look at what has been produced it meets the guidelines of what you had asked for when we passed this I believe in October and there's you know how I like to roll normally I like to have you see something at one meeting and then ask you to vote on at the next meeting because we want to keep things moving but at this one we intentionally did a little bit of a reveal tonight right so that you this was not something that was in the packet this was not something it was in the table file we'll put it on the website afterwards it's kind of a corollary to the table file but we want

060to have a little bit of a dramatic reveal so if if we think we need more than one meeting so if at the next meeting we just want to have some additional feedback and questions we can certainly do that and then push the vote out one more meeting beyond that if the board uh seems to have a very clear preference and says nope we're ready to go we can certainly you know keep moving uh at the next meeting but my sense is that this is something that is going to Adorn uh all sorts of shirts and hats and backpacks and all sorts of things over time so I think you want to make sure that you take a little bit of time to make sure that you can ask any other questions that you are

061ready to vote on a recommendation so it doesn't have to be at the next meeting certainly can but what I'm sensing is that we probably want to have the next mean just to have people reflect think about it bring any other comments forward ask any questions and then vote at the next meeting so the next meeting would be questions comments the following would be the formal vote in terms of which way we were to go so I just want to see if that makes some sense to people excellent thank you Dr Hillman Amy I saw your hand first and then Tom yeah um so I have a question about the process um I'm looking at this and you know everything's sinking in and settling down and I'm I do really like the first one but

062I'm still stuck on the face and I was happy that you um Julie re-read what the instructions we had given them were because it seems to me one way of differentiating between the townspeople and the Bandits is whether or not they had a mask on their face and I'm wondering these all have their kerchiefs up around their face so they all look more like the actual Bandits then the townspeople and I know we'll have talent people comment on that because the whole history of our town has been to celebrate the defeat of Jesse James and not Jesse James himself so my question is can we ask nuger to do something with the face part of this that doesn't look like it's covered but still keeps it gender neutral can we have some options for the

063face and um that's where I am right now Joel do you know in the Myriad of options you looked at if there was anything that did have more specific facial features and if those were eliminated for a specific reason no this is actually as detailed as this particular uh version was so this was um this was a very simple in fact a couple of students prior to some of the detail being added said it was just a little bit too obtuse um to really even you know kind of have it embody anything um and I you know I mean I think it's going to be up to the board I mean if you're if if Amy if your question is do you want three versions of the same logo with different faces on each one

064I mean that is that's walking us backward a little bit and that is certainly the board's prerogative to make that decision um but but in working through some of those those images that we uh that we played with even from the beginning of the process moving those Concepts to nuger and then creating uh drafts of uh the Ultimate Logos that you see ultimately the logos you see here um you know was really what the committee was charged with but again we are we are committee appointed you know to do the work of the board so we are you know I'm prepared to serve in any capacity necessary so um Joel I think I recall that this specific specific design was was a preference for the committee because the bandana is clearly below the face versus

065worn as a bandana over the face so for example a Raider with a bandana over the face and a townsperson with a bandana below their chin correct right but then I think what what I understand maybe some of the um where you think there's an opportunity maybe is that the way it's drawn now it still looks as if that per that writer or that mascot is wearing a mask okay um you had a question yeah and I think I agree with uh Amy um and it reminds me of a character from I think the movie Dick Tracy where they had like um like a black cloth over their face so you couldn't couldn't really you could see the the indentations of the nose and the mouth but you couldn't you couldn't see it so there

066was still a covering so maybe just tweak it so you can see a little bit more detailed facial um so yeah I mean getting a few more of those my other comment was after Dr hamon mentioned that you know this represents everything Not Just Sports and the the with the horses you get the impression that you know it's a team charging on the field or something so it's that would be more or if it's uh um a ferocious or anything like that when uh when it's the band concert or uh the knowledgeable or something it would seem out of place whereas this one is um more even more neutral in in that regard so I like this I think maybe just given a few more tweaks of the face facial features just to see what

067they are maybe it'll ruin it um but uh I like this yes no I agree with the previous comments and I'm thinking five years from now at a uh at a speech competition it's going to be interesting to see a uh this this logo with a cowboy hat and a mask over their face and and it I don't I don't think that's going to represent Northfield I think the townspeople in Northfield didn't have masks over their faces I think they were just people on the street or citizens that were down trying to solve the problem and uh all due respect and I I like this but I I think five years from now someone's going to look at it and say boy this this doesn't look think I don't think this is the North Field

068that I live in so Joel with this discussion then do you feel like maybe what there is maybe some it's not maybe as a parent to someone looking at this first logo that you have on the screen that that bandana is actually below their chin I can just tell you that uh there was not a single person on the committee that I mean the the committee discussion about this as a preference was that the bandana was below the face so there wasn't you know of these of these members of the committee there was no confusion about where the bandana was so I mean I'd be you know I'd be happy to go back to nuger and just say here's some of the feedback from from the board I mean they would be you know I'm

069sure they would be open to that um I do like I said the you know one of the strengths of this particular design in terms of the ambiguity of the face was exactly that it's an ambiguous face um so so I think that you know that was a preference for the committee but it certainly is something that we could ask newgrid to tweak and see what they come up with um but they're like I said the the this bandana in this particular image was was seen by the committee as being under the chin because that was a major point of discussion about the preference of this over others okay and then the other aspect to that is the end do you know if there were some specific conversation about why they chose that particular font

070no and that and and I would say that uh you know I think that the the and the font at the end is absolutely discussable and negotiable um what nuger talked about was you know kind of creating if you will and I think really um I think we could see that as kind of a process separate from the actual shape and identity of the logo to say okay let's finalize the end then because it's it's almost as you know going to be in in use as much as the logo itself so um we didn't discuss to say this was the font um what we discussed was let's come up with something that then becomes kind of the identity of the end for us as well as the logo itself now I really appreciate that thought

071and I think we do really have an opportunity I mean an end is our brand I think it has a lot of strong brand identity and coming out of this I think we have a real opportunity to to develop some excitement around the Northfield Greater brand and how much work we've done on Raider Nation and using that as a point of connectivity for our students and all the pride around being Raider Nation so I think that you know one thing that when I think about our current Raider mascot I think that you know some of the interest in that particular mascot for Avi for for a lot of reasons has waned and we haven't seen it out there in in such a prominent way as maybe if we were Board of Regents trying to replace

072Goldie gopher you know so I think that if we do have a mascot that you know we can we can potentially have some increased excitement around the mascot but I believe the end really stands as a very strong brand identity for Northfield Raiders so I guess it would be interesting to ask nuger what their design thoughts were around the particular end that they used and I'm I'm really glad the committee thought about the Standalone and there again I think I see the it's just the de facto black style and that is used now but I think it's really important that we have an identity guide coming out of this so that we can provide anyone who's going to reproduce this weather on you know uh apparel or merchandise or just in print media that they

073know that we want that consistency because I think it's really important so I think what I'm I'm hearing oh Noah has has a comment and then I I think we can sort of oh and then Claudia and Jeff so so we'll keep the discussion going and then determine how to move forward so Noel uh I don't see enough distinction of the face and I know you're trying to keep it gender and race neutral but it's not clear to me that the bandana has below the chin and there it would probably be a couple of Strokes with a felt tip pin a nigger's part to be able to make that a little more distinctive sure and uh and secondly um when my son was in high school he wanted to put an n on his his

074is is a little helmet of some kind and this is exactly the one that I used and I would suggest that that we copyright this and there's a simple way of doing a poor man's copyright and uh for all of you listening you just simply do what you want to do put on an envelope and send it to yourself and never open the envelope and then it has legal stature a status in a court of law that that is a copyright from the dated of the postmark and that will identify when you copyrighted that and all you have to do is uh put a stamp on it and send it to yourself and never open it and I would do that with Vienna in fact maybe the whole logo Joel was I you know for

075from what I understand the trademarks there's there's actually very few schools that that do trademark they're local and or mascot just because of the uh really the inability to enforce it in any sort of consistent way in terms of how many times the logo and mascot would get reproduced and then certainly a well-meaning advertising or something done in the community and then we would have to we would have to you know obviously pursue any sort of use outside of of the trademark so um I think I think what we can do is be very intentional about having an identity guide developed where there's specific um um colors and uses that are well detailed within the identity guide for anyone who wants to re reproduce it whether print media or on actual merchandise and um that

076does help get the consistency and often they look to that and because they do want to reproduce it consistently without having the the onus on us to to have to reinforce anyone who either you know very well could have just misinterpreted it and then suddenly were pursuing trademark infringement type type things that that we really wouldn't have the time to do and in a very consistent way so um I I do hear then that board members are are struggling a bit to um to know that that bandana is definitely below the chin and that maybe there's some sort of additional facial feature that could be added to this um if that's something that um nuger could could consider doing um and and maybe just so that we could see what that looks like and have

077the ability to decide whether the ambig ambiguity that that some of us feel is is a strength or that we decide it's enhanced with facial features in terms of the positioning of the bandana and still um somewhat gender neutral in terms of the the additional features adding Clarity for anyone who's who's looking at the mascot Jeff I think you had your hand up I was just going to say that uh I think Joel Lear should be here too I mean if he's not here in this session I mean just to be to and to have a logo that's for sports and for activities I mean you want to have a you know and I'm a football guy some you know linebacker guy I played here obviously Northfield and at Augsburg but um you know I

078I don't know I think that you have to I I don't I don't really um I I guess I don't really have a strong opinion on you know I didn't know what to expect and I just have to take a look at this and think about it so here um I think you're you're asking for Joel Olson to be here yeah I think you all should be here because you said you're older but Joe lyrics I'm sorry I get my yep and Joel was involved in the committee the entire time right and he was scheduled to be here tonight he just had a last minute piece that did not allow him to be here so but you know they have a logo and you have I mean it is sports and activities you know you

079can have multiple logos for different things I mean even if you wanted to use uh you know the N for a logo for some of your activities things instead of a sports type of logo I mean that's that's okay too so um yeah I don't know I I uh I I don't think that for what I'm looking at here this is some of the stuff what I kind of expected but uh I guess we move forward with what we have and go from there so um oh I'm sorry Corey oh Claudia and then Corey um I just want to make sure that that message keeps being heard that having the ambiguity of the face is really important so if you light it from a different um area and I'm not an artist so I don't

080know what I'm talking about but I know that if you light it from a different area I just did a search for clip art shadowed Cowboy faces or Figures it's going to reveal more of the face and it's going to reveal one gender or another I think so I think it's really important to leave it more shadowed in that area could they Define more you know that the bandanas around the neck probably but I I think it's really important to leave the face shadowed and I really see um all kinds of backgrounds being able to identify with that you know this particular version of it because you could have um you know the actual Cowboy the ranch hand um the towns person it's it I think it's I think it more more backgrounds would identify

081with this particular version um so I just want to make sure that I say that because I know that message is um being repeated right now that we need more of the face revealed and I really feel like we don't need more at the base I don't know maybe a little bit more but not very much more where you could tell one way or the other Corey a couple questions or a couple comments and then a question for Matt so I just to piggyback in Claudia's comments I I appreciate the ambiguity in here I think the committee and nuger worked hard to get to this point and ultimately this is a piece of art and I think we can see that and appreciate it and I think the structure is there to be clear about

082what we're looking at and we should let others interpret interpret it for themselves beyond that so I think I share the same concerns as Claudia that if we start adding a couple brush Strokes here or there that it's going to be too well defined then and I think that's you know backed up by the comments from Joel saying that this was the most defined piece they had the rest were even more broadly vague so I think the work has been done on that respect but I think there's been at least three board members who clearly stated that they'd like to see more so I'll leave that to the hands of superintendent Hillman to discern uh I have a question about the fonts so I know Julie has talked about that a few times the end

083used in all three of them look very different to me so the one on the third one looks like it's the current end that we use the second one has a little extra serif on the bottom right so that's a different font and the first one is clearly very different which I like the use of it here but obviously that can't be the traditional end because you have to have the illusion of depth and motion because it's on the bandana that's going up a neck um you can't just slap our basic n on there so I think if we stick with this logo ultimately it's going to be difficult to adhere to you know the trademark and or whatever we want to call it but also create the illusion of the Necker Chief and having

084the motion up so I feel like that's going to be a sticking point I like what's here though but you're not going to use that same n everywhere for obvious reasons I don't know if we have flexibility on that or if we really want to stick to this branded end or not so just a comment there and then for mats yeah it sounds like we're going to have a additional meeting to discuss this which is probably good but can we approve a logo without finalizing that letter like if we know we want to do this logo but we just have to figure out the letter I mean it's part of the logo so I feel like no but just kind of curious about that yeah I think that you could look at this in a

085number of different ways I think that you could authorize moving ahead with one particular concept with a directive to say we need to fix this not fix we need to further identify the one part of it the letter the the letter N I think that that's very helpful to uh the committee and then our and nuger to be able to help try to get that one portion right you could wait until you have the whole enchilada as well you know everything all at one point um but my sense would be that I think that I think we should reflect upon what your comments are and then I think we should ask newer Communications to give us some choices about what are the options for moving forward in terms of would they like to have one

086of the uh options selected and then work with the one part where there might need to be some um some tweaks to it or would they prefer to have everything selected at the same time I think that we could we could we also have to resist redesigning it to a certain extent um I think that I I I'm not an artist as Claudia she's not and so I think sharing what we are looking for and then asking them to make some modifications is reasonable so you can make that decision as we move forward you could say we are going we're comfortable to approve the bulk of the mascot but then looking because I think there's two terms we need to be really clear there's the mascot and there's the logo right the mascot is the

087entire photo here the logo would be the end that's on the neckerchief that's the way I look at it and distinguish between the two so you could certainly look at the at the mascot itself and then say we just want to make sure that the logo itself is consistent with what we want it to be off of the um mascot and I think the key thing there is going to be um you're writing your right Quarry that it's the the depth and the way that it's presented in this way is going to be you want to have it similar as what we're hearing the committee say which I think makes sense but it is not going to look exactly the same because it's going to be at a different angle when you just put it

088straight on so we my sense would be that you could move forward in a couple of different ways but I think we should all reflect upon it this is why I think an extra meeting is a good idea and I think we can start to get the depth of that at the next meeting does that make sense it does and I think number two is a good illustration of what happens when you just slap an n on something I think you know it doesn't look that off but it looks like well this is a good place for now uh whereas for the horse at least on the harness it looks like it's a little more natural and one last comment I know we want to move on from this is um floating heads generally aren't

089good I think Joel kind of made a joke of that early uh two and three clear the head headless horse ones clearly are cut near the neck whereas the first one with the extension of the neckerchief makes it look more whole so from a visual standpoint it's it's less uh awkward in that way I would say it sounds just additional comment I think as far as the ends Go I mean like we we have two ends and it's not terrible to have even when I talked to New Girl a while back it's not terrible in a sense to be the Northfield it'd be the end but you know we've got that fatter end and we've got that more narrow end so it would be kind of nice if we got it down to one single

090one and the one and it would be on that or not kind of what I mean it's trying to listen here a little bit and try to hear what I would be interested to hear what consensus one could get with the activities people and the sports people to maybe with coaches and people to be on the same you know page um all along with logos I was thinking more um of a uh you know a Raider on a horse um but it's I'm not saying that that's bad but uh um neither one of these are well I don't know what um it seems to me that even with the committee and the things that they're doing on that that they they kind of had the consensus on I'm calling it The the shadowed Raider um

091to me it seems like if you could work on some different versions of that or get close to tweaking that with like two or three other versions or doing whatever it is with that one that seems like kind of more of the consensus for one you know one unified logo from that standpoint but I mean I I was always thinking you know and it is I mean as far as I'm concerned I mean it is the Raider on a horse um you know that is the Northville Raiders but um it's interesting to see when you put those people together that they came up with this shadowed Raider and and I think that that seems to be if you tweak that a little bit um you know what do you end up with uh or you

092know what version of a Raider on a horse you know works and then like you said I mean you're taking because you're either you know either putting that on a you know if you're if you have a side of your football helmet or top of your cap or whatever I mean look at look at the Carlton Knights or whatever that Carlton night the night is just uh you put the Knight on there you put whatever else on there wearing a baseball cap you've got that logo right there you know and and if you start trying to do too many things I'm not saying that one's perfect I'm not even saying when I look at it I kind of get it 100 but I mean maybe to finalize three different versions of that that it just

093goes yeah I get it you know when you look at it within the first you know 30 seconds or two seconds that you kind of get it but uh so I I don't know I think uh um you know to see where that goes because I'm trying to figure out something that would maybe work for both activities and both um sports but you know again there's nothing wrong with just you know using an N if we like the N but it should be whatever's on there that logo that should be the primary and that we're using it would and again it's not the end of the world to have a couple of different ends but I don't know what uh I think standard I'm hearing these Jeff saying I think this is what the committee

094said as well standardizing the end so that you basically lifted off the handkerchief and put it on to the right and I think that that can be done but I think that goes to the style guide as well right because because of the depth when you remove it it's not going to look exactly the same in Joel I don't think that's what the committee meant I think that they meant that it should be the same end but but I'm sure they understand that when you lift it off of the the mascot itself it's going to probably look slightly different because it's at an angle currently and most of the time when you use the end it's going to be straightforward is would you just is that sound fair Joel I'm not exactly sure what you

095just asked me but I can tell you that the committee was very interested in a consistent standard end to be used across all of our whether it be whether it be stationary whether it be a helmet whether it be whatever it is so you know and to Corey's point he's right you know the n in this picture is on fabric that would be very loose and floaty so I'm sure you know I would I'm not a graphic artist I would trust nuger could come up with something that could be on an image like this but then also be lifted off uh and you know and placed on a you know it's it's the Chicago Cubs sea blowing on the the flag out in center field and it's also on a jersey you know so it's

096just it's it's agreeing that one even though it's moving in the wind looks the same as the one of the jersey and I think that that's what the committee was seeing is very important you know I think a good logo you know if you put that just on my baseball hat alone period that's it if we got that tweaked down to looking at that whether it's uh the speech team or whether it's the football team with the same one unified n with the same unified picture that's the logo I mean if you and that's a simplest form and I think that that's the biggest consensus on that and again I was always kind of leaning more towards you know the Raider on a horse thing but it seems the we me the way that you

097if you end up doing that you're ending up like chopping it up like sometimes you're showing the head and sometimes you're showing that with the horse and I think you know that's you know if you want the here we're gonna put the logo on this boom you know that that I think really would make the uniformity of uh uniforms um you know unusual in a sense but boom I mean that's a logo I mean whatever version it is of that that one would end up with I think is probably um that you can get everyone to kind of get you know 80 agreement on um it's probably a reasonable thing to end up with okay well um oh yes no the one that's on the screen I prefer I would rotate it in a way

098that the N is a little a little more direct this is a a face on and I'd rotate it in a way that the end is a little more direct and a little bit more um obvious and then I put the bandana tie to the right also so it's visible Mr newer can figure that out okay so I think um I really appreciate the the great discussion we've had in everybody's input I think Joel again the committee did some really great work here and it has come up with some some good choices for us I think it it appears that we're we're coming together around uh the committee's preference as well um I think going back to nuger and just having this discussion um around the end again they are the they are the experts

099in the professionals and understand um you know the font Styles and and how we would use that um as you know our identified logo and and maybe get some feedback there that we could share with the board at the next board meeting and I don't know um we've had some questions around the ability to maybe add facial feature I think the board seems somewhat um divided on that but if maybe there's an option they could show us that gives a discernible facial feature facial features to to that option just so that we could see what that looks like and I think Claudia's point is well taken for for me as well in terms of ambiguity and that's we obviously heard the committee felt was the strength of this but maybe sometimes to see it brings

100it clearer to people that that that priority for to have that ambiguity is really lost when there's any sort of facial feature added um that might be something that that would give the board members more comfort and understanding you know their Direction initially in terms of why that logo or that mascot doesn't have those or maybe we decide that the ambiguity ambiguity still exists with some additional facial features and I think nuger is extremely talented and and really understands and do you feel like we have explained a couple of of the um maybe direction that we would not totally redesigning but maybe doing some tweaking and then really having a more uh um conversation around the actual end do you feel like we're giving you what you would need to move forward Joel oh absolutely

101you bet I can work with that definitely and I just I think we just again emphasize thanks to Joel Lear and Joel Olson for taking on this really important work and I think if you look at that group of people on the committee right we had a good cross representation of current students we had a very recent alumni we had people who are current athletic coaches who are also alumni we had people who are from the community who don't have any children in school but are so I think that when you think about looking at how that committee was brought together and the work that they've done I really think we should be really proud of the work that Joel Lear and Joel Olson have done and the committee that they picked to give you

102uh I think some really quality images and of course we can't say enough about our strategic partner nuger for their work to bring these images to life so we also have to thank the 21 submissions right Joel was how many I think there was was it a total of like 18 or 19 people with 21 submissions so you go all the way back right this is something that the entire Community had an opportunity to be involved in so we're getting close we I heard us narrow it a bit tonight Joel Lear and Joel Olsen have their orders to be able to get a little bit of additional pieces for you and we'll keep this moving and we will have a solution to this this spring excellent thank you thank you Joel absolutely Yvette thank you

103so uh our next item for discussion is the um boys swim dive Cooperative sponsorship Dr Hillman are you just going to step in I am going to take this one this evening and so uh as you know from time to time uh the school district will enter into a Cooperative sponsorship for various Athletics and it really typically most often is with smaller school districts that are adjacent to us who don't have enough student athletes to run their own team but would like to have their student athletes participate uh with our teams so we have a number of things in our most popular Partners Arcadia Charter School obviously but from time to time we will also have Cooperative sponsorships with Cannon Falls or with Randolph and then there also runs a course where sometimes the students

104from that smaller School District no longer have an interest in in that sport anymore we do carry uh some of the smaller schools population or their enrollment as part of deciding which class we are placed in so we pay close attention to this and we want to make sure if we have a Cooperative sponsorship with a school school that isn't interested in providing us student athletes anymore that we dissolve that so that what was what we're bringing tonight um I guess we're bringing it to you as an item for a discussion and Report we're not asking you to vote on it tonight we'll have you vote on it at the next meeting um but really we're suggesting that we dissolve The Cooperative sponsorship between Northfield and Randolph for the boys swim and die beginning with

10521-22 school year and just the fact is that we are looking at um we just don't have the same number of students who are interested in participating so again it's not a huge issue but it is we don't do this very often so I wanted to make sure that you had a chance to see it and we've already gotten the um Randolph has already said that yes they support dissolving The Cooperative sponsorship for this athletic activity and just for clarity if we were to have some Northfield students step forward we this is something that we can re-examine as often as absolutely yes you can if if we have some Randolph students two years from now and they approach us about having a Cooperative sponsorship we can certainly consider it at that time as well any

106questions or comments on this okay yeah it's good to review the process of how we do this we've always been able to to serve other students from other communities and and oftentimes sometimes the numbers do help our own our own teams compete I know for the Alpine ski team Cooperative we added Red Wing in it significantly increased the uh the number of athletes competing which actually help the overall team so okay um we will move on now to the proposed 21-22 general fund budget unfortunately Val is not able to be here tonight so Dr Hillman will be making that presentation yeah so um again Val had a family issue that required her attention this evening so I'm pinch hitting for her and of course she has all of the items that are prepared well for

107us so I'm just going to walk us through the slides and so Tim if you want to bring the slide Tim and Bruce if you want to bring the slide deck up that's great okay so for the let's go all the way back to the beginning please there you go so what we want to take a look at to begin with is the general fund budget and so let's go to the next slide so as you know the most important driver of our revenue is enrollment enrollment drives approximately 65 percent of our revenue and what you're going to see is that um you know already this year due to the pandemic our enrollment declines 65 students below what we had projected and all of you are also aware that our enrollment uh has been declining

108over the past several years we're projecting that it will continue forward that is in alignment with the uh study that Hazel Reinhardt did for us several years ago just as she had said initially the elementary enrollment is where we would see the initial Decline and we would see some increase in the secondary enrollment we use something called the cohort survival methodology which means we move people to the next grade and so what we're going to see it we're starting to see this is where some of the reduction in those Elementary grades is now starting to make its way into the secondary and what's essential about that is that can under and through sixth grade remember they are at a 1.0 waiting from the state for funding and 7 through 12 students burn 1.2 of the

109basic formula and the reason is of course there are some more specialized classes like CTE Etc uh where it costs more to do those things and so that's the reason that the state has those so what Val is projecting we are also very conservative with our enrollment project projections but we are projecting uh 4196.35 adjusted pupil units for the 21-22 school year you go to the next slide so we have to make a number of assumptions about the budget remember the budget is a tool that we use to plan for our school activities for the upcoming fiscal year so we have to make a number of assumptions because of course the legislature who's one of our biggest funders they are our biggest funder does not complete their work most of the time until May and

110many times into June we still have to adopt the budget before June 30th and we need to do so uh as part of our planning process to be able to do it as early as we can reasonably do so so we have to go with some assumptions so the biggest assumption is the basic formula it equates to 55 percent of our total revenue now a few months ago we are projecting a zero percent increase to the basic formula because of the state's economic condition resulting from the pandemic we all know that we have seen a much Rosier Financial forecast from the state but we still know that when we look at what the proposals are out of the house and the Senate and the governor they're far apart with the house bill at a two

111percent increase over in each of the years of the two years in the biennium and the Senate at zero so we still feel that point five percent or a half percent uh is doable we know that that may be conservative maybe right on um but what we think is that that's a reasonable piece for us to anticipate what I do want to share is just what a two percent increase would mean so a two percent increase would generate just under 550 000 new dollars for the district so we talk about fighting for two percent and we are talking you know just around a half a million dollars of new funding and so while we always are looking for that increase to the basic formula and two percent is what we've been trying to get each

112year we know that that still isn't enough uh long term to be able to make sure that schools are supported by the state there's also several other areas for you to look at in terms of um of course when we get a double whammy if we don't get a large enough basic formula increase and the enrollment declines we also uh did get some addition we either going to be a little bit so there's some possibility of some additional dollars for special education that's been part of uh some of the bills that we're looking at as well and then as we've mentioned to you we also anticipating a decrease in compensatory funding from the state because of the fewer people who filled out the the free and reduced lunch price application and in Val's narrative we

113normally get around a million dollars and you'll see she's projecting only just above six hundred thousand dollars so that's a pretty significant change from uh a typical year to what we will have next year or are projecting for next year uh also when we take a look at the pieces are on property taxes we know that our voters have been very generous with our operating Levy and it includes the referendum inflationary increase so we will have a small increase based on inflation to our existing operating Levy for next year and in addition we want to take a look at the um I want to talk a little bit about the Esser funding and the federal sources so right now we are counting a little bit more than a million dollars that was part of sr2

114as part of both the revenue and expenditures portion of the budget uh we are still awaiting some final ruling on sr3 some of it was the 90 portion was released that's around 2.4 million dollars for the school district there's uh some possibility of some additional dollars from what's the 10 percent set aside but we do not have that included in this budget yet because as the time that we were running this we did not have official confirmation that those funds had been released and we learned you don't count funds until they're released so that's the federal sources and then when we think about our local sources um we are because of the financial circumstance projecting a lesser amount of interest for next year you know that we invest some of our dollars so we're not

115anticipating as high of an interest rate and then we are also making a assumption initially that all of our admissions and things like that that we rely on so gate receipts and things like that and activities for example we are making an assumption right now that they are not going to immediately go back to pre-covered levels so we are just trying to take that more conservative approach because I just don't think we know how it's going to roll once we are able to have more and more people uh come back to some of those kinds of events so those are the revenue assumptions next screen please Tim so this is our Revenue summary you'll see that we've got the historical components there you're seeing we're looking at a slightly lesser amount of Revenue this year

116than we were looking at last year and you'll see really when you get into that right there you're probably at about the amount of money that we were not going to get for compensatory pretty close right about four hundred thousand dollars let's go to the next slide Tim so when we look at the expenditure assumptions again we have other pieces that are not quite completed so as you know we're entering into negotiations with the Northfield Education Association our our largest collectively bargained unit our teaching staff has done an excellent job we have enjoyed having a very amicable and productive method of negotiations over the last 15 years in this District we anticipate that that will continue forward um but we have to project what we're looking at for our total Aggregate and we're projecting total

117salary aggregate increases across the entire system at about 1.9 percent and we have also taken into account uh the impact of the early retirement incentive we did have 10 teachers who took advantage of the early retirement incentive a fewer number of uh people in the office uh and office employees unit and in the educational assistance unit but we are anticipating a long-term savings over the next five years as a result of uh the uh teacher specifically around the teacher retirement incentive so that's included we also have a concern just about our health insurance piece over the next uh over the next year so we are projecting a 1.8 aggregate increase to expenditures for our benefits in addition as you may remember the state has increased the share that the employer needs to pay for the

118teachers retirement Association so this includes that increase it includes the increases I mentioned to the health contribution in addition I think that it's just really important for it's not a when we think about a the size of the budget we have maybe it's not as significant but it is a significant increase in what we're going to be paying out for unemployment so normally in an average year we average about five thousand dollars in employment for the calendar year 2020 our total employment or our total unemployment expenditures was almost a hundred and sixty thousand dollars and so the key thing is that that's something that is different it's not a ton when you look at the overall budget but we want you to be aware of that on to the next slide please so when we

119think about non-salary and other operational we do have our transportation agreement with Benjamin bus up at the end of this year and so we'll be negotiating a new agreement uh also we are going to be seeing an increase for the city uh for their implementation of the franchise you may have read about that in the paper the franchise fee is a little bit of a different way of looking at funding for Street repair we're still learning exactly what it's going to mean for the district but what we know is that the city is looking at doing that differently than they have done in the past and that's based upon some utility usage that's part of this as well and also when we look at it building discretionary we're modifying some things with the per pupil

120allocation that we provide to each building for things like their classroom budgets and things like that so we're working through that part and then we just always like to focus that our fund balance school is 16 of our total expenditures next slide please Tim so these are the expenditures by program and again it's just a way to illustrate for you um it's just it's a way to illustrate for you how these dollars are moved around I want to point out uh one part is that you'll see an increase in District support services and a slight decrease in instructional support services from time to time the state will dictate to us how certain programs need to be coded and this is a result of some coding change that they had that things that we used to

121be able to code to instructional services that we now have to code to District Support Services it's really essentially the same uh positions it's just a matter of being more specific to align with what they have how they have asked us to code so you will see this is the expenditures by program go to the next slide please Tim and then we look at the expenditures by objects so you can see where we put our dollars and of course we are a people business we pay people to come in and work with our students which is why our salaries is always going to are always going to be the largest area of expenditure so you will see that we are proposing a 59 million eight hundred ninety two thousand eight hundred and eighty three dollar

122expenditure budget next slide please so we take a look at the summary I think the key thing here is no surprise to anyone we've been talking with you about this for some time our Good Financial Management has allowed us to stretch this out for a period of time we are looking at the revised budget ending this year with an unassigned fund balance of 18.69 percent we are proposing a deficit budget that would still have us at 14.44 unassigned fund balance at the end of the next school year that would be below our 16 we've talked about a budget prioritization process starting this fall Val has been very clear about that um since she started giving you the budget presentations in January again looking at expenditures of around fifty nine thousand fifty nine million 892 883

123revenue of 57 million 741 000 45 and I do want to emphasize that neither the revenue nor the expenditures include the sr3 funding which is going to be a us significant amount of Revenue that we will have we are looking at how to best use those dollars and looking at a mix of things to support students as we come out of the pandemic with also some long-term Financial stability so we're still working through a recommendation for um how to use those dollars um but I think that that's an important part just to know that that's not part of this particular presentation at this time so I will do go to the next slide Tim I think I'm at questions so what I will do is I will certainly take any reasonable questions that I can

124answer this evening and what I will tell you is that Val has also said that if there are questions that you have of course we're not asking you to approve this tonight so if you have very specific detailed questions uh we can get those questions about you can email them to her you can email them to Anita and I we can get them to her and we'll get you those answers between now and the next meeting and of course if we have questions that are many award members will make sure they're part of the next board meeting presentation as well so Val does such a great job preparing her presentations even I can give it from time to time and sound halfway reasonable so great job okay questions I see Noel your hands up I'm

125looking at the general fund summary on the very last page and I see the percentage has been going down from 1920 from 22 18 and 14. uh I'm looking forward for the time when we can see the proposed budget out two or three years so we can see the impact of early retirement some of those things yes so I think that you know Val usually provides that in the financial forecast that she provided this year in December if you recall which was before we determined uh the financial or the early retirement incentive so we do know that we're anticipating right around a million dollars worth of savings over a five-year period thank you great question thanks Noel other questions Tom um I have a couple questions um why is unemployment so high all of a

126sudden yeah so what happens is uh we have many people in the district who while we did not lay people off last year there are some people who had lesser hours right for various reasons um and if you think about it really in our case it's really about our hourly paid employees we were able to keep people employed all the way through the end of the year however we have many employees specifically people who work in hourly positions who have more than one job and so if a person is laid off from another job that we still have a responsibility for some of the unemployment costs as part of the employer and that's my understanding of how that part works so we have while we did not necessarily lay people off we did have some

127people who had lesser hours than you know what they um May would have had without the pandemic and then it is this piece of these other positions that people have where we do have an impact on that when they're laid off from another position another position not in the school not within the school district correct well that's interesting um do we have any information yet from the Census what the population is in Northfield and whether it's growing it seems that maybe not in North well even the Northfield there's houses and construction going on but also in the areas surrounding but still in the school district and then so the the notion that the students are going down I don't know I did it seems counter intuitive yeah so a couple things I haven't seen a

128specific number yet from the Census so uh as soon as we have that we'll share that with you what I will tell you is that remember that um some these are just a couple of anecdotal thoughts based on your question Tom so the housing inventory in our community is next to nothing right we've all heard that we know that I encourage you to go on and look at the homes that are available for sale within the community there are very few of them and frankly they are fairly expensive right I think the last time I checked there was one home under 300 000 so that's anecdotal don't hold me there's just I look at that every so every so often just to get a flavor for what's going on in the community uh had a

129just had a conversation today with a building principal who has a family um who is interested in moving from a rental into a home cannot find anything but it's the time in their life where they feel they now need to and so they were asking about Open Enrollment right so you know could we move to another community and come back and and still come to school here and of course that part works you know we we are able to do that so when there's very little housing turnover or new units as an example it's going to be difficult to grow our population if you think about many neighborhoods within the community the neighborhoods turn over right so in one neighborhood where 10 years ago there might have been 25 kids getting on the bus stop

130but if this if the if that neighborhood is not turned over those kids have graduated and people not there to replace them so I think you have this piece when we don't have a lot of housing turnover within the community and you don't have a tremendous amount of new construction now there are things happening right we have a number of different products that are happening but they are still not going to come close to fulfilling what I am understanding that the need is so um you know we support and work with a number of different folks who look at housing you can't turn around in our community without hearing that housing is a challenge and not only is it a challenge it is a challenge to have a housing that a family can get into

131if it's your first house so there's a number of things there's a lot of people in the community who are very aware of this and a lot of people who are working hard on it and if we can solve this we can solve this for the great I mean we know this is not just a North Field issue right it is an issue Beyond Northfield but for those reasons Tom that's where I think we have seen um some stagnation in our numbers and if you think about it that increase that we had over the was really also corresponding with the boom and housing that happened in the mid-2000s yeah I can certainly see that in my neighborhood there's like one getting on the bus where there used to be 20. and then the uh my

132last question so the federal government is going to now pay for or provide free meals again does that um affect the compensate uh compensatory calculations and negatively so there's two things so this is a challenge um first of all we're still learning about what the federal government extension of the free meals program actually means for Minnesota we've actually heard two differing pieces in the last week what we know is anytime the feds pass something it takes some time to dig into the fine print and the details and so Stephanie strumming our trial nutrition director was just talking to us today about how the Statewide organizations are really digging into the details of this most recent news from the uh US Department of Agriculture and trying to make sure that they know absolutely how it's going

133to impact Us in Minnesota but we have to understand that there's two different parts when we talk about the uh meal programs we're talking about the meal programs right uh free lunch and free breakfast but over time the state of Minnesota has linked a number of other things to the rate of students who qualify for free or reduced lunch including the compensatory program so it doesn't necessarily matter what the federal government does because the compensatory is based upon who qualifies not necessarily who is taking the free meals so the challenge that we run into is if I am getting the free meals I have less of a motivation to complete the form right because I'm not getting the service that I complete and it's through no one's fault we have as a community we have

134had a number of Partners work very hard to try to get those forms completed but frankly we have people who are dealing with a whole lot more than filling out a form right and so I don't I I completely get it I understand but I also don't think that people have a clear understanding of how that can impact the funding that comes to the school system we've sent postcards we've made phone calls but we just know that we have a society that is stressed right now and that sometimes it can be difficult to get that portion completed so they while the feds might give us the free meals we still have to have a change at the state level around the calculation for compensatory thank you great questions thanks Tom uh no way back when

135when Hazel reynards came to the district Who present our first analysis one of the several of the Things She Said are still true nearly no starter homes secondly it's one of the best cities in the in the state and maybe in the country to retire in and thirdly people that retire in Northfield don't bring kids so as a result you're going to see the house needs going up and the popular student population probably not following yes single dwellings yielding school-aged children is the key you're right no yes and we have we also have a very very low rental vacancy rate so even people who might want to come here long term you can't even find something to rent and so that's that is a challenge too I actually work on a real estate project and

136I work with a broker that does franchises I call across 10 states and talk to a lot of real estate agents I mean that's all over the place it's extremely low inventories I mean you get a listing you know you get uh 10 15 offers on one listing and it's just it's just I mean since 2008 and everything crashed and then you're trying to build new construction and then you have lumber prices that are through the roof so it's really not a problem just for Northfield I mean it's all over the place so I mean we have to realize that too but I think that we have to work as a community and as a county to figure out how do we fund and figure out our housing issues here so other questions comments I

137uh I share Jeff your um talking about common common uh challenges that we all have and certainly one is declining enrollment and as a district we have fared better than than a lot of districts so I'm thinking about some of the both the house and the Senate bill and then the governor that um May address some declining enrollment in terms of some increased funding so we would hope that would come through and then of course we always have to talk about the special education cross subsidy and as we looked through the um expenditures the special education was one of the the uh the um the the increase of four percent um over last year and we already know that that is at a six million dollar cross subsidy so we hope that the legislators do

138there's a on both the house and the and the governor have some some work there to hopefully see the light and at least stopped or stabilize that growth which would be some increased dollars there for us so we hope maybe there's some some uh optimism that a couple things could could improve in terms of giving us the uh declining enrollment and possibly helping with the special ed cross subsidy yeah this is the we're getting to crunch time at the legislature so your legislative action committee has been working hard to try to make sure that our Representatives know what's important and uh we will continue the next few weeks are going to be instrumental in what we see come out of the legislature and then just one other question when you talked about the S3 funding

139of 2 million for um you're saying that that could potentially be an offset to current expenditures or maybe new expenditures correct so I I there's what we're seeing initially and some of the rules is some a pretty good amount of flexibility there is part of it and this is one of the things we're still learning is there's a portion that would need to be set aside for summer school activities that's not just this summer it could be spent over a couple of Summers which is a good thing so we're still waiting for those specific rules on sr3 okay great thank you um so Dr Hillman you are up next response all things covid brought to you by Dr Hillman yes so what I want to say is I I'm just really proud of uh how

140our school Community has continued to work forward to try to navigate this really unwieldy school year so I'm just going to share a little bit of data and then I want to share some what I think is fantastic news with you which we can all use fantastic news so I want to point out in my update uh just really looking at how we have expanded our what we have shared with the community around uh Active cases right for a long time that's all we shared were Active cases over the past 14 days then when we came everyone in person uh starting on March 31st of course elementary students had been in for some time we wanted to start publishing two other numbers that are really important the influenza-like illness rate and then the quarantine average

141and the quarantine average is really to give context to what quarantine means right so quarantine is when a student is asked to stay home for a period of time because they were considered close contact within six feet of someone who's tested positive for covid-19 for a cumulative of 15 minutes during a day now that could be sometimes that could be in school a lot of times that's out of school it's a family thing you know these kinds of things so I gave you a snapshot when I had to put the packet in on Thursday I want to show you how quickly these things can change so the average from April 9th to the 15th at the middle school for example was 5.29 that's what you had in the table when I calculated it the next

142day for the 16th through the 22nd we saw had seen an increase in the Middle School cases and thus the quarantine so we'd already gotten up to 9.29 for a week-long average last Friday we had our highest recorded yet quarantine rate at any school which was a little bit over 12 percent at the middle school so you think oh we gotta and we're watching these numbers every day today that number was at 7.62 that's how quickly the quarantine rate can change and it's because if you have a couple of cases that overlap or a couple of groups who are on quarantine overlap for one day that can make the quarantine number go up for a short period of time and then it can come right back down so we're washing it every day but we

143also don't get too bent out of shape when we see it go up for a short period of time and we don't get too excited when we see it go down for a period of time by way of example take a look at the high school the previous average was 6.33 for the week of the 9th through the 15th for the week of the 16th through the 27th that average had gone down to 4.53 for quarantine today was at 3.82 the ili average the uh average between the 9th through the 15th of the high school was 1.72 today today's number for today was one percent so the and remember mdh the the number mdh gets the most concerned about is the ili rate being at five percent or more for an average over about a

144week so while this is very difficult right this is very difficult day to day um what I the point of this is that we are focused on the data and the human beings that the data represents so we are working very hard to be able to keep the in-person model going right now I would say that we're in a fairly uh decent trajectory there's no way in a pandemic I can say that this is great never even try to say that but it also uh could be worse right in a number of different ways so I think that the tools that we are using are reasonable at this point and we're continuing to look at the data daily to make sure that we know exactly where we are and are we anticipating uh seeing things

145come up that might Force us to look at something a little bit different we're looking at that every day and we're publishing this data every week because we want to be transparent with parents and with the community so uh when it comes to that that is the current situation what you will also take a look at is I've included the Rice County Weekly incident by age and collection of Coba test which means that's the number of cases in the county over a period of a week one should know every week they now know I'm going to ask it so they send me the absolute breakdown from the they tell me exactly where the zip codes where it came from was it a congregate the living living setting so I get a set of data that

146is far more detailed than what I've included here but that allows us to take a look at how the cases are laying out in the county and as you may have read in my parent update last week the our Northfield share of the county cases has increased so for a long period of time we were able to say that northfield's relative share was small compared to the county but we have had a couple weeks where we've seen that share increase so it's something that we're paying attention to we're really talking with people about we still have to make sure we follow all the rules and specifically it really comes back to when we're in familiar settings where people are letting their guard down that's what the public health department is telling us it that that's

147it is truly Community spread now let's talk about the happiness because today uh this afternoon I'll be setting something out tomorrow morning Northfield Hospital and Clinics announced they talked with us today that beginning tomorrow they will be offering their vaccination clinics to 16 and 17 year old people as well as 18 and older which means they have access to the Pfizer vaccine at Northfield Hospital clinics runs a vaccination clinic every Tuesday and Friday we will be sending parents a phone number that they can use to call to make the appointment and we have talked specifically um we're talking with every single provider about making sure we know what is expected of people who are registering so in many cases you're going to have there where there's going to be an ask for something like a

148social security number and an insurance card but the fact is they are not required and we're gonna we're making it very clear we know Northfield Hospital and Clinics has had a great relationship with health finders to make sure that there are no hurdles for people to be able to get the vaccine it is free the vaccine is free there is no charge for it and to have Northfield Hospital and Clinics ready to go is an important thing uh we also know that this Thursday Rice County public health is going to hold a vaccination clinic with the moderna vaccine for people 18 and older at the Northfield Community Education Center from 4 to 7 PM we are still getting the details about what it takes for registration there but we specifically wanted to have a location

149on the north side of town um and we're still learning what does the registration look like if anything or is it just a walk-in clinic where get those details to tomorrow and then in addition we also have been working with Cub Foods and Cub Foods pharmacy also has access to Pfizer vaccine we had looked at doing a clinic Cub said they could help us with a with a clinic and then as we looked into how we could rightfully so they need to know how many people they could expect it's very difficult for us to survey people about their vaccination preference because there's a there's a number of different things involved that we just felt we really shouldn't get into so we worked out with them where we are giving families the phone number to call

150to make a a an appointment at Cub and that's something else that is is possible there we are also giving the vaccine spotter out we know there are several other entities in town that offer the vaccine Sterling pharmacy Walgreens and also Family Fare we talk with most of all those places and we know that they just don't know if they're going to get the Pfizer vaccine that's something that they don't have a knowledge of of what they potentially could get so we're trying to make sure people know all of the options that they have for vaccination while emphasizing that vaccination is a personal choice but this is the way to defeat this thing and so we our goal as a school district is to be use our convening power to make sure people know of

151all of the places that they can get this and so we heard today Minnesota is about 56 percent of this of the eligible uh people in the state who have had at least one shot that's a big deal the reason that it's so important for us to be able to offer this is that once a person has their final dose so two of the three vaccines you got to have two doses there's one that is coming off a pause uh where a person 18 and older would only have to have one dose but once after 14 days have expired after your final dose you no longer need to quarantine and that's a big deal especially for our 16 17 and 18 year olds who are involved in athletics looking at some traditional pieces that are

152coming down the pike so um while we have seen like the rest of Minnesota we've seen some increase you know here over the last few weeks we're also seeing epidemiologists say that our vaccination rate may have held off The Surge that other parts of the country saw that we are not experiencing as significant of a surge as other areas have so at the end of this I would like an honorary degree in public health to go along with my honorary degree in meteorology and uh legal studies just kidding but this we have a lot of Hope moving forward and I still cannot say enough about Rice County Public Health and Northfield Hospital and Clinics these two entities are just fantastic and then again when I called Cub Foods last week and said hey you've helped

153us with our they were right on yep absolutely we'll try to help and there were some things you needed to work out but I want to honor them that they the question was it was yes how can we help and we had to work out the details so we have a lot of people coming to the table who want our eligible students to become vaccinated and for families who maybe haven't had it yet they're emphasizing uh that it's not just these the students who can come but it's also their families because again the more shots that we can get in arms the better chance we have to defeat this team this thing sooner rather than later so that's the coveted part vaccination I'm I'm thrilled about that again I want to emphasize we understand and

154respect that vaccination is a personal decision we are not trying to tell people what they should do we're trying to make sure they know they have access to it that's the key thing that we're trying to find I also did share in my report this time with you we've talked with you about the racial Equity PLC activities that we have done through the year so I thought it would be good to share with you in the community what the topics that we have done each month have been so really this year has been focusing on thinking about through these individual behaviors right so thinking about myself as an individual and how I can better serve every student who I have access to by coming more aware of a number of different things related to racial

155Equity some of these things have gotten into systems Behavior as well part of our framework but I just wanted to show you the activities that we have done so far this year all of these activities include something where you've read or you've watched or you've listened and then there's a reflection with your PLC or it could be a reflection individually so you will see all of the things that we have done this year we plan to continue this Focus for plc's once a month for next year as well so that's the covid that's the operations update I'm gonna be happy to take it thank you questions comments board members have thank you I just think a couple of things we continue to communicate incredibly important information to our families through the covid dashboard um it's

156just such a really good resource to actually get the facts behind how what you know what are the actual cases in it in your uh child School versus maybe what you heard through the through the grapevine and secondly your efforts to find vaccines for families that's just really excellent and your um your really great relationships with our health care providers in this community has gone a long way for them to step up and say yep we want to help because you have that that relationship that you've built of trust and and they know that uh that you can get it done for them in terms of organization and communication and um so thank you for for cultivating those relationships and for your work particularly on finding vaccines for our families it's my pleasure and we

157have a lot of great collaboration with Community Partners to help come at this from every angle great thank you okay um we do have an additional item for um discussion it was in your table file and it's the uh area Learning Center and adult basic Ed agreement for students over 21 which Dr Hillman will explain so very briefly here no vote on this tonight um it came to the table file because we learned about it on Friday so the key thing uh here at the end of the day is that typically once a student hits the age of 21 they're no longer eligible by law to participate in K-12 activities so typically if I'm a student who has hit age 21 I would have typically and I had not graduated yet I would typically now

158have to go to the GED route right that's not the right thing for every student and so you are able to apply for a program through the state when you have a partnership through an adult basic education program and an area Learning Center where you are able to offer what's called an over 21 diploma through the local high school the services are all provided by adult basic education so the students aren't coming to a K-12 building they're still going to the adult basic education program for us it's housed at the Northfield Community Ed Center but the Abe program collaborates with the area Learning Center to find out this is really effective for kids who are missing say four or less credits so they're close enough where they can get this done and get a traditional

159high school diploma and not have to you're not necessarily having to restart when you go after a GED but a GED is different than a credit attainment piece so basically what we would do is if a student was not done yet and they have a few credits to go they transfer basically from the area Learning Center to receiving their services at the adult basic Ed Center we have a partnership for adult basic Ed with Farmington and Lakeville and so I think that this is important when we enter into an agreement with that involves other districts that the board affirm it we do not need to do that tonight Daryl Keller who's on this is always well ahead of the game but I wanted to make sure we could get this in the table file so

160that we can have you vote it on it at the next meeting again what happens is an Abe still gets the money so the district doesn't the the traditional K-12 program doesn't get any funding for this the Abe program still gets the dollars for it but they're just delivering the curriculum in a slightly different way and the student if they're successful and completing gets a high school diploma as opposed to a GED um it has been a very good program we know of several other school districts that have done Partnerships on this and it has worked out very well it's just if I'm a person who's only got a couple of credits left or I have to go down the GED route we worry that people end up with neither and so we want to

161make sure people have the chance to attain the degree uh if they're close enough so again I'm uh sharing this for Daryl this evening and uh we'll bring this to the next meeting for your affirmation questions comments board members have so is this a current program where we're just words of this oh we are starting this this we currently don't you have to have the the state needs to designate you as being able to do this and we don't have that designation as of yet okay this seems like a really great thing for for students that are you know in this particular situation where that's the right thing for them so we appreciate you bringing it forward so we have an opportunity to keep moving forward so this would be um effective for students who'd

162want to pursue something over the summer or would it be for fall of 20. it would start in the fall of 21-22 okay okay we'll bring that forward then for our approval at our next board meeting uh second committee or second meeting of the month we have committee reports that's the opportunity for board members to talk about the work that they do as liaison with various committees throughout the district so we have two reports tonight we'll begin with Claudia has an update on Torch scholarship program Claudia all right we'll take a little break from the Matt Hillman show um thankfully for everyone um well I mean I did submit that kind of short report there we have the torch committee met and then we um talked about some of the successes of the program including

163the care package program where they send right to our students who are attending college they send them a care box with cookies and a 20 Bill and notes of encouragement and that's a real successful program for helping our students keep going in that time of finals as new um incoming freshmen actually I think they send it to everybody who's former torch student um something else I wanted to share about the torch program that it's 17 years old and it started off with 17 students and now we have over 600 students who are impacted by the program um and yeah we're going to be awarding over 15 scholarships with um with the fund of over six thousand dollars no spoiler alerts so I'll leave it at that and the presentation is May 12th questions or comments

164I just had a quick question about how the scholarships are funded you know I believe it's just um contributions I don't think I don't think there's a funding source it's just that's private contribution but yeah so that's really amazing from our community to raise over six thousand dollars that's excellent once again towards doing amazing things for our students thank you Claudia um okay I have a quick report on C schools for equity and education just wanted to highlight a couple things we had the Steed general meeting on Friday and it was a great opportunity for membership to meet Heather Mueller as you know she's the new commissioner of Education effective April 1st when uh Mary Catherine Ricker decided to go back to the classroom Heather Mueller had been the point person on the pandemic so

165um really understands obviously the the challenge is there she comes with a great background from Mankato schools long time teacher and administrator and I was really struck by her passion and her energy optimism and commitment to always putting students first so it was a really great opportunity and I had decided I wanted to read this because there was an article in the star trip when they uh just did it a brief introduction of her for the state to know who Heather Mueller was and I was I'll just read it quickly because I thought it when you talk about the work that the district has done in really districts Statewide I think she really points to to some some makes some really excellent points so um the question that was uh posed to her is how

166has the pandemic shaped your ideas for the Department of Education and her response was when people think about education and the education system in general they sometimes think or have the impression that's really slow to change slow to adapt slow system but what we've been able to see at the beginning of the pandemic is that it's not true we are one of the only Industries in the world that had eight days to completely change the way we do our work provide and provide support to students so not just how we educated our students but how they receive their meals how they had access to mental health supports how we provide technology access to the internet set up for for school age child care programs for our essential workers all of that really happened in an

167eight-day span with that moment what that moment really solidified for me is that there's more hope now than ever before that we can create big systemic changes that close our gaps and our disparities and we can give each and every student every single day a world-class education so I thought that was um really well said by her and and really just encapsulates all of the work that everybody's had to do in the last year so she did say that mde will start scheduling regional service Cooperative meetings to start talking about fall and what that might look like um legislative update quickly we've made some uh alluded to that a bit this evening but both the House and Senate have passed their respective education Omnibus bills house confirm conferees have been named they have just named

168the Senate conference Senators Chamberlain icorn Duckworth dornick and weiger so those conferees will get together and Hammer out the final Omnibus Bill of which there's many elements that we we are are looking to see first and foremost that two percent and two percent on the formula so the work of your board legislative action committee now is been pushing that the education targets are high enough to support some of the things that that we know we need in terms of two percent and two percent on the formula of 400 million dollars especially education cross subsidy and a number of other things that that really will significantly impact our general flood budget so that's the work um going on um right now with with both C msba and local legislative action committees to communicate with our legislators

169some very important days ahead uh legislative session as a reminder is scheduled to end May 17th but we'll see if that actually so if there's any questions or comments that's all things legislative okay so with that we can move on to the consent grouping um as a reminder there were some personal items in the table file that were added to the consent grouping 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 Amy is there a second that can buy Jeff all those in favor of the proving the consent groupings say I opposed motion carries we'll move on for items for individual action we just have one this evening and that's policy approval first reading of those policies was

170at our first board meeting in April is there a motion to approve policies 4 30 and 436 and to Sunset policy 439. moved by Amy is there a second second by Tom any questions or comments on the uh changes to 430 436 or sunsetting 439 okay all those in favor say aye all right opposed motion carries that's it for items for individual action we'll turn over again to Dr Hillman some items for information beginning with national teacher appreciation week so this year uh national teacher appreciation week is May 2nd through the 8th and teacher appreciation week as it says in the information is celebrated the first week in May and it's our chance to say thank you to those who have player have played such a huge role in our students lives official teacher appreciation

171day is Tuesday May 5th and recognizing dedicated Educators across the country in the state in our district for the lasting contributions that they make to our lives what I would just encourage board members to do is not only with the teachers who you know we have here in the district but thinking about those teachers who have played a role in either your life or your children's lives and saying thank you I think sometimes we think that you know we gotta give some food and of course we always love food but it's a little different with covid but what I will tell you is one of the most valuable things to Educators is when a former student or a former parent are a parent of a former student comes back and thanks them for the work

172that they do so often in teaching you are not able to see the outcome of your work in the moment you can see some things in the moment but it's about how we are preparing people for lifelong success that's our vision right and so I encourage board members and I encourage people in the community to take a say some time during that week just to send a short thank you and I will tell you those are the kinds of things that give people the fuel to be able to keep going forward because they know they have made a difference so while food and all that kind of stuff is always appreciated until this heartfelt handwritten notes are so valuable so I encourage you to think about either teachers who are in the district who have

173made a difference for your family or maybe it's last year I did a series of pieces where I reflected on my high school teachers and and wrote some notes about saying this is these people were great and they were they were why I am where I am today in a lot of ways so for people in the community looking what can they do to appreciate teacher send them a note thank them and make sure that you they know that they made a difference for you or for your family that's national teacher appreciation week okay we'll move on then if there are no questions we'll move on to board packet format yes so starting with the next board meeting for the most part you're going to receive your board packet via a Google folder and so

174we are going to experiment with this we've looked at a number of different we are still going to there's still gonna be a couple of printed pieces but in general um we've offered you to have the laptop if you would so choose and we're going to start sharing this is going to be an experiment we're going to do so we've got a plan we've talked to a number of different school districts about how they share their packets we think that we can make them more usable for those of you who use them in the electronic format and we think they're going to be simpler for use rather than just a single PDF so we'll be moving to that we'll be seeking we believe in continuous Improvement you might understand so we'll be asking for your

175feedback as we move ahead we'll still produce the general PDF that's posted to the website um so people can get it all in one location that may change at some point too but Anita has done a great job of looking at what have districts who have done this successfully how have they done it and our goal is to do it without purchasing additional software there's a lot of other there's some software you can purchase as we've reviewed the software we're not convinced that it is something that is superior to just doing a shared Google drive folder so we've got some ideas we're going to give it a shot and I we know we know it's going to be successful it's going to look different a few months down the line than it does to begin

176with here and that's because we're going to need your feedback to make it the best experience for you that we can did I say all of that correctly I need to all right excellent any questions or comments I know that both uh Dr Hillman and Anita will work individually with each of us to be sure we're comfortable with the new format okay um graduation update yes so just wanted to again reiterate that uh the graduation ceremony for the area Learning Center of course is going to be a little bit different this year as well it's going to be on Thursday January 3rd and it's going to be in the green space on the east side of this building so if you as you leave it's going to be to the right as you would go

177down 2nd Street and so when we're doing with these all of these outside events is we are first of all calculating the square footage of the area that we are going to hold the event in and then we use the Department of Health venue calculator there's a calculator that you can go in and say is it a seated event is it a non-sea is it a standing event what's the amount of space that you have in it will tell you how many people can be in a location so we have enough space in that green space on this campus for them to be able to have an outdoor graduation on June 3rd there will be a rain date we just don't have that identified quite yet and then Northfield High School's graduation again is scheduled

178as one ceremony at this point point at 2 pm on Sunday June 6th on Memorial Field if we have inclement weather we are going to move it to Monday at 6 30 p.m principal Lear has been communicating this with families at this point we believe based on the calculations that we currently have that we can do this in one ceremony we're still determining what that means for support personnel and board members and all the other people that go to graduation we're still doing some final we don't exactly always know how many people are going to graduate until just a few weeks ahead of time so our intent would be to have you participate as normal but I just need to share it's it's a possibility that it may have to be adjusted this year that

179we're going to do everything that we can to be able to do that you know families are going to be limited in the number of tickets that they can have so we just want to make sure that we're looking and I've also learned who knows the guidance could change between now and then as well but based on the guidance we have today we believe we can pull this off in one ceremony it's going to look very different than it normally does a lot of the football field is going to be used as opposed to a small part of it and again our goal is to be able to get as many people there as possible including people from the board but we are still finalizing and it's that part is we want to we're going

180to make sure that we get get the right amount of people in the stadium and again making sure that we're emphasizing trying to to get as many families uh can who can be there at the same time we will be streaming it so you can still watch it you'll be able to watch it live um on most likely on I guess Zoom actually is probably how we'll do it so Zoomer Youtube it'll be it'll be streamed which tool we use yet we're not sure so working through that but that's the graduation update um quick question about kindergarten fifth grade eighth grade graduation some of those things yeah so we are working through that same exact piece we're calculating and and Advising where people can have those events so uh the fifth really it's the fifth

181grade graduation we typically have not done the same kind of thing with a kindergarten graduation but a fifth grade graduation what it is looking right now is that most people are trying to work through if we can do one classroom at a time rather than have on all the groups together those items are still being finalized and we are looking at a variety of different options there in some cases in those cases we might actually be able to hold those indoors because it's but again we're looking what is important to each uh individual school and what is most important to their fifth grade class we're also working on our preschool graduation which again is intended to be outside using the calculation tool that I mentioned before excellent thank you any other any questions or comments

182Corey what about board involvement for the alc graduation yeah so typically uh board members aren't specifically involved in the area Learning Center graduation but it is one of the most you're certainly encouraged to attend but the board doesn't have a formal role in the area Learning Center graduation um I'd encourage you to attend if you are able uh it is that is a piece where I think we will have enough room for everybody not everybody always comes and that's perfectly fine um as you know the Early Learning Center is one of my favorite events of the year the LLC graduation because of the personal nature of the program people speak about each student and it's very heartwarming so if you've not ever attended one uh it's something that would be very good to do so

183good question Corey that's a great question thank you Corey so we can segue into senior ceremony yes so the senior Ceremony this is uh latest right hot off the presses from the high school that so when we're talking about the senior serum we're typically talking about the awards night if you recall so the awards night is going to be us and a lot of times it also includes Juniors this year it's going to only be seniors and it's going to be held on May 12th at 6 30 p.m it's going to be a combination of the awards and academic Awards National Merit recognition um scholarships and the maroon and gold sports award so they're going to be combining it all into one so that we can have people at one location at one point and

184again it's going to be restricted to seniors and award presenters only so I am still waiting I didn't see a location for that yet I need to have you didn't so they've got the date um still finalizing the location for that excellent thank you so those are the items for information we can move on to Future meetings um two meetings in May Monday May 10th and Monday May 24th at 7 pm those are regular board meetings and they are held here and our district office boardroom so with that thank you everyone for a great meeting and excellent discussion tonight so with that I asked for a motion to adjourn we are moved to adjourn by Noel is there a second second by Amy all those in favor say aye opposed motion carries we are adjourned