001I call this meeting to order this is the regular meeting of the Northfield Public School Board today is Monday December 14 2020 and the time is seven o'clock P.M due to the health pandemic and the extension of Governor Wall's executive order 20-10 covid-19 peacetime emergency this meeting is being conducted via video conference in accordance with Minnesota State Statute 13d .021 in addition Dr Hillman superintendent of Northfield Public Schools is present in the board's regular meeting location at the Northfield high school media center in order for Northfield school district taxpayers to ask in-person questions or make comments during the truth and Taxation public hearing as part of tonight's agenda the district did make accommodations for questions or comments regarding truth and Taxation or general public comments by submitting them via email by five o'clock today this
002meeting is open to the public via live stream the recording of this meeting will also be posted on the district website procedurally we will conduct the meeting as follows we'll Begin by taking board members attendance by roll call Anita Ozzy will call the name of each board member in alphabetical order by last name when your name is called please respond by saying present Anita present gerwood present Hardy present Iverson present Pritchard present Cornell present stratman president excellent thank you also present at this video conference meeting are Anita Ozzie Dr Hillman's Administrative Assistant Aaron Bailey director of Community Education Val mertisdorf Director of Finance Greg gelino principal Northfield middle school and Craig poppenhagen principal with Clifton Larson Allen board members are asked to mute their microphone when they're not speaking at the start of each discussion
003as chair I will call on each board member in alphabetical order by last name for any questions or comments if you don't wish to speak you are welcome to pass I will conduct one round of questioning for board members you can consider using the raise hand feature throughout the meeting all the oats on the items for individual action will be conducted by roll call by Anita Ozzie each board member should wait until their name is called before voting so with that we will move ahead um Dr Hillman there were a few Personnel items and some property tax levy information in the table file yes and this evening's table file you had in addition to the truth and Taxation presentation a packet which included an Eller's analysis of the property tax levy and tax impact we
004had several generous gifts as part of the table file we had a couple of appointments we had a leave of absence and a grievance appeal okay excellent thank you very much if there's no objections we'll add these items to the agenda as we move forward is there a motion to the approve the agenda as presented motion moved by Jeff second by Amy uh like we will conduct a roll call vote for approval of the agenda Anita bronyak hi kerwitz hi Hardy I Iverson hi Pritchard aye Quinnell aye stratman aye okay motion carries the agenda is approved we'll move on to public comment this is an opportunity for residents property and business owners parents employees and students of the Northfield Public School District to address the board this is a listening opportunity for the board and
005not a time to debate an issue to accommodate the public comment portion of our meeting we have made available on the district's website the ability for the public to submit feedback to the board via email by five o'clock today all submissions that follow the district policy regarding public comment will be read Now by myself and just please note public comment for the truth in taxation public hearing will take place during that part of tonight's agenda this comment period is reserved for Northfield Public School District taxpayers only so I will move on to read public comments general public comments we have five of them this evening the first is from Jane Jeffrey Northfield citizen I urge the Northfield school board to redesign the school mascot it is racist and violent image it doesn't fit the times
006we are living in with the renewed focus on inclusion and appropriate images again thank you Jane Jeffrey Northfield citizen the second is uh from Mara and Sam Steinberg to the Northfield school board we are writing in support of a change to the Northfield Raider mascot with Northfield alums in our family we have been proud Raiders for many years however the mascot image always made us so comfortable now we truly know the harm that this imagery causes having a mascot that is human is offensive it objectifies an individual a culture or both please move forward in making Northfield Raiders inclusive to All by making a mascot that we can be proud of our third public comment is from Jane Becker Nelson dear school board members I write to offer a comment on agenda item 7.3 the
007review of the Northfield High School Raider mascot as a graduate of Northfield high school and parent of two children who will one day attend Northfield High School I support the removal of this poultry and racially insensitive symbol as a youngster the Raiders mascot was in the background at all football field Ice Arena band room and on flyers I never questioned it nor did I ask myself how does this fiction impact my Asian identifying classmates why is my team's mascot carrying a sword and glorifying violence it's time for all of us to ask these questions symbols are silent but speak loudly I urge you to follow the commendable action of many other schools and professional teams remove the harmful mascot and develop a new visual symbol for Northfield high schoolers to unite around every step matters
008to ensure that all students have access to an education excellent education and a positive learning environment that affirms their identities thank you for your thoughtful consideration of this important issue okay next we have a comment from board member elect Corey Butler to the board as a school board member-elect some feel it's prudent for me to share my opinion on emotion front of the board tonight giving formal approval to the high school administration to consider a new raider mascot I'm supportive of the current board approving the motion and I look forward to joining the conversation in January when I am sworn in our last comment is from board member elect Claudia Gonzalez and George dear school board thank you board members for meeting tonight and giving your time and energy to our district and our community
009many thanks to every teacher EA staff administrator and other school Personnel for all the hard work they put into every single day of this challenging year parents and students are trying our hardest every day too may we have many more good days than do-overs as Northfield Public School Board member elect I would like to voice my support to update the Raider mascot as requested by the student council of Northfield High School in February of this year and presented to the board by Dr Hillman on November 23 2020. earlier this year the student council at the high school put forward a solid effort to update their school mascot picking up the Baton that previous classes had put forward I was extremely proud that student council members shared on our local radio station kymn reasonable Arguments for
010giving New Life to the 1956 mascot even while recounting painful interactions with athletes from other schools with true school spirit and deep Pride for Northfield High many students staff faculty and community members including myself as a parent of a current high school and alumnus of class of 2020 look forward to a modern version of the risk Raider mascot I think archiving the current mascot and phasing in a new design is brilliant and gives stewardship I trust administration at Northfield High to bring the board four options we have an updated mascot design in place by the end of this school year all right that concludes our public comment for this evening we can move on now to our first discussion which is a truth and Taxation presentation for the payable 2021 property tax levy as to
011the presentation that will be followed by public comment Dr Hillman at that time will explain the technology that we have in place for anyone who wanted to make uh an in-person or a uh comment versus uh via teleconference also as a reminder there was some information that was provided in our table file this evening as part of Val's presentation so Julie just as a I did have one announcement uh on the announcement I'm sorry I'm sorry no problem my script so we just have the one announcement this evening and we want to congratulate uh Northfield high school student Maggie Malika she is our Northfield High School 2021 Minnesota State High School league Excel Award winner and uh the Excel award stands for excellence in Community Education and Leadership and it's a unique recognition program designed
012exclusively for Minnesota high school juniors who are active in school activities who are leaders in their schools and who demonstrate a strong commitment to community service this is one of my favorite awards that I see given every year because it's it's about people who are involved in activities but who go beyond that and I want to give a heartfelt congratulations to Maggie Malika who is the Northfield High School 2021 Minnesota State High School league Excel Award winner and that is the only announcement that I have this evening Julie excellent uh congrats to to Maggie Malika and I apologize again for for uh yes okay so now we can move on to the truth and Taxation presentation um and again a reminder there was some information in your table file so Val good evening so I'm
013going to go through um quite a bit of financial information tonight we're going to talk about truth and Taxation and our Levy certification that is for approval tonight we are going to revise the general fund budget and talk about an updated Financial forecast so um I will get started um so as a reminder just how the levy Cycle Works um so annually the Assessor's Office goes through and assesses all the property values in the spring and then is it it's showing black on my screen Matt is that yep I'll take care of it here in just a second you can keep talking and I'll get it on the screen all right no problem um so they assessed all of the values um in the Northfield school district um and basically Minnesota has a pretty complex
014property tax system um comparatively there are over 40 different um classes of property and different rates that can be assigned to them so um each property gets a net tax capacity and all of the property within the Northfield Public Schools boundary gets added up into our total tax base basically um so each taxing jurisdiction the county goes through this process and for reference we are actually situated in Three Counties so we work with Rice County Dakota County and good view County um for the entire you can go to the next slide so in September I presented the preliminary certification and once that is certified we send a copy of that to the Minnesota Department of Education as well as the Three Counties and they take that dollar amount that was certified so we certify at
015the max which means all of the calculations and formulas that the Department of Education has in statute um that the legislature has in statute are calc to a certain total based on our enrollment estimates and some various other data that we input to that system so that number gets calculated um as a um for our tax base and then the statements are mailed out in November um which most of you probably received um and you will see all of your taxing jurisdictions on that statement between September and now we have the opportunity um to make sure that all the calculations are correct um if we were to have a bond or a voter approved referendum it gives opportunity for that to be added but pretty much whatever happens in September we can not go above
016that number unless it's voter approved um I'm excited tonight to tell you that it's actually less a little bit less than what we um presented in September and that is primarily due to um the boundary funding that we just did so that was an exciting uh good story for a decrease um you can go to the next slide map so legislative impact as you know the state constitution has two two priorities um a uniform system of schools is one of them and therefore our funding is highly regulated by the state we get 70 percent of our budget from the state this Levy provides about 24 of our total general fund budget but the state sets all of the formulas um all of the tax policies the class rates all of those things how much we
017can ask for a voter approved referendum all of those pieces are driven at the state level you can go to the next slide there are also quite a few things that can impact the actual dollar amount that you see on your property tax statement from year to year obviously a voter approved referendum um and changes in enrollment a significant portion of the revenue formulas are enrollment based so any fluctuations um both positive and negative results in in swings in those Revenue calculations the levy is also a five-year process start to finish so we are certifying this Levy tonight that's actually revenue for us next school year for the 21-22 school year and there are adjustments for up to three years after that so we estimate enrollment this when the enrollment is finalized the state goes
018through a process to make sure that we got all of the money that we were owed or they take it away if we got too much and so that can happen for up to three years after we've received the revenue also legislative changes you might recall last year there was a legislative change to move the 300 board approved Levy option into the um with the 424 local optional so that's now 724 so swinging those amounts out of order approved into other so those kinds of things impacted as well and certainly the change in your market value or if your property changed class um you know if it was classified differently can impact it greatly as well and then certainly levees by other taxing jurisdictions so typically you'll see the city and the county and the
019school district as well as some other small special ones depending on where you live so all of those things play into it you can go ahead so as I said this provides about 24 of our general fund budget it also is all of the revenue to pay for our debt service payments it includes both waterproof levies as well as state authorized and it really does fill in the gaps for The Chronic underfunding that we see from the state and allows us to continue our great programming go ahead so the 2021 property tax money for the district overall is up about 327 000 or about 1.64 um the preliminary Levy was 20 million four hundred and thirty six thousand four sixty fifty four and the final certified is 20 000 or 20 million three hundred and
020thirteen thousand forty three dollars and thirty nine cents um so a slight decrease and again that decrease is primarily related to the boundary funding that we did our debt service um payments came down a little bit which as a reminder is a complete savings for taxpayers which is a great um great thing let me go to the next one so this is just a comparison of last year's Authority both the preliminary and the final versus this year's so you can see overall the levy certification is up about 327 000 from what we certified last year and down about 123 000 from what we preliminarily certified in September go ahead so this is a breakout of where the different funds come from so of the 20 million dollars about 37 of that is just the voter
021approved referendum um so you can see it's a very significant portion of the levy um and very much because of the wonderfully supportive community that we live in The Debt Service is sorry The Debt Service is about 26 um again the majority of the debt Services also voter approved general fund other of 31 and you can see the note on the bottom that's all of the other kind of state authorized formulas such as the local optional Revenue operating Capital the long-term facilities maintenance and some other programs the capital of four percent is the voter approved 750 000 dollars and then Community Services has about two percent of that total go ahead so we are required to show um taxpayers some specific breakout um and so you can see here how it breaks out by fund
022so general fund is about 14.5 million Community Education is about 419 000 and The Debt Service is about 5.3 million dollars so for a total of 20.3 million and you can see on the right hand side it's about 2.8 percent increase in the general fund um of 0.56 increase for Community Ed and then uh 1.32 decreased for Debt Service which is primarily related to that boundary funding the voter approved category not quite sorry it is 12.6 million and the other is 7.6 so you can see um the the majority I think it was about 63 or so um is voter approved and again we live in a extremely generous community and other is the other state authorized levies that we have access to and that decline in the voter approved of 1.55 on the right
023is partially related to our projected decrease in enrollment so the referendum is coming down slightly because of that but it is also because of the boundary funding those are voter approved bonds that were refunded and so that amount decreased what was actually levied for so that's part of that as well and then the bottom classification is just referendum market value and net tax capacity and that's really just the ways in which the county calculate um how to spread the amount of our referendum or the other tax levies go ahead so this breaks out in a little bit more detail the general funding specifically because that's our operating fund so you can see by the different Revenue sources where all of that funding is coming from the referendum is obviously the largest portion of that at
024about 7.6 million and then local optional revenue and the long-term facility maintenance of the other two um large ones that gives you a breakdown um towards the bottom you can see there's abatements and adjustments um and again our goal is always to have those adjustments as minimal as possible we don't want to see large swings estimating enrollment close to accurate is helpful in maintaining those swings um so we're not jumping all over the board because providing consistency for taxpayers is important so they're not seeing large swings from year to year and then Community ad in debt service for that total glad this is just kind of the history of our Levy um just for comparative purposes um so 20.3 million weighs about a 1.64 increase and you can see the history of where we've been
025the pay 18 was the year that we had the increase to the voter approved referendum so that's why the 23.62 is there and I think the average over five years is about 5.85 percent go ahead all right so that was a lot of information about the levy and now I'm going to talk a little bit about the general fund budget um as a reminder as part of the truth and Taxation process we are required to talk about the budget and so we use the opportunity since we're already discussing the budget to talk about um where we landed and then to revise that because we have quite a bit more information than we had in the spring you can go to the next slide so there are quite a few things that we information wise have
026now that we did not have in the spring we have lots of estimates so our audit is complete which you'll hear about next um our October 1st enrollment which is a pretty significant driver for several formulas is complete um all of our employment agreements have been finalized we've got you staff hired and so we know where they're placed on the salary grids and things like that this year is obviously a little unique um with the pandemic and so we did receive coronavirus relief funds so we're including that in the revised budget and just overall um different covered protocol expenses to make sure that we're in compliance with the safe learning plan from MBE and in addition the Portage program which is a requirement of that plan and so pulling all of those things together to
027make sure because we didn't didn't have an estimate for those in the spring when we did our adopted budget go ahead so this is our enrollment projection um as we've already talked about um we did see a pretty significant decline from what we estimated and so you can see the 2021 adapted we had projected about 4.4 [Music] um or for 4406.8 weighted pupil units so as a reminder um K through 6 is weighted at 1.0 and 712 is weighted at 1.2 and so the 3988 is a little more close to um actual physical student count um there's some some differences in there but that's a pretty close estimation and then the weighted calculation is what our actual revenue is calculated on so as you can see the revised estimate is about 43 pupil units less
028again we um we use a enrollment model that calculates about 17 different ways we use the traditional cohort survival so we assume that um if you were in kindergarten you're going to first grade Etc and then based on some historical enrollment and Trends IT projects out so we are actually about 67 students um with the October one less than what we had projected but based on our history um I don't believe that the weighted calculation will be down 67 if that makes sense so it's still a decline um it's still less than what we had anticipated and so that certainly impacts the budget but um you can see also up above I included last year's um so you can see in 1920 and we had a similar scenario where we had projected 4460 and we
029revised it down because we had lesser students and the actual kind of came in the middle so hopefully that will be similar where we'll end a little bit higher than what we're projecting with the revised budget but obviously there are some significant unknowns this year both in terms of enrollment and just for families and making sure that they're choosing the best option for their students so um about half of the enrollment decline was actually just kindergarten so when you look at the numbers you can see the secondary is still increasing which actually helps to slow um the impact on our Revenue because they're higher um they have a higher weighting so we do get a little bit of additional really for that but the the decline is basically 100 in the elementary level so we're
030certainly hopeful that the the kindergarten is a one year and they'll be back next year um so that's the current estimate so the revenue revision has um obviously a lot of moving pieces I always think it's interesting to summarize it into five lines uh Because the actual detail behind this is pretty significant but the property tax as you know does not change so um we certified that last December so that's a known amount and absolutely the easiest part of my budget because it's already done the state sources is declining slightly and again that is directly related to the enrollment decrease and then you can see a pretty significant jump for federal sources so we got just over a million dollars of coronavirus relief funds and so that is accommodating that addition to our budget and
031then local sources you'll see is declining lots of moving pieces in here um we have Direct Control of about 2.7 percent of our actual budget the property taxes the state sources and the federal are all formula driven um either by the state or federal government so we can plug in the numbers based on our enrollment or other factors but the local sources is really the only one that we have any kind of control and that's actually a strong word a lot of it's donations or participation fees things like that where we can increase the free the fees but that might result in decreased participation for example this particular decrease um is a is mostly related to um activities and some of the building permit stuff so we aren't renting any of our buildings right now
032and so that's obviously a decrease in our projected revenue and with the state of activities currently we are expecting um not only less participation but we also don't have as much admission Revenue because we have to restrict the number of people that can actually watch the games if they're able to have them so definitely some um concerns they're bringing that number down hopefully again that will bounce back and also last year the 1920 audited results just as a point of reference is higher because of the sale of the iPads and the lease purchase for the property so there's about um nine hundred thousand dollars that was in the actual audited results also um so that you can see kind of last spring already had an impact on on that Revenue source so just as a
033as a point so 58 point uh 58 million 184 370 is the revised budget which is just slightly higher than um the adapter budget and again that's primarily related to that coronavirus relief funds that we received go ahead so the expenditure revision um is always kind of an interesting thing to work through this includes obviously a million dollars of the coronavirus relief expenditures so there's some addition in here but there's also a bunch of things that are coming out um we are expecting some savings with our transportation for example because there's no activity Transportation or field trips or things like that so there's um some substitute savings and utility savings so there's lots of things that are kind of um added or covid um you know face masks and Staffing for Portage and things like
034that are that are kind of throughout this revised budget but there are also things that we're anticipating some savings on um so sort of um it's it's a bunch of positive and negatives um and so it's hard to hard to capture all of that the other major um majors and contributing to the decrease is the capital and Equipment line You'll see that's 2.2 million dollars or 2.3 if you're rounding and that's directly related or mostly directly related to the 733 000 that um I brought to the last board meeting for the long-term facility maintenance so we had authorized about 1.8 million to supplement our construction projects and so about 733 000 of that happened prior to June 30th and so we changed um basically pulled them out of the budget because it already happened um
035and matched up that with our um prior year lcfm plan if that makes sense um I believe that was the biggest points there um so if you want to go to the next slide so this is the summary when you pull everything together and um you will see that we were originally planning to end the 2021 school year with about 15.31 on a send fund balance now as we talked about I believe at the last meeting we ended significantly better than anticipated in 1920. and so we are starting the 2021 better than anticipated so that beginning fund balance line you can see it goes from 16.4 to just over 18 million so that's a great great place to be um starting off strong during a pandemic is a good place to be it allows us
036to be proactive in our response and planning and making sure that we're supporting students and staff and families in in the best ways possible so with the 58.2 million roughly and the 60 million of expenditures the project the new projected on a spine fund balance is about 11.2 million or 18.69 percent which as you know the board goal is about 16 on a signed fund balance so we are now projecting that we will end this clear above the 16 goal again directly related to ending last year better um which we'll talk a little bit about with the audit um most of most of the impacts from last year were directly related to the spending freeze that we implemented when um when we were required to shut down in March we didn't have any discretionary spending
037from March through June unless it was directly related to distance learning or a regular operating bill and so that made some significant impact on the budget as well as you know substitutes and utilities of transportation and all of those things contracted services a lot of different pieces that just weren't happening because we weren't um in school in person um you can go to the next slide I believe foreign due to the timing of everything that we've talked about we felt it was really important to do the updated Financial forecast now that is typically something that we have done in January but since we have been talking about and anticipating uh budget reduction process this year I wanted to make sure that we provided this update because we ended better we're starting in a stronger place
038this year um and obviously we're in a pandemic which is a different um not what we anticipated at all so the financial forecast has obviously a lot of assumptions um so I like to just start that out um pretty much any Financial forecast that model that I can run will look um five years out like we are falling off a cliff and don't know what we're doing that is um that is very common and so I only will show three years out um partially because we are on a two-year state budget cycle and so we currently don't know what's going to happen in the spring for the next two years um so going out any further than three I think is just problematic um enrollment Trends can change in all of those pieces so right
039now I have zero percent on the basic per pupil funding for both fiscal 22 and fiscal 23 and then I believe I have half a percent for fiscal 24. um I would say it's very unlikely that we would have zero three years in a row that would be pretty catastrophic I think for school districts but I'd much rather be conservative and show worst case scenario um and then be able to respond more positively if the legislature chooses something else um due to the free lunch lunch and breakfast program right now we are projecting about a five hundred thousand dollar loss in compensatory Revenue right now that is only for fiscal year 22 that Revenue calculation is based on um concentration of free and reduced um approvals and so we've just obviously had less families fill
040it out because there's not a need for it right now and so that is um currently the projection that does also have the potential to impact our title on funding but we won't know that for a while yet um it's it's kind of on the edge right there I do have a small increase in special education there is a built-in increase in statute which I believe is about four percent however I do have some concerns about their maintenance of effort requirements this year last spring we were allowed to basically reassign staff specialized staff to support the emergency child care and some other um other duties that were required that is not the case we can reassign special ed staff this year to support the tier one care but we have to track the hours and
041the dollars in which they are reassigned and they will not count towards our maintenance of effort is our current understanding and so that's a significant issue because we have um multiple special ed educational assistants supporting um our tier one care during the day so the the maintenance of effort is a reminder for um for those is basically a requirement of the district to spend at least one penny more on special education than we did the year before there are four reasons um that we cannot meet maintenance of effort um but they are very um very specific in particular if we have a very high cost student move out that would be one explanation um but we would actually have to document the cost that that student incurred to show that that is not a cost
042in our budget anymore so things like that um I believe um director of special services and Cheryl Hall and I are hoping to come in January and do a presentation about maintenance of effort just to give you some more more information and um just a little more um insight into our concerns about this particular one so I did a small increase just because if you don't meet maintenance of effort there are some ramifications to your next year's budget so I chose to be conservative on that one um I know I'm a little into the Weeds on this topic so I will stop but just know that we're hoping to come and provide some more information about that federal revenue we are projecting that to stay flat again there may be an impact to title one
043but at this time we haven't heard about any other impacts for our federal funding it does include fairly limited salary increases obviously we know we're in a position with a deficit budget and so we need to be um aware of that and responsible as much as possible with how we're managing that so that is um included in there even if we were to do complete zeros most of our contracts have things that like the teaching contract for example has um lanes and steps that automatically allow people to move through them so even with a zero there's still a small percent increase in the overall cost of that contract health insurance um I know Director of Human Resources Molly beesman presented um at one of the last meetings about our self-insured health insurance we have been
044seeing some pretty significant increases in our claims and so we are anticipating some pretty significant increases the premiums for 2021 are increasing five percent but that will be completely on the employees contribution there will be no increase to the district contribution um based on the way the contract language reads right now so I am anticipating um for fiscal 22 for that to be um requested in negotiations so and I did a five percent increase the year after that just because I'm not um I want to make sure that we have enough forecasted to cover any increase I also was not sure if we would just see increased rates from the impact of covid-19 on Health Care Providers if they are going to be increasing rates just to make up some money in their budgets as
045well so a couple different moving pieces with that one and then just a two percent inflationary cost on all of the miscellaneous supplies and materials throughout the budget the capital project Levy just as a reminder is 750 000 and that does expire in 2023 um which means it's revenue for the 2324 school year so just a point there you can go to the next slide so this is um a summary of the numbers so the First Column is the revised budget um that I just talked about and then a three-year forecast so you can see the on the very bottom of this slide they have the apus which is our weighted pupil unit calculation for enrollment we are still projecting declining enrollment for the next several years and very much in line with um the
046the demographic study that we had done about seven years ago now and so overall um you can see that we are this current budget um the spending variance is blue there um we are still projecting a deficit budget of about 1.9 million so even though we ended last year more positively than anticipated we are still projecting a deficit budget even with the additional coronavirus relief funds um and then that obviously projects forward and continues to um get larger as you know inflation and all of the factors in that calculation um go through um you can go to the next slide so this is the fund balance um basically the same thing so the current revised budget uh the 18.69 that I presented um just a little bit ago um and you can see that for
0472022 we're projecting about 14.21 for unassigned fund balance which is obviously below the board goal of 16. um the number on the very bottom is the amount that would need to be either reduced from expenditures or added to revenue to meet 16 um on the penny and so you can see that number just exacerbates as um as the items compound across the schedule so um that's a lot of information and I wanted to um talk a little bit about the budget reduction process so you all had access to my narrative my professional recommendation is that we consider postponing the budget reduction process one year we certainly know that this is not something that we will not we aren't going to um have enough enrollment to push it off multiple years like we have in the
048past this is something we will have to deal with um to be um responsible stewards but I think um there are several benefits that I see who are waiting one year um we will have um the state's budget for the next biennium by May and that is 70 of our budget is from the state so having those known amounts makes a pretty significant difference um and hopefully it'll be a little more positive I know the last state forecast was more positive than originally anticipated but that is a pretty big unknown um for our budget overall we will also just have better information about the pandemic in general how it's affected our students and Families how long will we be in distance learning or hybrid um and those kinds of things because all of those impact
049our revenue and expenditures in various ways and we'll hopefully know a little more about next year and if we're returning hopefully to some sort of um more normalcy if that makes sense I also um think that it would allow for a much more robust in-person process to gain Community understanding and support we are prepared to do the process via Zoom it will not be um you just don't have the same ability to do it on Zoom to have hundreds of people participate in the way that we would like to and the way we have in the past so that is just a point for consideration I think it's important to have um robust Community participation and so that would allow for expansion of X we're going to assume that we won't be social distancing forever
050um we would also hopefully know if we're getting any other stabilization funds from the state or federal government and um so I was checking my notes because I had a couple points that I wanted to make sure um I think the other the other major piece for um Dr Hillman and I as as we've discussed it is providing a sense of um normalcy as normal as you can be um or at least a sense of relief for our staff um and our students and our families who have anticipated this coming we know that the pandemic has been tough for everyone and if we have the ability to take one thing off Vehicles plates [Music] um I think that that's important I have a hard time saying that with 18.69 on the signed fund balance that
051we should consider um going through through a process and um potentially impacting positions and people um and their health insurance and all of those things that come with a budget reduction process um so I feel like if we can support our students and staff in this time um that's an important place um and consideration for us so that is a lot of information um I try not to make my presentations this long because I get that it's a lot um but I hope that um you know that we we take the stewardship very seriously and there are a lot of moving pieces this year the pandemic has created a lot of um unknowns and interesting circumstances and we are trying our best to manage the funds in a way that the community would be proud
052of um there was um just for the truth and Taxation there was a tax impact statement in the table file I did have ehlers update that um with our 1.36 percent instead of the 2.25 and um across the board if you look at that the average is a decrease for taxpayers of about four percent um so sorry I'm bringing that right at the end but that's a positive so um I think we're going to do the public comment portion first and then um we can open it up for board members is that correct yes Val that is correct so I will ask Dr Hillman if there is anyone present in the media center I am here alone there is no one here there is no one present is there anyone that has taken advantage of
053the opportunity to make questions or ask questions or um comment on the tooth and Taxation as a Northfield Public Schools district taxpayer um so there is no one here in person uh Julie but what we will do now is uh if because we are required to provide during a public hearing like this the opportunity for uh people to have public comment uh if you are interested in making a public comment and you are on Zoom uh via this particular presentation what I'd like you to do is uh you are able to put something in the chat only that the panelists are able to see so if you have an interest in making a public comment please put your name and your address in the chat once you submit that I will explain that you're going
054to be put into the video I will promote you to be what is called a panelist in Zoom you'd be able to make your public comment and then I'll have you go back into it as an attendee so if there are items here that people would if there if there's anyone who's on the call who would like to provide public comment please at this time put your name and your address in the chat we will then call on you promote you to be a video panelist you'll be able to make your comment during this public hearing uh live and then we would go ahead and put you back in as an attendee so I'm going to call for that three times and if we have no one who's put that in um at that point
055I do have one question that's been put in the chat but it's not or in the it's not um been requested as a public comment so the person who put that in there we can certainly get that question to you um but if you want to make a public comment please put your name and your address and then we'll promote you to a panelist okay very good so we have a comment from Corey Butler and I'm going to take Corey and make him a panelist now and Corey then you'll be able to uh make your public comment here okay so Corey you should be here with us as a panelist now and if you want to start your video Corey and then you may ask your question so if prior to um prior to speaking
056if you could state your name um we ask that you limit your remarks to three minutes and just remind you that questions are appropriate but debate of issues is not so welcome Corey and we ask for your question or comment thank you good evening board and Dr Hillman and the rest of the staff there quick question concerning the potential variants for future years my question is is the second and third year in additional reduction or is that a sum total so I think it was 2.4 I don't have in front of me now but uh 2.4 in the first year then maybe additional 1.9 in the second year is that a sum total then for that 4.5 or 3.5 or is it an additional amount thank you Val go ahead and answer that question okay
057so the um the 2.4 the spending variance in um 2022 is the basically just the revenue versus expenditures so um our expenditures are 2.5 million dollars higher than our Revenue and so um on that next slide if I can get there um it it talks about so that's just actually Revenue over expenditures the number on the very bottom of the next slide is the actual correction needed to make um the unassigned balance on unassigned fund balance reach 16 so there's kind of two different variables that we're looking at um so for 2022 um to get to 16 we would just need to cut a million dollars that would mean we would have um 16 but we would still have a deficit budget if that makes sense so the unassigned fund balance um sorry this is
058a lengthy explanation um is basically whatever's left um that's not restricted by the state so we do have some changes with our long-term facility maintenance Revenue um where that's an increasing amount so that's the reason we can have a deficit budget but still meet the 16 if that makes sense so I think hopefully that answers your question um but it it does it is cumulative on that um that slide so the 2.5 million is then 3.2 the next year that's it's a deficit budget year over a year um you wouldn't necessarily have to add those numbers together on top of each other thank you Corey I'm going to ask first I see no other names and addresses in our public comment at this point in the chat I'm going to ask a second or a
059third time here if there's anyone else who would like to make a public comment about truth and Taxation please put your name and address in the chat box and I'll promote you to be a panelist to make your public comment and or ask your question sure Pritchard I have asked uh the attendees the nine attendees twice and I have placed a request in writing in the chat seeing no additional people coming forward I'd recommend that we move forward with the meeting for board members two both the general fund budget revision which is a reminder we will vote on as an item for individual action tonight to approve and the truth and Taxation for pay 2021 Levy so I will again go through the roll call for board members if you have no questions or comments
060you can pass Tom thanks pal that was a lot of information um and you'd as always do an excellent job um and I agree we should wait a year to uh to the budget reduction process um there are a lot of things can change uh question so we've saved money already on um like utilities or other expenses and that was for like spring and have a few I mean and now we're theoretically saving money again because we're into distance learning and has that uh been factored into the budgets going forward or is that I mean just unknown and not really included yet yep um so we are anticipating some savings because of uh the distance learning now but it is different than it was in the spring the spring was a complete shutdown so our
061buildings were locked um we were able to shut most of the lights off um with the exception of the building that we had the tier one Emergency Care at it was um you know sort of like we just weren't there and so that's a different level of Energy savings our buildings are open now um even though we don't have students present there are staff that can choose to work from um from their classroom or from their office so it is a little bit different we're certainly not going to see the same level of savings that we saw in the spring um on the flip side we've had a very mild winter which is helping with our utilities because we're not running as much heat yet um so there's lots of variables but I'm not anticipating
062it to be nearly as significant as it was in the spring um but certainly have um a small decrease expected for this year thank you thanks Tom Amy first Val thank you for taking such a complicated budget and pulling it all together and making it understandable in your explanation and in your documents I found it very clear so thank you for that I also really appreciate the document in the table file the tax levy rates and I think we need to say that one more time that people who have you know whose housing values haven't gone up substantially will have a decrease in school property taxes and I think that's important news for a lot of people so um could you just repeat that one more time in better English than I did just so
063everyone can hear that and that's my final comment absolutely um so basically for um somebody with about a 200 000 home which is the typical example that we use um I believe it was about 4.4 percent I don't have it right here in front of me but um so your um if your market value stayed exactly the same which is very unlikely but if it did mathematically or School District property taxes would decrease 4.4 percent um or another way to view that is if your market value increased 4.4 percent approximately you would pay the exact same amount that you had paid the prior year for your school district taxes thank you I hope everybody hears that and understands that uh that's really due to a lot of your good work and maps and the administrations
064to find ways of saving money um on the different you know Bond payments and uh refunding the bonds so thank you for all of that and I think it's all good news and I also agree that your idea to wait a year before making any big decisions is a smart one because A lot's going to happen in this next year thank you Rob thanks Val that was a great and as everyone said very uh full presentation I was I'm sorry I'm not completely prepared with the details but I would and looking at my tax statement there were two I think two maybe three different categories of school district um taxes and I noticed on mine one of them was an increase and one of them was a decrease so why can you explain why one
065category might increase and the other one decrease that you would see are voter approved and other that's typically what they will print on the actual statement so on the the slide um what's the slide number slide 10 of my presentation if you want to go back and reference it you don't have to I will tell you but there um the middle section of that has the subtotals by truth and Taxation category as voter approved and other and so the voter approved went down 1.55 and the other went up 7.38 um so in theory that should correlate to what you see on your taxes the voter approved should have gone down slightly and the other would have gone up um the voter approved is going down um two two primary reasons the enrollment decrease that we're
066anticipating um obviously the referendum is a large piece of that voter approved um calculation and then the bond referendum so those were voter approved bonds so that decrease in the payments we owe means that we're levying less for the taxpayers so those are the two primary reasons that number is decreasing and then the other is all the other formulas um combined and there's lots of different reasons that those are going up for various calculations um but that's that's why you see that on your taxes it's it's that particular breakout that reflects on your actual tax statement great thank you um my other question was on the big pie chart of [Music] um where the percentages and you say 26 is Debt Service fund is I think you said the hunt does all of The Debt
067Service come from local sources yes yep so we are required sorry go ahead I was just wondering if there were any other parts of the budget that come entirely out of local sources or if everything else is a kind of combination of state federal and local um pretty much all the other budgets are a combination um Debt Service is specifically um there's a statute that requires us to Levy 105 of our debt service payments and that's really a way to support um school districts in there because we don't have the ability to just Levy taxpayers for instance the way the city can or the county can they have different different statutes that allow them to build a building or do things like that um so we most of our things are we have to get
068voter approval and so um so a hundred a hundred percent basically of The Debt Service there are some very few and far between exceptions um that would not require voter approval for The Debt Service um usually they result in a reduction of general fund Revenue um but that is a statute-driven calculation if that makes sense great thank you yep Ellen questions or comments I had two comments one I wanted to thank valve just not only for this report but for the amount of effort that you no doubt have had to put into thinking through I'm thinking about the budget revisions and the how you had to strategize with the covid funding and what it could be used and what were the rules for it when they when the spending had to happen and all of
069that that happened um in the in the stewardship that you and Leadership have put into this to put us in a place where my second comment is I also agree um with Amy about and um Tom and and um your recommendation about postponing the budget reduction process and how we're able to be able to do that because of this stewardship and because of the way that you've been able to look at the funding to put us in a place where we could postpone this because of having gone through this before the level of Engagement that you would want um it just would be much more difficult to have over Zoom so I really appreciate all of your effort and thank you for a thorough report thank you yeah thanks for the report appreciate that very
070much details um and I would also mention that I think it is wise as you said see what the state comes up if that's our 70 money to uh weight and uh you know see what the reasonable New Normal will end up looking like when we have more numbers and factors in so thank you for your report and your your diligence and all you do my pleasure no questions or comments I think you're muted and all am I still muted we can hear you now go ahead Noel thank you for your leadership on behalf of both the district and for the voters your knowledge is very very clear to us and regarding the reductions I would agree to postpone them a year as you recommended thanks though all right thank you again Val I Echo
071uh the comments from the board members just a phenomenal job that you do um you do every day for us and I really consider your uh thank you for the this the uh great thought that you have put around the um the next steps in in our budget um process I think two really strong points that I think will be important to make with the community will be that it does allow us the opportunity to update our strategic plan and I think even as we will hear Greg gelino talk about the the work at the Northfield middle school and we've heard the other building principles they've learned so much about instruction and being able to inform some of our decisions around the what we've come to learn out of covid-19 but also the opportunity for
072us to take the time to update our strategic plan because it has been five years since we've done that and it is it is a time that we had looked at an opportunity this past past year to do and we just didn't have that opportunity and then the other piece that I think is really important and when you you are a testament to this every single day is that it isn't an all or nothing that there will be um opportunities um recognized and fully maximized in terms of the way we can do strategies now so it isn't really an all or nothing it's really just I think giving a longer Runway to the work that we know we will need to do so thank you so much um this is not the last it is
073kind of the a bit of the vowel show tonight for about lots and lots of presentation time for you so we really appreciate it and we just know we hope you know how grateful we are to you for all your amazing work so with that I will introduce uh Craig poppenhagen who is a principal with Clifton Larson Allen and he will be presenting the results of the 2019-20 fiscal year audit welcome Craig all right thank you I'm happy to be here and Val I'm happy to continue your special night here this evening so we'll talk about we'll talk about the audit results here um the opinion on the financial statements uh is a clean report so uh basically with auditing the numbers it means you know the the numbers look correct to us to the
074best of our ability and all material respects we found all the support behind those numbers that uh that we tested for and looked for um so good result again that's that's not different than previous years so you like to have a audits go well like this and and have clean results um along with looking at the numbers we look at the controls or the processes around the numbers we have no findings for internal controls not even for uh financial reporting or Preparation of the audit document so that is also a very good result very few of our clients get by with no findings there so that's uh you know a Real Testament to your to your team um Val as well and her background and diligence in tracking tracking the numbers um for you so
075that's a good result um compliance wise um we did uh audit uh Federal program dollars again um so um the first program that we looked at was Child Nutrition cluster and no findings there um the second program uh kind of dovetailing into uh coronavirus relief Aid you did have some in the 1920 year um so specifically the Esser program and with the Azure program you've had about of expenditures claimed um here's where we have a little bit of a roadblock um the compliance supplement that we or I is your auditory needs uh to audit the Esser program or or feel comfortable that we've tested the compliance appropriately has not been issued yet in final form so um I will I can tell you we did test the expenditures that were claimed they look appropriate but
076unfortunately I can't release a report on the federal compliance piece of the audit until that compliant supplement is released um that being said I do suspect our path forward will be to just pull the federal compliance audit section out an issue that separately at a different point in time so once that compliant supplement becomes available we can issue the federal compliance piece of the audit we can continue uh releasing the you know the financial statement piece so those numbers the financial numbers need to be into the state by the end of this month and I think that's going to be our path forward to do that is just to break those two components apart um next or last piece of audit uh compliance I'll talk about is the Minnesota legal compliance so that is some
077specific um statutory compliance for the state that we have to test and uh no findings there as well so very very good results overall I'm not aware of any findings out there um even in the federal keys um the next slide um 2020 you know it wasn't enough that we had um coven kind of piling on uh to all the challenges for the 1920 year but uh we also had an accounting standard change as well um and that was gasby statement number 84 around fiduciary activities so what as we statement 84 did is it um it triggered a restatement of fund balance in the general fund because it changed the geography of where Student Activity funds and scholarship funds are presented so for 1920 and going forward Student Activity funds and scholarship funds as they
078stand our reported as part of the general fund prior to 2020 that was not that was not true so fund balance wise it added about a half million dollars to restricted fund balance in general fund um for fiduciaries kind of Standalone activities you have a custodial fund that continues things to watch forward going forward any type of new um uh Arrangements around fiscal hosting or being a Fiscal Agent any trust agreements that might come up those can come you know perhaps as part of the quests or wills and Testaments things of that nature any new custodial agreements so anything like that we'll have to look through and evaluate through the lens of Gatsby statement 84. fiscal 21 and 22 brings with it a new lease accounting standard so some you know new changes to look
079forward to down the road as well from a financial reporting standpoint um the next slide I won't drill into this one too hard this is just kind of a slice and dice of the general fund um showing the revenues the expenses so uh kind of that in total 57.5 million in your revenues coming in uh 56 million in expenditures going out added about a million dollars to fund balance um you know Cost Containment initiatives uh all those things that were discussed um in the truth and Taxation piece so I won't reiterate those um the operating Capital piece I'll touch on that that's in the middle of the slide and you did spend uh some of those Capital operating Capital dollars down so equipment and lease payments are running through there for like your one-to-one initiative
080curriculum and Technology you also have a land purchase for the shop so you drew some of that money down kind of since ltfm or long-term facilities maintenance is available in the very next column basically kind of your goal for operating capitals around 200 000 uh ending fund balance as kind of a carry forward so those are kind of some of the adaptations you've made with ltfm kind of being its own Capital funding mechanism the non-spendable assigned unassigned column on the far left that includes now your Student Activity funds and the scholarship ending fund balance so again that was about a half million dollars say for um due to that accounting change okay um next slide is just kind of a pie chart um for general fund revenues where did the funding come from um about
08170 percent State uh about 24 property taxes um so that's consistent with truth and Taxation um two and a half percent Federal um and then um other the three percent includes um Student Activity revenues uh mainly so that's something kind of new uh geography-wise going into that uh Little Slice um Trends pretty consistent with the previous year which is the next slide um just kind of uh you know just a visual checkpoint um is the mix different than it was the year prior uh no it's the mixes signif substantially similar so um the next slide that I have for you is general fund expenditures so just kind of looking um looking at the general fund expenditures uh kind of where are we spending our dollars and um the pie chart on the left here is
082is all general fund spending the pie chart on the right is just as a breakout or a subset of the instruction related components of your spending so kind of big picture wise the smaller uh pie chart on the right represents about 80 percent of your general fund dollars going into either into the classroom directly or to um supporting students so 80 cents on the dollar in the general fund is going in to to students student support or into the classrooms directly and that's up about two percent from the year before so the next slide is the 2019 kind of how did it Stack Up and compare about 78 79 percent um going into student instruction for 2019. uh enrollment trends these numbers uh again kind of dovetail into what you've seen in the previous segment
083for truth and Taxation and um you know have been holding you know pretty consistent um trending upward kind of in the middle uh middle year down a little bit and then as you're projecting a little bit down about 44 students going into the 2021 school year so you know the significance of course is when 70 percent of your funding is really State you know formula driven um each student represents about sixty five hundred dollars now in general education um state aid so it's kind of uh quick math and a quick statistics there for you uh the next slide just kind of looking at the food service fund balance and with uh with the covert environment in the fourth quarter um food service was kind of you know the whole operation was kind of stood on
084its head um basically with the shutdown um your meal counts meals served decreased of course pretty significantly the number of meals and that's just for the simple fact that there's not students in the building to partake in in the Food Service program you had budgeted to spend down about 235 000 of fund balance here the actual spend down was pretty close to that about 220 and what I would say you know with with the covid and the shutdown um the fact that you're able to come out that close to plan with such enough evil um in the food service operation um that's just very good management very good stewardship there and adapting quickly to kind of weather the storm so um I would say you know your food service staff they earn their they earn
085their dollar keeping track of that um community service which is the last slide that I have to talk about kind of the same um the same upheaval uh very similar at least as with food service Community Education that one Top Line revenues were impacted of course because of you know so many activities that are in person can't be in person there couldn't be in person in the fourth quarter so the lasso cancellations of activities just things not happening on the on the top end side for revenues and the other thing impacting Community Education was basically the you know the governor's mandate or executive order to provide child care services to essential workers at no cost to them so from the child care side in the fourth quarter you know while you had the cost of
086providing the service you didn't necessarily have the revenue um coming into fund it because of that initiative so that certainly had a down downward pressure on so here um you budgeted a spend down of a hundred and ten thousand came in a little bit more than that at about 130 um but again I I would say you know excellent job managing to that result uh with such an upheaval um in in operations because of the covet environment so um overall I think you know you certainly you weathered the you weathered the storm in 1920 and uh are doing a good job just continuing to to manage through that um I think in in 20 and 21. so that's what I have for prepared remarks for you um Madam chair I'll turn the meeting back to
087you is and you can direct me where we where we want to go from here excellent thank you Craig and we certainly uh appreciate you acknowledging um the work of Val and um just to preemptively congratulate Val as I know other board members will want to do on this amazing audit as she has always been able to do for us but um in talking to Luke greden's uh who did the actual audit he just was so incredibly complimentary about Val and and the work that she does the meticulous um way that she works and um just how how what a pleasure it is for them to work with the Northfield school district so um with that I do want to ask board members if they have specific questions for Craig um if you don't have
088any you you're welcome to pass come um as everybody will say um great job Val um there one question so in the federal compliance it's covid related but yet uh you're saying that the um you don't have the standards or whatever to to know how whether we're in compliance but if if if there aren't any um standards how can we know if what we're doing is compliant yeah I would say what you what I can say is we have a pretty educated guess if you will on what what the compliance requirements will be but you know until they're actually in print for for the masses for everyone to see um that's that's the holdup there thanks so Tom just my two cents on that um because I cannot stop myself um so the federal government
089provided US money and then they tell us what we can do with it but they have not told the Auditors how to check that we did those things so they can say based on what the federal government gave us guidelines for the funding that we were in compliance but until the federal government gets their act together and actually provides the documentation that they said was supposed to be available a month ago we won't have the official for that so it results in us having to actually issue two separate Auto reports um which is kind of ridiculous so that's my two cents can I ask a question then about that uh Craig or Val um with the state statute having that needed to be completed by December 31st if that comes through in the next couple
090weeks will that require a special board meeting to just approve the audited Esser funds or is that something that we would have um Grace into 2021 as mde told us how to do that yet so I talked to MBE um and there their response was basically the 1231 deadline is in statute and there's no waivers or anything we would just not be in compliance but there's no actual um consequence of not submitting it and then they followed that up and said except you wouldn't be eligible for the school Finance award and I said oh so we are going to issue um the just the financial statements and submit that and so then we will be technically in compliance with the statute they just won't have the full report but we will have submitted um the
091bulk of the audit basically by the 1231 deadline so we would still be eligible for the school Finance award um and then my understanding is we can just submit the the single audit um whenever we have that available um when they after they issue the compliance supplement so I'm not I'm not anticipating a need for a special meeting I I'm comfortable just submitting the financial statements um to be in compliance with that statute okay and of course the special board meeting would assume that they got that together in a very short amount of time and Craig and your team would have a chance to do that so with the clock ticking I think your plan is good yeah it would be you know you have the holiday season coming in there too so pretty soon
092you know everybody's running at about 50 you know right and I just don't think yeah I don't think there's it's fair to ask um anyone at this juncture to try to jump through hoops for something that has been so delayed so Val if you're comfortable with that approach and that it does not preclude us from school Finance Awards which are always so well deserved I think that's a sound plan um Amy questions or comments yes um first thank you Craig for the um the presentation I always enjoy hearing about the audits every year because it's always such great news and it certainly is the foundation of my confidence in Val and the administrative team at the district um and so thank you for that and I just would like to add to not only are
093these reports turning out so well and Val is doing such an amazing job with them that she had a baby in the middle of it too and it didn't stop her didn't slow her down so thank you Val again for all your excellent work this last year great comment thanks Amy in fact I always tease Val that she should name one of her kids Gatsby but she passed on that okay so Rob I have no questions just I'm joining everyone else and thanking both Greg and Belle for their hard work on this thank you Ellen no questions and I just acknowledged having this audit is fantastic and that we we get used to having these fantastic audits but they're you know we don't shouldn't take them for granted so thank you Val um and your
094team and then thank you Craig for the report and Shining a light on Stephanie stromi's work with the food service because that was certainly you know under un unseen circumstances so it's it thank you for highlighting that very true great thanks Ellen Jeff yeah Craig thank you for the report Val uh for all your updated information and uh sounds great appreciate it no questions or comments thanks for the report and uh congratulations to Val for again doing a great financial job for us thank you great thank you and of course um we have to thank Craig from Clifton Larson Allen and Luke greeden who did the audit for us you are always been such amazing partners for the school district and um we don't normally um highlight two funds but I appreciate that um your
095uh recognition of the phenomenal work of the community Community Education and the food service and that we had or Child Nutrition excuse me that we had the opportunity as Ellen said to shine a light on those two particular funds for the school year so um thank you Craig for your work and we will um move forward with approving the audit as required by the state so thank you and all the best to you in the new year Craig thanks very much thank you okay and thanks Val you get a little bit of a break now okay so we'll move on now to the Middle School update we welcome Greg gelino um to provide the Middle School update welcome Greg back sorry sorry you got to be behind me just the way that the show goes
096okay that's okay I'm a numbers person it's not much I like data and numbers so that's just fine I actually liked it so um thank you for having me give me a chance to do an update um at the middle school and I will kind of clip along and hit some highlights here some things that are going well so far um I know we're in distance learning but our hybrid really was a success we put a really a big focus on health and safety we've made that our top priority going into the school year and um I can I can say it was it was successful the problems that we put in place if you just look at our district dashboard we had a minimal number of cases at the middle school and we had
097zero that were actually any type of close contact that ended up being a spread of any type at the middle school as a matter of fact about close to half of the cases we actually had at the middle school actually came from students that were participating actually at the high school so we actually had a lower number of just middle school activities in and out of the building so kudos to the team of all the adults that put in time and effort to make it happen but it was successful the other piece is the hybrid model itself we really we took a look and did a really outside the box type of thinking with hybrid and we really focused in on that core instruction I wanna reiterate I've said on many platforms that the motto
098we landed on even though it involves our electives teaching remotely all year or at least we can all come back in person that does not mean we don't value the electives see that the electives are hugely valued at the middle school but it was difficult times you have to make some tough decisions and with feedback that we heard from parents wanting more instruction time and needing the really as part of the protocol it's kind of connected so we could keep kids together in pods and move them the only way to do that was to simplify our schedule which our parents and our students wanted as well so the model I think was a success if we had to transition back to that we'll continue to be a success the transition from hybrid to distance learning
099I can tell you that it was I was a little nervous at first because when we did it I heard next to nothing from parents or students and I was getting like okay there's no news good news there is no news everyone's not happy um and I can tell you that it was no news is good news I've heard from multiple parents now as um through email and phone calls I even sent a little survey out and asking and both our parents and our students really liked the changes we made in distance learning spreading out the content so that students had things to do every single day it spread out the homework as well we were very um systematic and how and what classes we flip-flopped and how we spread them out knowing which classes
100tend to get more homework so it's the transition it was seamless even though it was short notice we were able to give a paper copy to every single student that was in our building we got to mail went out to families that were absent or students that were absent to the family so they had them so it really went off um without a hitch better than I could ever expect I can also say I believe that our response to the parent but spring um again I mentioned it the simplifying our schedule um we have set Zoom times now for distance learning so kids and students know exactly when they're supposed to be zooming and if they have to be absent attend another one that's fine but we make it really clear it's it's just like
101you if you go to a third hour English class but your schedules are second hour you're going to be marked ABS in second hour um you can probably you can probably go to that class to get the content um and that's really helped it's helped students become more organized um it's really help parents to know and stay on top and help their students as well the consistency in schoology um that shout out to Hope and her team for kind of getting that going I know um that was a large undertaking but it also has been something very important that our families really have been asking for actually prior to even any of the pandemic stuff so um the things that we put in place have been very very helpful we had one pretty decent sized
102snag but we've worked through that and it uh people have said that it's been much better and my last one on here on this slide is as part of our middle school goals was to have 75 percent of our families attend at least two of our conferences I can say our preschool conference we had 99 of our families participate and then we had a pretty short turnaround if you think about it we had our fall our fall conferences and we had 70 percent of our families attend those and that's even with counting the amount of time in half that we had for conferences so we're pretty excited about that challenges um we continue to really work and look for ways to engage students that it they're they're no surprise to us we knew before we
103went to distance learning that there was a group of students that were going to get tough to be able to log on to zooms to really reply to messaging um and that there's no other way to put it I it that gives me gray hairs at night and um causes many people to pull their hair out but we've assembled even more adults to kind of we call them kind of Chasers and kind of track down these students and see what's going on and talk to families um there's uh we um I worked with Zach Pruitt and HCI and worked with him to be able to Bear a couple more promise fellows which uh they can't start quite yet we just hired them but they'll be starting soon um but everyone's really we learned from last
104spring some things that were a little bit more effective and we got after it right away because we knew who those students more than likely were going to be um so we're doing better than we did in the spring um but again still not where we want to be but so we'll continue to work on it students responsibility um getting work done outside of class um I have to say that's really not new I mean that's something that's been kind of building over the years we've kind of seen a trend with our students that they can engage and when they're in the building but getting them to kind of follow through and complete assignments it's been a creeping up a larger number of students I'm not completing some of that work um you add in
105the pandemic and distance learning and hybrid and some of those things kind of get magnified a little bit more um but again working on it we've changed some things with how we teach we've gotten better at teaching and distance learning um we're using our tools way better students are becoming more engaged in distance learning as well as I have to say that added benefit we didn't see coming was we chose to go into distance soaring to keep our pods which was smaller groups instead of combining the maroon and gold cohort and having classes in the 30s upper 20s we kept the small classes of 12 to 15 some 16 17 but those smaller class sizes across the board teachers have said has been phenomenal it's make it easier to get kids engaged there's students that
106normally wouldn't be engaged that would hesitate to reply on Zoom that are freely offering up answer and willing to stay after with teachers so we're really seeing some good things happen in distance learning I do attribute a lot of that to them the quick connections that we made in hybrid because of the smaller classes the last one I have on here is AVID we're not avid's still going forward it just kind of slowed down a little bit we had big plans for doing staff development and we're doing some of that we've had a group of about 21 staff members get some virtual training over this past summer and they they now meet a couple times a month they're just starting that up to kind of work on different Avid strategies themselves and eventually hoping that
107second semester a plan is to start rolling that out with the rest of the staff and kind of start teaching them but to be honest I mean toy transparent is it is more difficult via Zoom or virtually to get people excited um about Abbott about anything new it is a little bit of a challenge that way but we are moving forward it is a priority as you can see by the graphic that we kind of started up last year it's it's one of the the things that we want to focus on moving forward and with that I will open up the questions to all of you excellent thank you Greg so board members questions or comments Tom um yeah thanks Greg um questions about students not completing work is that homework outside of class that's
108not getting done it is when it so there's kind of two components of that so we're in hybrid and a student go attends class at their maroon cohort and they attend on a Monday Tuesday and they do not have they have their view class but it's not a homework based class on Wednesday but they have three days where they're really not checking in with the content Area Teachers um they have their electives that they have to go to it's those times that are really challenging and I've kind of um we do parent tips on a regular basis we would do tips for students view teachers kind of connect with students and try getting them organized but it's really part of it is a middle school mentality you know I know the high school struggles with
109this a little bit too but it's just developmentally where our middle schoolers are at that it makes it difficult if you think about in hybrid that a middle school has to go literally five days before they see their math or English teacher again and that's a long time in distance learning it's a is slightly better in the sense that they they do have core instruction um four days a week because we've spread out those classes we flipped a couple classes um to the I call it non-cohort days um so that actually has improved with the work completion but it's still a challenge yeah um okay so uh as you said that it's kind of just the Middle School development stage so in the in previous years when students were in in uh school full-time you
110saw similar difficulties with getting homework done it's just a little bit more Amplified it's a little bit more Amplified there is when we were even in person that was it was every year I was seeing more and more um teachers say this this is a challenge for them this is something they're struggling with and frustrated with um so it's not something even when we come out of a pandemic that we can say hey it's going to be all better we we're going to have to continue to work on build skills um with our students and find ways to take time to do that and do you see any difference between like sixth graders who are just coming out of Elementary School versus eighth graders who are getting ready for high school it's a tough question
111only because um what's expected in the rigor between sixth grade and then eighth grade is is so different um I do know that uh sixth grade coming in they do spend a lot of time building those skills because it is so new that transition that's a big transition from elementary to middle school and our two sixth grade teams do a phenomenal job kind of bridging that Gap when students get there and kind of teaching them and coaching them how to become more students so um I don't know ultimately I can compare the two but um I would if you put my feet to the fire I'd say it's about the same going sixth to eighth grade it just had a little bit different level thank you great questions Tom thank you Amy hi Greg thank
112you for the presentation I have two questions um I'm still a little confused about how the distance learning is working do you still have the small classes then or the classes combined back together um so you have you know 30 person classes but it's distance learning since they're mating four days a week yep so what we did is we had a pretty decent discussion with our teachers on what what they preferred because there was pluses of minuses to doing both and what we what we decided was we were going to keep the cohorts so we kept the smaller class so for example if you're a maroon day seventh grader um you had in hybrid you had five classes in a study hall which in distance or get strapped so five classes we actually moved there
113Monday Tuesday to only have four we took the science class so we moved it to the other two days to kind of balance out their schedule so they don't have like their math class four days a week or their English class four days a week they're only having them two days a week but instead of like in hybrid just having elective classes on their non-cohort day they now have in seventh and eighth grade they now also have a science class because science class tends to have a little more homework a little more studying component to it reading and stuff um in sixth grade we did this similar more thing but sixth grade we actually moved um two classes we moved social studies because it's pretty reading intense as well as the signs so we move
114both of those over and that balanced again their workload out as well and gave students um a more structured week if you look at it as a whole versus having a heavier two days and a really light three days okay so the classes yes are smaller the classes are smaller because of that that sounds really smart so I'm glad it worked out my my other question I have is when you were in hybrid mode um did you see any increase or decrease in behavioral issues in the students what was your sense about that uh huge decrease it was a kind of like crickets you know it was a kind of it was super nice um if you think of the size of the middle school and you cut the number of people that students roaming
115the hallways it was it's amazing how few and how quiet the building becomes people going class to class and then again those small cohorts those small pods um kind of had a social network that they kind of connected with and they liked kind of going class to class with that was kind of their friendship group that was some of their social time they got to have because they're with those same groups of kids as they move from place to place I can say if we combine both maroon and gold cohort there is actually let's see 510 to about 40 different pods total and there's only really one pod that if we come back in hybrid we may consider moving some kids around because it's maybe not the best mix but all the rest are are
116Rock Solid they we really see very few behavior issues whatsoever I'm curious to see where that'll take you for next year when you're planning your classes and if you'll have learned anything from this year as to how to reduce behavioral issues even further by how you combine students so yep I can tell you that there's um the interesting piece that few teachers in seventh and eighth grade have mentioned that uh they would like to revisit maybe doing some type of teaming and creating teams and something something 8th grade what they've done we have in sixth grade um because of this thank you again you're welcome Rob questions or comments well I was going to ask I think um Amy sort of got it in at the end there I was going to ask about um
117just you've been forced to make all these adjustments this year and if there were things just looking ahead that you learned that you're like oh this actually is something we could use all the time it's not pandemic specific but that it's an actual Improvement upon you know the way that things were done in the past because I you know back in the before times last year we were talking about trying to do an a later start for secondary and we were like how is the schedule going to work out and suddenly you're forced to make all these schedule changes and I'm wondering you know are some of them actually beneficial and they might actually help us make some adjustments in the future in other ways yep the teaming as I said is probably one that
118I I'm we will explore a little bit more and say okay do we want to continue with that the other piece that's really come into focus on a lot of the teachers have commented on and um Mr O'Keefe and I also notices the desire of needing an Avenue to teach some of these skills we've kind of teachers have taken because we've extended some request time in hybrid that they've taken the time to teach some skills it's like okay we could Pro we could use a place to be able to be really um systematic on um skills for success for students so that has also come to life okay thank you thanks Rob Ellen no questions or comments Jeff yeah Greg thanks for your report um I'm sure you've you know you're getting kind of kind
119of getting this down because we've been at it for a while my question I had was um are we doing okay and are you finding any things with truancy issues or follow-up at home um you know we all need to be accountable and deliver the best education we can and be as caring and compassionate it's possible but we also need to keep people accountable and I'm wondering if are you you know running into any of those situations and I don't know what truancy laws you know really are but um does that happen very often where you need to enforce those um it it's not too bad it's it's probably in line with what it was when you're in person um the larger challenge is that um I don't see the county being overly supportive um
120given the circumstances of being in a pandemic so that's it's where some families you could kind of use that as a carrot to maybe improve attendance that's really kind of not not an option um I'll give a a shout out to um officer whis who does um our he does visits and does uh um social he takes a social worker sometimes or he'll take um some other people with him just to do a safety check and make a wellness check on a student and checking with families he does a phenomenal job checking with those families and that can be effective but we don't have a I don't think it's hotter than normal we normally have it's just an even more of a challenge to support those families and support the students to get them back
121engaged all right if you don't have all of our tools yeah just a safety check makes a lot of sense if it need be just to know what's going on in that home if you haven't heard anything back so appreciate your time thank you no questions or comments no I think you are on mute everything's on mute but my mouse well we can hear you always have the great lines well said okay no we can hear you go ahead thank you for your thoughtful and informative report uh one thing you didn't touch on and I would where what the direction is regarding substitute teachers an educational assistants but you said it's been a challenge is there is there any light at the end of the tunnel on that well it's actually to the substitute teachers
122I mean um the middle school we have kind of a group of substitute teachers that just they love coming to middle school so they're always looking for opportunities we typically don't have a problem getting substitutes um in distance and learning we don't need them um so I'm hoping that our group of when we get back in person they will come back we've used some technology when teachers are gone in hybrid there's something called an owl camera which I won't go into detail but it literally is an owl that can show a classroom with 360 degrees so a teacher even though if they're out if they're well enough to teach they can still teach from home with the students in the building that's been effective our educational assistants they've done a fabulous job they've adjusted like
123everyone else um it's it was a challenge I give um again a shout out to our case managers in special education because uh it's been difficult to figure out how to make sure we're servicing all of our students properly but they've all done a terrific job and now Shifting the distance learning there's different levels of comfort with technology but they've all been right on board and meeting with students regularly I know a few of them actually meet at the middle school still during distance learning for Wi-Fi issues to make sure they have good Wi-Fi and so I see them all the time meeting with students helping with homework sharing screens hey um I want to get this done I'm going to meet with you in two you know in a couple hours come back so
124they're they're kind of the behind the scenes Warriors that are doing some fabulous work and supporting our students thank you excellent questions board members um Greg thank you and when you came before the board I think it was September it was August or September you you really highlighted the um challenge of um student engagement and you've really gone after it and and just a number of ways that you've looked it really um to really create you know to really overcome the challenges of both the hybrid and the distance learning and um really just phenomenal work and I think um you know the addition of the promise fellows thanks you know to the generosity of HCI but a number of strategies that you're talking around teams and and the Outreach for student engagement and some of
125the things I think it it really points to Val's um you know thoughts about how we move forward in creating a budget and and how we look at you know how we're reaching students in some of the ways that are effective and um one of the things when you talk about how quiet the middle school is you have 140 students middle school students are also doing Portage right um so I think I looked at the numbers you have in a hybrid model you have 400 students in that huge building so so it is it's a great environment and it's one we wish we we can't replicate obviously um we'd love to be able to but I think that you're you're spot on in terms of of really um identifying some ways that that have worked
126so well um and I think the other thing I'd like to compliment you on and your staff too is really paying attention to the parent surveys to inform you know your decision making and and most of all it's been a testament of your leadership in terms of how you've been able to get um staff and and all of your staff on board and and really really addressing these tough challenges and making these tough decisions like the elective piece but but listening to parents and and really making it all work so thank you so very much we know it's just been an incredible Challenge and we are sincerely grateful for your work my pleasure thank you for the kind comments okay excellent thank you and all just in the new year right exactly no one's going
127to be sad to see 2020 go away exactly okay good thank you okay so we'll move on now to welcoming um Aaron Bailey director of Community Education to provide an update and certainly we're happy always happy that Aaron is is at our board meetings but particularly tonight so we can thank her for her incredible um results for the uh for the audit um and for her for her phenomenal work with managing the community education budget so thank you Aaron and welcome thanks Julie hi everyone I'm happy to be here tonight um just to give you an update on where we are in the working nurse um kind of how the year has started off and what's going well and kind of what we're still trying to solve um so things that were going well our
128students and staff were certainly happy to start the school year in person um the way it worked for our building this year is we essentially potted everyone up prior to the start of the school year and so um had we needed to shift to a hybrid model we were already in pods for our preschool we um had the ability to be with being in the Northfield Community Education Center certainly had the ability with more space thus making it able to make that possible um I've had time to think this year if we were still at Longfellow School and how would we have done that and I'm not sure that this would have been a doable we would have had a doable as doable of a solution other than to greatly reduce numbers and so um
129the building we're in has certainly made it possible to enroll students who are interested in attending um there are currently 122 students that are enrolled in hand-in-hand preschool um we we started the year with 104 students attending in person and then 18 students were intending and what we'll call our hand-in-hand Portage preschool so we did um mirror the K-12 district and offer a full distance Learning Preschool this year uh and that did have 18 students so that is the 18 students is the equivalent of one full section of preschool so that was um great for us to offer and we certainly did see an interest in that um just for your understanding hand-in-hand preschool is full at 144 students and we've been full for a number a number number of years so we have 122
130students and um kind of like the rest of the district did see families that made some choices to not send children um this year just based the pandemic the same is true in early Ventures again a program we haven't necessarily had openings in very fruit frequently that we do have some openings in this year just because of choices families families made for students who are enrolled in hand-in-hand preschool 34 percent of the students come from how uh come from households who qualify for free reduced price lunch meals 26 are students of color and 43 are special education students the um those students who are attending in person and choosing the Portage model basically the demographics almost exactly mirror each other so they're within about a percentage points if there's in any adjustment so um very
131similar demographics from those who are attending in person and those who are attending um via full-time distance learning we then again had because we'd had some experience with distance learning already this year we did have a successful transition for hand-in-hand preschool into full distance learning so we did do some modifications um from what we learned into in this last spring when we did this so we um pushed out one thing we did hear from families last spring is less less time on the on devices and so with more time this year to plan for that we do push out significantly more activity packets and projects that students can do at home that then they can share back um but and we still of course have things that they can view online but not necessarily as
132heavily using the device which um families were happy just due to the age of children and also the use of um devices and internet capacity in their households when they have potentially K-12 students who are also trying to attend classes so we certainly saw the dedication of students and staff as they're working under some you know difficult circumstances with covid-19 protocols um with hand-in-hand preschool we have classes that attend morning and afternoon and they're different so we are doing a significant amount of cleaning in the day as we transition different pods throughout the day and so everyone has just it reacted just with the most positive attitude to make sure that that happens family conferences were also a great way to start the school year this was something we were look looking to do in
133hand in hand actually before the pandemic made it more of a priority for everyone and so um it was certainly a great way for families for us to connect with families understand their needs better before the school year started and just helped to outline with them what this year would look like no matter what learning model that we would encounter throughout the year and then we're certainly um the building is open which is a huge success for the year and then we're moving forward with all the Partnerships in the building so just a couple updates on those Partnerships the Northfield healthy Community initiative has four staff working from the building that started right away in September the Community Action Center has had five Distribution food distributions um from our parking lot I will say one
134was taking place today uh the line of cars we started a second line in the bus pull-up Lane because the line of cars was so far out on Lincoln Parkway and that we did not want to cause any traffic issues and so these food distributions have just been a great a great resource for families in the community and are are well attended we also tonight um had a flu vaccinations Clinic taking place at the same time so we are really feeling fortunate to be able to use this building as to support the whole Community too and then um who the CAC is also currently storing food um some in their Foods dry food in their food shelf area they continue to use our freezers um and for refrigerators and then they also moved in a
135brand new uh cooler for their space uh last Friday so this is starting to um continue to take shape additions uh staff have reviewed and provided uh feedback on the first concept drawing provided by the Minnesota Children's Museum I'm meeting with them again on Wednesday so we continue to move forward with the design and installation for the former Media Center space um and then of course the Kaboom playground uh has been installed and has gotten lots of use which is is very exciting so the problems we are trying to solve for um prior to moving to a full distance learning was just of course supporting students who are in quarantine um we did have times where you we had two uh situations where a classroom was in quarantine for a certain amount of time and
136then we've had students obviously that have been in quarantine and so just when they are in quarantine just making sure that they're getting their activity packets still feel connected to teachers and to staff but it does of course cause some logistical challenges and Technology issues if they did not necessarily we are now we have a hundred percent of students connected we had to distribute about I think seven devices out um to students to make sure everyone was connected HCI of course helped us with hot spots but prior to being in full distance learning we did not necessarily have those all distributed because they were attending in the building and so being on quarantine sometimes caused a challenge I will say also just for students sometimes having access to food is a challenge you know when
137we aren't necessarily having signed up for meals and things some of those become a challenge to when students are in quarantine um Stress Management for all staff I mean I think this has been mentioned probably in everybody's uh update is just there is the amount of things to plan for and be prepared for and keep in in the front of your mind is is high this year um another problem we're just working to solve for is just the lack of flow within the building so I think what these programs typically look like are and are designed for is to have a pretty free-flowing movement so you can attend early Ventures Child Care walk down the hallway and go to hand-in-hand preschool and walk back to early Ventures and a parent doesn't need to be there
138to um assist with your child care and your preschool needs for the day those are things that covet has put some pause on so we typically would allow for an early Ventures child to register for any section of hand-in-hand preschool and this year in order to maintain those pods we um early Venture students could only sign up for one section of preschool so it potentially meant that they weren't mixing with other students or necessarily getting the dosage of preschool that they may have wanted but it allowed us then to maintain that pod of students from early Ventures into hand and preschool and back without mixing um so that and it only allowed us to do that for students who are the year before kindergarten were typically if you were a three-year-old you would also be
139open to hand in hand preschool but again could not do that and ensure on the pods the same thing happens with our intervention so we provide interventions in all of our program settings typically again this has been impacted as we just tried to limit the number of um staff interactions going in and out of certain classrooms where students are receiving their interventions has just covet has caused some limitations on that and then of course of course how we serve families with children ages birth to three years old we do an extensive amount of home visits in a typical year whether it's ECFE staff whether it's our birth to five Early Childhood excuse me well birth to five or and birth to three Early Childhood special education staff um many of those things happen in their
140natural settings in in their homes this year what that's looked like prior to going to full distance learning is we've done a lot of visits on the playground and in the gym in in other areas of the building where other students and staff might not be accessing but it has certainly changed um the nature and the flow of these um how these programs operate in and it certainly increases the workload for staff a lot of the observations that happen for kids in this ages is during their play and um when you can't create that setting or have them be in that setting because of um trying to avoid mixing up pods it does certainly make it more difficult and then of course as Greg mentioned to just finding substitute teachers in an educational assistance has
141been challenging at certain times there's just been a couple situations where we've had a high level of Staff out on certain days which just means we are doing some shuffling within the building to make sure we have all the coverage that we need and with that there is our winter spring brochure that I hope all of you have received in your mailbox as of now and I will take any questions thank you Erin questions or comments board members have Tom um thanks Aaron for a good report um a couple questions do you know the timeline of the indoor play area so yeah um not fully so we backed it up a little bit so our original timeline had it being installed over winter break and partly we bumped that back once we knew that the
142start of the school year was going to diff be different and part of the move we just didn't rush as as much as we had on the schedule in um kind of August and September uh I will also own it feels a little cruel to kids to put in a nice indoor play space and say you can't use that right now so we are somewhat accommodating for that time just to if we put it in we want it to be used and we are certainly putting it um in with you know in with the idea of maintaining cleanliness you know we don't think covet is going to hopefully be as large of a factor in our lives going forward but we I mean I think it's certainly shown a light on how to um increase
143our level of disinfectant sanitary things like that so that we've added some steps in there even as we consider what's going forward but we're trying to accommodate a schedule that feels fair to the children yeah that's a good point um so um you know you got this new building and I I can imagine that initially you had different plans for it and then those all had to change so uh and then hopefully next fall you'll have different plans than what's implemented now so uh hopefully that'll all work out and then just out of curiosity you had a photograph you had a picture of a young young child with a mask have were kids wearing masks I mean where were they taking them off playing with them or right so per the governor's guidance mask would
144not be required for anyone in our building um in our preschool setting and in our ECFE setting I would say maybe 25 of children wore masks all adults obviously wore mask um but I would say probably 25 of children in those in our child care setting it's virtually none I mean it's some occasionally but very low number and again they're there for anywhere from eight to ten hours a day which is I think why you see the difference in that where if you're coming to preschool or to um ECFE it's it's a much shorter amount of time and the kids had no problems wearing them I mean there was a this is cool or this this is my match I would say the kids who were wearing them I saw very little issues wearing I
145mean not even to the point of touch they were good about not touching them um and keeping them on for ECFE classes we were we ran almost everything we could Outdoors too so we use that if you've seen the outdoor playground that's on the front side of the building that was our primary setting for ECFE classes this year too great thank you Amy yes thank you for the report Aaron I had the great pleasure of seeing the new playground and was very impressed by it and as I meet people with young children I tell them they have to go check it out so it's a beautiful playground um I'm sort of curious about the same thing Tom was asking about which is how much Social distancing can you do with children and do get the
146sense it's going to affect their mental health at all and what they see as normal going forward what do you think about that yeah so when we were in person obviously social distancing um the same guidelines that the high school or the middle school would have had in hybrid art looked you know they we were in an in-person setting part of what we did Amy at the start of the year though was to help to promote that and so when we when we looked at our numbers at the start of the year and looked at the space that we had in this new building we were able to spread everybody out considerably so the number of what we would have normally had in a one person in a one classroom the two teachers and the
14718 kids we most classes right now as you saw have probably 12 kids about them and they're spread over two classrooms so we took two classrooms opened up the divider but we're asking them to stay on their own side but they can the teachers can see across the room um they can interact with students but the kids basically are in smaller pods and we did that very intentionally um because we had the ability to do so and it allowed us to keep kids safer so you're right um social distancing is a is it more of a challenge in the five and under population so we took other steps to reduce how many um students and staff were ever in one classroom setting at a time does that make sense right and do you think there'll
148be any long-term effects from this age group are they resilient enough that they'll just bounce back when the opportunity arises I like to believe in me that all kids are resilient and that we are to also trying to teach the skills right now that um yes it looks different um but that we are also still teaching the the both the social emotion a lot we are heavy on social emotional learning we use Second Step um in our program too we've used a lot of social stories that are related to a pandemic and so being able to address this with kids and I mean kids know it's not you know especially if they've been in programs before it's not the same um but we are certainly trying hard um to make those things happen in the
149safest way that we can thank you Amy Rob thanks Aaron I have no questions or additional comments Ellen sure I had one question so I think I'd understood way back when the world was different that when you came into this building that this year was going to be a sort of let's just do the same thing until we get used to the building and then of course that didn't actually get to happen the way you had wanted um do you and you as you look to the future of when things are back to a a different normal um are you going to still sort of think that you'd like to have be in the building and and be able to experience that normal before you sort of undertake making any significant changes yeah that's that's
150a good that's a good question Ellen I don't know if I can totally answer it quite I mean I think we would still um when when more of life gets back to normal I Envision that the the need for full-time preschool you know full day preschool still exists and I I anticipate the need for more child care slots in this community still exist they don't they don't exist in the same way right now I think as life slowly gets back over though I'm not sure that those have necessarily gone away they might take a dip for a certain amount of time I think as we I mean you are right our plan for this year was to kind of do business as normal because we were moving in at the end of August and needing
151to have some kind of be able to move in and launch the year about a week later um so I think we need a little bit have to know a little bit more what does next fall look like probably before we start some of this um we know we've seen a reduction right now and how many people are participating in our program and does the world look enough different that people will come back at a higher rate is probably something we need a little bit more information on before we can fully determine would we start to um Implement some of those growth plans next year or would we be looking at slightly longer thanks great question Ellen Jeff yeah thanks Aaron it sounds like you're calling some audibles at the line of scrimmage and uh
152you know putting the game plan in day by day so I appreciate your diligence of keeping working hard on all of that and uh you know get through this year and you know hopefully it's the next next year will be a little bit more normal no I'll hope for that Jeff thank you for your report it's good to hear your enthusiasm for the reallocation of the building and we look forward to this year but also next year when you can be a little bit more in control thank you for your report thanks Paul excellent um thank you Aaron I mean you just do a phenomenal job and we are so grateful for your work so thank you so much thank you okay we'll move on to uh Dr Hillman uh covid-19 response and operations update
153yes I will uh keep my report as brief as possible this evening to allow board members to ask questions uh you have heard from our administrators about the transition to distance learning uh both Aaron and Greg talked about their experience this evening uh talking with all of our leaders I would characterize our shift to distance learning this time around as a much smoother process than we had in the spring we can't forget that in the spring we had an emergency move to distance learning based upon the concerns about the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic and of course this time around with people having some experience both families and staff members we have across the board heard a lot of a much more smooth start to distance learning this time around versus what we had last
154spring one of the key things that our administrative team recognizes is that when we move to distance learning being able to manage our staff remotely has to be done differently and even though we are able to have staff work from the building this time around as opposed to last spring when there was the stay-at-home order we still know that managing a remote Workforce in a in a different way than if everybody is here is something that as Leaders we need to make sure that we concentrate on so I'm proud to tell you that as of Wednesday December 9th our administrative team had had 422 check-ins with our staff and that was either via email telephone text messaging video conferencing or even a potentially socially distanced uh a personal meeting in the building so what I
155want the board to know is that when we shifted to distance learning in the spring we're all learning about a lot of different things as we've shifted this fall people have a little bit more experience and we are leveraging what we learned last spring including as leadership making sure that we are routinely checking with our staff intentionally to make sure that they have what they need that they have the support that they need in order to implement this as effectively as possible and even though we've had experience before we are still all learning how to effectively teach from a full remote perspective so I'm very proud of the fact that people have adopted a continuous Improvement mindset they looked at what they learned last spring how do we make changes and you heard that this
156evening in both reports from Greg and from Aaron I also want to talk through a little bit about the providing at-risk assistance to at-risk Learners and in the narrative that I included in your packet I shared with you the work of Cheryl Hall and hope Langston that they put together some protocols for bringing in our most at-risk students and when we think our most at risk at-risk students we think about our area Learning Center students we think about our special education students who have very intense needs we also think about our El students who may need some additional support in their language development that is very difficult to do via video conference and we also think about some of those other at-risk Learners so we have put together a staged return plan for at-risk at-risk
157students we started off right away with our area Learning Center following an approach that we learned from Rochester Public Schools with an appointment-based system so if there's an area Learning Center student who needed some specific assistance with their distance learning they can contact the office there was a schedule where they can request to come in for a certain period of time as long as the teacher is there they can of course get assistance via Zoom as well but our area Learning Center knew that that consistent connection for a variety of reasons was really important uh we have been able to do that successfully and I want to point out that the area Learning Center is the only building in the district that has had zero confirmed covid-19 cases so their protocols and the way that
158they're working through this this was our beginning effort to see how could we support at-risk Learners in person even when most of our students are learning remotely the second group of students who we will actually be bringing in later this week are are highly intense need special education students so these are students who spend quite a bit of time uh 60 percent or more of their daily minutes in special education these are setting three special education students we had originally looked at where we were at when we started distance learning we all know that our County case rate the number of infections per 10 000 residents was uh well above 200 and so as we looked at what we looked at through the reasonable person Theory we thought if we could get back down under
159125 uh cases per 10 000 that would be a reasonable time to Bar start bringing in very targeted special education services last week we dropped below 125 so this week we are able to start bringing in some special education students with highly intense needs that will happen later this week and then next week and then continue after the new year so we are working through that we have a three three different uh pieces that we use with that who are the students what are the case rates and then are our staff able and willing to be able to come in and in these cases we've been able to check all three boxes we would not start any El or other at-risk learner students Services until after the beginning of the new year I'm going to
160get to the metrics in just a moment so I want to also share that one of the things that we had learned in the pulse survey is families really not feeling that they always had all of the resources to to support student learning at home so we've done a variety of pieces including adding specific parental resources as part of our weekly updates and then we started four weeks ago we started with a parent support webinar that we are running on Sunday evenings from 6 30 to 7 before this last one on this past Sunday night we had been averaging 47 connected devices for each of those first three sessions we know there could be multiple people listening to that but we can get a report and so we're averaging 47 connected devices first through those
161first three sessions uh the first week we had hope Langston and I talked about the transition to distance learning and what kind of supports and tools were available for families the second we worked with local health and wellness coach Cindy boyam to talk with families about how they can set up their home and their relationships at home for Success during distance learning and really honoring and understanding that we're in a very challenging time and that there are some tools needed to be be able to address some of those challenges within our homes the third week we were welcomed Dr Jane runsheimer a local physician at Allina Health clinic and Rice County clinical Community supervisor Sarah Coulter to be able to talk a little bit about where we are in terms of Public Health and the
162kinds of things that people needed to be able to do to keep fighting the pandemic and keep impacting those County infection rates and then just this past weekend we had a great All-Star panel Allison Sweeney a third grade teacher at Sibley Elementary Rose Turner Cliff a sixth grade teacher and a previous intervention teacher at the middle school hope Langston and myself we talked about how parents can support reading development in the home we know that that's such an important piece and when we have students off campus wanting to make sure that that reading development continues and that we look at parents as learning Partners we need a stronger partnership more than ever people are starting to think about okay we know that distance learning was scheduled to go through the end of winter break what's
163going to happen after the beginning of the new year and what we're looking at right now is the metrics that we have from the Department of Health and the Department of Education the the dad that we are using now has shrunk when we were in person or in the hybrid model there were a number of other data points that we are able to use because we had students on campus we had people reporting to us uh their covid-19 infections their covid-19 close contacts and in distance learning uh self-reporting just is not working like it did when we had people coming to campus so we're really back to using three different metrics at this point based upon what we have from the Department of Health and the Department of Education we have to move and move
164back to using the county infection rate per 10 000 residents and those guidelines that Governor walls's team set out on July 31st for us so we are reverting back at this point to looking at that data we are also looking to make sure that the schools have the ability to implement the safety measures that are required for either hybrid or in-person learning and I think we've seen this fall that we were able to mitigate gate danger here at school of the transmission of the virus and then finally do we have enough healthy employees to be able to effectively staff school programs and we know that for many school districts that was the straw that broke the proverbial camels back to be able to have to move to distance learning it wasn't just about the rise
165in cases it was also about that we had so many staff who needed to quarantine or who were out that we weren't able to effectively staff buildings in a way that we felt supported programming was able to do that safely so we're back to looking at that we had really hoped to be able to share with families what our plan was for after winter break we had hoped to be able to do that last week unfortunately there were two pieces that came to our attention that we felt that was reasonable to delay that decision number one is that we expect Governor walls is going to speak this week we thought he was going to speak today now we understand that he will speak Wednesday to talk about the current pause and if there will be
166any extension in that and if there will be other resources or other things that come forward in that talk that we're looking forward to on Wednesday in addition we've been hearing some pieces that there is a group of 28 professionals including nine superintendents representatives from teachers organizations Department of Health Department of Ed who have been meaning to talk about learning model Transitions and some of the things that we've been hearing coming out of that group is that there was the possibility of some updated guidance from the Department of Health that may really change the guidelines that we started to get about the county infection rates uh back in July of course some of you may have seen over the weekend there was an article actually is in today's paper saying that the Department of Education
167is saying no we're going to really stick with the original guidelines and so we are waiting just to hear if we could hear something this week we'd love to be able to use that to inform our decision making for how we come back after winter break what I did share with families at the end of last week in my weekly update is that they do need to plan for at least a short period of distance learning after winter break and again we are going to do our best to be able to give the decisions about what how we are going to come back after winter break and what would the potential return to school and in either an in-person or a hybrid model look like last week's County number was down to 117 and based
168upon the data that we're seeing this week we anticipate that that will keep going down now we know in October and November that data skyrocketed nearly straight up when you looked at the graph it is uh decreasing not quite as fast as it went up but at a fairly rapid rate now I think the key thing there is that people may become thinking that we are on the right track and now we don't have to do all those things that were really helpful in us getting that number to come down and what I would just tell people is we have to Triple down on all of the hard work that we've been doing around social distancing and masking and those difficult things of avoiding Gatherings outside of our homes with people who aren't in our
169household unit all of those kinds of things we need to keep going because we know that this virus can go back up as quickly as it has gone up and come down we of course know that the vaccine is on its way and we hope as we start to see people who become vaccinated that we continue to be able to have a greater control over the virus I also want to share with you that we have been a pilot for the Department of Health in a covid-19 school-based pilot for testing and we've done two of these sessions now and we'll have a third one this Wednesday at Northfield Middle School from 1 pm to 7 P.M we're using the saliva test so it's a not an invasive test at all the first weekend December 2nd
170we had 480 tests and they were gone in four hours we thought we would be open for six hours but we gave the last test out a little bit after 5 PM we did get results from 450 of those tests there were a total of five positive results about a 1.1 percent positivity rate and while you might think oh you only got five people I was even worth it if you think we were targeting people who are asymptomatic people without symptoms and if you think about make making sure that we get those five people out of circulation and isolating you think about the impact that five asymptomatic people can have on spreading the virus getting even just five people out of the mix is a really important piece in terms of us moving forward and
171getting control over the virus again this past week we had 511 tests administered we had 720 total tests and we're I believe we're gonna have around 600 tests this week and then we'll be learning what what can we do um with what we have learned from these tests and we're really working on how can that be part of our return to school metrics as we move forward I will tell you we've had really positive feedback from the Department of Health so much so that they brought someone from another region this past week to watch the logistics of how we ran the site you really weren't waiting very long even the second week when we had a lot more people show up to begin with the weight was was fairly reasonable compared to what you would
172think at other sites so you're very proud of being part of this testing process and we're very grateful to mdh for including us in that piece I do want to also share just a little bit more about our anti-racism and racial Equity work despite all of the urgency of the pandemic we have not lost sight of the importance of carrying this work forward um since my last report I've given you a list of items that we continue to work on in your packet and the one piece I'm going to focus on is that we are starting to turn over our monthly PLC racial Equity discussions to teacher leaders and this week Northfield high school English teacher Sean Dube and the district's licensed school nurse maimuna tour Akita are going to present a session about calling
173we call it speak up at school and it's a series of resources from a magazine called teaching tolerance really giving people some simulated opportunities to think about circumstances and how they might respond and giving them some sentence starters and some tools that they can use to respond if they hear students or staff or people in the community uh you know using racist language or telling jokes that are insensitive about racial equity and those kinds of things and so we're working forward to try to continue to develop the skill set within our staff through our monthly PLC racial Equity discussions and I've I've listed a number of other things that we are working on right now on that uh and under that framework of attacking symbolism individual behavior and systemic behavior and making sure that we
174truly live out our vision of preparing every student for lifelong success in a world-class learning environment and we believe unequivocally that in world-class learning environment is anti-racist I do want to go off of one thing that Dr Hardy had mentioned is that as you know we did have extensive discussion last winter about the potential of a later school start time and I had promised you last spring that I would bring this discussion back this fall I think you all understand why that discussion has had to go by the wayside for this at this moment but I do think that it's important that we will bring that discussion back in the winter we have learned a lot about the potential benefits of additional sleep for especially our high school students as we have evaluated the schedules
175that we've used in distance learning and so that's another piece even though you think well how is that connected when our classes start later because of distance learning when that happened in the spring and some of the ways that's happening now we are getting some additional data and thinking about are there different schedules that could better support our secondary Learners so I had told you that we would try to do that this fall I think you understand why we have not gotten there but I want to make sure that you know that it is not completely off of our radar and uh so those are the items that I have for you today excellent thank you okay board members questions or comments for Dr Hillman um Tom um thanks Matt um no questions or comments
176thanks no questions or come comments thank you Ellen no questions or comments Jeff thanks Matt no questions or comments no DR England thank you informative as usual okay great well Dr Hillman we just are so incredibly grateful for the work you're doing I mean it's just outstanding in so many ways and I think um top of that list should be your communication to uh to parents and staff and and ultimately to to um the students it's just been phenomenal and you are working tirelessly to just try to keep a pulse on everything that's happening and quite honestly we all Marvel at the job that you are doing under an incredible amount of stress so um just a testament to you that you jumped on the testing program as soon as you felt like that was
177available and that has just been huge um I want to compliment you on the incredibly um uh smart and dedicated command team that you put together we have um some representatives from from staff and students and the community and they have just been working working hard in terms of trying to make the the right decisions about the learning models and the things going forward but it's just a testament to your leadership and you have really um you know people have rallied and they you know they're tired and and they're stressed and you keep them moving forward every day and that's just because they see you doing that and the positive um Outlook you have that we can do this and we can continue to move forward and I think in addition to that the priority
178you've placed on mental health for our for our students and for their our families and and the staff has just been incredible and you've just figured out how to reach people in so many different ways and and we talk about Lessons Learned and I think that as a school district we're clearly going to come out of this much stronger as a district and a community so we really can't thank you enough and um we hope that maybe in the coming holiday that you'll have some opportunity to kind of decompress a little bit but uh we know it's been full court press uh for for months and and weeks and days on end and so we just are so grateful for your that's my distinct privilege thank you and we have a great team of people
179who are doing all of those things that you just said so it's my privilege to serve them and you okay great thank you okay that um board members does conclude our items for discussion and reports so we can move on now to approval of the consent uh grouping there were a few uh items in the person Alpha personal 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 okay not hearing anyone is there a motion to approve the consent grouping so moved moved by Alan and it is seconded by Jeff we will ask Anita will conduct with a motion and a second Anita will conduct a rule call vote Anita Rania I gerwitz hi Hardy I Iverson
180aye Pritchard aye Cornell aye stratman hi excellent motion carries we'll move on now to items for individual action we have five items this evening uh first item is our fiscal year 2020 audit is there a motion to approve the 2019-20 audit as presented so moved moved by Amy is there a second second second by Rob any questions or comments um by board members I will run through the roll call quickly and if you have no question or comment you can simply pass Tom asks Amy s Rob pass Ellen pass Jeff yes no okay we have a motion in a second no questions or comments um Anita roll call vote please roniak aye gurwitz aye Hardy I Iverson aye Pritchard aye Quinnell hi stratman hi okay excellent the motion to approve the 2019-20 audit um carries
181our next item is uh policy committee recommendations um we'll ask for a motion and then um have quite time for question and comments so the board is I'm sorry is there a motion to approve policies 404-409-413 and 415 as presented I'd move it no moved by null is there a second by Tom second by Tom thank you so as you recall we did a PR uh we did uh have the first reading for all of these policies at our board at our November 23rd board meeting so but I will ask board members for any questions or comments on these policies Tom asks Amy Chris Rob pass Allen pass Jeff bass Noel okay we have a motion and a second on the approval of the policies Anita a roll call please Brainiac I witz aye Hardy
182Iverson hi Pritchard aye Quinnell I strapmon bye excellent motion carries those policies are approved um our next item is the Northfield High School Raider mascot refresh is there a motion to direct Northfield High School administration to complete a process that offers the board up to four options for refreshing the Raider team mascot conceptual design centered on the community's defeat of the James younger gang will be given the strongest consideration but other designs are welcome the designs must be free from weaponry and simple to reproduce unless there are unavoidable delays the board will review the submitted options no later than March 1st 2021 that is the motion is the motion to approve motion moved by Jeff is there a second second by Tom second by Tom I will open it up for questions or comments by
183board members Tom um no time to do it thanks excellent Amy uh I am still hoping that the new mascot will be gender free somehow I don't know if we can include that um but I'm just throwing that out to the universe maybe someone will hear that um okay thank you Amy Rob no questions or comments Ellen no questions or comments Jeff no questions or comments no I had a question from a voter a couple of days ago asking the need for a rant mascot and I'd like to hear comments from the other board members if they've had time to if they need a little time to think about it maybe we shouldn't discuss it now but what is the value of mascot is what this person was asking me that's that's an interesting comment
184did you have a a response for them Noel I said I'd bring it to the board okay well I mean it's certainly one of those Traditions that that seem to be held dear by by most uh most high school and professional teams is to have have a mascot and that I think goes to to the larger um you know context of identifying your school and and uh but I think it's an interesting point and Julie I think that that's something that the board would be able to consider through that process right I mean at the end of the process there will be things that are submitted and I think at that time the you know if there are things that the board would choose to say well we're not going to have them that's an
185option that the board could also select and I I have a comment for you number one about Northfield I talked to guy from you know Massachusetts the other day and he he knew Northfield because Northfield is most famous for the reader raid period And the fact of the matter is it's not we're not celebrating Raiders we're celebrating the defeat of Jesse James days it's defeat we're Victorious over the criminals that came to Rob our town so that is our number one identity for Northfield Minnesota thank you Jeff to uh our board members if anyone else have a question or a comment um that uh in reaction to Knowles question I would want to respond to Jeff's comment in that case Northfield should be the defense Northfield Defenders rather than Northfield Raiders so what we did
186was defend not raid okay is there any other questions or comments on the motion okay we have a motion and a second uh roll call vote Anita please Rania hi gerwood hi Hardy I Iverson hi Pritchard aye Quinnell hi stratman hi motion carries okay our fourth item for individual action is there a motion to certify the County Auditors the 2020 payable 2021 final certified Levy limitation and certification report in the amount of 20 million three hundred and thirteen thousand forty three dollars and 39 cents so moved moved by Amy is there a second by time second by Tom I will run through roll call for any questions or comments Tom pass Amy pass Rob pass Ellen pass Jeff yes no yes and myself I did the roll call vote Anita I apologize for that I
187guess the time is getting late but I uh oh no I'm sorry I was singing do a roll call okay I'm really losing it sorry people okay we were just asking for questions or comments I am so sorry okay we have no questions or comments now we can do the roll call vote Anita thank you hi okay motion carries so we have one more item for individual action let's see if I can get this one right so is there a motion to approve the revised 2020 2020 2021 general fund budget of revenues of 58 million 184 370 and expenditures of 60 million 73 so emotion moved by Ellen is there a second by Rob okay I will run through questions or comments prior to the roll call vote Tom ask Amy yes Rob pass Ellen
188s Jeff yes no okay thank you that motion carries I will like to entertain um one additional motion oh wait we do we just we just did the passing out oh I'm sorry now I'm really losing it I am so sorry Anita roll couple please thank you Ellen Brainiac I gerwitz hi Hardy Iverson aye Pritchard aye Quinnell hi stratman hi okay I had one last chance and I blew it so now one I would like to entertain a motion however we are present 950 and we do have a few items of business remaining on the agenda so I would entertain a motion to extend the meeting past 10 pm moved by Amy is there a second okay it is a motion and a second by Noel Anita if we can have a roll call vote
189on the motion to extend the meeting past 10 pm broniak I gerwitz aye Hardy hi Iverson hi Pritchard aye quinoa I stratman hi excellent thank you motion carries okay we'll move on to items for information enrollment report Dr Hillman foreign yes in your packet this evening you had the monthly enrollment report and you'll notice that we've leveled off just a little bit more we had gone from uh 300 38.83 full-time only students excluding early childhood and part-time or independent study ALC students October 1 our number was 30 83 in November that had bumped up a little bit to 38.90 and we're now back down to 38.80 so you are seeing those numbers each month and that is the enrollment report for uh December excellent thank you um I will run through board members if you
190have any questions or comments on the enrollment report Tom yes Amy yes Rob pass Allen s Jeff yes no yes okay excellent so we'll move on to our second item for information which is construction update we are at number 38 Dr Hillman yes it's amazing that we are at number 38 and uh what you'll see is that we are getting very close I was at Greenvale park today uh there were some modifications and some punch list items getting taken care of at that facility today and then the big thing is that we the carpet is here for the administrative office um update and that will start to be installed this week we've been through uh the district office a number of times they're looking in great shapes are just really an excellent remodel that is
191going to benefit the community for decades and decades in addition to being in a financial wizard of Valor storef is also an excellent moving coordinator she has been in charge of putting together the plan for the district offices to move we are currently in boxes and we are all having to have all of those things ready by Friday uh district office team will be working from home for next week as the items are moved and then after the holiday will be unpacking and the district office will be closed for a short period of time we'll be updating the website with that as well and then officially reopening on January 4th so we are excited to be able to move into this new space and then allow the high school to be working on how they
192will take advantage of that space of course the plans for dealing with that were delayed by covid but they are going to be able to make good use of that space as we move ahead so I'm just going to ask if Val has anything else to add about the district office move no I don't so thanks for your work on that too Val excellent thank you it's crazy to think we're down to the last project and uh but I appreciate I know it's a it's a heavy lift for everyone in the district office who are already juggling a number of challenges to have to physically look at their office space and box it up and and so um you know it's it's uh um will be good when it happens but it's tough right now
193for having that additional um to do on on your end so thank you um okay so uh construction update I will go through board members if they have any uh questions um regarding any of the uh construction projects Tom yes Amy I'm just wondering about the high school district office renovation how um is there money set aside for that and when will they be able to start using it I know you said it was deferred for a little while but if you could just tell us a little bit more yeah we right now we don't have any dollars set aside this year for that process we are meeting with our Capital uh projects Committee in the next week and I anticipate that that will be part of our discussion uh the high school has a
194number of the high school administration has a number of ideas about how to use that space um I think they're really specifically looking at how could they use that space to support students with individual needs and to be able to Parlay that into freeing up larger classrooms in the building so we will be considering any potential changes there it'll be minimal uh renovation we're certainly not talking about a major renovation would be most likely things that we would do in a house but I know that the high school administration has some Concepts that they're working toward they could potentially be using that space fairly quickly without modifications depending on how they choose to use that space and then of course we would be using the summer time to make any physical modifications to that facility
195that would be necessary thank you Rob yes Ellen pass Jeff Bass no yes okay thank you for those items for information update um move on to Future meetings we're looking into the new year Monday January 11th 2021 7 PM the organizational board meeting followed by the regular board meeting and Monday January 25th at uh 7 PM regular board meeting um the format of that meeting of course is in flux but at some point we are hoping to be in our new boardroom at the new Northfield uh district offices so with that I have one last thing that we need to do tonight and that is of course celebrate uh our two departing board members Ellen Iverson and Rob Hardy and uh this is tough this is really tough um wow um you you two are
196absolutely amazing so I have some remarks um that I'd like to to share um as as we know both Ellen and Rob chose not to pursue another term on the board um Ellen was first elected to the board in 2008 she came to the board as a parent of two Northfield public school students as both a parent volunteer at Greenvale Park Elementary and as a community member on the district's educational program advisory Council Ellen from the onset understood the challenges and opportunities facing the district time and again the board benefited immensely from her expertise as a director of evaluation at the Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College this knowledge and unique understanding of how to evaluate programs aimed at approving teaching and learning was invaluable to the board as we reviewed curriculum and staff
197development programs as a member of the Northfield promises data action team Ellen's fast knowledge AIDS them in making critical program decisions this vital work has led to student achievement games that our students that our district could not achieve alone Ellen was fiercely dedicated to her boardwork she willingly stepped forward to volunteer as the school board liaison on a number of District committees committees her work with the district youth Council helped them to understand how to harness their energy and enthusiasm to effectively provide the student voice to the board's decision-making process Ellen served as board chair from 2013 to 2015-15 her strength of leadership helped the board to navigate the decision-making process on two important initiatives that would have long-term impacts for the district including the District Master facilities plan and the transformational technology iPad initiative
198as a board we have profound respect for her work she was quick to now acknowledge the hard work of our administrators and staff for the great work they do for students Ellen's approach to decision making was first and foremost what was in the best interest of students her board's service will be marked with great Passion dedication and commitment to Northfield students and their families thank you Ellen for your 12 years of service to the board you will be so dearly missed so Rob I will give the board opportunity to to make some remarks to you as well um Rob Rob was first elected to the board in 2012. he came to the board with an intense interest in education and educational interest issues he served as a community member on the district's educational program advisory
199Council Rob is one of the founders and former board chair of the Canyon River stem school and a k a K-8 Charter School Rob's work on the board reflected his intense passion and concern for the well-being of Northfield students and their families he's an Ardent supporter of the district's torch program his work on the torch advisory committee was instrumental in the program's successful growth what we valued most about Rob was the approach he used in making decisions he was committed to having a thorough understanding of all aspects of the issues at hand he devoted a great deal of time to conduct comprehensive research in order to ask all the right questions he placed high priority on understanding how the board's decisions would impact individual students and staff members one of his greatest strengths is to
200view board issues through an equity lens Rob served the district well as a member of the policy Review Committee his ability to critique the technical aspects of policy language and his skill in drafting new policies was invaluable to the committee's work Rob is respected by the board for his Civic mid-ness and Community involvement in 2015 the Northfield public library in the arts and culture committee selected him as the community's first poet laureate Rob has enthusiastically embraced his posts and has worked tirelessly to achieva's goal of giving voice to new and different poetic voices in our community we are grateful for the beautiful piece he wrote to celebrate the class of 2020. his poem served as a powerful opening to their virtual graduation ceremony thank you rob for your eight years of service to the board
201you will be best remembered for a champion of Northfield students and your unwavering caring concern for their well-being you will also be greatly missed so as a board we just cannot thank the two of you enough and I hope you understand how deeply deeply difficult it is for us to have to say goodbye but we of course wish you all the best so if we can all unmute and provide a moment of great Applause for these two amazing board members so what I would like to do is just run through board members so that they have an opportunity to personally say goodbye Tom um yeah thanks um so I've had the pleasure and honor of serving with Ellen and Rob for only two years they're both deep thinkers and sincerely care about the education of
202all kids about the equity and Humanity of us all as fellow humans and about the school district and its responsibility to the students staff and Community they're wise sometimes poetic stewardship and oversight has helped make the Northfield schools the exceptional School District that it is big impacts happen in small venues at the local level public service is rewarding because of benefits calculates others I thank Ellen for her 12 years and Rob for his eight years on the board Nelson Mandela said what counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived it is what difference we have made to the lives of lives of others that will determine the significance of the life we lead thank you for your service and sacrifice best wishes for your future thank you Tom wonderful remarks Amy
203well first I want to thank Rob for being an excellent table mate for three and a half years until kovid separated us and I also just wanted to say to both of you that you have made uh you definitely have both left your mark on the Northfield schools and you've had such a positive impact on the Northfield Community and I wanted to thank you for that and wish you both well as you move through the next doors of your life in the next adventures and I know you're going to do great things so thank you for being part of my life for the last four years and I look forward to watching you as you move forward thank you Amy Jeff yeah AC great great job there on uh talking about um Ellen and Rob
204uh I just uh uh enjoyed my time with you guys uh just appreciate your friendship and your wonderful critical thinking skills and I think that uh you bring a lot to the table and you always make decisions that are you know well thought out you spent a lot of time with that and your your dedication and your contributions to the district that are just greatly appreciated so uh just you're very much appreciated and I take my hats off to you thank you thank you Jeff no we gotta make sure I'm unmuted here when some board remember when some members joined the board they usually look to the other board members for uh a role in leadership guidance this was a situation where we had two board members come on and I think they provided leadership
205almost immediately and with particularly with their way that they were thoughtful and articulate in responding to the issues so congratulations for your uh thank you for your service and congratulations to what is in store for you for next thank you Noel excellent Dr Hillman did you have any comments um I have made uh comments to both Dr Iverson and Dr Hardy over the last uh couple of weeks but I never miss an opportunity to say something but I will be brief though Rob's laughing because he doesn't believe that's possible but I've known both of these you know extraordinary human beings for 11 years and both of them mean a lot to me both professionally and personally and the first thing I want to thank them for is being part of the team that hired me
206for the superintendent's job I I'm very grateful for that and I'm very grateful for the support and the guidance that you gave me in my development as uh as a leader in the school district and that's something I will never forget and you're not getting away with it just because you're getting off the board I'm still going to be coming to you as a community Representatives I also want to just highlight again the student-centeredness that have been brought to the board that was always the lens in which you looked through things and the the way that you understand governance and what the school board's role is in an effective educational organization is a model for what other people should learn you should teach the class on understanding how governance uh what role board members have
207in the governance of the district and for that I am truly grateful because I think that as a governance board we value that people who really Embrace that approach again going back to the fact that we're going to update a strategic plan here most likely in the next year and the two of you are instrumental in helping to develop the Strategic plan that has gotten the wins that we've had over the last several years if you think about the change in the reading curriculum that we had if you think about the implementation of social emotional learning you think about the financial methods that we have that have kept us cut free for over a decade I think all of those things came directly from you so I am very grateful for you I've told you
208that already I'll be telling you more we uh you are not replaceable right there will be new people in these seats in January but no one will be able to replace what you have brought to this community so thank you foreign well well said everyone we hope um Ellen and Rob you you depart knowing how well respected you were and how how we valued you work and how dearly you will be missed okay so um with that um have a restful and safe holiday season for everyone and we'll see everyone in the new year with that I asked for a motion to adjourn I moved to adjourn moved by Noel is there a second thank you we want second by Ellen um we will ask for a roll call vote on the motion to adjourn
209Anita braniac I witz hi Hardy hi Iverson hi Pritchard aye Quinnell hi stratman right excellent thank you everyone we are adjourned