001all right thank you everyone for being here we are the otana school board we'll start this meeting at 5 34. it's our regular meeting tonight eric our attendance tonight just missing jolane all right joe please rise and join me in the pledge to the allegiance for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all first up tonight would be to approve the agenda as presented motion in a second any further discussion hearing none all in favor with an eye any opposed emotion carries item four tonight is the mission moment i'll turn things over to mr ellstad thank you mr chair members of the board it's my pleasure tonight i have one uh fix that we need to make based upon our last mission moment uh if you remember at our
002october meeting we recognize all of our students that had participated in all-state choir band or orchestra and there was one student that was inadvertently missed i will lift up that student the student is alec harris alec was part of our minnesota all-state choir he was participating in the minnesota music educators association allstate program and i believe i talked about those programs last year they have an upcoming concert in february they did perform in august at st john university in collegeville minnesota and they'll be performing again in february at orchestra hall as part of the minnesota music educators association midwinter clinic so i wanted to lift up alec for that remission moment the other group i'd like to lift up tonight is all of our secretaries in our district if you can imagine when i typically
003ingest at times will refer to our secretaries as what i call our cbo's or clearly the brains of the operation our secretaries are truly valuable to every single building and every single program and i know we have a number that weren't able to be here tonight but i would ask that those secretaries from a district that are present tonight please stand and be recognized by our board and by our community stay standing please these individuals have helped us navigate through a really difficult and challenging time in education and they're willing to do anything and everything that's needed to make sure that our students and families they are front line they are customer service and at times they're helpful in getting kids that there's a frantic parent phone call about an appointment or something and they
004get the kids of the office they just are a real what i call the swiss army knife when in a building they do about everything that they're asked to do and i can't thank them enough for all of their efforts not only during this past 20 months but certainly for all of their efforts from the time they started until the time they choose to leave us in retirement so again thank you so much to our district secretaries thanks mr alstead thank you clearly the brains of the operation that's a good phrase item five tonight is public forum item five uh is a good opportunity now to remind everyone the importance of uh meeting decorum we did not allow slander defamation profanity personal attacks or revelations of private data as cherry respectively request that the public
005refrain from interrupting speakers during public forum you'll be provided three minutes asked to state your name and the subject you wish to address her first card tonight is from roger wasseck mr wasser come on up welcome good evening october 19th i think i just put covert down there yeah roger watson sorry the bottom line next hook my written input the republican gubernatorial candidates at meet and greet the candidates for governor november 2nd at the country club from dr frank sallenberger's october 2021 second opinion monthly newsletter the copit 19 gmd's gnar gene modifying drugs who initially granted emergency use authorization based on clinical trials that only use the chance of getting a severe covert 19 infection or deaths from covert 19 as the endpoints overall death rate or health were not considered here's how the data
006breaks down price reported that their gmd's injection prevented eight cases of severe covert nineteen out of twenty one thousand seven hundred twenty injected if you do the math that means two thousand seven hundred fifteen people had to be injected and twelve of those had to suffer a severe complication requiring hospitalization in order for one person to have any benefit meduna founder gmd's gene modifying drugs and jackson prevented 30 cases of severe covert 19 out of 15 210 injected in other words 507 people had to be injected and 101 of those people had to suffer a severe complication requiring hospitalization in order for one person to have any benefit j j founder gmd's gene modifying drugs injection prevented six cases of severe infection out of 19 630 people injected in other words 3271 people had to
007be injected and 43 of these people had to suffer a severe complication requiring hospitalization in order for one person to have any benefit and this from wise tradition uh summer 2021 as for giving covet vaccinations to children a new fda document reveals that 86 percent of children who participated in the fisa covert vaccine trial reported adverse reactions some of them serious this public input is presented to encourage all members of the school board a board familiar with state mandates to contact our governor state representatives and state senators about covert 19 mandates realizing that the data above by the drug companies show that the new the so-called covet vaccinations have probably filled hospitals and increased overall death rates thank you mr wasik thank you next card is from angie langley ms langley welcome all right oatana
008school board parents grandparents and taxpayers i come to you today to start unraveling what is being offered in our local school district libraries this will be one of many that i will be speaking about i am not here to change anyone's mind but i'm here to be transparent i feel being transparent is what the community is looking for this word has been used by our local superintendent and with hopes to share what kind of transparency i believe the community is looking for i along with some other volunteers have taken upon ourselves to go through a 16-page document that i found online that lists out what they deem in appropriate material in book form today i'm introducing the book called flamer it is a book that has been published in 2020 and by an author named
009mike corrado the book is considered a graphic novel where pictures and comments strip like materials portrayed this book can be located in our own very own owatonna middle school which houses our 6th to 8th grade children ages approximately 11 to 14. on page 22 you will find a conversation where some boys at camp are getting ready for a campfire and dinner quote ugh hot dogs again what's wrong navarro i thought you like a big sausage in your mouth i thought you'd like a big sausage in your mouth yes we all know that kids have picked up on dirty jokes so you may ask what is wrong with this on page 23 a child states excuse me okay who wants my hot wiener and yes another answer is oh yeah baby slide it right into my
010buns and again another dirty joke but this time pictured as you can see they're motioning where to put the hot dog okay moving on on page 120 same kiddos at camp having a discussion about a girl that has a friend a boy says yes she's friends with my cousin i often love her and they use the word epping but spelled out the right way in love with her i wish i went to your school so i could watch her walk every day another boy says haha that's not love that's called a boner and the other responds huh it's true my dick gets so hard thinking about her sometimes that i think it's going to rip through my jeans getting to some more even more graphic and disgusting events keep listening page 130 boys still at
011camp are getting ready for bed and one of the boys in this depiction is walking into his tent he notices that the tent is being used for them for some disgusting purposes the boy says hey guys what you doing one of the boys already in the tent says taking care of business have a seat the boy who was getting invited into his own 10 states uh-oh i think i figured out what taking care of business means this is gross ms langley that's your time so what is happening here is this book is not age appropriate thank you for being hopefully that they were actually uh going to be drinking out of a bottle full of and it's actually drawn out in here missouri it's your time thank you this is not okay our next card
012is from deb groutman ms groutman welcome good evening um i really appreciate everything you do since i've been coming to the school board meetings i've really learned a lot of things that you all are responsible for and my grandma was on the school board i knew that when i was young and i just i just wanted to know and be involved i'm going to start with the scripture verse isaiah 54 13 all your sons will be taught by the lord and great will be your children's peace in righteousness you will be established tyranny will be far from you you will have nothing to fear the early americans combined the school building and the church building this concept worked well and fostered an attitude of respect love and nurturing to our children certainly we have moved
013beyond a shared building but i believe the basic concepts of teaching right and wrong obeying your parents and those in authority over you can prevail this does not mean that i would separate religious groups one from another because the greatest commandment of all is love i would like to see some of our classes that have previously been cut such as cursive handwriting to come back i have read studies that prove learning by computer only does not promote the memory of information as well as writing down facts by hand there is a direct connection between brain and muscle memory that only happens when students actually write down the facts this can be accomplished by making our school days a little longer and allowing for more learning time also recess could be re-established when i was young
014school lasted until 3 30 or 4 and children were not pressured as much and they learned more and were better behaved this would also help working families with daycare problems that's just some suggestions i would hope that would be considered thank you for your comments uh next card is zach radke mr radke welcome so i have heard from many parents of oatana children most of whom do not back the teaching of critical race theory i have a message for you all you need to wake up this is being taught in a ton of schools i don't want people to come crying to me when their kids get indoctrinated against your family values and morals we need participation at school board meetings to keep the district transparent in its actions now i had to change this
015part of my speech and i do appreciate the otana people's press if there's one thing that came from a recent article that parents should wake up to is the depiction of the amount of stacks of paper that came from the few keyword searches that we asked for as a group that should be astonishing when we keep getting told that this stuff is not being taught to our kid kids when there's thousands of emails i almost can't even speak about it the things that are trying to be hidden i mean are absolutely astonishing to me i mean honestly i cannot even believe that this is what's going on um this is gonna be the last time i speak for a while but i'm very disappointed um i like to think that most people have our children's
016best interests at heart that book i i didn't even know that was going on and that is appalling the stuff that is in that book um oh man actually i couldn't even get up and talk because that makes me angry that that's even allowed in one of our children's libraries secondly i've been hearing about speakers that are for crt can continually get to the microphone and praise you guys for your commitment to equity training and implementing these tools in our schools to clarify crt and equity are one and the same we have been told countless times crt was an elective and it is not being taught in our schools the way these people talk is matter-of-factly as if it is like they have inside information again crt is being taught in our schools you guys
017have made it blatantly obvious that you take this as a threat to your agenda and the brainwashing you are putting forth to our children there have been police officers here for the last three meetings which have all been peaceful and we are told it has nothing to do with crowd control from them themselves we have done nothing violent but it still feels like a quiet threat in my opinion that we will be arrested if we act out of line even though they are both very nice individuals i've met them both they seem great i love them i backed the law enforcement i have a hard time believing a ton of cops would arrest a ton of parents who care about their children and what their children are being taught um so i have a hard
018time believing they do that i find it weird that their presence is here with how calm we've all been throughout all this i also have questions about the last work meeting which it was stated you want to switch to all electronic purchasing of tickets for events in oaton school district how will the kids with no internet access by the choice of their parents or older citizens who do not use these platforms enter these events if this is about security how many times have your ticket booth's been robbed um i i'm pretty sure the answer that is zero i've lived here my whole life and i think i would have heard about something like that um and if that's my time i guess i'd like to finish it with it just makes it easier for you
019so i guess i would have appreciated some of the answers being brought to the attention because it's a lot easier for a parent to send their kid with ten dollars to a to a game or something thanks mr thanks for your comments last card tonight is from april st martin ms st martin welcome how's everybody today i hope you're all doing well um i just want to start out by saying that i'm not entirely sure why people keep asking us why we are asking for data and requesting information from the owatonna school district my response is and always will be why shouldn't we ask why should we be afraid to ask and what exactly are you hiding that you don't want us to ask so why shouldn't we hold you school board and the superintendent
020and the teachers that are in the school district hold them accountable for what they are actually teaching and how they are teaching our children the one thing i have learned from a part of my research is that there are two parts to teaching one is the curriculum and yes you can tell us all day long that it is not in the curriculum but even that we're starting to find is not a true statement from research that we are doing um the second part is how you teach something and the pedagogy of how that works so even if you were to say that it's not in the curriculum you can still teach it by how you teach that subject so i just want to give some information about something that recently happened to me i have
021sent numerous emails and school board to school board members trying to get information about exactly what equity is in in a classroom and what it looks like during my research i have found out that there is an equity library that is currently housed at the owatonna middle school equity library so what may you ask is in tight is in that equity library i don't know i only get a list of what is in that and even the list itself is very concerning some of those things have to deal with whiteness how to teach black boys how to be an anti-racist to some of those things now i was told specifically by miss carrell that it's only available to teachers we can tell by looking at the district website that those books are currently and actively
022being checked out by teachers so once again what is in that equity library i specifically asked to be able to look at those books and so far i have not been told that i can the only information that i give that i have been given is that coveted rules prevent me from going into that room or into the school at all that concerns me as a parent because as a parent i have no access to the teachers or what is actually going on in that school and i would be even more concerned if you currently have a student that goes there so i would like to look at what is actually in the equity library i have made a formal request to find that information out and i'm going to keep asking for that information
023until i can actually sit down and read those i have made a an accommodation and said that i would be willing to make an accommodation for that that's your time thank you and so that's what i'm asking in return thank you item six tonight is reports our first report comes from amanda heilman and sarah cramblet which is our audit good evening welcome yeah thank you tonight we have dennis hugo bean from clifton larson allen and he is going to be presenting our annual audit results for you all right i think i can do that thank you so much thanks amanda sarah i'm dennis hugo bean as you said um and i'm here to present the otter report um i expected lucas to be here with me tonight he had uh issue with uh kovit with
024their son um and their daycare so i'm gonna do it to myself we were here about a week ago to do the audit presentation with the finance committee and i appreciate you joining us last week we made a couple of changes to the presentation as a result of that finance committee meeting so i appreciate very much the opportunity to meet last week and as always i always like to start by thanking sarah and amanda for the opportunity to do the audit they do a just a fantastic job of working with our audit team they put a lot of work they're very conscientious about working with our auditors and anybody from the board and certainly the superintendent who work to do the audit interviews we appreciate your work very much and we couldn't do our work
025without your involvement so thank you so much for that to the extent um if you've got questions i'll ask you at the end if you've got some questions but if you want to interject those i suppose you could do that as we go through these um in terms of the audit results first and foremost the first thing that you're always hiring an auditing firm to do is the the results of the audit opinion itself the district puts together what's called the act for i'm not used to the acronym yet for years and years it's been kafir comprehensive annual financial report gaspi changes that to act for annual comprehensive annual financial report so that's changed around there so now it's afer um you've done that for years but in terms of the audit opinion we've issued
026a clean or an unmodified audit opinion so that's as good of an audience opinions we were able to give any minnesota school district so that's first and foremost the main thing that you're hiring an auditing firm to give an opinion and that's what we've issued so that's always good to hear and then because we're following governmental auditing standards we have to give an opinion on what's called the yellow book opinion it's issued under originally a yellow book cover so that's why it's called the yellow book compliance opinion and there's two different aspects to that there's a compliance opinion and there's also an internal control opinion we talked about last week the fact that it's actually getting very very unlikely that you're going to get an audit a report issued nowadays in minnesota that where you
027get unscathed you know you have no compliance issues issued you know you know either through the compliance aspect of that letter or the internal control aspect or the minnesota legal compliance aspect or the single audit aspect your particular district actually had no findings under any of those particular audit letters that we've issued so that was unusual it's getting to be it's anecdotal evidence but it's actually quite unusual nowadays to to get no audit opinions or findings issued under any of those aspects so that was very commendable doesn't just happen you know it's taking a business office that actually takes those responsibilities very seriously because of all the different ways that you can have findings nowadays because of all the interactions between the food service and special ed and all the different ways that you can
028have findings nowadays you pay a bill late you know for example i mean it's nothing that is usually reflecting on the business office but there's just so many different possibilities so to go through all these different possibilities it's actually pretty commendable to not have any findings this year so for the single audit again there's a lot of new coronavirus for example new single audit testing that was done for the education stabilization funds corona virus relief funds for the single audit programs that we tested and then again minnesota legal compliance fall so again very commendable to get through the audit results and have no findings to report this year so good job in terms of actual financial results for the general fund um thank you for sliding i know i'm gonna forget that i'm just gonna
029let you keep advancing those if you don't mind in terms of the financial results of the general fund we always want to draw the board's attention to the unassigned portion of the fund balance or the yeah the general fund unassigned portion of the fund balance because in terms of programmatically and decision making of the board the unassigned portion of the fund balance is where your decision making authority generally gets focused so in terms of the unassigned fund balance you your fund balance last year ended at 5.899 million and this year it ended at 6 million 167 so auditors like to express that unassigned fund balance at the end of the year as a percentage of the overall total expenditures of the fund so you started the year with ending fund balance at point four six
030percent you end of the year at nine point seven two percent so virtually unchanged for the year so it's very steady so you know again the other way that you like to express the ending fund balances is expressing it as about five weeks of the average expenditures for the year so not every district expresses it that way but that's that's a pretty good healthy fun balance for for a minnesota school district so five weeks of operating costs is pretty good and the other thing that we kind of talked about is that the operating results at the end of the year are very intentional you know your board is very intentional um when you make decisions as a board what you can count on or the results are going to come out very close to what
031you intended and again not every board can can say that you know one of the things we're going to look at here in a second are how close did the results come out to what you had adopted as a budget for example you know again you can't just take that for granted because i could show you a lot of results where the results are wildly different than what a board had approved as far as an amended budget for the year so again very commendable results the category of fund balance that's in the restricted category grew from 3.8 million to 4.8 million just wanted to mention that it's re really neither here nor there whether that fund balance in the restricted category has 3 million or 10 million it's the fact that the legislature gives you
032a dollar and tells you it has to be spent in a specific way now in your particular case that restricted category is uh ltfm operating capital and medical assistance in your particular case i think amanda mentioned last week in the finance committee meaning that that was again an intentional choice that you're deliberately trying to build that up a little bit with the ltfm and the operating capital for your long-term needs of capital related items so that was very deliberate on your part in terms of the next slide related to student enrollment as a board you've already looked at your enrollment very thoroughly so we didn't feel like that really necessitated a lot of additional input from the auditing firm just because all the minnesota districts in a covert year like 2021 was experienced very similar
033results in terms of families deciding to delay enrollment and i think we already talked about the fact that that's turned around for 2022 so i don't think that necessitated any additional discussion from me since you've talked about that pretty thoroughly already in terms of the revenue for 2021 you know big increase in federal sources from what they had been we did audit those pretty thoroughly as i already mentioned with no findings or anything like that i did encourage board members to read the section at the front of the audit report called management's discussion and analysis page 27 has a very detailed explanation of the changes in revenue from 2020 to 2021. um the business office wise does a very thorough job of walking you through exactly what why the revenues change from one year to
034the next so that was that i would encourage you to when your time permits to go ahead and read that expenditures per adm again we had a great discussion last week about whether or not we would include a slide like this just because i always get worried when i attend a board public board meeting because i know that people with agendas can take information like something like that you know an enrollment declines or something but yet you spend more per student things like that but again i think most people understand when the federal government provides resources for you to deal with pandemic things like that and peop you know safeties concerns of students have to be addressed and things like that your costs per student are going to go up and in this particular case
035you had some capital needs that also had to be addressed so that was deliberate and again sometimes when we present this information we deliberately take out the impact of capital spending just because it can fluctuate so significantly from one year to the next we decided not to do that in this particular case because people think you're getting gimmicky when you start doing things like that so again even though the student population declined slightly the cost per student went up slightly but i think it's very explainable so that's why we approached it that way in terms of the next flight one of the changes we actually ended up swapping out as a result of last week's meeting and one of the reasons we have that meeting with the finance committee so that we can improve the
036powerpoint is looking at we weren't taking credit for this particular slide didn't have any information on it from a budget to actual standpoint it was strictly looking at total expenditures on a five-year comparative basis but we said we really needed to take credit for the great job that the business office does in terms of budgeting on a object code basis so this is like we swapped that out at the bottom here so we could show you what a great job the business office does in terms of budgeting if you look at the salaries and benefits lines in particular what great information the board is getting for salaries and benefits in particular and then if you total expenditures were within 1.3 million or 2.1 percent if you backed out the very common timing differences you get
037related to capital expenditures you can see again really good budget differences so the total expenditures were 1.1 million dollars difference over the prior year but the majority of that difference was capital related so and i think we already talked about the fact that you had ltfm and operating capital projects that were the explanation for those increases from one year to the next most of the savings that you're seeing in terms of the purchase services category were all corona virus related i believe in terms of like substitute costs we had a good discussion about that again in the finance committee meeting last week in terms of the food service fund the fund balance ended at about 598 000 which was just about 71 000 lower than the prior year but i think the big story there
038was just what a great job the district did in terms of pivoting in a coronavirus environment not every school district had that experience i think the the true story was that the budget had the fund balance declining by about 431 000 this slide doesn't show that of course because it's just showing the actual outcome but if we looked at the actual budget the budget showed the fund balance declining by 431 000 it actually ended up only declining by about 71 000 so the true story there is what a great job the district did in terms of pivoting in a corona coronavirus environment where all the meals ended up being free meals through the summer food service program you know funded by the federal government so as the next slide shows all the food service meals
039served for 2021 yes there was a you know fairly significant decline in total meals served but they're all funded by the summer food service program so in terms of reducing your meal meals on the expenditure side for brought down to match the demand on the revenue side so really good job and similarly in the community service fund similar outcome again i could show you in a number of districts where that was not the case where they were able to pivot successfully in a covert environment and you know in your particular case you actually were able to grow your fund balance i have a lot of school districts where that wasn't the case they actually wiped out their fund balance in a covert environment your district successfully pivoted that wasn't the case everywhere i assure you
040so yes revenues were down but you actually matched the reduction in expenditure revenues along with the expenditures so that was good it was a good pivot so districts that were able to match the revenues and deliver programming that parents needed given the circumstances had had good outcomes so that was successful in terms of the expenditures per profile you know the profiles data this was a district where this one i think the first one a couple of years ago we actually started to put in a visual manner you know we always used to and then the executive audit summary for those of you that might have it in front of you always just put little tiny data only in a numerical format we never used to put it in a visual format but your particular finance
041committee seemed to be one that was more let's call you more visual learners on in the in the finance committee meeting so we we took that data and put it in more of a visual format so this might not be that pretty in this kind of an environment but in in the book it looks maybe better than it does up on a screen here but that was the first time we ever did anything like that so now we've started doing it for all of our clients is because it turns out there are more visual learners than just in owatonna but one of the things that we talked about last week were the things that jumped out for us was the fact that for your particular district now this is comparing 2020 is the comparative year
042not 2021 because of course profiles data published by the department of ed which are the first two columns is not available yet obviously because that won't be published until next year in 2022 so the comparative data again is 2020 but the thing that the things that stood out for us were oatana's district and school administration is somewhat almost to the word significantly lower you know on a comparative basis for schools that are over 4 000 and also on a statewide basis and then the thing that jumped out is that your regular instruction in terms of where you're putting your dollars you know you have less dollars available to spend but the dollars that you do have available to spend are going on a higher percentage basis to regular instruction kind of jumped out at us
043and then the other thing that for me jumped out was that you're spending more on debt service which you know really isn't surprising because as a community you all voted right to spend dollars on debt service so it shouldn't be surprising that that's where you're choosing to spend more money so those are the things that kind of stood out for me anyway and that's what we chose to report from the executive odd summary everything that we chose to put in the powerpoint is available in the executive audit summary there's a lot of good content in that in that report i believe it's available for download on your website is that true we very much appreciate the opportunity to work with the school district and with that i will stand for any questions that you might
044have i once we ask if there are any questions i have one more thing i want to share with you though but with that i'll ask if there's any questions i can help answer questions nothing no really all right i just wanted to let you know if it hadn't been shared yet that this will be my last meeting with the district i will be retiring from public accounting on december 31st um so i wanted to thank you for the opportunity to having worked with you for these last few years and thank you and wish you all the best going forward how many years have you been in it in public accounting i started in 1985 working with schools right from the very beginning the firm i joined just happened to work with school districts so
045and enjoyed it right from the get-go it's been a great run thank you sarah cramblet and amanda hallman wow thank you [Applause] again any further questions relative to the report maybe just a comment um again you know i work in the compliance field so i get it and i get the importance and the value of a clean audit it's it really is unheard of i think in a lot of industries i'm sure it's not um you know as you've mentioned dennis you know to find these in the education field is probably few and far between i think it probably happens in most industries right so you guys are just consistent and we are so grateful for your work you thank you thank you thanks we'll move on item seven tonight which is general information the
046first one would be the enrollment report does anybody have a question for mr elstad or members of his staff as it relates to what we found in the enrollment report looking around i don't see anything we'll move on now to policy revisions both nikki and lori are here policy revisions were presented to you in board book any questions for them as you had a quick first reading through that tonight is just the first reading on that we'll pick this up again in december any questions all right hearing none we'll continue on uh item eight tonight which would be uh no action required by the board first would be board forum i'll start down here with you debra do you have anything for board forum no corey um nothing further you've heard the audit stuff out
047of finance committee and obviously the policy committee we've been busy you know preparing those so that's it thanks uh i do have one thing for board forum tonight next month on december 13th our meeting um our meeting that night has truth and taxation that typically would start amanda's gone already uh amanda would present that at six o'clock and rather than having the board meeting start at 5 30 go for a certain period of time stop do the truth in taxation stop go back to the regular board um i'm curious would all of you be okay if we just start truth and taxation at six and then run the regular meeting subsequent to that that's fine don't hear any particular objections to that so sarah that's how we'll do it right uh eric you got a
048couple of things for board forum yeah we had a our facilities committee meeting this evening in regards to the new high school budget is good schedule is good everything's on schedule they're busy right now getting footings and foundations and still ongoing there are working on getting stealing set up they've even started working on getting bathrooms plumbed they're hoping to get decking started sometime this week just on the second floor of the building and we actually had 13 students go out and tour from our career development so it was exciting there they were in that and right now everything's on schedule that wall should be getting tipped up in january and in regards to we also had an update from our we had a great start to the community task force which is working on the
049current site and they've had two meetings with 24 loyal members attending both of them and things going real well there too for in motion thank you tim i attended the curriculum advisory committee meeting last week this week i can't remember two topics one was just a review of the strategic plan for the district that we put together earlier this year and the other was an opportunity to learn about english language learning and teaching with martina and another one of her colleagues did a interesting job of kind of showing us all the ways you adapt when you teach to for someone who needs support because they don't know the language that you're teaching in and it was a kind of a neat experience so it was kind of a cool usually the that committee isn't uh
050so hands-on educational and it was just a good time it was actually a good opportunity to to put yourself in a student's place a little bit thanks i don't have anything uh we just wrapped up cash drive at the high school it was definitely a lot of fun i wasn't able to figure out like a set price that we were able to fundraise but i know that it was really really successful and obviously just a lot of fun but other than that that's it thank you uh i'm going to turn things over to mr ellstad for some comments on the administrative report yeah really briefly i wanted to provide you a covet update as of this afternoon our district percentage is 0.57 percent of staff and students that are currently impacted by coven uh that
051number picked up a little bit in the last couple of weeks but it's still we're continuing to move forward with our five percent threshold before we would change any mitigation strategies at this point and so we're well under that and so we'll continue to monitor that moving forward we we did receive information last week from minnesota osha regarding a vaccine mandate for staff and all businesses actually have over 100 employees i would report to the board that that has been stayed by district court and it will be heard again december 7th through the 10th by the sixth district court in ohio and they will be reviewing the information and then they can take one of three courses of action one would be they can continue the stay which means there would be a pause on
052any vaccine mandate they could actually rule down the mandate or they could take the stay off and then it would continue forward as a district we need to begin our planning for this by informing our employee groups but we are certainly um the stay has been ordered and so it's given us a bit of time to kind of look through what the impacts might be when you have eight over 800 employees um it can present some real challenges and so we're trying to work through those and we'll proceed as minnesota osha would ask us to do on a positive note we started winter activities last week and this week we have some of our highest participation numbers we've had in a long time it's really great you can hear whistles and bells going up in
053the gym behind us we started basketball boys and girls basketball today it's really exciting to see our kids involved and that's a big part of the engagement that we have with our students is being involved in activities the other thing is we're closing in on one of my favorites is robotics and we're closing in on the robotics season and we're going to have a banner number of students participating in our robotics program and they of course will be participating in competitions later this winter into the spring and um i would invite you if you get a chance as a board member when you are invited by the robotic club for the big reveal because they reveal their robot that they've it it is incredible to me to see how they can put that together the
054teamwork that's required to do it so anyway those are just a real a few positives from this past week and seeing our kids be part of activities so thank you thanks any questions okay we will move on uh item nine is the consent agenda quick reminder we are approving the minutes from october 25 and november 8th the disbursement and the personnel report anybody have any reason to believe we should pull any item out okay hearing now hearing none will entertain a motion to accept so moved and is there a second a second we have a motion in a second any further discussion hearing none eric it's a roll call correct deborah aye lori hi mark hi nikki hi tim hi i'm myself and i 60pad motion carries thanks eric uh tonight that we have several
055items for board action the first would be the minnesota state high school league there's a grant that we apply for i'll turn things over to mr alstead thank you mr chairman edward this is an annual grant that we apply for through the minnesota state high school league foundation board of directors and what this funding is used for is to help students that are economically challenged so that we can provide scholarships for student activity fees so that more students can participate uh in our activities again this is a a grant that we have applied for for a number of years probably over 10 years and so we're seeking your consideration of approval of this tonight this is a resolution would call for a voice or a voice call vote will couple excuse me something we always
056do any questions with regard to this one of you be kind enough to introduce the motion for us i move that the board approve the resolution supporting the district's application to the minnesota state high school league foundation for a form a grant to offset student activity fees second we have motion in a second any further discussion we'll call vote please deborah aye lori aye mark aye nicky aye tim hi i am selfish and i 600 pass motion carries thank you item b tonight would be the audit which was just presented to us for the year that ended june 30. uh we had plenty of time for questions don't believe there's probably any further questions with regard to this would one of you be kind enough to introduce the motion here i move that the board
057approve the audit for a year ended june 30th 2021 as presented second we have a motion in a second all in favor with an eye any opposed that motion carries item c tonight would be the resolution establishing the polling places mr ellstad a quick description yeah this was pursuant to a minnesota statute by december 31st of each year the school board has to designate a combined polling place in the event that we would have to have a special election during the course of the next year again this is something that is done annually by school board city bowatonna and others as they anticipate or would anticipate any special elections so what you're taking action on are being proposed to take action on tonight is resolving the combined bullying polling place at the clinton falls town
058hall questions um our designated polling spot hasn't changed for years has it it did change about two or three years ago it used to be four seasons civic center okay but that had to change because it couldn't be it had to be some place that involved a township versus being in the city of oatana okay so that's why clinton falls was the closest town hall to this actual city okay thank you any other comments once again would one of you be kind enough to introduce this motion i move that the board approved the resolution establishing polling places and designating hours for school district elections not held on the day of a statewide election second we have a motion in a second eric this is roll call deborah hi laurie aye mark aye nicky aye tim
059hi i'm myself and i 6 0 pass motion carries thanks eric last item tonight would be gifts to the district mr elstad yeah we have four gifts for to be recognized tonight a couple of gifts that are kind of wrap up with our homecoming parade also a gift to our business deca club we're starting to get some other material things we actually got a lock cabinet storage cart from bosch that was donated to one of our special education programs and then lastly a gift for three thousand seven hundred and twenty dollars from the music boosters uh for a new cello for the owatona high school orchestra very nice one of you be kind enough to introduce this last motion i move that the board approved the resolution for acceptance of gifts as presented second we
060have a motion in a second eric it's a roll call deborah aye lori hi mark aye nikki aye tim hi and i myself and i 60 pass motion carries that brings us to the end i will move that we adjourn tonight's meeting second all in favor with an eye any opposed motion carries good meeting thanks folks