001and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all minutes show that all members are present for jim tomsky i'll start with fall commendations we have one person here right now for cross country tom would you like to stand up and speak on behalf of your athlete well sir we've got julia dobner here today to give her a combination for the state cross country meet and this is her fourth year in a row which i think is quite an accomplishment so i'm proud of her i'm happy to have you give her an accommodation what grade are you and julia um 11th grade fourth year that's awesome yes congratulations scott and thank you for representing ours maybe we could squeeze the board together and get a picture
002thank you strong word congratulations i wonder if maybe you could get in the middle and we get the board members to kind of get in here and well you can display your very good thank you congratulations oh we also have a commendation for cali metzwah she represented the girls swim dive team at the state tournament this fall ben hallberg uh he was on the boys soccer team the section finals i believe they took second place in sections finals he was also a conference bully of the year i believe and cooper novak he is the representative from the boys soccer team section finals and that he was uh my first team all-state soccer team we also have awards here for sue and don thomado and sue van hooser for completing phase one two and three of
003the school board workshop series and does it say four two one two oh i'm sorry one two three and four uh moving on we have cis and comments citizen comments we have four people signed up for citizen comments i'd just like everyone to be aware that citizen comments we respect data privacy laws and prefer that we do not use names and if you are auto order and use names or students or faculty um you will be asked to stop your citizen comment and we will just stop whatever you're saying right there and we'll shut it down um the school board we just listened to what you have to say we did not comment on what you have to say we listen to what you're going to comment on we'll digest what you have to say
004and we'll discuss it a future meeting or at the committee meeting um we ask that you try to keep your comments to approximately three minutes not gonna like stop you right at three minutes but close to three minutes as possible please we have corey wallace first cory i am able to speak from here yes that's fine um i'm gonna read this and i'm gonna have to be really careful to keep names up because i did write it with so uh bear with me um i'm corey wallace and i have a child at the at the high school who's a ninth grader my child was just honored or honored as a student of the month from the art department and one of the strengths mentioned was his ability to provoke new ideas and thoughts question and
005question techniques and mediums that would challenge even an experienced artist i want to thank princeton public schools publicly for developing and fostering these inquisitive challenging and thought-provoking characteristics of my child these critical thinking skills are habits of being a tiger for instance habits of being a tiger also include characteristics of pluralism being able to evolve and being unthreatened by differences my kid is different he challenges gender constructs and societal expectations for appearance and this challenges the comfort level of many of the people that are around him this doesn't mean that he's harmful nefarious or innately bad he's not afraid my child is also transgender while the majority of experiences that he has encountered are synonymous with habits of being a tiger this transition has been met with a lot of unempathetic fear-based hate and a
006lynch mob style community response rooted in misinformation and bad intentions i want to thank the district and the high school admin for their commitment to support civil rights issues and for their objective support in navigating these situations i also want to extend an offer of my support to the district in accessing resources information and facilitating opportunities to expand awareness for lgbtq plus youth in our community if there's anything we can do to facilitate or support say something thank you thank you so i'm sorry if i get emotional um over this um but i just need to say to everybody in this room um there has been a lot of hate in our schools and in our community and i have something to say i have a transgender child a child i have raised them from
007birth the same way other people raise their children they are kind caring loving smart and a great role model to their younger siblings they are honest hard-working sincere and are selfless when it comes to caring for others my child has had hard times growing up and has shown strength that most adults can't even fathom my child took a step towards their true self one day and came out to me how terribly hard that must have been a person who you have known one way your entire life and to speak up and tell them one of the most honest truths and face it imagine for a second that you were in this place you have to stand before your hardest critic and tell them your biggest most terrifying truth and fear their judgment not knowing if
008you will be hated cast away or loved how terrifying would that be not think if you were still a child and had to do that we cast hate so easily and don't see the amazing person behind these hateful acts it is easier to hate if you can't see their face i ask parents what makes your child better than mine what makes your child more deserving of love respect safety and to live life without fear and harm if your child came out to you and told you they were gay would you tell them you are not worthy of love would you tell your child they do not deserve to be safe live life happy and no love would you turn your child away and not support them would you show them hate and judge them no
009you wouldn't as a mother and father you show your child unconditional love you teach your child they are worthy and deserve life just like any other child they deserve happiness and love your support your child they deserve happiness and love you support your child and you stand behind them regardless children who identify different than your own children are still human they deserve love they deserve life they deserve safety and they deserve support i would give up everything i have for my child that includes my idea of what i thought my child should be i would give my life for my child's life and each and every one of you would do the same please continue to stand up and do the right thing don't turn your head don't look away don't walk away don't let
010your personal agenda and views cloud your judgment we need to protect our children from violence hate and bullying whether they come in a form of another child or an adult all children should have the right to be who they are they should not have to hide in shadows and hallways and fear they should be able to hold their heads up stand tall and be proud be a leader and be a voice and if their voice is not heard then we have the responsibility to be a leader and to be their voice and protect them i say it again i am a proud mother of a transgender child and i love them unconditionally and they deserve life love happiness and to live without fear of harm just like each and every one of us thank you
011thank you so uh standing before you this evening i see people in this community that have for many years they've been here for many years i've lived here since i was eight and i'm now 42. i'm very disappointed to see the bathroom policy change that was recently instituted at the high school 30 years would have this been a goal would have this been acceptable no when does it end these so-called progresses are a very small percentage of the population why are they catered to i've read through the excuses the lawyers have come up with such as trans students may dehydrate themselves so they have to use a bathroom that they self-identify with what about the safety and health of the children who are now uncomfortable with the policy change what happens when they they begin
012dehydrating themselves out of fear of assault or rape who's going to take responsibilities for the negative effects that happen to children because a few kids parents don't want to say too bad so sad you're a boy or a girl then the governor made it illegal for parents to seek help for their children because they label the conversion therapy notice that obama okayed this trump took it away and biden instituted it we are in a fight of good versus evil and i know what side i want to be on on judgment day are you willing to answer are you willing to answer for doing nothing when the day comes those who sit idly by are just as guilty rather than spending tax dollars on attorneys to help make excuses for children that you really need help
013or perhaps some love and attention from their parents why don't we spend these dollars on an attorney and try to figure out how we how to stand for what we believe in and that is that princeton still has morals and values if there is nothing to be embarrassed or ashamed of why was the decision hid when it was made why wasn't it sent out to a mass eman in a mass email if you plan on opening faculty bathrooms for kids that don't want to be subjected to the stupidity kids that may be afraid of leering or predatory behaviors from others that are now allowed to use restrooms that are normally used why is the some minority group christ racism because he she it cannot have their way about something and someone is reprimanded and forced
014to comply you may think that it is a stupid statement but 30 years ago his bathroom situation would have been seen as ridiculous and another 30 years of complying with the minority requirements where are we going to be next we will have adult sex predators identifying the 16 year olds so they have access to prey on others self access to crayon and other self identifying as dinosaurs this is all ridiculous and it needs to be stopped in its tracks now all right thank you donovan wallace and g wilson i am a student at princeton high school and i am transgender that means that i use the men's bathroom and i identify as a man i go to the bathroom that i identify as and by law i'm allowed to do that when i use the
015bathroom it is nothing special i use the bathroom i do my business and leave i do not interact with the people in there and there's been rumors about us around the school standing up and lifting our leg and emailing our home this is i understand why that may be concerning and if it's believable i will say that that's not true we use the bathroom respectfully and it's not we don't even meant if we could we wouldn't mention that we're transgender we do our business and leave we are still the same people and we go about our day as it is in the hallways we are harassed we are apart that i am i've had people screaming in my ears they have been rammed against lockers they create a dent in our day i have not
016been able to do my homework in fifth i've not been able to pay attention in class when all i want to do is exist i want to do what i need to do and i want to be myself i don't attack people for using the wrong name for the wrong pronouns although i'd appreciate the respect of it i want to be respected and i do not want to cause a problem i have not caused a problem in the bathrooms and in the most simple terms i'm not looking for anything special i'm looking to be allowed to do what i need to do to eat safely to walk safely and to use a bathroom safely all right thank you and that is it jay sorry i didn't know if you guys were together on that one
017or if you were separate so jay wilson i am a student at princeton high school i am in ninth grade and i am a transgender student as donovan mentioned um we face relentless harassment in the hallways we are yelled at we are called names we are called slurs in the hallway and all we want to do is go to school in peace in the bathrooms we go in we do our business and we leave we don't want trouble with students in there we don't want to prey on students in there um we want nothing to do with the other students in there um the rumors that he mentioned have been spread um are certainly not true we don't use the urinals we go into stalls and respectfully use the bathroom and then leave i am
018not asking for people to change their ideals i'm not asking people for for people to go out of their way to use the correct name and pronouns for me i'm not asking people to talk to me like they would a man who is not transgender in the bathroom i'm simply looking for respect from people and for people to let me know about my business and peace thank you that is the end of the citizen commons thank you all for coming taking the time out of your night can you speak i'll move on forward better member committee reports we'll start with chad i had a finance committee meeting before this and yeah i had agenda planning last week and then finance tonight uh yesterday was long-range plan planning today was finance committee meeting and then world's
019best workforce you know i have also had agenda finding the other day and we had long-range finding last night we talked about a lot of facility needs that we're hoping to uh fix with the referendum that we obviously can't can't do that anymore it's going to be interesting yeah and then agenda planning and world's part best workforce two um i had a c executive meeting um and then last week the c general meeting and the two speakers senator carl nelson who is the tax committee and then a demographer from the state of minnesota that broke down a little bit about the census um and i did forward both of those videos to you today so they should be at the top of your email list i have their revolts they're both interesting the um the
020demographer use is really interesting because all of the boundaries for voting for your legislatures are changing yeah so it was that one is you only have time to look at one that one is um it's really that the best one and couldn't even begin to go through all the statistics and then um i was also at long range planning meeting last night as well as we talked about facility needs that are now still needs emergency fund centers thank you john i had a community ed meeting um a coffee with fan and then throwing the best workforce uh student council are they on no i don't believe our student council representative is with us this evening okay so we'll move on to the superintendent well first of all merry christmas happy new year board i'm very
021thankful that we have reached this pinnacle time of our school year um it's been a difficult challenging year i think we entered the year optimistic that it would be much better and easier than the year before and i think if you talk to any one of our 500 plus staff members they will tell you that it's probably quite a bit more challenging so i'm just so thankful um to to our our great staff members and teams and all of our students for the hard work and dedication that they've shown um and resiliency over the the last couple of months and then they have some much needed time off i did prepare a statement regarding the transgender bathroom ish issue that was discussed tonight that i think it's important for me to share with the board
022there up until recently schools across our country really did not have direction um on the the best way to address this uh recently there have been many court rulings that do provide clear expectations and that's what this um statement is is to you about and i've shared some of this documentation with you in the past some community members have asked why school officials allow transgender students to use bathrooms that align with their gender identity simply put school officials are required to the minnesota court of appeals recently issued a decision holding that the minnesota human rights act give transgender students the right to use restroom and locker room facilities that align with their gender identity the federal courts have reached the same conclusion based on their interpretation of title ix and equal protection clause of the
023u.s constitution erasing any doubt from the status of the law the u.s supreme court recently rejected a virginia school board's appeal in doing so the supreme court left in place the lower court's decision giving transgender students the right to use restroom and locker room facilities that align with their gender identity the school district is obligated to follow the law which is now well established in our state and across the country if you have concerns about the state of the law you may choose to make your concerns known to elected officials at the federal and state level those are the appropriate venues to address concerns although it can be frustrating at times school officials including school board members and school administration have no authority to change the law instead we must follow the law as interpreted
024by the courts and i can provide any documentation um and you know people can talk about we can discuss policies and those kinds of things but the reality is the board has no discretion to have policies that don't follow the law and that is some recent developments that i think it's really important that are known i also want to share with the board what our mission is and just continue to remind folks of what that is princeton public schools is an innovative leader in instruction developing in every learner the ability to succeed in ever-changing world and every time i talk to you about our our mission i point out that there's only one word right that is in our mission that every single letter is capitalized and that is every right and uh we when
025we talk about our game plan we talk about yes we're an institution of student learning but we need to have the prerequisites for student learning to occur and have conditions for learning to occur which means that the task to ensure that our students feel safe and respected free of discrimination and harassment and hate and we're committed to doing so but all of these issues are extremely complex and i believe deeply that our schools are a small microcosm of the greater society and every day we have about 3 500 students enter our walls of our schools every single one of them different and that's the that's a beautiful thing um and we also have 500 plus staff members certainly a representation of the greater society and i think most of us in here can agree that
026our greater society our local community our state the federal government and our global world there are very there are many many complexities and many of those complexities full into the school and um we uh you know we're a school we're a school where learning should take place and i'll just give you a recap of the last week you know much of last week focusing on a global pandemic issues related to uh divisiveness and polarization with what strategies we use or don't use in our schools related to the pandemic flowing into a federal scare of terrorism on tick-tock and chasing our tail for multiple days with law enforcement to ensure that all of our kids are safe right and now we're talking about some of the issues that we're talking about here today very complex but
027we come every day committed to make a difference in the lives of our and kids and every day we fight we fight all the stuff that's out there all the divisiveness and polarization and we work really hard and are committed so when our kids come to school um we can do school and we keep having all these distractions we keep trying to fight it but i tell you what it's tough and we're not perfect and nobody's perfect it's not a perfect world but we are ultimately in the business of human development developing humans and uh all humans i think we can agree aren't perfect and we all make mistakes but we're all on a journey of continuous improvement trying to get better every single day so i apologize if i kind of went off kilter
028there i wanted you to know what what the law is and uh and i want you to know that it's challenging right but uh we still maintain our commitment to make a difference in the lives of these students and i tell you what we're blessed with the fact that we we had a short break at thanksgiving time now we have a break now but you know when things are gonna get tough in january february march and april and may when we don't have a two-week vacation to look forward to and that's when we as a board and administration need to need to really be there for our people our kids and our staff members because i'm worried it's it's been tough but it's going to get tougher and we don't have breaks and and we
029need we need to keep people healthy you know um our staff members and our students their mental health because i tell you what a lot of stress going on so anyways all and my remarks thank you very much merry christmas happy new year and you know entertain any questions you might have anyone have any questions i'd like to entertain a short little break if you guys would like i know some of you guys might want to duck out it's kind of awkward to duck out of meeting in the middle three minutes is that all right if we take a quick little break sure all right because what what's next taxation i just is everyone ready to get back at it i just want to give people a chance with some taxation michelle all right if
030we have public who is watching this later on please give me a call if you have any questions on the slideshow because the board's heard most of this and they're the only ones here i'm going to skip through quite a few slides here we know all this we know all this you know that i know that okay first interesting slide is revenue disparities this tells us how many school districts get more money than we do per student and how many get less so the state of minnesota puts out a nice disparity spreadsheet and i go through the whole thing counting school districts it's moved by three districts so three districts more now get more revenue than princeton public schools uh it's still at 47 that received the same amount but i can tell you for
031sure cambridge will move next year into uh the category of more and then there's 31 schools that receive less than you do is that because cambridge has their own operating money yep so that'll that will help their daily their per student right out this is our end of year adjusted okay how our enrollment looks in total as you can see we were kind of flat in 16-17 we jumped up really well in 18 we maintained that a little bit higher in 19 and then we came down in 20 and do you see that big drop in 21 uh the good news is is 22 will come back up and might be a little bit higher than 21 but it won't be lower based on the current enrollment information i have so we are taking a
032hit on enrollment the other piece of enrollment that affects us is those coming in and those going out the blue line are those choosing to leave our district that live within our boundaries and as you see that's still a stair step up um we in 2019 was our highest point for those choosing to come in um and then we kind of came back down but we're still higher than 2018. so i i honestly don't know what the answer is to that piece but that's what the data is showing us now the the outgoing that does not include home schools right correct these are only kids it's only going somewhere other districts other districts that recorded mars correct so we will have um emily would have to speak up and tell us how many homeschoolers we
033have we have over three hundred that have left in the last year is that three hundred dollar schoolwork no total total i'd say within the last um year and a half we probably increased that by about a hundred maybe 150. we have a lot of um k through eight that have gone to online since we don't have that as an option in princeton so there you go the school district levy is on a separate sheet i'm sure you all reviewed it these are just how our school taxes are the normal graphs we put there has not been a significant change in any of the percentages so here you go our proposed total increase is two percent which is very little in the levee world there were no changes to any of the levy formulas this
034year and debt service of course were required to do the five percent this is interesting we had ellers run the tax base numbers so you can see our tax base from 19 went from 8 to 8.8 increase to a 9.5 this year was a 10.5 percent increase ntc also increased um this actually jumped a little bit more um which is 11.1 that's net tax capacity they take out some things on that one and then this is the new impact of the levy for princeton residents i just chose three in three of value levels and i did have two phone calls from residents they were not from the mille lacs county side they were from the sherbert county side and they saw significant jumps in their value so overall from our tax levy has gone down
03513 over 13 okay it's actually gone down more than that in a couple years before that we were paid 150 000 home was at 714 dollars and we are now at 485 so the tax base has grown um but with it if people had a significant increase in value if they were at 150 000 in payable 21 they were paying and if they jumped 100 000 which there's more than a handful i think that jumped 100 000 because i was got to see a few people's tax statements they went from 528 to 869. so even though that category went down significantly because they jumped value they ended up paying more so those are the types of phone calls i'm getting and i um told them that they need to you know they can't do anything
036about their value now but they need to pay attention in march and april and go to their hearings at the county level and then the rest of this is the whole property tax piece the change is what changes market value and then all of the property tax programs so any questions real quick um those are city residents all already go back a couple sites city of princeton residents or is that princess that's all residents that's all school district okay yup we're talking our school district boundaries so they could be in icanni county they could be in blacks county sherburne county bentley county we have four companies there any questions for michelle just if you hadn't had a chance to read that article in union times we tried to capture the essence of the finance piece
037and i know that if we do a school board um evaluation next year again i don't we haven't decided that but let's remember on the question that they says do you what are you doing to inform the public on school finance please remember that we got we've been doing some things clip it out put it on the bottom how [Music] well michelle helped a lot with it and you know we did yeah consultation from it was good i liked it i don't know if the right people read it i was gonna say how hopefully people are you know that's the tricky thing is i it's hard to get people to read her stuff and to pay attention yeah more stuff but we try people it seems like there's more value in reading comments on social
038media that are not grounded in any fact at all people will give that more treatise than actual did you put that article on uh the princeton appearance the parent our parent facebook page uh no no did i make sure it got to the bottom right away um we'll uh i mean we'll we'll do a tiger times i think we're gonna try and get one with tomorrow we'll add that in there too [Music] we can keep pumping that out in different places uh michelle do you have to touch on the levee on this or are you good with what you did no that was the detail um it hasn't changed finance has seen it multiple times thank you i want to approve the agenda do you have a motion to approve the agenda second promotion named
039by deb seconded by chad is there any discussion hearing none all in favor aye aye opposed judge approved uh discuss and act on previous board meeting minutes we have a motion to approve the median minutes has read come on you have a second emotion made by sue seconded by eric minks considering discussion hearing none all in favor aye opposed the medium answer approved consent agenda we have a motion to approve the consent agenda so moved second is there any discussion hearing none all in favor all right opposed sentence approved first oh i'm sorry school board compensation information school board compensation michelle guessing this is you well i'll take it if you don't we just put that on there um to remind you that generally we will have the board vote on our compensation at the
040organizational meeting um so we wanted you to have information and to be thinking about that if that would be something that you would want to modify or change we have certainly pushed that off to a later date if you weren't prepared to make that decision at the organizational media that will be on the agenda could we send this policy to policy because these committees are not correct and they were correct last year either and they're still not correct we don't have a certified negotiations or a quest buy there no we don't is that correct here so could we send this to policy and get it sure maybe we pulled the wrong one well let's let's get that to policy asap all right is there any questions on that is there a policy meaning between now
041and you can set the compensation i think and we could set the command and we can straighten that policy out later right okay i thought we i thought we did it i thought we did it last year because they weren't right last year either i thought so too so i don't know emily are you listening yeah i heard i'll take a look and see if i can find the right one you if you might have grabbed the wrong one or where we're at with that okay yeah i can pull it down we probably don't i mean we know what committees there are can it just change do we have to i don't know yeah it can change we could just don't worry about organizational media yeah we'll just change it to yes thank you all
042right moving on first reading the policy summary of changes sue well we did this back in october so um i had to like refresh my memory i don't think there's anything there that's huge uh the fund balance policy uh we continue with our ten percent um just made a note of that otherwise it was pretty much just some um a few changes in birding and things like that so they're all there if you have questions any questions on policy all right thank you all right moving on to the action portion uh do you have a motion to accept the 2021 levy paid 2022 as presented emotionally by chad do we have a second oh second seconded by deb is there any discussion hearing none will vote by roll call starting with don yes sue yes
043eric stramberg yes eric minks yes deb yes chad yes all right the resolution is approved the levy is approved there's no auditions to the agenda future meetings are listed below the organizational meeting at six o'clock january 4th with a motion for adjournment which is made by eric banks second and by sue is all in favor all right he's adjourned