001And the most sustaining she's pennu Yes. But so we don't have another spot in the I was like well auditorium I got eventually. No shear that $2,000. Yeah, we'll go for it. For me, it really depends. I emailed him back. If I if I can mess up occasionally, that's not so bad. I enjoy people too cheap to hire and then and then the whole thing we didn't we kind of knew about that, but we didn't know exactly how wanted it to be. just that no different [Music] [Laughter] I have Washington. So, you know, I'm guessing meeting at 9 to 11 on Tuesday when I pulled up that's usually if I have a super important meeting that's the time wasn't I just rub In honest, that'd be fine. All right. Um, it is 6 o'clock. Um,
002all members are present, so we'll call the meeting to order. Um, Chris, can you get the door? Yes. Thank you. Um, we'll start first off with communication items. All right. So, we're going to see how the end of the school year went with our administrators. So, we'll start with Cassie. Um, come on up, Mrs. Acerson. Let's hear what's going on at the elementary school. Good evening and happy summer officially. uh we wrapped up the school year. Um I could have easily gone on to multiple pages um to share all the things that we did towards the end of the year, but just wanted to reiterate um we ended the year with special learning opportunities, projects, presentations, field trips. Um we had our last day of school assembly where all students came together um combined our
003fifth grade graduation along with their music program. Um at our assembly we honored students for different recognitions and awards. Um certainly played school song and who let the dogs out. That is a a strong tradition at the elementary school. And then um also I was able to have our one-on-one my one-on-one meetings with uh certified staff as they checked out before summer. Um, that's always a favorite um for me just to meet one-on-one and reflect and recap on the year. Um, I will say it's timely to schedule uh both on my end and on staff because they're busy and wanting to get things ready to go, but um it is beneficial allocate that time and and make it a priority. You can see Bulldog Spotlight May recipients there um as we honored them in May
004for being mindful, connected, and respectful. Uh their picture should be in the paper if it hasn't been already. And then spring benchmarking, as you know, uh we check for student understanding fall, winter, and spring in the areas of reading and math. And so we were able to complete that. Um, Maria Rasmmanson and some students created a video uh that we shared out with families and it just gives a recap of what benchmarking is and uh what that looked like. I don't know if you want to take a peek at it here tonight or watch that on your own time, but that was communicated to families uh just giving them um an understanding of Would you like to see it? Yeah, might as well. It's short and sweet, but it's point. Hello, Bulldog families. We are
005excited to share with you an important component of our educational framework. Benchmarking information. Benchmarking is vital for understanding where our students are at in the areas of reading and math. It not only helps our teachers tailor their instructions, but also provides valuable data to students, families, and our community. We would like to share why we benchmark and how the assessments are structured. We will look at the fast bridge assessments for both reading and math. Stay tuned as we dive into the details of what benchmarking entails and how it benefits our students across all grade levels. First, let us share why we benchmark. It's not just a requirement from Minnesota legislation. It serves multiple purposes. Number one, it is data for teachers. This data helps educators tailor their teaching strategies to meet the needs of their
006students. Number two, data for students and families. It provides insights into student progress, helping families understand where their child stands. Number three, data for our community. It engages the community in the academic growth of our students. Now, let's talk about what benchmarking is. Benchmarking involves assessments that have target scores which we gather through tools like Vastbridge for reading and math. Importantly, we conduct these assessments in fall, winter, and spring to track growth and areas needing improvement. As we look ahead, we'll examine the specific assessments used for each grade level, focusing on how they contribute to achieving our spring benchmark goals. This is a vital part of our strategy to ensure every student meets their potential. As we dive into fast bridge assessments, let's start by understanding what these entail for our younger students. Like in
007kindergarten and first grade, we have early reading and audio reading. And in math, we have the early math assessment. These are crucial as they help to track foundational skills like letter sounds and number identifications. For students in grades 2 through 10, we use fast bridge assessments for both math and reading. A math and a reading are comprehensive assessments and adapt to student performance in real time. The other tools we utilize are designed to cover a broad range of skills from basic math facts to complex multi-step problems in math and from sounds and spellings to fluency and reading. Here are the spring targets for the grade levels. You can see the targets increase over the school year from fall to spring and by each grade level. Our goal this year was to increase the percent of
008students target scores from fall to spring. We aim to grow from 64 to 75%. Exciting news. We're proud to share that 79% of kindergarten and first grade students met their target goals, exceeding our goal. Second through fifth graders worked toward increasing CVMR fluency from 61 to 70% while we made strong progress reaching 66% proficiency. There's still room to grow and we're committed to continue improvement. Here are the spring reading targets for the grade levels. We are working to increase 61% of our students meeting the target in the fall to 75% in the spring with students in sixth through 8th grade. We had 68% of these students meet the target score in CDMR fluency and we are proud of the growth but we have more work to do. Our sixth grade through 10th graders worked to
009increase from 61% in the fall to 70% proficiency on a reading in the spring. Students came in at 59% proficiency. So, we will pick up where we left off in the fall. Here are the spring math targets for grades K through 10th grade. You can see the targets increase over the school year from fall to spring as well as by each grade level. Now, we can look at our math goals. We aim for 82% of our kindergarten and first grade students to be proficient in early math. 71% of the students met the math spring benchmark. And in grades second through 5th, we aim to have 74% of our students meet the spring benchmark in Amath. 70% of second through fifth graders met the benchmark this spring. In grades 6th through 10, we set a goal
010of 70% proficiency in AATH. 67% of students met the spring benchmark. As we wrap up the school year, we are focusing on finishing strong, showing the growth of our students. The math and reading data only show us a glimpse of the growth our students have made. We know our students have grown in other ways, too. We hope this gave you an overview of our benchmarking. Thank you for helping your child finish the school year strong. We are so proud of our student Bulldogs. Have a great summer and keep reading. Go Bulldogs. So that uh video was shared with families um both at the secondary and at the elementary just providing that overview and we'll dig a little bit deeper into our data uh next fall when we present again um about all things data. Um
011other summer updates, our custodial staff um has begun cleaning our classrooms and um all throughout the school they are working hard and hitting that ground running. um getting all the things prepared for the fall already. Uh kitchen staff are busy serving breakfast and lunch to not only our PAS program um but to our meal summer program families and students that come in um and there's the flyer there for families if they want reference as to uh when breakfast and lunches are served. Um then I just wanted to take the opportunity to give the board and community an update of our school of excellence um application process. Last fall the elementary um embarked on this opportunity to um apply for the school of excellence which is um kind of ran through the Minnesota elementary school principles
012association. And if you want to click on that link, um, a one pager kind of describing what the school of excellence application looks like and it's for all elementary schools focusing on the six standards at the top. Uh, learning centered, diverse communities, 21st century learners, quality instruction, knowledge and data, and community engagement. And on the left hand side, um, I laid out the process that we participated in, uh, with those five steps. And if you recall, in the fall, we sent out stakeholder, uh, surveys to engage, um, various stakeholder groups in responding to uh, those six standard areas. Once we received uh, that information, we did a data analysis and review uh, looking at what our um, survey said. And you can see that on the right hand side. Um, of the six standards, there
013were 27 substrands. And you can see our green substrands that were higher. And then we looked at our three lowest substrands. And those are the ones that we focused on um in writing action plans for taking the data and how are we going to respond to that. Um I provided the strengths and the areas of growth. So those green bars and the red bars um on the graph so you can take a look at those. Um calling out the 5e uh for our area of growth. Make results transparent to the entire school community. Um that's what we're doing with that benchmarking video. um taking those action steps right away um and making those quick wins so that way our community is um more aware of how we are doing as a school but also as
014a district. And then 6D was um one that I know we've talked about here at board meetings um market the school's distinctive learning environment and results. And so how do we tell our Paynesville Bulldog story um at the district level and at each site level? Um so those are our strengths and areas of growth. On the right hand side um I put in presentation slides for you and the community to review. Um with the application process for each substrand and again there's 27. we had to write a narrative for all 27 and so it was just under about 90 pages. Um so that's all linked in there. If you are a um if you learn best by reading narratives that's in there this slideshow is in there. If you learn best by bulleted items um
015so kind of whatever your preference is if you want to look at those. Um but all of that information is there for those that would like to review that. And again, I just want to reiterate um the school of excellence process and award. It's not an award that you get, you receive and you're done. It really focuses on the journey of and towards excellence and that continual process of transformation and how do we continue to grow and learn with the things that we have in place. Um, and so with that, I'd like to just say thank you to um the staff and people that were involved along the way. That was a a big lift throughout the school year to get that submitted by June 1st. Um, so that was submitted and we're waiting to
016hear back um from MESPA, Minnesota Elementary Association. How long does that usually take? Um, the timeline was this summer. They review all the applicants and then they get back to us if there's clarification needed. Um and then fall they follow up with further communication. And then in closing, I just want to say a sincere thank you uh to the board, to staff, to students uh for giving me the opportunity again to serve as Paysville Area Elementary School um principal. As I reflect on my third year, um it's gone by fast and I am surrounded by uh such great great people, community members, board, staff, and students. Um we are we have such a great community um that is building a strong school um school district. And so thank you for allowing me to serve in
017this capacity. Questions? I was just wondering how many people how many kids are you having participate in the free meals. Yeah. So um it varies um dayto day uh weather also depending um but I I have heard they served like 120 um lunches one day and it got pretty pretty hectic um getting all of that because it is unpredictable. So, kitchen staff are doing their best to make sure that they've got all that they need to accommodate people who are showing up. So, but it's great to see people taking advantage um and it's great that we're offering. It is great that we're offering. Yeah. And we'll have more numbers. I think I've presented on that um in the past uh further throughout the summer. Cassie, you've done a a wonderful job. I don't know if
018I get trouble for clapping, but uh I've shown a lot of passion. we see it with on your displays and stuff and and and then the school done a heck of a job. Thank you. Congratulations. Pleasure. Thank you. All right. And then uh we'll transition over to the secondary and we're going to hear what's happening uh at the end of the school year for the secondary. Mr. Rasmusen, take it away. So, if you hear a lot of things that sound similar, I didn't copy Cassie's homework here, but uh it's a lot of similar thoughts. Uh we had a extremely busy end of the school year and so if I had put all the things that we had done to kind of honor our students in this board report, we'd be here all night. So, um
019but we had a really busy May with things like honors banquetss and balorates and dollars for scholars breakfasts and things like that just honoring all the great work that our seniors and our students have doing. So, um I did put a little bit about our graduation ceremony there. We held our graduation ceremony on May 23rd. Uh we had our um car parade where students got to parade through town and then be dropped off at the school. Um it was followed by a formal ceremony that honored the accomplishments of our seniors. It was a meaningful sendoff to our graduates. And I just want to extend a lot of um appreciation for anybody who helped contribute and helped set up and helped prepare for the uh the evening. It was a great way to send off our
020seniors and to honor them for their great work here. So, um, and thank you for board members for being a part of that and being there to greet parents and stuff. Uh, Cassie mentioned too, we wrapped up spring benchmarking, and we'll kind of go into a deeper dive with the data, uh, further up, but we wrapped up those. Uh what we're going to use these for is now we get to look at the data and see how what we can do better as a school and how we can make some adjustments in in what we're doing as for curriculum and um identify strengths and target areas for support and adjustments as needed. Uh looking at our data. So but we're glad that we wrapped up spring benchmarking here. Uh looking forward to summer. Uh this
021building does not stay empty long. I was uh I was pretty surprised. The other day I walked just down to the pack and I walked past volleyball was in full swing. We had about 50 kids in the gym with volleyball and then I walked down and wrestling had a camp and there were two basketball camps going on. So the building was was packed with people. So it's fun to see a building that's you know we don't we don't shut down and close our doors. We're pretty active and alive this summer. So it's just fun to see. Uh the custodians too. I am always amazed the students have barely left the building and if you walk down the middle school hall, all the classes are out in the hallway and they're already hard at work prepping
022for the beginning of the school year. So, it's it's fun to see. We're in we're in full swing, summer swing here. Um, and we're doing some planning for the upcoming school year and and making sure things are prepared. I do want to give a big thank you to our arts council. Uh, the arts council had a brought a group of volunteers together to come and rehab the stage. So the stage gets beat up with moving chairs and stuff and the plywood gets chipped and so they came in and a group of volunteers came in and filled all the cracks and repainted the stage and really took some time refurbishing our stage. So I just wanted to make sure I said thank you to our arts arts council and and a further thankful for myself as
023I reflect on my end of the year here. This is my first year as a principal and so I'm really thankful and and grateful that I get to serve in this role. Uh it's been an honor to serve Payneesville community and work alongside such dedicated staff and great students and and such a wonderful community. So um I appreciate the support that everybody has shown me and I I look forward to building on the progress that we've made in the secondary. So thank you for everything. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Um so let's move on to committee edits. So, Chris, if you want to come on up and uh let us know what's happening in our world of community education. There we go. All right. Well, we just school got out and we turned and
024burned and we just started right away with getting ready for summer. So, um we had staff in on the day after school is out and working in our PAS program cleaning and organizing and getting ready for kids to come in because we started on June 2nd. So, we just got hopped right in to get get going for our summer. So, um, June 2nd kicked off a lot of our programs. We had our all of our wreck, summer wreck is going. Some started earlier, but all of it is going now. Uh, prek soccer, te-ball, rookie ball, travel softball, travel baseball. We'll have track and field next week, the summer camps, basketball, volleyball. Um, those are going right now as well. um that little group picture there. We have 24 preschoolers in our in our soccer program.
025I had to hire two more coaches because they were just there was a ton of them. So, um so that is just a little picture of them with their t-shirts on the first day. It was uh rainy so we did it in the pack which was probably a good good thing. Um they were it was a little more contained when they get out they get outside they just keep looking at the playground. when do we get to go over there? So, so um it sometimes that's a bad time. Um summer pause started on the second. We have 108 kids registered. We're getting about 70 kids a day. We had our first field trip. This is to the uh historical museum. Uh we did it last summer as well and they took us through a series
026of stations. The kids learn about, you know, the one room schoolhouse. They the one far on the left is they're putting out fires. So they had they had bucket brigades. Yeah. So those those aren't orange cones. Those are little fake fires. So they're they throw water at them and they tip over and so that's a fan favorite. Another one is um I don't have a picture of it, but they play Annie Annie over. That's is definitely a fan favorite. They love that game. Today in the auditorium, we had a first of a series of just some free events that uh the Great River Library and and community ed we just really tried to do some collaboration in our programming. So um we community ed sponsored this one. This is the wildlife safari sustainable uh it's
027called sustainable safari wildlife show. She had five animals. Um, we had close I probably think we had 200 people, you know, we brought 70 we brought almost 80 people over from PAS, but it's filled with a bunch of other people. They're back up on the second level. So, she brought a she brought a couple I don't know what the first thing was. It was really small, but she brought this that that little alligator. He's right there. He's a baby, thank goodness. And then this rabbit's like 15 pounds. It was giant. And then while she was talking, that kangaroo was looking at me and them trying to get out of the bag and I'm like, "Stay." So then finally that kangaroo got to get out and she talked about it and then she put it on
028the floor for it to move around and the kids were just, you know, loved it. So it was it was fun. It was a fun event. So um we have more fun up and cominging things that are going to be at the auditorium. uh for the summer. So, I'll report more in July. Our playground, we are starting our build on the 23rd. So, the it's kind of a lot of pressure right now. We're trying to finalize our volunteer lists. We have to get some details. Ken has to get some prep work details. So, I'm working real hard to make sure that we are lined up and ready to go for that startup build. So, exciting. Are you going to send out an email as far as like equipment needed? What What do you want? You
029You just need bodies. Well, that's part of what Yeah, that's what I'm I'm getting a little conference call with um the builders. There is a list of they do we do need to have tools and so I'm just going to make some checklist connect with Ken and see do we have this or do we need to ask people to bring things? Could we be on the list for that so that we know if something we should bring? Yes. Once we know the board, we we the this board. Yeah. I guess my plan. Yeah. Absolutely. I guess we just so we know what we got to bring. Yeah. Absolutely. That's part of I'm trying to pull that all together so that when volunteers walk in that we either a have the material or have all the
030tools available or b there's a group of people bringing some of those materials. I got to apologize. I got one last question. Yeah. You got 108 registered. How does that compare to previous years? Is that gone up? Uh, it's it's about the same. It's it's it runs into that just over a hundred kids and yeah, it's about the same. Um, oh, so then the next thing we have our um update from the our rural child care initiative. We had our planning meeting on the 15th. We have broken into groups. We are planning for two big events. there's a a childcare provider appreciation and then a town hall meeting but and also there'll be a survey. The survey will go out to community members. It'll be in businesses. It'll be in, you know, um, saturated throughout
031the community to find out to get, you know, childcared needs and find out feedback and find out, um, what are some problems, some barriers, and then maybe some solutions to get all of that data. And then that will be brought to our town hall meeting to discuss, you know, here's what we found in our survey and to bring stakeholders in to talk about some brainstorm some possible solutions. And then from that point, the committee will write some goals and try to try to make some, you know, steps forward and and try to uh give some solutions to our childcare issues. So, more to come on that. Um, like, uh, Mr. Ratzman said, we are busy. Summer camps are going on right now. June is busy. Summer camps, we have day one training, summer rec classes.
032There's, um, Miss Payneesville pageant will be using our uh, auditorium. We have breakout sport uh, tournament next week. Um, then we also have a community theater performance of Pride and Prejudice. We have a our that end of the building is busy. Also, um, Jesse mentioned that the arts council came in and they painted the floor. I just want a special shout out to Nate Ringall and Jean Lewis and her husband. They, um, they brought the sanders and the buffers and the big pieces of equipment in that just kind of buffed out all the little gouges and and brought put bond in and made it really dusty. But then it then it but that it got all cleaned up and it looks really great. So um it couldn't have couldn't have looked good that like that
033with also those guys um spearheading that. So give them a shout out. Thank you Chris. Any questions for Chris? All right. All right. And buildings and grounds. Let's hear what's uh what's happening in in your world. Ken I know. Awesome. Speaking of summer, all these people come up and talk about the fun stuff at this school and I get to be the debut donor, right? Oh, with a smile. Smile it all better. So, uh, started on a middle school gym. 30 years of wax on a rubber floor. Didn't go well. It's on there good. So, we did not get as far as I was hoping. And we have to set up for gymnastics now. So, it's basically going to be where it is for a year again. And Uh but it it was tough going
034in there. I'm going to be looking for other alternatives because it's tough going. Um the roof project uh they ran into a few issues up there. Um most of it was in corners and so on underneath flashing. They had holes. They had uh the flashing on the louvers louver were flashed wrong. So the water was actually running in after they had the louvers off. You could just see the puddling where it was inside the walls and everything else. um that just came about here this week. I've been busy. I was off last week late. Came about them, but I was off and um talking with uh Troy a little bit and myself and the other guys and we'll figure out a good solution and bring it to the table. We'll make sure you guys are
035all aware of what's going on. Uh Troy did send out that LTFM kind of sheet from that road project when he was out. I don't know if we shared that with you guys. No, I haven't reviewed it yet. Um just some nice things that we can be working on keeping the building safe and upright. So water. So uh other things, parking lot lights. I've been struggling with them for a while. It's on the new system down in the pack. I did exactly what the guy told me to do when I called them and lo and behold, all the par lights don't work in the in the downstairs. If you guys have been down and I have not had time to go back and look at it, uh I need to call them back. figure out
036what I did wrong. Figure out got to be another weird little system watt. It's a watt saver thing. So, we'll get her figured out. Get them lights all working and coming on at the right times. Not at noon every day out in the parking lot. I don't think we need them this time of year. Um mowers. So, I had two mowers break down here in the last two weeks. I did get the the uh parts for the grasshopper and uh got that one up and rolling today finally. Again, uh the John Deere um we busted the main shaft to the rear end. The knuckle went out and took out some oil lines and everything. And I looked at it and I'm like, I do not have time to deal with this. So, I did take
037it to John Deere and they're saying $2,000 to fix it. So, I I don't It's got 2,700 hours on it. How old is it? What year is it? Yeah, we'll we'll have to take that. We'll have to bring that back. Yeah, we'll bring that up. I I told him don't touch it for the time being. I told him I'd let them know in the morning. Just talk a little bit. See what we want to do there. Um, and then today, uh, there's a DX unit up that there's two DX units on the roof for the, uh, admin offices and one of them the pump went out on R22, of course. So, that's not supported anymore. I have to look at it. I just found out today. Um, I have to go up and look at
038it um, to see because there's two of them. I don't know if they're linked together. If they are to fix it, I think they'd have to be both redone. If they're not, possibly we could put one newer one in there with the newer refrigerant and stuff in it. Go from there. It's hard to say right now. I can't answer that either. So, figure game plan there. So, and the other one, they're both fairly old. They're both the same time. So, what happens when you have a when you have old buildings? Yes, that happens. No, it just doesn't last forever now. Yeah. All right. Any questions? I always just been You do a great job. I think there's a lot of things behind the scenes that people don't realize in a new building. The interior guts
039about it. You know, they think the outside looks great, but there's a lot of moving parts inside. So, a lot of moving parts. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Um, so I'm gonna invite, uh, Bob York to the table. Um, if you would like to move on. Um, so, uh, one of the things that we've talked about over the course of years is, um, uh, taking a look at careful the the chair is a little makes me nervous with sliding. Yeah. Um uh one of the things that we've talked about over the course of years is how um our um our job descriptions hadn't been analyzed for a number of years. The point values, how everything aligns. Um and so um Bob came in and and worked through um a pay equity study for our
040district. And so um I'm going to just I'm going to share this and then I'm going to uh turn it over to you. uh from the beginning. And I'm going to um I just got to get rid of Hold on here. Um I don't remember. Just give me a second. I got to figure out which one it is because I don't remember. Yeah. Well, I don't normally we don't I often don't use uh PowerPoint. So, I just want to make sure that I have it um shared for the community as it's recorded. And so, screen. Sorry. Oh goodness. Okay, just give me one second. I got to remember how to not duplicate the Thomas. Do you remember? If you go back to your um just share entire screen one screen one and then hit share
041there and then now you go back to your screen I hit show my screen anyways and then now you can go edit from beginning. Nope. And it'll still give you presenter mode, but okay. What's it should be displayed? All right. Now you got back. Yep. There you go. All right. Thank you. Sure. So, uh, by way of introduction, my name is Robert. I'm the president of DCC. I've been doing this for well over 40 years primarily with the public sector although I have a few private very few uh and my emphasis is always to be doing classification compensation studies in addition to occasional organizational studies performance appraisal work and other things related to each other but primarily is classification compensation spends. So when Janelle approached me the issue at that time was Bob I'd like
042you to review what we're doing make make sure that we're doing things correctly fairly uh and objectively. And in terms of doing these kinds of studies, it's it's really a similar systematic process that I would follow regardless of what district I'm working with. So in terms of the objectives, uh the first thing you always need to do is collect data about what people are doing, making sure the information is updated as possible because jobs do change. Um once the information is collected, we typically write job descriptions. Then we evaluate the relative responsibility level of each of the position descriptions. Then we conduct a salary survey to assess the competitiveness of our pay program. And then once we have all that data together, we go about and offer recommendations on changes in design of a new
043pay program and then provide our clients with an estimated cost to implement those findings, recommendations. So the presentation kind of covers the objectives here. Then I'm going to talk about what the steps in the process was and then conclude with findings and recommendations of each of those areas. So, in terms of collecting job information, we put together a position description questionnaire that Janelle passed out and her staff passed out to employees to complete to gather uh as accurate up-to-date information that we could get. Uh employees were asked to fill out those questionnaires and managers were asked to review those comments to make sure that there was nothing that importance that was left out in terms of job duties or to ensure and clarify the appropriateness of what people were saying you were responsible for doing.
044One of the problems that I uh ran into is that for one reason or another, a significant number of employees did not complete uh the position description questionnaires. And while that is kind of common, the problem I ran into is that a number of the positions in the district I had no information on whatsoever. I didn't even have one person that filled out a questionnaire for that job type. So, I was really forced to use your existing job descriptions that I had and then relied on the questionnaires for the remaining of the jobs. I'm going to ask some questions here because I fine. That's fine. Uh when you say a s significant number of employees did not complete return the questionnaire. Yes. 50% 25%. I would say probably half of your current position titles I
045didn't have at least one employee questionnaire for that was disappointing. Yeah. That's pretty embarrassing. But again, you can't you can't make people fill out the questionnaires. Although what I always tell people, this is an opportunity for you to explain what your job duties are, what's changed in your job over the number of years. And there's always the suspicion on the part of employees that there's a hidden agenda associated with these studies. And I tell people that the worst that can possibly happen as a result of participating in the study is what? You get a pay raise? Nothing at all. That's the worst that can happen. We're not going to cut people's pay. Uh we're not going to eliminate job titles. We're not going to reduce our workforce. Uh that is not the intent of the
046study. But, you know, we deal with what we can deal with. So, have you had that happen to other schools? Because I question the reliability of a study if the people didn't respond. Well, I'm assuming employees that didn't fill that out felt that the current job description described what they doing. And if they felt that the job description did describe what they do, they would have taken the time to fill out the questionnaire. So your for your information, you just took all that we had for for half of them when it comes to assessing the relative responsibility of the job. The other piece to remember is that all of those descriptions, even if they were old, were reviewed by the supervisors. So it wasn't just a non a disengagement. So if we had the old
047ones, the supervisors provided opportunity to say these are the things that have changed or not changed. So it was it even if the individual didn't provide the survey, there was analysis of whether it was accurate or not. And what I find disappointing mostly about this is usually at the conclusion of a study like this here, people say, "Well, I'm not sure that is accurate. I'm not sure that my duties were reviewed as I would like them to be reviewed." And my response is that is, well, then you should have filled out the questionnaire. Okay. But I I I I do want to just add all of this information has gone back to employees through supervisors. So it's it's not everything has been passed back through the units and with their um union stewards and with
048um the representatives. So it's there it's not people it's not that they haven't had an opportunity. They may have chosen not to participate. So obviously because you knew what to do, we're not the only ones that that happened to, right? The only school, correct? Um, and then as I typically gather the information, I usually find that your current job descriptions, not just here, but everywhere I go to, there's about 10 different formats. there's no consistency in the job description. So, uh I tried to format and provide a standardized format for everyone. So, I hope that after this is all done, that format just keeps going and anytime there's a new job, that same format is used to ensure consistency in our approach. Um, and then as Janelle said, the job descriptions were prepared. Managers had
049an opportunity to review, comment, make corrections, deletions, additions. I reviewed that and as appropriate, I updated, revised, and finalized those job descriptions for the district. Once the job descriptions were prepared, I evaluated the responsibility level of each of those jobs descriptions based upon the classification matrix system. And what that system does looks at four major factors. Knowledge, occupational skill is factor one. Supervisory authority is two. Public relations is three and working conditions is factor four. The reason it's called classification matrix system is that each of those factors are divided into two sub factors that form a matrix that allows me to come up with a point score given both sub factors for each of the four factors. Okay. The ratings were summarized, reviewed with the superintendent. I think we did make one or two changes.
050Uh those ratings were finalized. And what this does is create that internal pay equity that's required by the Minnesota Pay Equity Act. It requires all public jurisdictions to assess the responsibility level of all its jobs and report to the state every two years. By the way, you just recently did that. I don't know if you got a notice of passing, but I'm sure you will. We we did. Um and when all this was happening in tandem, um Bob provided input on on our report, so we were all in compliance. And then I took all my ratings from all the factors, sub factors, put it in a spreadsheet, and then I hope that that spreadsheet will be updated. Whenever a new job is added, a job is deleted or there's been significant change that a rating
051may have changed. That just keeps your documentation. That was one of the things when I started the study there was not really any documentation concerning why did this job have 300 points this job have 136 points what were the factors uh and we are required to provide documentation and provide ongoing maintenance on our system as part of the Minnesota K equity act and I don't know that's been done but I didn't see any formal documentation forms or anything that said this is how we arrived at 300 points for this job for example. So now we have that you probably cannot read that but this is factor two this is supervisory responsibility I just wanted to show you a matrix that I use. So when it looks at when I look at supervision, I look at
052two major sub factors. I look at the extent of supervision or the number of people the jobs responsible for. That's along the top axis and on the side axis going down it's the nature supervision. You don't supervise. You're lead worker. You have expert authority. You're a full supervisor. so on and so forth. So for each description I rate it on supervisory responsibility and I look at the intersection of my two findings. So, if a job has a full level supervisor, it supervises uh let's say uh nine people on my rating worksheet, it's going to say B for the number of people supervised and probably D for a full supervisor. Full level supervisor being somebody who can make uh human resource decisions in terms of hiring recommendations, discipline recommendations, uh, dismissal, pay, so on so forth.
053Okay, I come up with a point score on this factor and then I add the points to each of the other three factors and I come up with a total point score for each of the jobs. Okay? And then I have this chart. So based upon the total point score of the job I'm looking at, I can assign it to one to 32 salary grades or levels based upon solely the responsibility level of the job. Okay? But that's just one part of making a pay decision. at simply the internal fairness of a job based upon what we ask the job to do. The other component is what what is the market pay for that job irrespective of how the responsibility level the job has been determined. So that's the next phase. So what we did
054is we met or we I met with the superintendent and we tried to identify and select jobs and organizations of which to collect salary data. Given the limited number of jobs that we have here, we surveyed almost all the jobs except for some that were kind of in flux or ones that I thought there were certain issues that would cause problems, but for the most part, it was most of the jobs. Uh in terms of benchmark organizations, we typically always want to select those that are have a similar geographic area. Uh positions that or organizations that you have historically compared yourself to. Uh and then we want to make sure that those organizations have jobs for the most part that are similar in terms of uh structure and duties to our jobs. Okay. So I
055compiled a salary survey questionnaire that described the briefly described the duties and qualifications of the jobs in the survey. that was emailed to each of the participants selected. Um Janelle and her staff did a great job in terms of calling everybody up and trying to wrestle information from them. Uh we'll get into that in a little bit. Uh the questionnaires came back to me. I reviewed the data. I compiled the data, entered it in a spreadsheet and analyzed the data and then prepared a salary survey report outlining the information. Then with once you have the survey data and the job ratings, you have to then figure out now that you have the information, how do you redesign, how do you update, how do you revise the salary ranges uh in such a manner is to
056be consistent fair and across all the jobs. And in Minnesota, one of the complicating factors, as I'm sure you're aware of, is the Minnesota Pay Equity Act, which basically tells us they don't care about the market. What they care about is paying jobs that have similar responsibility. That doesn't help you achieve your HR objectives, which are to attract, retain, motivate, and keep your employees. Okay? So what I try to do is blend the internal responsibility level. I tend to put more emphasis on that but I also take into account the market data so that we can put ourselves in a competitive stance given our financial ability within the marketplace. And then I did that and came up with an estimate of cost to implement that revised program. And I'm not sure you can see that,
057but here are all your jobs. And if you look on the right hand side, it shows the salary grade level that I assigned each of the jobs to from top to bottom. If you want to look at that for a while and let me know when you want me to proceed. This this went out in the board packet. So they they've had it. So those were the list of positions that we gathered market data on. Um the one we didn't get any information on in terms of the data was the community center supervisor. Uh and then on the next page, it shows those organizations that supplied us with the survey questionnaire. And then I also showed you those organizations that we repeatedly asked for information on but did not supply us information which I was
058pretty disappointed. Uh the participation rate was 53%. Uh that's a little I'd say most of the time it's around 75%. That's all the best schools too for comparing to us and yeah I heard Kimble I don't know how many times did we contact Kimbo Maple Lake and Eden Valley I reached out to multiple times. Yeah. And again they're supposed to provide that information. Uh but you can only twist their arms and what do you do? and then you run into a timing of how long do you sit and wait to try to wrap up a process. So that was a little disappointing but you know I think we had enough information to make an analysis that is uh consistent. So if the act was in 1984 and I've been on a school board a fair
059amount of time the uh Minnesota pay equity act. Yep. Yeah. I've never heard of this before. Does that mean that potentially those other schools are doing something to get through the system without having to be formal documents? Uh I I have to be somewhat political here. Uh the state of Minnesota said you don't have to hire a consult. Here's what we did. simply take the points for our jobs and use it in your district. But they only did it for state jobs. I mean, it it really isn't. So, basically, there was a way for them to do it without a true analysis of their district. Yeah. To satisfy the state. And it's a totally inappropriate because they said it has to be a bonafide job evaluation system. I got you. I mean, but I suspect
060we might have been doing that. Well, well, I think I think you did. But what probably happened, and Janelle, you probably know better than me, but my guess is that couple people got together said, "Here's the pay. Here are the points." No. So, back in the That's not what happened. Back in um early in Bob's era, he brought in a consultant to do the Hayes system. Okay. Okay. In this district. Yes. But that was 15 10 Yeah. 10 15 years ago. That's when we first started. Okay. So that's how and and what we had we didn't have we had added job descriptions that never had had not been aligned within that old system. So we had documents from 2008 200 and some of the job descriptions that we provided that we didn't have were from
061that era and the hay system is the state system. I gota that's what they use. So I got you. So So it had been we hadn't touched this for a number of years and that was the system that was that Bob had trained on but all the people were gone. Well, you alluded earlier that you were trying to set it up so we stayed with the system. Yes. So it's maybe they had a consultant at some point time and tried to stay with the system and now we're back to where they started from. They might have want to stay in the system, but they didn't give you any documentation. Gotcha. Interesting. So, one of the because they were the schools our size. One of the next pieces is that um Bob also then will provide
062training to myself um business manager and our payroll person that we anytime that there's a change, it comes in and it's evaluated through this system. It surprises me that I know Bob did the haze system because I remember him doing it, but I was pretty new to the board and I really didn't understand what it was all about. Y but I remember him doing that. But it surprises me that we still had some jobs here that didn't have a job description. You know, I would assume for that system to work, there had be a job description for every job. You would think so. So confusing, but it was more confusing back then. Well, it's still not. I mean, there's still a lot of moving parts, but uh so the findings there are two ways looking
063at market data. The very simple approach is you have all your job titles. You know what your average pay is. You know what the market average pay is? And you simply average it and you say on average are our jobs above market, below market and by how much? Okay. The other approach well let me step back. The problem with that first approach is okay, so now you got this information. You know whether you're above market or below market, what do you do with it? Uh for those jobs that says you're paying too much, do you take money away from people? Of course not. If it says that you're underpaid by 20 30%, are you going to give them a 30% raise? Of course not. Okay? We can't afford to do that. So the approach in
064terms of designing a new pay program is taking all that market data, survey data and generating a pay line that best describes what the market is based upon average pay. generating a statistical payline that looks at your average pay and then comparing those two pay lines and say on average what is the difference in pay between those two lines and that's what that graph shows us right there. You advance to the next one. Okay. Does does it discre cause cause discrepancies? Like we're a small school. Yep. So a lot of times we have people that wear more than one hat. So their job description might be one thing, but they actually do their job on half of another or even two jobs. And that's what I said early on where it said mixed classification. What
065you do, you have you have two approaches that you can follow when you have a mixed class. You can say when you do this job you get paid that do this job you get paid that do this job you get paid that to some extent I think that's the fairest but it's an administrative nightmare to track all that okay the other approach is say what's the highest level that you're asked to perform given those three different jobs or four different jobs and then base the pay on that according The point point being taken was Amanda was doing a lot more than what she was really actually and what her job description was. So we we changed job description. Correct. Yeah. To to compensate for what she's actually been doing. Right. So and this graph is
066what I'm wondering. What's that? Does that skew this graph? I think in in that particular instance that was one of the that may have been one of the benchmarks we didn't use because the pay was out of line or skewed and I was worried about it hitting the data. So I didn't even collect market data. Okay. Because if you would have looked at at hers was an anomaly that wouldn't have been consistent with a neighboring school district. Right. So when Bob said that we sat down and looked at a couple of those, those were those nuances of what what was unique to our district and why. Okay. Okay. And that's fairly common for districts as I'm sure. I believe it probably is. Well, I mean, I think I think I'm kind of a graphic visual
067learner. And when I look at that chart, it tells me a number of things. It tells me that as jobs increase in responsibility, the market's paying more, but you're also paying more. Uh, but it also says that you're consistently below market. um when I correlate the data collected on market and correlate the data internally that's used to generate those lines. The correlation between my job ratings in the market was significantly better than the correlation between my job ratings in Europe. But in both cases, the correlation was at least 0.9 or better. If you're familiar with correlations, a score of 1.0 zero would mean all those dots and salary figures would align directly on the payline. So I think those uh correlations were pretty impressive. But it also says you've been keeping up and doing a
068fairly good job with respect to pay for responsibility level. But as you can tell, I mean there's outliers. There are always outliers. overpaid, underpaid situations. So when we looked on a job by job basis, that first approach that I said that produces an outcome that shows us that on average we're about 6% below market. Okay, the graph that I showed you, the difference AC between those two pay lines was also about 6%. So there was consistency there and as again as it said as jobs increase in responsibility pay differences start to be become larger and larger. Um again one of the issues that I always run into when I revise and change or update uh pay structures is fighting the teacher salary schedule, lanes, steps, and so on. That's a career schedule from the time
069they come to you to the time they leave you as opposed to others that have an individual contract and flat rate of pay. and then others that are in union that have ranges and steps and trying to make sense of that and bring it all together in a consistent and fair manner is always a challenge. So what I propose to Janelle and propose to the district is that you handle teacher negotiations basically the same way you always have handled negotiations with the idea that the teacher schedule I think it comes on a couple pages later you were about 6% below the maximum but pretty close to the minimum of the market rate. It wasn't quite 6% but the starting was closer starting we're on point where we're a little bit off is at the top
070end of the schedule more of a problem at the maximum top end top down. So what I did was create a salary schedule based upon the midpoint of the market trend line as the midpoint of the new structure. And then I built minimums and maximums around that midpoint and then created nine steps for everyone excluding the superintendent which I'm assuming you want to make the decision on pay for the superintendent. Okay. However, whether people are on an individual contract or not, I would still recommend that you keep salary create salary range minimums and maximums because when you submit your data to the state of Minnesota for pay equity, they don't care average rate of pay or the individual pay, if you will. They look at the maximum. So if you make decisions based upon here's
071what we want to pay for example the secondary principal that's not a range that's that's what we're paying the person and it works against you. Okay. It's much better to have a salary range minimum and maximum and you can still have your individual contracts but use that minimum and maximum as a guide for your decision making. Okay. And board members, I think that's one of the pieces that we've not had a structured context of looking at um the average market range of a minimum to a maximum. We've had um and I know we've talked about and Bob, many of these are negotiated contracts. So, I want to be really clear. This is not saying that these contracts are not being negotiated. That is I want to be really clear. That's not what's happening here. What
072this is is this is a guideline of on the market with the market data. This would be your range of a minimum to a maximum that should guide the discussion points. So I just want to be really clear from the people that turn the survey in, not including a whole bunch of the small schools. So your minimum maximum is based upon those people that turned the survey in. But when we saw the list, we have a lot of small districts. you don't have in there. So, you could have this and it could be here and there had they participated. That's why I did that's why I only use uh average average pay because for so many of the jobs they didn't have a maximum they didn't have a minimum. My option was to say current
073rate of pay is both the minimum, midpoint and maximum of the analysis. So, I just used uh the mid uh excuse me, the market average uh for designing and analyzing the market data, but we still didn't use data from the schools that didn't participate. Nope. Correct. Okay. Like I said, that was unfortunate. Yeah, it is. So what I did was take each of the jobs. I took their job ratings. I assigned them to salary ranges based upon the job ratings. So they got assigned to the pay range based upon their responsibility level and the ranges themselves are based upon the uh market data. So that way I've blended both the internal responsibility and the market data to come up with a consistent and fair approach for making pay decisions. Okay. And then one final step
074I took was to once I had that preliminary pay ranges put into place. I then went back and I looked at the midpoint of that range, compared it to the market average and if there was a difference of say 15 16% and move the job up a grade. Okay. So, I was looking for those special market considerations that the market says we got to pay the job more because we have to. Okay. As for instance, some of our technology that's a that's a really good example because there's the market sustains a higher um competitiveness for technology positions as for instance. Yep. So, the counties that I the counties that I work with, one of the typical ones outside of technology is attorneys. 30 years ago, they were commanding huge amounts of money. Then the market
075changed and they were beating each other up for significantly lower rates of pain. And now again it's gone back. Now they're increasingly uh more valuable in the marketplace and that's their struggle. So when you have exceptional market considerations, that's something you want to pay close attention to every couple years to see if the market has changed for those particular jobs. Okay. So to estimate the cost for each individual employee, I put them in the range based upon their current rating. I increased their pay by 2% to make it forward to 2026. I compared that figure to the minimum of the range and if they were below that, I brought them to the minimum. If they were within the salary range I assigned them to, I put them at the step closest to hire. If they
076were over the range, I considered it a situation where we had to freeze that rate of pay until increases overtime brought them back into my proposed range. And then I costed it and the cost was 2.84% 84% of estimated payroll for those employees not part of the teacher bargain. Okay. And then in terms of just ongoing maintenance is required uh by the law, you have to report your maximums and job ratings every three years to the state. You are required to maintain the system and track changes over time because every three years you have to say which jobs changed in point value, why did they change in point value, provide a reason for that change and then also any new titles, title changes and so on. So you gota you really do need to track
077this on an ongoing basis. Um and then I would recommend that you develop a systematic review process so that every job in the district has an opportunity to be reassessed for new duties, changes in job duties and so on. That doesn't mean I have to be involved in that. It simply means that you need generally in my larger school districts like Duth AIO so on. We have like a four to five year system. We take it by job families. Each year we look at a job family and for those jobs or their changes they usually send it to me because they don't want to deal with it but they could do it themselves. uh and then over the course of five four years all jobs get have been evaluated and then I usually recommend after
078five six years you replicate the salary study just to make sure that you're uh still competitive and keeping track with your market. Okay. So you guys said 10 12 years ago you guys had the haze system that we quit using. Is that true? It hadn't I hadn't seen updates from the haze system for a number of years and the consultant the individual who came to do the training isn't doing the training was not doing the training. Okay. So, now we're committed to DC for how many years are we committed to you? Is this a one-year thing or what? What are we doing? Well, I'm I'm going to give you training. Okay. So, you'll have people inhouse that should be able to do it themselves. I'm also available if you want me to do it. But
079what Hay Hay is so concerned about protecting its proprietary system, they don't give you the guidelines. They don't give you any information. You're kind of left on your own unless you pay them to do it. Well, you've already paid me to do it. You paid to use my system. So, all I would ask is that I will train you in my system. I'll give you the forms. You can use me or you can do it yourself. All I ask is that you respect it as my system. And if at some point in time you want to change, you have them consult implement their system as opposed to use my system because then it'll come back to haunt me and say, "Oh, I'm gonna ask a million dollar question. So what are we paying you to
080do it for this year? Are we are we committed for this year? This is done. This is done. Well, am I online? I mean, and I mean when you say to train, obviously that would cost more. Correct. It's part of the proposal. Oh, it is part of it. It's part of the contract. I wrote it right in there. So this we approved that contract. Yeah, you approved this contract in August or September. August. But I guess is it yearly? No. No. You moving once this is all done, if you want my help, then I charge you for what you asked me to do at that particular time. So, so part of what this was is to make because we had a lot of pieces that were missing pieces. Correct. So for us to so now
081it's it's getting it back to um you know what I'm gonna get in trouble for let's just continue on. You're not well you're not getting you're on a topic. If I could just add one thing I'm going to get our issue is with the with the staff as a whole administration if administration stays or changes nothing travels downstream or upstream. So that's what would be my big thing. We have an administration changes. Then they don't remember any of this and everybody in the system kind of starting all over again. And that may have be some of what happened with whatever bot did. Maybe it's something that got started and it just dies. If you have the data there, if administration changes, we just need to address you and somebody comes out here and gets us
082on track with training for a new group, right? Because I think as school members, that's what we need to remember because if we don't, then we'll go through a whole process all over again. And and I like the hay system, you have the rating forms, the rating worksheet, you got the questionnaires. I've given you as much information as I put together to do the study in the first place. Yeah. And it also sounded like you were training more than one person. So, as long as we're not having if there's some changes in employees, there's always going to hopefully be one person that knows what's going on. So, we have some redundancy there. And like you said, if you want additional training done later on, couple years from now, as long as we have this administration,
083I think we're fine. If it changes, that's where we get into what you're talking about because it's dollars you're spending all over again on something that was there to deal with. You don't use it, you lose it. And and I see that happening again and again. you know, six, seven years later, I'll do a study. I'll give them all the information. Then they don't do anything with it. Okay? And then they let out a proposal and says, "We're interested in hiring a consultant to look at this and look at that." I'm saying, "Why don't you just call me? I could do it for a couple grand as opposed to spending 30 grand." Yeah. you know. So, uh just as a as a point of reference, so the contract was um approved in July of 24
084and it's broken apart. So, if we for example want to come back and have um so um job analysis are $70 to $160 per job analysis. So, if we would have a new job description, we could. Now, this was the July cost. So, I'm not going to hold on, you know, for 10 years, you pay $70 to do a job. That's not what I'm saying. Actually, it's $150 to read a job. So, there So, that's kind of the point of the the range. Okay. Um the um so update all the job descriptions 4,125. Okay. Um, conduct the job evaluations, $2,300. So, all of this was broken down on. So, if there were things that he didn't need to do, there wasn't the cost. And when um he needed to create a new job description, that
085was an additional cost, right? So, there's there's is that helpful kind of as a point of reference for the dollar. So, it would cost us to tweak something years down the road. I guess what that's what concerns me when I hear about we did something. It's like, well, we never used it. So, I mean, if we're going to spend the money, we should be utilizing it. Absolutely. Correct. And I understand two years from or three years from now or five years from now, something's got to update it. I totally understand. We need to pay, right? Um, but I just it's kind of baffling when I hear a program we had and then nobody knew what happened. I I think you were on track where what happens is superintendent changes or the HR director changes and
086new person comes in and says I didn't find anything. But no, this gives us a good baseline. I I I totally understand the purpose of it. And the job descriptions are something you're not going to lose in the first place. Yeah. But we actually never I don't know that we ever had a two set of job descriptions. So um attached in the agenda is the file folder that has all the job descriptions. Um and so these are it they're they're categorized by who's supervising whom. Um so you can kind of see um you know for we'll just uh principles obviously the principles these are all the individuals that are within their buildings. Okay. Um and so as as Bob talked about you'll notice the um you'll notice that the format is going to be all
087the same. Our old job descriptions, you might remember, had percentages of like percentages of time. Those became kind of I think um uh ambiguous, unnecessary and and it was how do you and I think staff got hung up on that because they didn't know how much time to um allocate. Right. So, so these are these are in this is linked in um to the agenda. These as I mentioned these have been shared out to um the union stewards um to uh supervisors um and then our our next steps would be uh you'll see on the bottom the next steps would be um just the signature after today's date. Any other questions for Bob? I know it's a it's a big process and there's a lot but any other questions beforehand. So again let me take
088you out. So again I want I want to make sure that people like especially for as we move into negotiations this gives us this gives us a foundation to understand where we sit. Um and and I don't want to for a second have people think that we're making decisions outside of the process, but this really is about giving us as um as a district, we know where we sit in relation to others. I do think that your point is very valid. We have to take that into consideration and then um I will reach out yet again and find out what does this look like for you. I would like to say just one more thing. uh because I kind of assisted in terms of reporting to the state this last round for pay equity. uh
089you're in that precarious situation where you have a small number of male jobs. And if we were to lose one, maybe two male jobs, we could be put at risk uh for compliance. Uh because school districts typically pass the Minnesota Pay Equity Act because the majority of our actual employees are female and part of the teacher bargaining unit. teacher bargaining unit with lanes and steps. I don't know what it is, 150% from minimum to maximum generally puts them when you see that pay line over the top of the pay line and that saves us from being out of compliance on statistical analysis test. If we have fewer than I think I think it's fewer than six male tribes, we go to the alter alternative analysis test. And to be honest with you, that puts all
090the onus and decision making at the state level and it makes it very hard to be in compliance with comp. So if we can maintain that statistical analysis test, we'll be fine. If you have open ranges, mins and maxes for everybody that's consistent, you know, this one being higher than this one, this one higher than that one, so on, we probably would pass the alternative analysis test, too. But it always scares me the subjectivity of the person at the state who's making those kinds of calls because I can't always understand what the heck they're doing and I don't think they can. Did you just say that, Bob? I did just say that. All right. Okay. Anything else for Bob? Thank you for your time. Appreciate you coming out and making the presentation. All right. uh
091we'll move on to the 2526 budget. Uh so this will be uh fairly straightforward. Um a number of these items we've talked about um uh but um a number of these items we've talked about. Um so this is a a very similar again this is the snapshot document that has um our fiscal year 25 fund balance the 2526 revenue 2526 proposed expenses the net difference and the fund balance the the bottom line of when you look at the budget that's proposed is we'll still be um be able to contribute 11,296 toward our fund balance um instead of moving backwards efforts and having to tap into our fund balance. You will notice that is a really close number. Okay, there are a couple of there it's a close number. Okay, now there's a couple of factors
092and I'm going to talk a little bit about those um in a little bit more detail um uh in when we go to make the formal approval in uh on the 22nd. Um but some of those changes are are because of the way that the legislature they did just approve um the budget and so there are some reductions within that budget and I'll I'll speak to those a little bit more in a little bit more detail but um as those have come through all that has been taken into account. We planned that the budget was going to be approved the way it was proposed and so this accounts for all those changes. Okay. Uh so some assumptions that were made. um it does have the 2.74% increase on the formula. So again, that was an
093open discussion as a proposed reduction. Um we'll see in the future if that stays uh stays available to school districts, but right now we we counted on it. You'll also see that we are planning on 898 ADMs instead of um as opposed to 892 last year. Our title one funding has remained stable. Um that was good news for us. Um and why that's such a big deal for me to watch is because at the federal level we didn't know how that uh federal change was going to impact um funding coming to the states. So at this point in time that is stable. Uh we do cons continue to bank on some cross subsidy uh reduction aid which um currently it's about 50% of our cross subsidy. So just as a reminder what our cross subsidy
094is is is what we are required to provide um a a consistent level of special education services. um and we receive a prrated or a portion of our expenses back. When the rest of those expenses are coming out of the general fund, those are considered a cross subsidy. Um the state of Minnesota has recognized that um the federal government hasn't has not held up to their promise of funding for special education for years. Um and the state has allocated money to help offset for school districts. Currently, we're at about 50%. Um, that also has been on the discussion block of potential reductions, but right now we're banking on that to be about 50%. What's really difficult from a budget perspective, you will likely never see me tell you this is how much money we're going
095to get in special education revenue because it is extremely volatile. um and special education um uh is a reimburseable expense. We have to spend the money up front and then the year after we get uh we get a reimbursement. Um but it's also very dependent on the type of services that we have to provide. So, it's really not um we have sometimes we have students that have um maybe they've had um a medical need and they have a placement in a in a residential treatment facility or perhaps we have somebody who needs a um a higher level of mental health support and so then that student might have a a higher level of needs. Those are costs that we we just can't bank on per se, but we get that reimbursement a couple years down
096the road. Okay. Yeah. this ADM. What does that mean? Um, the ADM is your average daily membership. Okay. Thank you. I missed that acronym. Okay. Um, so from an expenditures perspective, um, so we, uh, and I've talked preliminarily about looking at step advancement to, uh, buildin costs. So you're going to see that there's a moderate assumption for steps um, which is there are some that are um kind of using Bob's analogy, it's an average, right? There's some that are higher, there's some that are lower. It's really trying to take an average. Um this does include um some workman's comp and property insurance increases. Uh you're going to see um just as a reminder that our expenditure budget is about 77% salaries and benefits. We are in the business of of students and it is teachers
097and pair of professionals and food service and custodians that are serving our our kids. So that's the bulk of our expenses. You will see a transition into our business office as we've talked about. Um Amanda's coming on as our business as our business manager. Um technology support uh hiring on our assistant to support uh technology and specifically within with Leah. Um we are um looking at increasing our early childhood elementary special education needs. Um and we also talked about the possible ADSIS math position. So um I have not posted that because the budget has not been approved but our ads application was um approved the way it was written. So uh the board is able to move ahead with that teacher if they would like to. Um some other uh assumptions that were made is
098that uh continuing everything with our food service the way it has been. Um you know, one piece that I just wanted to to call out and and we've been doing it this way, but I I'm not sure that families remember this, but um because all meals are free. Any second meal that is um a student eats, they are charged the adult price. So just as a reminder that that's that's in there as well. Um, we've talked about um some using our capital funds for subscriptions, licenses. We've talked about our long-term facility maintenance project um projects. We have a lot of softball field planning happening, some track evaluation and restoration conversations happening, upkeep on fields throughout the district. Those are ongoing conversations. The one piece that is just as you heard Ken talk about those unknown
099variables. Um, and if you think back to this last school year when we had to have the awnings in door seven and and the building envelope on door seven and door eight replaced, those there are expenses that come up. So, we do try to make sure that we're conservative in our budgeting so that we can take care of those emergency things as as they come up. um uh debt service. Um that's going to just remain as it is with our our bond repayment schedule. Um some other conversational items that we've talked about the four sections of kindergarten. So again, we had we had four sections of first grade this year. Um brought that first grade teacher back on to kindergarten for uh four sections in kindergarten. We've built in the unemployment costs that are anticipated.
100Um uh actually um one other piece that's coming that came out through the legislature is that our unemployment um for our summer unemployment for our pair professionals and food service is covered by the state for the next two years. Okay. Uh we are having to keep track of that because if it changes after um some of those costs that are special education for our pair professionals will be coded to special education and that has some implications as we talked about for our cross subsidy um and having more costs come out of our general fund and the state is really wanting us to keep track of that. So we're going to keep keep our eyes on that as well. Um uh we did maintain our our sub costs. Um we have seen an increase in sub
101costs over the last couple of years and and we don't expect that to change. Um the paid family medical leave cost has been accounted for. Uh the one piece that I do want to just call out is that that is a cost not only for the employers, but it's also a cost for the employees. So um just a reminder that that's built in as well. All of our contracts are being negotiated. Um so um again built in a moderate using steps as kind of our our conversation um and uh and then we've maintained a budget cycle for curriculum to make sure that we don't fall behind on that. So um we are talking about our strategic plan review. Um, we've talked about some multiple year planning for athletic fields. Again, making sure that that softball
102field and the track are are um moving forward. This is an area, the final bullet here is an area that um I've given just some highle inkling to um but this was an area that uh our principles and myself were a little caught off guard. Um because uh we are required to um purchase a screener which is called the Capy. I don't and I'm I'm gonna have to just call it the capy because I don't know that it even has a a name. Does that have a name? I think it's just called the cap. Okay. I'm sure it's got something, but that's all right. The bottom line of what it is is this is part of the read act. Okay. And this is a screener. Um and it's intended to help flag students with dyslexia.
103Okay. What we're waiting for is what we do after we do the screener. What is our level of intervention that's required? As you're going to see, there's a set criteria. We have to screen all students that are in grades 4 through 12 that are reading below grade level. Okay. Um so using the data, the benchmark data that we've had from this spring for our school district, that would be about uh 201. Okay. Each CAPD assessment takes about 40 minutes to administer. So that's 138 hours of staff time because they're individual in their individual screeners. Um we're trying to wrap our head around this. Okay. This is something where we just are are trying to figure out how we can logistically do this and then also um understanding from the department of education what are we
104supposed to do with it now that we're done right and then what happens when um a student is screened out as a ninth grader and they're reading at grade level does that mean they don't have to be screened out as a 10th grader and an 11th grader so there's just I'm kind of going down a little bit of a wormhole but there's just a lot of unknown own answers to questions that administrators were trying to wrap our heads around. The other piece that we um I've really been hoping that we were going to be able to kind of absorb it within the school district is the requirement to have a literacy specialist. Um, you've heard over and over and over the amount of work that our team is doing to really build in the multi-ter
105systems of support for the re the reading, um, the math. Um, one of the requirements is that we have somebody that's that's designated to kind of lead that. So within this budget we have built in could we combine those people and do the capy and work on the literacy specialists and could we reallocate some positions together or some responsibilities together. So that is built in as a possibility for us as well. So I want to just wanted to let you know that that's been built in as you're looking at this proposal. So, those are those are the considerations that have come in on the do um you're going to see the Bruce's favorite spread spreadsheet. Um but and you know, I know that this isn't our favorite spreadsheet to see, but it's a consistent snapshot
106of what you've seen over the course of years. So, I think it is important to keep that moving forward because it is you're able to see the breakdown of everything over the course of years. Okay. So, this proposal um includes I'm going to go back up to the top, sorry, these these figures. Okay. Are there any questions for me or things that you would like to see broken down differently um before the budget is presented in J uh at the end of June? Okay. Uh so there's the budget. Okay. Moving on, the literacy plan forward presentation. Okay. So, I'm gonna invite Mr. Baker to come on up um and walk through the literacy plan. Um which document do you want me to um first we'll open up the Yep. the guidance. Okay. Um and just
107to go from budget to local literacy plan, just a refresher, the local literacy plan took place of the read well by third grade um which was in previous legislation. And so now the read act brings in the local literacy plan and last year um was the first presentation of our new local literacy plan and um so now we are reporting on year one. Okay. Um throughout this last school year, um myself and some of our MTSS staff have attended trainings from MDE and also resource training so we can learn about the readact and learn about all the changes um that Janelle just spoke to with the CAPY. And so we are continuously learning as they're pumping out new information around the Redact in the local literacy plan. Um, so the reporting system, um, this is
108a template and you'll notice that it's blank. Um, I just wanted you to see what is all being required in our annual report. And there are 14 different sections that are reported on in um, or for the literacy plan. And so this was due um, or is due the 16th of June. So, we can exit out of this one and pull up my other one. Um, but I just wanted you to have access to what's all being reported. And then I put together um just a one pager that walks through what was reported in each of the sections. Um, MDE sent out um an active link unique to Payneesville that we submitted our report on. Um and so once that was submitted to them on the 5th, we are waiting to hear back. Um they
109did receive it. Um so we're just waiting for that approval um that it's been approved. But if you want to click on that link in my one pager, I do want to show the board and the community where to find this information. Um so if you're looking for some more literature, here is the MDE website um around the local literacy plan. And if you scroll down um you will find so there's the link I just shared the guidance document. You click on the link down below that one. Yep. Right there. So this is where um all of the district's local literacy plan reports will live. And so when they approve ours, you'll be able to come here and see ours and all of the other districts. Um, this is really um I enjoy this because
110I get to go see what are other people doing for these different areas. Are we are we on point with our surrounding districts? Are we can we look at other districts who might have more resources than us and look at what are we doing and what could we be doing? So, just an FYI um that that's where the report will live uh publicly once ours is approved by MDE. So that's why when I try to click on there, you'll see like Payneesville doesn't show up yet because ours has not been yet been approved. So that's why it's not in there. Okay. Soon. Yep. If you can go back to my one pager, please. Uh yep. Um then just walking through kind of the different sections. Um the goal of the local literacy plan and the
111read act is for all students to achieve grade level reading proficiency by the end of third grade. That's the goal of it. Um and so then that is our goal as well. And the way that we hope to achieve that um are one through five using our fastbridge assessments uh creating personal learning plans to bring that home and school partnership together using the evidence-based interventions um training our teachers and letters and then having our multi-tered system of support framework to provide supports to our students. Um the next section talks about our screening tools in K3. There are no changes. will continue to use um the same tools in 4 through 12. There's been some language change around this uh within the read act. And so we updated our reports that we will be um using
112the CBMR that fluency piece for kindergarten through 12th grade because if you recall we need to identify students who are not reading at grade level K through 12. the first year it focused on um not everybody not up through 12th grade. So that was the change and then also that prompted the change for a reading as well and auto reading. So we made that adjustment in our report. Um parent notification the personal learning plans we continue to um tweak and modify those when we know more. We'll do better um in what is being asked of us with those plans. um will increase parent involvement through literacy engagement. So how do we bring on parents um and educate them as well to help their students uh read at grade level databased decision- making um we have
113no changes to our plan there. Multi-tered system of support this has been a big conversation um for us as a district. Last year was our first year we expanded MTSS through 8th grade for our lead time. You've heard Mr. asking some talk about lead time providing reading support to our students. How do we expand that beyond 8th grade with the resources that we have um and the other programs and initiatives that we have? You heard Janelle talk about access reading and math are part of our adset. So, how do we bring those resources in and allocate them to the read act as well? Um core curriculum, no changes there for grades K5. Reading interventions um for grades K12. Again, that's dependent on resource allocation with our access um with title. You know, what are we
114able to allocate into where professional development um no changes other than to continue with our letters training for new staff. Um uh so we'll continue uh phase one and phase two for requirements um professional development educator count. We had to give in our report how many people are in progress for letters training and how many have completed letters training. So those numbers are um updated annually. literacy aid funds. Um with the funding that we receive, we were able to update that and um we're using the funds for our letters training and our fastbridge assessment tools. So I'm going to just add one piece here. Um so you'll notice that we've had um over the course of years we've re received money for um and it was identified as readact but then um there's a certain
115like pot um certain eligible uses for those pots of money and you can carry them forward to use for as an example professional development for letters. Okay. So, so and then when that money is gone, then it's gone. But we're keeping that's why they're asking to to see how much I think school districts have left and then what the cost additional cost is maybe for school districts. And so this last year with that literacy aid, if that's what we use in future use, um one of the changes was uh training for our pair of professionals. And so next school year we will be working with uh that piece to make sure that pair of professionals who are working with students in the area of reading have been trained in evidence-based uh literacy as well. So
116that will be um those funds will be used for that. Again continuing on with fast assessments and then um as the district literacy piece that Janelle previously spoke about in the budget. Um number 12, screening summary. We had to give counts um how many were screened, how many were above benchmark, how many were below for K3. And then um we were not required to give student counts for 4 through 12 in year one. That's forthcoming. And then lastly, 13 and 14. Um, going back to that CAPD free basics assessment, um, we needed to report how many students were screened for dyslexia and what was that count for, um, students in grades K through three. And so, we were able to um, update and provide those numbers. Lastly, number 14 was optional for 2425 to give
117student counts for grades 4 through 12. And because it was optional, we did not report on those numbers. We have an idea. Um but because it wasn't required, we chose not to report that. One thing I want to um bring to your attention is the very bottom. Um a lot of the read um focuses around proficiency and then looking at that um dyslexia piece. And so I linked in there the Minnesota state statute of the definition of dyslexia for your reference. Um it is characterized by difficulties with accurate or fluent recognition of words and by poor spelling and decoding abilities. Our assessments that we are doing help identify characteristics of we are not diagnosing dyslexia. We identify characteristics and create a plan for those intervention needs and that is our role at the education level.
118Okay, that's the snapshot of the report. Again, when MDE um approves it, we'll get notification and then it'll go on our district website and the MDE website with that drop down. questions with that first go at the reporting for the new local literacy plan. All right, it's you and not me. It was a team effort. Um, this was not me just filling out. It really was a lot of people. Does it vary from year to year? I mean, you've been here three years. has, and I know you don't diagnose dyslexia, but is it starting to You seems like you hear that word more now. Is that getting to be more common, unfortunately, or Well, there's the educational term and then there's the the medical term. Um, and so that's why I wanted to put in
119the definition because when we use it educationally, it has a different um help, a different context than the medical field. So, but to Ron Ron to answer your question, you are hearing it more in legislation because that has been a bit um um a shift in focus at the legislature to make sure that students with dyslexia have or are identified, we have the ability to meet their needs. Um but it is the med it's kind of like a autism is a similar you might have an educational the um criteria for autism and you have a medical criteria for autism and they don't automatically mean one and the same. So it's it's similar just seems the word is outworn that uh people are made more aware. I don't know. Yep. I would agree with a lot
120of that stuff. It's just we're better at diagnosing it now. You know, there were dyslexic people back in the Middle Ages, but there's people who, well, they didn't read so much back then, but you know, even in the past 40 years, they just weren't good at reading. Sure. We had different labels for them back then. Anything else with here? We are all right. So, Rachel, come on up. Um, so we annually uh need to do a QC comp. And um I am excited to have Mrs. Nelson here um to do our Q comp update because there has been some um just I would say leadership growth within our QC comp uh committee to have you know off in years past I've just given you kind of the summary right and so we talked as a
121leadership team um so our the comp committee involves teacher leaders and administration and uh so Rachel is going to do the QC comp report for the board today. So, uh, thank you for being here and thank you for waiting so patiently to the the very tail end. I should have told you 7:45 try to keep it short and sweet because you've been here a long time. So, I just wanted to give you a little overview and history about the QC comp program. First of all, just um, some of you maybe heard the term before, but some of you are maybe unfamiliar. So Q comp is a voluntary program that allows school districts to design and collectively bargain a plan that meets the law enacted um through the Minnesota legislature in July of 2005. Our district
122plan was initially submitted and approved in 2016 which is quite a bit after um when the law was enacted. The 202425 school year is the ninth year that our district has participated in this program and approved programs receive $169 per student in state aid to fund their approved program. A district Yukon plan must have four components. The first component is teacher leadership positions and responsibilities. So that would include my role this year. I've been a co-coordinator for the QC comp um program a districtwide along with regrowthy and I'll talk a little bit more about those positions in a minute. The second component is job embedded professional development. The third component is teacher development and evaluation. Sometimes we refer to it as TE and the fourth component is performance pay and alternative salary. Currently, just so
123you know, there are 111 school districts and 71 charter schools, one intermediate district and one education district that have been approved to implement UC comp throughout the state. And there are 27 additional school districts that are on the waiting list for funding that um so other school districts would like to participate but are unable. Uh the annual report is required by state law. So this past school year has been one of transition for our current UC comp leadership committee. most of the teacher leaders that spearheaded that initial plan in 2016 have retired or left our district. And so what we were finding as we were reviewing our plan in the last year or so prior to this year was that there had been some things that had been lost in translation and as we lost
124some of that leadership that had the initial vision for our plan. Kind of like what you spoke to about the job descriptions, we lost some fidelity in our Q comp program. So, one of our primary goals this year was to review, update, and work on fidelity in our implementation of our plan. So, that was part of the reason that we added the co-coordinator position districtwide because we previously did not have a overall district leadership position that oversaw comp as a whole. We had a lot of individual leaders, but not an overall leader. So again, that was a shared position by me and Marie Broie. Uh so the first component that I spoke to was career advancement options. And so this year there were eight teacher leadersship positions in our plan. And those positions were filled
125by 17 different teacher leader individuals. And those teacher leaders all got an additional stipend for the role that they held. So some of those position roles were being on the committee, the coordinator, being an observation facilitator, a mentor, um and also just there's a lot of data collection and upkeep. So there are some positions at the elementary and and high school that are just making sure people are getting their paperwork turned in to provide accountability. Uh another goal of our committee was to expand our leadership. it had kind of dwindled down to a few rock steady leaders, but we wanted to start to incorporate some of the younger people and um the new staff that we've brought on. So, we had four continuing QC count leaders on our committee this year and we had three
126new leaders. So, that was great that we were able to bring on some new people. And in addition, we recruited a number of experienced teachers to be mentors for our new staff. One of the things that we were most proud of this year was that our district comp committee set goals uh for student growth and achievement at both the elementary school and secondary levels. And both buildings met or exceeded those goals. And that's actually the first time that has happened in our UCOM plan. It's a $50 stipend per teacher if they meet the goals and for the whole year. So these stipens are not huge. Um but in the past when the plan initially started we were in what would you call that? What was that called when MCA's or scores were low and you
127were like improvements we were because of our MCA scores we were in kind of a position there. So the goals that were set by that initial group were really lofty and we were never able to meet them. But using the new FastBridge data and some other data sources, we felt like we could better reflect what's happening in the classrooms with our teachers. And so this year, the goals that we set were more attainable. They were still um high goals, but they were more attainable. So, for example, um in grades six through eight, the goal was for students to increase from 61 to 65% um proficiency in their CBM reading assessments through Fastbridge. And we surpassed that goal. We met by 67. And the elementary goal was to have um 61 to 65% in the Fastbridge
128early reading and CBM reading assessments. And we also surpassed the goal and it was 71%. So even though those numbers still have a lot of room for improvement, it's exciting for our teachers to see that growth, use that data and um to get a a little reward for that. Second core component is job embedded professional development and this year part of a huge part of that is the polit um the professional the political learning communities. There we go. supposed to count but professional learning communities is known as PLC's and our UC compon leadership team did um two pres presentations at inser service days and we had a lot of discussion as a team how to help support our teachers and build and improve those professional learning communities and that's an ongoing project that we plan
129to continue through this next year. Uh the third component is teacher evaluation and as you know our teacher development and evaluation plan is currently being reviewed and there's some crossover. We have some committee members from QC comp that are also involved in this process because it's such a huge part of our QC comp plan. And the final component is of course the performance pay. So just so you have some idea if teachers complete all the parts the required parts the stipend is $1,000. So, it's $50 for the student growth. It's um $375 for participating in um $400 for professional responsibilities, $175 for completing their observations and evaluations with their peers, $50 for the studentwide achievement gains, and um $375 for setting a not I spoke to the district goals, but for setting a personal student
130learning goal for your own students and meeting that that goal and participating in that in the work that goes along with that. So, um we had um 100% of our staff were able to get that performance pay. Not all of them got the full thousand dollars, but 100% of our staff participated. And the one piece that was optional in our plan is committee involvement as a professional responsibility and we only had 88% of our staff participate on committees. But there are teachers who because of other responsibilities with coaching and stuff that it's just a really difficult um piece for them to participate in. So that piece is optional. But I think it's exciting that we've had 100% of our teachers engaged in the QC compon program and that we've increased our leadership capacity. It's it's
131great to see some of those new leaders coming on board and growing. We need more young leadership to continue in our profession. It's also really exciting to see teachers using more data to um talk about their work and to place value on what they're doing and to use that to make their instructional decisions. So again, the really exciting part was meeting that goal and and we've had a lot of changes, but it's been really positive. We have to update our plan um each year by August 31st. So hopefully I will have some TDN teacher development evaluation updates to include it in our plan and the state is also requiring a um cultural competency rubric to also be included in our plan. So that is a required update that we will have to make. Everything else
132we're planning to keep pretty similar for for next year. So hopefully what you're hearing is um again trying to align some of the work that's happening across the district. So when we're talking about using data to drive instruction, it parallels and there's value to the work that's happening within their professional learning communities. when we're talking about um having staff use their flex time and those pro their personal growth goals, how can it make be the meaningful based on all the other work that's happening across the district? And so, um it it's been fun to see that group come together um and and share kind of uh we're all moving in the same direction. It feels like the boat, you know, we're kind of got the boat aligned now. We're just getting the ores moving in
133in um with the right rhythm. So, it's exciting. So, thank you for thank you for that. Are there any questions for Rachel about coupon? So, there this doesn't need to be submitted formally, but it did have to be presented to the board. So, thank you for coming. Moving on to request for information. Just real quick, and I apologize to everybody. I I forgot to mention this uh last month. uh at the annual FFA uh banquet uh the school board was presented a certificate of appreciation for continued your service or helping. I apologize nothing else we are right