April 12, 2021 Regular Meeting of the Board of Education

001i'd like to call this meeting to order please join me in the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay the roll call this evening all members are present this evening and first up will be the open forum michael is going to help me out and read we do have one letter this evening in accordance with our board policy we do set aside 15 minutes to receive citizen input through this open forum segment of the board the letter we received is from william d markert on 7690 crestview drive prior lake in december the school board approved the commitment to equity and inclusion resolution this resolution is divisive and

002polarizing social justice and radical activist agendas and indoctrinating children in political ideologies should not be the role of any school board or educational staff even though the school board held sessions last year with a small group of individuals to develop the resolution the school board did not invite the entire community of taxpayers who pay for educating children to any open meetings to discuss the resolution and its impact to the educational curriculum in fact something this devices should have been put to a taxpayer vote to determine if taxpayers want to pay for actions taken as a result of adopting this resolution a few weeks ago i wrote to the school board and asked that they withdraw this resolution because of the harm it will inflict on educators and students my request was denied therefore i am

003requesting the school board be transparent with the taxpayers and address the following why didn't the school board solicit comments from all interested taxpayers related to this resolution versus the small group of people it unilaterally chose to develop it please post to the school board's website more detail as to what was discussed and or decisions made at the school board's february 22nd 2021 study session related to the meeting minute item labeled discussion regarding equity and inclusion and building cultural bridges in our community that was presented by superintendent stallow please post to the school board's website a detailed explanation of the training that the school board has already taken has already or will be asking all educators school administration and staff to attend related to this resolution and confirm whether this training will be mandatory to maintain

004employment or whether it will be voluntary please post to the school board's website the amount of money the school board intends to spend and or budget to implement any actions taken as a result from adopting this resolution including the amount of money already spent please post to the school board's website a list of vendors and materials used or will be used associated with training educators administration staff and students related to this resolution please post to the school board's website the action plans that have already been developed or will be developed related to this resolution and confirm the school board will keep taxpayers updated on the actions and results and finally please confirm or deny that the school board is contemplating or has already decided to use radical quote critical race theory end quote to train

005its educators administration staff and children okay next up is the approval of the agenda do i have a motion to approve the agenda so made by jonathan second second mary oh you're so loud mary now i hear you very clear and clear all right uh this is roll call jonathan hi enrique hi i julie aye mary aye michael hi all right that passes 7-0 the consent agenda the consent agenda items are considered to be routine in nature and will be enacted by one motion there'll be no separate discussion on these items unless a board member a citizen so requests do i have a motion to accept um well here let me i'll tell you what's on them uh tonight's consent agenda has uh the financials the check wire transfer disbursement summary the wire transfer eft

006and ach banking bank reconciliation statement from february 2021 the building bond investment report the monthly wire detail the monthly health and dental wire detail the monthly check detail the monthly ach detail approval of the school board minutes for the regular board meeting march 8th the study session march 22nd candidates for employment resignations terminations non-renewals the district retirements and the leaves of absence do i have a motion to accept the consent agenda so mate by michael ii by enrique one note i am going to say here is because it is this time of year that we always get our usually our annual retirements [Music] and i just want to make note of those i'm going to read the names carol achy 31 years of service paula case 33 years of service ellen dudsick 18 years of

007service kelly jonkey curtis 31 years of service bonnie mcgarry eight years of service deborah rubisch 15 years of service sandy timmerman 35 years of service leon weickel 20 years of service and michelle proson 25 years of experience officer of service and um i always do this every year it's 216 years of service so i really want to thank those individuals for serving our district and our families for that amount of time they will be very hard to replace okay i have a motion in a second [Music] jonathan all right enrique hi amy aye julie aye mary aye michael aye aye that passes seven zero resolution of acceptance of gifts do i have a motion um to accept the resolutions of gifts as listed soulmate that's amy mary mary sorry i'm not good at that do

008i have a second second enrique roll cabo jonathan hi enrique hi amy hi julie hi mary aye michael aye aye that passes seven zero next up is laker pride dr sala we have a few guests this evening for laker pride so as redtail ridge principal mrs barb yetzer makes her way to uh the podium we have a team of students who are also going to be with us this evening do you want them turn to work absolutely so i'm sorry but i just want to before the students can you back up just a little bit because we're going to be sure to get you on camera the camera the camera's up in the ceiling it's right up here so you might need to even come back a little bit more there we go so we're

009so excited to have you tonight every year we have a district theme and our district theme this year is we are pl sas which means prior lake savage area schools voices so tonight we have an opportunity to learn about the influence and the power of your voices as student leaders at red tail ridge so with that i'll hand it back miss yester would you like to present and then we'll introduce the students perfect perfect thank you we are so excited to be here tonight i am very excited to be here to share with you something wonderful we've been doing at red tail ridge since our february readathon our students along with our ptc raised over 26 000 and one of their big items that they wanted to do with some of the money is to

010purchase another piece of playground equipment and it has been probably seven years or so since we've gotten any new play ground equipment out there so what happened is mr brandel our dean of students kind of got this group of students together there's actually 16 students who became our red tail ridge playground committee board of trustees and they've met several times since february once we knew what our budget was about how much money we could spend on another piece of playground equipment they went out and they checked out the area of the playground that it's going to go on and they had packets it was very as you can see in the picture up there it was you know very professional they all had name plates and they had a a packet of of options and

011choices of pla of playground equipment and then they had to go off over a weekend and then they went and got to go visit other playgrounds with their families and so they brought back different ideas they narrowed it down to our three options right here this coming week we will be working on a video to present to the whole student body then the entire student body is going to vote on one of these three pieces of equipment and that will be what we will be doing for our new playground piece one person that i do want to recognize is carissa wassing she's our ptc president and i can't say enough about all of our ptc's in the district and how supportive they are for anything especially through distance learning and all of the things that

012were required and asked for of them and so i can't say enough so chrissa thank you very much and for being here tonight as well so dr stahlo if you want we will have each student um say their name and then we work we wanted to know i want to know what's their favorite part of being on this committee what has been their favorite experience well that sounds great i'm gonna just bring the microphone next to each of you and you have to speak kind of loud because of the masks and to make sure that our cameras can get this so we'll start right here my name is josie benson i'm in fifth grade and one of my favorite parts about being in the committee was being able to make decisions for the rest of

013the playground so kids can have a fun um playground so they can learn better and um have fun thank you my name is zane benson and i'm in second grade my favorite part about being in the community of trustees is that you're going to make decisions that not many other kids are going to do mega other kids get to have fun that is fantastic thank you my name is blake benson i'm in third grade and my favorite part is being able to vote of all the things we could do can't wait to see what the vote comes out when is the vote again next week okay so we'll let you know i'll put it in our newsletter and everything absolutely very good thank you you all better be looking for the red tail ridge newsletter

014my name is sophia muir and i'm in fifth grade and my favorite part of it is everything hi my name is ella watson and i'm in third grade and my favorite thing about this is i get to help in kindergarten and my favorite thing about it was everything my name is megan tate and i'm in third grade and my favorite part about it was being on the team my name is school hubble and i'm in first grade my favorite part was everything you should be so proud of yourselves for your leadership for organizing all this and ultimately for making a decision about what's best for kids and who else is better to make decisions about what's best for kids than our own kids and our students so thank you very much thank you for trusting

015the voices of our students in this decision making around real money and real impact on students so we have for each one of you a laker pride certificate which i'll ask ms yetzer to give to you and we cannot wait to hear what the outcome of this vote is thank you very much for being here tonight and i just want to mention one more thing is there are eight other members too of this committee so we thank them and they've got certificates as well so we're excited to see how this all plays out thanks thank you all for being here thank you parents for also bringing your children and your students and for supporting them through this really amazing process thank you very much thank you okay okay um next up there's nothing for unfinished

016business and then on to new business and the ready to learn plan dr sallo so report only excellent good evening everyone um thanks board members for allowing us an opportunity to share information with you our district covid 19 coordinator joe kabushik and i are happy to be here tonight to provide an update on where we are with our ready to learn plan please know that the transition plan that you're going to see this evening is the same plan along the same timeline that we talked about and presented at the march 8th meeting but there have been some things that have changed although our plan hasn't changed so we wanted to be sure to have an opportunity to share some updates with you some of the things that have changed since march 8th and again this

017plan was approved by our incident command team as well as our regional support team even knowing that some of the data has changed it still is a plan that's supported at this point we do know that cases in the county and in the state have increased and we also know that the b117 variant is about 50 to 60 percent of the current cases are with that variant we also know that there are more cases in student age children so one of the things that we really want to share and joe will share more of this in his portion of the presentation is some of the important work that we continue to need to do with our families and partner with them to ensure that we can keep our kids in school because this is a

018really exciting week as we are bringing back our secondary students to in person but we want to be sure that we can keep them in school we want to be sure that we can keep our activities and athletics happening especially some of our big deal things like prom like the theater play that's coming forward like some of the the athletics and other activities and graduation so with that i'll just remind you of the timeline that we have in front of us again at the secondary level today was a transition planning day for our staff so students did not have school we also had a copin 19 testing day for our staff tomorrow we will be administering the a.c.t for all of our juniors in person at prior lake high school and because of that we

019will have a distance learning day for our sixth seventh eighth ninth tenth and twelfth graders and they'll begin quarter four then in distance learning um wednesday was originally planned as a grading day we always have that between quarters and we're between that third quarter and fourth quarter so we maintain that date and then uh secondary students will be back to four days in person learning on thursday so with that i want to hand this over to joe to continue going through some of the other information thanks joe thank you borah share rule dr stahlo board members as i go through this some of this stuff will be a little bit of review but i think it's important for our families to hear this as we prepare to transition our secondary students back um first talking

020about the minnesota safe learning plan we know that there has been some changes to the learning plan throughout the year in the beginning of the year we were very much tied to those county numbers as the year has gone on that has been one of the changes that has happened we continue to watch those county numbers and i'll share those current numbers with you shortly but it's really shifted away from that being the primary number to that being one of the numbers we look at and they really want us focusing on our local numbers and so we spend a lot of time each week looking at our case rates for our students and our staff weekly and so i'll share those with you and as far as updated numbers soon people continue to ask now

021and it's kind of a mind shift of is there a hard fast number is there a number that means you must make a change and in the new safe learning plan the really only hard fast number there is is the five percent number and that five percent number is in reference to if you have five percent of your student population that is out due to covid like symptoms as well as the influenza symptoms and illnesses and so we are tracking our attendance as one of the other pieces that the incident command looks at on a weekly basis what you see here right here is something that can be found on our district dashboard and what that is is this shows the number of student and staff cases that we have each week and so this

022was last updated just prior to spring break as you can see our staff numbers have remained pretty low for all of quarter three we are averaging about one and a half to two cases a week for our staff and obviously one of the key components to that is the vaccination piece that i'll talk about a little bit later when it comes to our student cases they have been varying each week as high as 15 for two weeks in a row as you can see in the middle there and most recently right before break we ended at a number of 12. the number that we see or the graph we see right here also can be found on our district website and this is showing the scott county case rates that we see so frequently being

023released the most recent number the state released for the week ending march 27th was actually a number of 58.71 as we have heard from scott county and they're predicting that number is projected to continue to rise they do expect that number to be over 60 this week when it is released as we're looking at bringing back our secondary students we continue to look at these mitigation strategies and the key thing to remember is that the mitigation strategies don't eliminate exposure they are designed to minimize transmission so we're trying to prevent the transmission of the virus between individuals in our building and so the first one that we've been doing since january when we return with all elementary students in person is the need for our staff to currently use two layers of mitigation when working

024with or around students and as we there's been some conversation about if staff are vaccinated do we continue to do that and mdh feels very strongly right now due to that variant that dr stahlo mentioned which is more transmissible that we continue to use those two layers of mitigation we'll continue to watch and if changes can be made in the future that would be great but right now we'll continue that process one of the things that changes significantly at the secondary level as we transition to bringing all secondary students back is our distancing as we bring back all students we'll be looking at using a three foot spacing as opposed to a six foot spacing between our students one of the challenges of this is the fact that the definition of a close contact does

025not change and so even though our students are sitting three feet away from each other the definition of a close contact is still within six feet for more than 15 minutes and so people need to understand that being back in school full time is if we have a positive case it is going to lead to more close contacts and contact tracing is something that's going to take significant time as we look at the secondary level and we have six class periods that those students are sitting in we'll be looking at seating charts for all of those spaces their seating charts at lunch bus if it is something that the student uses to try to identify those close contacts and so because that number is going to be larger we are going to be utilizing some

026different ways of notifying our families and so we'll be using our school messenger as a way to communicate with those families where the student is truly a close contact we want to make sure that those families are notified right away if it's a situation where they need to come pick the student up or to let families know if they're a high school student they may be driving home but we want them to know right away that their child was identified as a close contact and that they would need to quarantine as we look at that quarantine one of the pieces we had shared with you last time was the fact that we are allowing that shortened 10-day quarantine and again the 10-day quarantine we are using for a couple reasons first and foremost we want

027our students in the building and so we are looking at our specific data to see the students that we have needed to quarantine what were the rates at which they ended up testing positive or not that was a big role that we looked at we also like the idea of the numbers being consistent where it if you test positive you are in a 10-day isolation and now this way we have 10-day quarantine for those that are close contact so it eliminates some of that confusion of is it 10 is it 14 the only time that 14-day still comes into play is if it is a household contact and our nurses are doing a fabulous job of reaching out to families and having these conversations but i would say if there's one ask i have of

028families is to please understand as frustrating as it is when you receive that phone call from school saying that your child is going to have to stay home because they need to quarantine we need to understand that the nurses are doing exactly what they are asked to do they're following the mdh expectations and mandates of the quarantine and i know because i've had conversations with parents too and it's mostly frustration but please we ask that you work with our staff as we work our way through this process as i mentioned earlier vaccinations have been a huge piece that we've been continuing to work with all of our staff have had the opportunity to receive a vaccination some of them are still working their way through that because they needed to delay their vaccination for a

029variety of reasons but since we last spoke the state of minnesota has now opened up vaccinations to all minnesotans 16 years and older that means that we now have a large number of high school students who are vaccine eligible we are currently working with scott county to see if we can work a partnership with them similar to what they did with our staff to see if we can figure out a way to provide access for our students 16 years and older for vaccinations and so hopefully we'll have more information on that soon we still continue to test our staff that is an option that all staff have i know that we had staff participating in that process today as we return back from spring break that was available to all of our staff in each

030building and as we've mentioned before there are opportunities in the community for students and families to test through various community resources as dr sallo said we're we're getting towards the finish line we can see the light at the end of the tunnel and it's a very exciting place to be but we need to make sure that everyone is remaining vigilant we want prom in some capacity for our seniors and juniors at the high school we want graduation for our seniors we have a full spring full of sporting events and activities and clubs that we want our students to be able to participate in in order for that to happen we need to make sure that we stay vigilant and continue to follow these necessary strategies at least for the short term to get us to

031that point and that includes as you can see there we have to continue to wear those face coverings practicing that social distancing and most importantly if people are feeling ill we need people to remain at home if you're feeling ill that is the number one thing that people can do is to remain home away from others lastly we're continuing to monitor the numbers at the local level as i said that's one of the key pieces we're using to try to help us determine what's going on in our schools and what we should continue to do our goal is to have our students in the building we want them there i can tell you the conversations i'm having with students teachers everyone is very excited about secondary students returning but we want to make sure we're

032doing it safely so we ask that everyone continue to be vigilant continue to contact the schools if there's a positive case or a student is not feeling well so that we can make sure that everyone is able to safely return to school thanks joe any questions at all can't help but remember the fact that you said a seating chart for lunch for secondary or high school students how's that going to work great question so at the middle school that's actually already done the middle school has been using a seating chart at the for lunch for a while at the high school what we want to do is we want to provide the high school students the opportunity to have a little flexibility with where they sit but at the same time we need to have

033daily documentation and so on each table there's going to be a large qr code and the expectation is that students will scan the qr code and they'll enter it that will then tag their email it will also time stamp so we know the exact lunch that they were in and the table they were sitting at so we can see the four or six students that are sitting at the table depending on the size of the table and then we'll do that each day and so we can always reference back to that i like that thank you for the update if you have any update on prom or graduation that you can share i'd be curious about that and then i'm also wondering about if we have students in the 16 to 18 age range and

034they've been vaccinated and they're 14 days past their final vaccination are they required to quarantine upon exposure all right i'll answer the second question first and then i'll move to the first question so the answer is yes if we have students 16 to 18 years old who are fully vaccinated so as you said 14 days post and a reminder that our 16 and 17 year old students are only able to receive the pfizer vaccine that's the only one that is approved for 16 and 17 year old 18 years or older can take any of the vaccines however not however and as you said it is correct that those students would not need to quarantine if they are fully vaccinated the 14 days post their second dose or their only dose if they were the johnson

035and johnson vaccine as far as updates on prom and graduation i can tell you that dr bisek and myself have met multiple times with our high school prom committee we actually went ahead and sent out a survey to all of our students to try to get some input on what they have and so we're actually meeting with them again in a couple of days to look at the results of that survey we have a date set it is saturday may 22nd and we're hoping that we're going to be able to have some activities unfortunately there are some pretty tight restrictions that mdh has placed on us when it comes to prom that includes they want students in pods of no more than six and then those pods of six have to remain more than six

036feet apart from all of the other pods with no intermingling of pots that can be challenging for students at a prom situation and so that's why we really laid it out for students to say this is what our requirements are what are some options we can provide you both from a grand march standpoint into options after that and so we collected their feedback we're going to meet as a prom committee like i said on wednesday and hopefully we'll be sending out the more detailed answer in a little bit and as far as graduation kind of similar to that we have our graduation date i know that dr bisek was working on a letter that will be going home to all seniors kind of laying out our date our makeup date and what our options are

037because again we have current restrictions as to our restrictions are not around our students at the graduation because if we have them on our football field because we already do the outside graduation they're considered the participants very similar to a football soccer lacrosse type of game it's the spectator piece and we're really trying to work our way through the number of spectators that we would be able to have at that and we also know that's not until june 11th and there's going to be a lot of changes or continued changes around guidance with that so we want to lay out here's what we know here's what we can plan on and then we will also continue to make changes as we work our way through thank you thanks joe um next up is the uh

0382122 online provider application dr stella excellent thank you again um since the beginning of the pandemic and really throughout the 20 2020-2021 school year the district has been in the planning stages of working with the department of the minnesota department of education to become an online provider to offer elementary and secondary courses and curricular to students we now act in december we were provided formal communication to the mde and official notification from them of our intention to become an online provider and we the mde has accepted that notification and we've been working in partnership with them on the application process as part of the application process we do need to seek board approval to complete the application process and then submit the completed application to mde and that's almost ready to go this is one

039of those final steps of this pending the mde's approval then we can continue to work through some of those logistics in terms of if there's interest and if we're able to offer an online experience a continued distance and learning experience for our students what's important to note is along with this in both in the legislation right now is still the possibility of offering districts the flexibility to continue to provide distance learning as we currently are or in some format that works for districts moving forward we're hoping we have that flexibility because that allows us to lean into some of the work that we've done this year that has worked really well and there are some differences with being an online provider that would would be barriers to some of that so we wanted to be

040sure that we were in a position however to have that opportunity to provide that again if there's interest as we move forward so this evening i am seeking uh board approval for us to complete the application process and submit that to mde and we would be submitting that very shortly okay i'll take a motion in a second and then we'll have questions anybody has any do i have a motion to approve um the online provider application homemade by mary second second second by jonathan um any questions comments mary um so we're asking uh and this is just my concern here because obviously there's a lot of online providers right now that have a specific curriculum and other schools have already applied for that prior to the pandemic but it looks like we're probably not the

041only school that's going out there and asking for them to amend those current rules to to continue going with what actually was happening by default uh through no fault of our own or whatever uh for the past year do you know if they gave any indication if they do approve our application this will be temporary because of the circumstances uh is it like a limited time or is this something we're actually asking the department of education to actually modify their current online uh certification so if we if we um get accepted as an online provider we can be an online provider that's we can do that moving forward and i don't know for sure if that's a three-year license or ongoing i'm not exactly sure what that is in terms of if the legislation makes

042legislators make a motion to allow us to continue being in distance learning i'm anticipating that would just be for a one year so ideally the legislation legislators allow us to continue the flexibility of distance learning and we get approval for the online provider that would allow us more time after this one year of maintaining or continuing with distance learning to see what else we want to have in place as an option for our families moving forward you know just a kid and i know that there's they've been talking about this is there actually a bill out there where they're trying to do this just for the next year the flexibility of that i think it's within the summer school bill and with that flexibility yep okay thank you and certainly board if you uh if

043you approve uh this request um once we know more about what next year looks like we certainly will be bringing that back to you and we've got a lot of work to do to see you know first of all will there be any interest and then we'll have to look at what we're able to and what we want to do in order for for that to happen well i know like prior to the pandemic we were obviously thinking about i'm thinking about doing this too as well so really what we're approving is just for us to be an online provider based on what mde right now their normal formal application and then whatever they give us for guidance is basically what we're gonna i mean obviously whatever we're gonna have to do so whether i

044think i know when we talked about this earlier it's i mean i know we want to be able to have as much flexibility as we can on our end and run it very similar to what we've done this past year to give kids options right and it does look a little different being being an approved online provider there are restrictions to what we're doing right now so yes what what you're proving tonight is for us to submit the application the application that we are bringing forward is for our elementary it is comprehensive so it would look very similar to the distance learning academy that we have right now and again that's going to be needing to take a look to make sure we have whatever that minimum number amount is at multi-age if need be

045so there's a lot of things to be considered but the elementary portion of this would look very similar to the digital learning academy that we have the distance learning academy the second dairy component is just some courses it's not all of our courses that could be done in an online format it's supplemental the elementary is comprehensive so it would supplement some of their courses again that's different than what we're currently doing right now i mean i do think even pre pandemic it would be nice to have the flexibility for our families because i know there's different situations out there and whether kids are doing part-time or whatever i mean that that they're able to do that within our home district i think would be yep and there there are some different funding pieces on this

046so it's not it's not at all a win win-win for us but it does provide that choice and it gives us an opportunity to continue to build some options but we would definitely have some work to do in terms of what that means for for funding and to be sure that it is a sustainable option for our families well and students that do this would obviously get a prior high school diploma correct which is not all i mean yep we can't do that with everybody so okay all right any other questions mine was answered okay i have one more terry brought up a good uh dr stahlo brought up a good um uh question there because i know that concurrent to everything going on right now and i haven't been paying that close attention last

047couple weeks there is is there available status right now are not that i'm aware of julie do you know anything yeah i have not heard any changes with that okay thank you okay any other questions okay we have a motion and a second roll calpo jonathan i enrique hi amy hi julie hi mary hi michael i that passes seven zero all right next up is our budget adjustment recommendation right hello again board members thank you very much tonight we are going to be bringing forward the results of the budget adjustment process in which we have been engaged so on the oh i'm sorry jim we're going to pull that up thank you perfect um the outcomes this evening it are that we will bring forward the recommendations for the two million dollar budget adjustment target

048that the board directed us to do and seek action from the board on the proposal the priority of our budget work is always to align our resources to our strategic plan as we seek to provide an excellent education focused on the work associated with our strategic directions which ultimately help ensure that our mission is realized by all of our students well the formal timeline of the budget reduction process began in february there was certainly much work that has been done throughout the past year to plan for and prepare for the current year budget as well as planning for next year's budget as you can see on the timeline that you've seen multiple times now tonight really is the end of this process as we seek action from the board and then continue to build forward

049our budget as an overview we engaged in this budget adjustment process to help ensure financial stability and over the next two years solved for a four million dollar budget deficit the board provided direction for a two million dollar budget adjustment as we determine the 2021 22 budget this will spend down our fund balance to approximately 8.5 percent which is within but at the lower end of the 8 to 12 percent fund balance policy as part of the budget adjustment process we wanted to ensure that we gathered uh multiple stakeholder input from across the district we did this through two primary steps first of all principals site leaders and department leaders hosted a staff meeting where the budget information from the february 22nd board study session was shared after those meetings all staff members were invited

050to submit budget adjustment ideas which were collected across the district once the initial input opportunity was closed the data and ideas were desegregated by each school as well as some departments and the district service center principals and then other program and department leaders then met with their building instructional leadership teams their team leads or at the dsc departments to review district ideas and those ideas that came specifically from their buildings or departments they discussed ideas and then collaboratively submitted the ideas each team prioritized and felt was best to come forward again in the initial process inviting all staff members to have an opportunity for input we received 198 total responses this slide shows the breakdown of what percent of the overall responses came from each building or department and you can see some buildings had

051a lot of responses others had had fewer but we wanted to just get a sense of where the responses as we compiled district-wide responses came throughout the district those 198 ideas centered around the following themes administration staffing and substitute reductions and we'll talk about this later in the presentation curriculum and professional development work and again you will see a recommendation about the district staff development that that is coming forward early retirement incentives we reviewed this concept and it wasn't feasible for us to consider this idea this year there were some suggestions and input around the fund balance and about the ideas about the board spending down more of the fund balance which is exactly the direction that you gave us at one of our last meetings originally you had provided direction for a 2.5 million

052dollar budget adjustment and you agreed to spend down more of the fund balance while also maintaining the policy parameters when you directed a two million dollar budget adjustment target printing software waste reduction and transportation were also some ideas that came forward and we spent a lot of time reviewing printers and printing and again determined at this point that while you will not see any of these ideas reflected in these recommendations we do have work to do and we want to continue to do that work as we look to cost save and be more paper light reducing the number of copies that we use throughout the district to better align with our district being in east stem district technology levy there were several ideas submitted about going to our community with the technology levy or a

053capital projects for technology request to help ensure stable funding for student technology health and safety staffing infrastructure and we'll be discussing this at our finance facilities and long-range planning meeting next week and then continuing that conversation with the full board there were also some ideas that came forward about implementing a four day week with one day a week in distance learning this idea was not something that i entertained i do not believe it's best for students nor will it be a significant cost saver additionally administrators didn't support it and i did not i was rather confident that this would not be the direction of the board or our families as well but i wanted you to get a sense of the multitude of ideas and the themes that came forward from those responses so after

054reviewing the input working through the process costing analysis and impact tonight i'm recommending the following budget adjustments i want to thank everyone who contributed to the process throughout and also those who shared their perspectives with us between the presentation on the initial budget recommendations and tonight i want folks to know we certainly value perspective and we know that these are very difficult decisions to make and impact people in very real and different ways so first of all um the first thing that you'll see here is our sr2 federal funds as part of our budget adjustment we will use these esser federal funds which are one-time dollars it's a one-time funding source we'll use this as part of our budget adjustment the original estimated allocation for the sr2 funds was 772 000 so that was the

055amount that came forward in the previous presentation the actual allocation that we will be provided is six hundred and eighty three thousand five hundred and forty six dollars the next thing is the annual right sizing of staff to enrollment and jim is gonna speak to this a little bit more uh later in the presentation but you can see the 10.2 fte um there administrative reductions i am recommending the elimination of the assistant superintendent position as well as a one-year hold on the hiring of the activities director this will not be a reduction in activities in athletics but a reduction to the high school administrative team i've asked joe kobuschik to assume the roles and responsibilities of the activities director and to work with interim activities director beth fuller and the activities department to continue to

056advance the excellent work that they are doing in terms of programming and opportunities for our students in terms of achievement and integration as you recall we did levy for an additional four hundred thousand dollars of achievement in integration dollars or revenue our plan is to use these dollars to support translation improvements and access to information for our students and our families additionally we will use some of these new funds to advance our equity and inclusion work through a new equity leadership position we're in the process of reviewing job descriptions roles and responsibilities researching and visiting with other districts to determine what would be best for our district additionally we are using some of the new revenue to help offset a portion of the salaries of our elementary deans the work of our deans help us

057reach our attendance goals students achievement and development goals gap closing goals and academic goals as part of our achievement and integration plan i would assume that in may we will come forward to the board with a job description for that equity and inclusion position to the next slide because we did not spend as much as we had anticipated in our district staff development this year we're recommending to use again as one-time funds in our district staff development to support portions of salaries and benefits from some of the staff who provide these supports across the district and then the last recommendation is prior lake high school is going to collaborate and work with human resources to pilot support and supervision differently for substitute teachers again in light in addition to realizing a cost savings this is

058a direction that we had talked about pursuing over the last couple of the years and we believe that especially after this year our students and staff have some flexibility that we can do some things differently with that i do want to remind you that we also did originally have a recommendation uh regarding some efficiencies and with some technology and software and because of the feedback of board members we have i have eliminated that recommendation moving forward so with that it really concludes the budget recommendations i'm going to ask executive director of human resources jim quorum to share some additional staffing information and then we're certainly happy to answer any questions that you have after board action this evening we will then communicate with staff tomorrow depending upon the outcome of this meeting so with that

059jim i'll hand it over to you thank you okay and this is something that you've all seen before and i think we just wanted to emphasize this one more time that when we went through the process and we came up with at 10.2 um a large majority of that seven 7.2 of that came from the elementary so i the whole point of this graph is to continue to show that we were really right sizing we weren't in a budget cut mode in the sense that we were having people take on more responsibilities than they normally would that this is about a student-to-teacher ratio and using the elementary as an example because secondary would be very similar it's to show that after the right sizing based upon the current numbers as the board gave us parameters

060to work within uh current numbers that that average class size in the elementary has remained like i usually say boringly flat over the last number of years which shows that you've been the the staffing patterns have been right for a long time and trying to mean that consistent average class size in the elementary so okay um let's um anybody have any questions we can go with questions first anybody mary go ahead um could you go into a little bit more detail about the achievement integration are those funds that we use last year for something and then this year they're the same and we just didn't i i'm that was kind of confusing to me no yeah thanks mary for the question if you recall we did a levy for additional dollars so we have about

061four hundred thousand dollars of additional revenue this year so in the the new things that we'll do with that money is uh we've allo allocated a portion of that for translation services that's an area that over the last several years we've recognized we need to do better in and figure out what those better services are and how to use money accordingly to make sure that our families have access to information the other new piece of that will be an equity and inclusion leader and again that's something that we're researching right now and will bring forward to you and i think there's another portion of some other resources in terms of the new money but then the additional monies that will be used to offset the rest of that new dollar will be portions of the

062elementary dean positions that would have been paid before out of our general fund but we'll be able to have a savings in our general fund by utilizing some of those achievement and integration dollars again because of the work that our elementary deans do just like our secondary deans who also a portion of their salary is currently being paid for out of integration and achievement funds but because a portion of what they do the work that they do with students to support students and families is aligned to the goals of achievement integration achievement integration is considered a restrictive fund we can't just use it for anything right you go into the restrictions of how it's supposed to be used because otherwise it kind of sounds like we're hiring new as we're going through these reductions and

063i'm just trying to make sure that everyone understands that so one of the things that we have to do each year is we have to submit a plan to mde align to our achievement and integration dollars and that really is about you know closing gaps and advancing achievement looking at attendance to make sure that that we're supporting students and their families as they're moving forward but you're right mary those funds have to be used aligned to those achievement integration dollars or goals that we establish thank you any other questions comments there's another question but i don't know if anyone else did on the slide and i mentioned this i i did and i appreciate the staffs you know very willingness to answer a lot of questions leading up to this but i was gonna ask

064uh terry or jim if you could go back to that the label of stipends on the slide before this and and just explain um that particular term just because it is a broad term and i know you went over it a little bit on the slide but i was wanting to know if you could actually explain what you meant by the staff development uh piece i think this the specific of that is some of the wolf ridge type-ins that we we didn't pay from this year because the trip did not happen right so i i i am not one i believe that is the only siphon amount i think so jeff isn't here but um that was a about half of the cost because we didn't go up there so we still paid a portion

065of the stipend because our amazing teachers um designed with wolfridge and experience a home experience so they still did some work and still did a bunch of planning in order to have an opportunity for our students but it wasn't that overnight some of the costs that we normally would have with that stipend and that is something that we worked with the bargaining unit on to establish i was just trying to clarify because that's what i thought it was when i had my questions answered but i just wanted to make sure that when you were going through the slide that the stipend itself didn't come from the lack of professional development from the staff yeah thank you okay um jonathan just just a comment um you know this is everybody's least least favorite part of their

066job without a doubt and so i'm grateful to the effort we have had a minimal impact um to our classrooms and that is something that we asked you for and so we appreciate that um i i do think we always look at when we have um when we look at our budget and where we spend money in the and the how thinly how thin we operate at the administrative level um and to be having a position gone is just going to put more work on all the folks who are still there and so i do appreciate that in the in the process and so i just feel good about where we are hopefully we can recover and be in a better situation when we're having this conversation next spring uh michael i just want to

067add a comment i want to add a comment also or a couple and that is for those who maybe um are listening and very focused on the prior lake savage budget process um for those of us who are following what's happening statewide this is happening in districts all over the state not only was coveted impact but a lot of the funds that are coming in are one-time allocations these aren't long-term budget sustaining allocations and they're specifically earmarked and so what's tempting to say the government just threw a lot of money monies at public education it's very specific and very limited in addition we continue as all those districts do in the state to struggle with the fact that not only do we look at a percentage of increase for our general fund that is not

068always there but inflation continues to go up and our funding is not tied to inflation so again we are not the only district struggling with this but that gap widens every year so it is not we are fighting some things that we just can't win um when we do this and we are not alone and i think if you're not someone who's attending regular education meetings or listening to state updates it looks like prior lake is just struggling and you just really need we need the context to understand those larger issues that we are trying to work within and we are not alone okay mary um yeah so just to add on to the statements before we vote first of all whenever you do a reduction in staff you are reducing people and that is

069something that we need to take into account whether it is a non-renewal voluntary resignation whatever they're still affecting individuals and for that we should take that very seriously and as jonathan said whenever you reduce any staff you are piling on the work to everyone else it's it's the same with any business and i've been through multiple reductions in force in my companies and over time and it's an incredibly difficult decision it's not one that we should make light of because it's a right sizing or anything like that um so the bottom line is that people are going to have to do the same work under under already strenuous circumstances um i'd also want it taken to acknowledge the morale issue this year i did feel that the survey and the process of involvement with the

070teachers were better but i haven't i have to think that given the fact that we were doing this even before the pandemic which is not the same as other districts and there's some districts that aren't going through any of these reductions right now but i think that some of the lack of participation in the survey is really a result of historical concerns and a reflection of how this has been dealt with historically however i was fairly i did like the review of the way the survey went out to try and get the feedback from the staff and from administration this year um you know we do need to to self-reflect here the the the buck does stop with the board and we do make our own rules and we do need to have in the

071near future a long overdue reflection of how some of the situations of the variables that are within our control that we do sit down and review that uh we try to do long-term strategy a little bit better understanding the the roadblocks that are in our way and you know we try to teach our students that we you know about critical thinking and i think this is a teachable moment for ourselves as a board um the other thing is that um you know first of all i just want to say that last year um i didn't vote for the reduction uh simply because i didn't think we had exhausted all options and this year i think we did i'm i'm happy that we included administration in it uh that's something that we asked for last year

072and didn't happen and this year it did happen and i appreciate the sacrifices that are being made um i would like to however as we go forward uh somehow or another uh start to engage a lot uh more of the feedback from staff in particular and from the educators that are on the front line in order to help us lead better and have less of a of a situation going forward um you know we we have some options that we could have done coming into this that didn't occur like a tech levy so we need to make sure that we take advantage of those going forward and that we do what we can to prevent these types of situations from occurring anyone else um i'll just make a couple comments um i very much appreciated

073the process i think it was comprehensive and thorough and i think we were clear in our direction with the cuts with administration so i think that's been echoed by everyone that's commented so far and i appreciate that i do know um you know there are people i think as everyone's pretty much said behind each and every one of these decisions which makes it incredibly difficult a lot of people who have served the district for many years and so i just want to recognize that and lastly i'd say um as far as engaging others um i'm gonna look to the the finance group on that um i think that was one of the recommendations coming forward out of the beginning of the year when we talked about you know i think it's important that we hear

074from educators in that are in the system but i also think it's important that we hear from our public and getting community more engaged around what how funding works for our schools what it means and what these decisions at a state level mean to districts i think the vast majority of districts are in very much similar situation as us and it's been expounded because of the pandemic um we wouldn't have been in this situation if we didn't have a pandemic i don't think we were right on target as of you know june july last year so um you know i just this is uh i've been sitting here for 11 years it's not unique um this is a bigger problem than probably like savage but we are forced to deal with it and so um

075i do agree that we're going to have to have more conversations around funding a tech levy or whatever operating capital and i think that's you know been talked about already so we do have to use more of our mechanisms to be able to fund education okay with that being said i'm going to look for a motion in a second to approve the budget adjustment recommendation do i have a motion you have the motion no no i actually i did discussion first okay do i motion i moved by michael second second by enrique the roll call vote uh jonathan hi enrique hi amy aye julie hi mary i michael hi i that passes 7-0 okay personnel items jim all right chair well board members superintendent stylo um on that list of not favorite things to do

076another one of those is then the actions required based upon the vote you just took and so i have several of those items tonight and so i'll go through each of them and try to provide some context around them before the vote the first one is the list of non-renewals non-renewals can happen for various reasons it can be because of licensure it can be because of proposed reductions it could be for performance it could be various reasons why staff are are non-renewed these are probationary teachers which means normally it's in their first three years of teaching that requires action by you but does not require resolution by you so the first one is a comprehensive list of all of our licensed non-renewal recommendations and i bring them forward to you and and i would say

077that this is one of the most difficult things i think for hr folks to do my staff takes it very seriously and and and ensures that it is as accurate as it possibly can be and that we do it with a sense of respect for the people that are going to be affected their livelihoods affected by that so we take that very seriously and i commend my staff for the efforts they've done in the last couple weeks to to get this just as absolute right as we possibly can so i bring that list forward to you for your approval okay um do i have a motion to approve the probationary non-renewals as listed so made by jonathan second second by amy any comments or questions yep um i know jim i had asked you questions

078about this earlier too but if somebody's looking from the outside it does look like we're releasing a large number of staff and understanding the hr side of it some of these are people that have to bring their contract to an end each year and then it's renewed the next year for example with licensure issues at lola delago so if someone were looking at the board packet they may think oh they just talked budget and now we're letting go of all these staff do you want to just speak to that first sure um there's several reasons oftentimes a teacher may be in the state of minnesota we have tiered licensure and if you are in a tier one license a tier two license there are very specific criteria around how long you can remain employed and

079a lot of our teachers in unique programmings like you mentioned are on a tier one or tier two license that requires us to non-renew because it's only good for a year it's very specific to that position in that building at that grade level whatever we posted for it's good for that year then the process we need to post to see if we can find the the context would be to see if there's someone licensed in that area most of those are so unique enough we normally don't um and oftentimes the people that we currently have in those positions are the best qualified and so it's a process that we automatically have to go through for six or seven of these that's just related to strictly licensure it isn't that we there isn't a position there

080it isn't that we don't want them it's that's a process that we have to go through each year annually thank you same things we did last year thanks yep okay any other questions all right um roll combo michael hi mary hi julie hi amy hi enrique hi jonathan aye aye that passes 7-0 the first resolution to bring forward is the resolution reducing and discontinuing programs and positions this is a required resolution that anytime we have staff who are tenured would be affected by any reductions that we're doing you would need to bring that forward as a reduction in either programs or a discontinuation of a position there would be two positions affected by that because we do have one in both individuals have continuing contract status therefore action have to be taken on both of

081them so the first resolution is about actually reducing the position or the program okay this would require it to be red and a roll call vote yeah so the way this presents it says the board member's name so i'm going to take the motion and the second first and then i'll read the resolution board members you see the resolution in your packet do i have a motion to approve the resolution for reducing and discontinuing the programs and positions of assistant superintendent and secondary french teacher so made by mary second julie all right board member france introduced the following resolution and moved its adoption be it resolved by the school board of independent district 719 as follows that the following programs and positions or portion thereof be discontinued one assistant superintendent 1.0 fte and two the

082secondary french teacher reduced from 1.0 to 0.6 fte that is the resolution and we have a motion and a second this is a roll call vote jonathan i enrique hi amy aye julie aye mary aye michael aye aye that passes 7-0 the next two resolutions are related to unfortunately the individuals assigned to those positions and that is required to be read uh by name and for the reasons for the ula the unrequested leave of absence so the first one is for resolution proposing placement on requested leave of absence for the french teacher again this would be read out loud and a roll call vote okay i'm going to make the motion myself i'll look for a second at the end i'm changing the way i'm doing it here board member ruel introduces the following resolution

083and moved its adoption be it resolved by the school board of isd 719 as follows that is proposed that anna steedman a 1.0 fte teacher be placed on unrequested leave of absence without pay or fringe benefits at the end of the 2020 2021 school year effective june 30th 2021. said action is taken in accordance with the 2019-201 collective bargaining agreement between the district and the plsca and pursuant to minnesota statute 122 a dot 40 sub 10. the grounds for this action is as follows a a lack of pupils b financial limitations c discontinuance of position namely a point for fte french teaching position i have a motion do i have a second second by amy any questions or comments okay this is roll calvo jonathan hi enrique hi amy hi julie hi mary aye michael

084aye aye that passes 7-0 and the final resolution is proposing placement on requested leave of absence for the assistant superintendent okay i will motion this one board member royal introduces the following resolution and moves its adoption be it resolved by the school board of isd 719 as follows that it is proposed that jeffrey holmberg a 1.0 fte assistant superintendent be placed on unrequested leave of absence without pay or fringe benefits at the end of 2020 2021 year effective june 30th 2020 one said action is taken in accordance with the 2020 through 2022 collective bargaining agreement between the district and the prior lake savage administrators association and pursuant to minnesota state statute 122 a dot 4.0 subject uh subordinate 10 i think the grounds for this action are as follows a financial limitations b discontinuance of

085position namely a 1.0 fte assistant superintendent be it for the resolve the notice of proposed placement on unrequested leave together with a copy of this resolution be forwarded to mr holmberg be it further resolve that mr homer be notified of the offer to be employed effective july 1st 2021 in the director of teaching and learning position pursuant to the wages and benefits apple applicable to that position mr holmer shall have until may 15 2021 to accept or reject the reject employment in that position i have a motion do i have a second second second who is that second over there mary enrique mary did you yeah mary okay that's the second um this is a roll call vote michael hi mary hi julie hi amy hi enrique hi jonathan aye aye that passes 7-0 okay

086on to the next one um we have two and two final agreements for the 20 22 terms and conditions and negotiating season if you want to think of it that way quite quite a bit after the fact of the school year starting but we got there and the the one that i want to make mention of initially is the peras the minnesota school employees association the terms of the agreement are abbreviated in your board packet and it is consistent with all of the parameters that the board has given us through this entire time in regards to salary increases along with any other parameters which you included in there so that would be the first one that i would bring forward included also in here is the final individual contract which we have that that done

087as well and that again is consistent with all other individual assistant director and director contracts as well so i bring them forward for your consideration okay um is everyone comfortable taking these together okay yeah all right um i'm looking for a motion to approve um the recommendation below for the minuscule school employees association um and the contract for that as well as the contract for the assistant director of operations and transportation as listed in your packet do i have a motion homemade by mary second by enrique any comments or questions okay seeing none roll call vote jonathan i enrique hi amy aye julie hi mary aye michael hi i that passes 7-0 is the next one insurance yes i don't have that okay it is insurance um on behalf of julie and myself we're bringing

088forward the recommendation for the increase to medical and dental rates our consultant one digital has has worked with us and we are going to continue with preferred one as our insurance carrier for health insurance and the recommendation from the insurance committee is a recommendation of an increase of 6.11 in our health insurance we feel comfortable with that increase and that that will keep us healthy as a district as a self-insured district going forward as we continue to look at other options related to plan design change uh possibly sometime in the future and a zero percent increase in dental that that one remains the same so that's always good julie anything else okay oh do i have a motion to approve then we'll take questions it's all made by jonathan second that camp amy any comments

089or questions go ahead mary um that was a decrease from an original estimate of 12 percent um was that just negotiation or did we gain or win any we had a we're on a trajectory and julie jumped in if i we were sort of on a trajectory where we were spending um we were depleting things rather quickly and that leveled off by the time i think they looked at best and final as far as in the rfp process and and that made a difference so we had an estimate that when we worked with our consultant originally seemed reasonable and by the time we got around to the uh rfp process and the best and final it had dropped about half of what we estimated it to be so that's a good thing our concern would

090be going forward if as this pandemic continues if part of ours is large spend large spend individuals that's making a difference right now but other than that the rest of it is kind of on par i mean we're kind of spending where we should be at this point but there was some there were some really heavy months towards the end of the calendar year there was no no change in the formulary no change in okay so everything else remained consistent and they brought it down just because the benefit level is going to be less the benefit level remains exactly the same we are we are outside of this increase we are looking at some other um sub programs within there as far as pharmaceuticals or whatever where we aren't changing benefit it's just how they're

091doing it will it whether it's mail order or whatever that is actually going to gain us some costs and our hope is that those additional savings on those programs will begin to increase our reserve okay any other questions okay seeing none um we have a motion in a second um michael hi mary hi julie hi amy hi enrique hi jonathan aye aye that press is seven zero all right thanks jim okay we have a series of proclamations here coming up um i'll be reading these so bear with me volunteer appreciation week whereas volunteer appreciation week offers the opportunity to recognize and to thank public school volunteers who contribute unselfishly to the success of prior lake savage area students teaching and support staff and the goals of public education and whereas parental and community involvement is

092a significant factor in the quality of our schools and the success of our students and whereas we appreciate the dedicated volunteers who give their time and talent to assist professional educators and support staff and whereas volunteers reflect the highest value values of our society and become role models for students by demonstrating an interest in education and whereas volunteers are called upon to assist teachers and staff with day-to-day activities involved in providing a balanced education for our students and an important part of a team that strives to ensure that each and every one of our students succeeds and whereas it is fitting to support the goals of this observance as when parents schools and communities work together in preparing today's students for tomorrow's world therapy resolved the school board recognizes the week of april 19th through

093the 23rd 2021 as volunteer appreciation week um all right um martha i forget do we have to prove this i was gonna say i just read these don't i okay so thank you volunteers um next up would be the child nutrition week and that proclamation is child nutrition employee week whereas nutritious meals are meals at school are an essential part of the school day and whereas the staff of this district's school meals and nutrition department are committed to providing helpful healthful and nutritious meals to the district's children and whereas the men and women who prepare and serve school meals help nurture our children through their daily interaction and support and whereas the week of april 26 through april 30th 2021 is child nutrition employee week so we thank them and recognize them and lastly um

094and not least of course is our proclamation for the national teacher appreciation week and this proclamation is thank you teachers whereas teachers make public schools great and whereas teachers work to open students minds to ideas knowledge and dreams and whereas teachers keep american democracy alive by laying the foundation for good citizenship and whereas teachers fill many roles as listeners explorers role models motivators and mentors and whereas teachers continue to influence us long after our school days are only memories now therefore the school board of prior lake savage area schools do hereby proclaim the week of may third through the seventh as national teacher appreciation week with the designation of tuesday may 4th 2021 to be national teacher appreciation day within the prior lake savagery disc district and we thank them very much for their efforts

095up is policy and it's a first reading of some policies go ahead and dr saul thank you very much board members we had a chance uh these first four we had a chance to discuss review and have some discussion around at the march 22nd board study session but we'll bring them forward again this evening in case there's any additional information you'd like us to gather questions that you might have the first one 511 is the student fundraising you'll note that there are very few changes to the actual policy there was a change that we discussed two weeks ago eliminating the call out of a report by the superintendent to the school board annually on the fundraisers we do track those and we do maintain records of those practice has not been to do a formal

096report so for uh discussion purposes i brought that forward to eliminate that from the policy since we weren't doing it and we discussed that a bit um and i don't know if you have any other questions about that one or not any other questions go ahead mary uh first of all i have no problem with the policy or the changes i just wanted one thing that i forgot to ask last time and that was does the program administrator for the fundraising activity have to be a school district employee i thought so but i didn't i didn't see it defined here so that's always a question just trying to think if there's a case that it's not um really yeah they don't need to be employees they do need to be employees i thought that they

097did yeah thanks julie okay so yeah they do need to be employees okay any other questions okay so otherwise that one will move forward okay very good um 516 is a student medication again some minor changes we do have an addition of part of the minnesota statute on possession and use of sunscreen that we have added on there i know there were some questions last week around that and actually our historian our resident historian uh provided me as i look at martha walls providing some information that this actually conversation goes back over 20 years around an incident that occurred so we are recommending the piece of the statute be in this policy questions on that any questions on the edition or any thing there all right i don't um moving on to policy uh 518

098um dnr dni orders i don't believe there were any changes noted on that nope it doesn't look like it and then the immunization requirements again pretty minor changes in terms of just making sure that we added a few other folks that could provide statements otherwise very minor recommended changes to that as well okay no questions on those looks like okay so those will move forward and then the second reading of policies we have 505 looks like which there are oh i'm sorry these are board approvals i missed it sorry my ipad or my computer is a little yeah i think board sorry we don't have any second reads and we're at board policy approval so we have 505 which is the student um enrollment it's actually it's called on our packet it's student entrance requirements

099and on here it's student enrollment requirements there's a difference in the wording martha i don't know if you see that i mean i'm just looking at board book it says student 505. 505 is student and enrollment entrance and then 509 is student and it was enrollment yeah so i'm just clarifying no that yeah the description and the says student enrollment requirements for 505 but on the actual attachment it says student entrance so we just so it's enrollment it's entrance okay so i'm getting student entrance okay so we have 505 student entrance requirement is how that'll read i don't think there was anything on that nothing there as well i'm just wondering if we can take these in a chunk people that's what i'm looking for any guidance from anyone um 524 that one has a

100few changes i think we talked about already long here that's a long one um 525.1 is everyone comfortable doing all these at once be good with that good i'm looking for head nods okay so um do i have a motion to accept 505 509 524 525 and 525.1 no it's all made by michael second second amy yeah any comments or questions all right seeing none jonathan aye enrique hi amy hi julie hi mary hi uh michael hi i that passes 7-0 and now on to administrative reports dr sallo superintendent thank you at prior like savage area schools our mission is to educate all learners to reach their full potential as contributing and productive members of our ever-changing global community and our collective work is focused on achieving that position of that mission and tonight i'd

101like to highlight some of the work in which we've been engaged first of all a bit of a legislative update the e-12 education finance bills were released last week the senate bill proposes no increase in the basic funding formula in the next biennium and does not address the growing crop cross subsidies in special education and english learners programs at the same time the senate bill will provide millions of dollars in new subsidies for non-public schools through a new education savings account program the house bill includes a two percent increase in the formula links the formula to inflation beginning in fiscal year 2026 holds the special educa education cross subsidy at the current level and reduces the cross subsidy in the english learner program the house bill will also allow school boards to renew in an

102existing operating referendum by a vote of the school board so those are bills that we're going to want to continue to follow and to reach out to our legislators as we work through the process they work through the process in the next couple of weeks in terms of enrollment as you know we continue to watch student enrollment very closely and are making an effort to work to increase our numbers a comprehensive marketing campaign for incoming 20 21 22 kindergarten families has been underway since december we're also launching seven several promotional activities in an effort to gain back families who left our district during the pandemic we'll continue to provide an update on enrollment as we move forward our district has once again earned the certificate of excellence and financial reporting award from the association of

103the school business officials asbo international our district has been an award recipient for the past 11 years according to asbo prior lake savage area schools earned the certificate after providing a high quality comprehensive annual financial report for the fiscal year and 2020. this award represents a significant achievement and reflects our commitment to transparency and high quality financial reporting attainment of the certificate signifies that the district has met the level of excellence required by asbo and it's a testament to the integrity and the technical competence of the prior lakes prior lake savage area schools business staff i want to congratulate executive director of business services julie sink and her entire business office staff on again achieving this high level award thank you julie our our crisis community response team will be gathering on april 21st for

104our annual table top training exercise this involves our administrative team some of our support staff the board chair and our public safety partners do the pandemic we're not able we were not able to get together in 2020 and therefore this year's exp exercise will look slightly different in the past years barring any changes that need to be made due to the pandemic our plan at this point is to conduct a refresher training course related to incident command system that helps guide our emergency response in this exercise the emphasis will be focused on leadership and situational leadership and decision making within the first five minutes of an incident this will assist us in how to achieve a positive outcome during an emergency situation lastly i'd like to congratulate we had 24 twin oaks middle school 7th

105graders who are advancing to the state history day competition the state competition is going to be held virtually this year with students showcasing 10 projects in four different categories including documentaries exhibit boards performances and websites this year's theme was communication in history the key to understanding a total of 64 students participated at the school level creating 35 different projects and the state competition will be held at the end of this month thank you good evening i've been sitting in the back it's unusual for me not to be up here talking to you i felt like i had to we do have a little bit of an update on enrollment as dr stello had indicated our enrollment continues to decline it's faster than we would like to see it and we lost 26 students in the

106month of march mainly at our high school but we're still continuing to lose at our elementary middle schools and so currently we're below our projected enrollment numbers by about seven kid students and if that number continues we may really want to re-look at what our number is for next year for enrollment and how we're going to look at that and so can i just ask you we're below what it was we projected eight thousand six hundred and sixty eight students were at eight thousand six hundred and sixty one there were seven students okay did i say eight seven no i think you did say seven i just wasn't her hearing very well okay and so we are you know watching it closely um you know i'm not really sure you know i expected at the

107high school level i'm not really expecting it at our middle and elementary and so um it has a lot i know to do with the pandemic and how people are viewing all the you know everything that happens and so it's into individual families choice and how they're dealing with that and as much as we're trying to provide those opportunities for our student children they are really it's a value of whatever it is for their their family we also are receiving i should talk a little bit about kindergarten enrollment we're still we're doing really well with our kindergarten open enrollment that's about the same as it was last year for kindergarten however our resident is still lagging about 25 students behind and i just don't know if they're just continuing to wait to see what happens

108but that number's really been consistent for the last few months so even though we're gaining some students in kindergarten i'm still lagging about those 25 students and then we are receiving some additional esser funds s or 3 funds we are expecting i shouldn't say expecting but right now they're showing that we would receive about one point a little over 1.7 million dollars and as for three funds that was 1.7 1.7 um 20 of those funds have to be restricted for learning loss and so we'll be looking at that i would guess that we may not get quite 1.7 million dollars for that i believe that is still based on 2019 numbers instead of 2020 and so if they change that to 2020 those numbers will go down similar as to our essa ii funds have

109been reduced we get very little funds compared to some other districts surrounding us again it's just really based on our title one student account and so when they look at that it is really based on those numbers and so even though our counts didn't go down if others changed it really changes throughout all of the schools so some schools will go up and some will go down but right now it shows that we're slated to get the 1.7 million dollars they have 60 days to disburse that once the state education agency receives the funding control you know in contrast to us or two funds they have a year to give us those funds so it's very odd how that's been slated to been be dispersed to school districts but i do still expect that we'll

110get sr2 funds sometime after june 30th sometime in july julie did was that estimated as part of our budget to begin with the 1.7 not the 1.7 so that's an addition to what we but there are stipulations in how we can spend those funds i understand that i was just wondering if it'll be a little bit harder to supplant we would be able to supplant some of that i think it's really going to depend on what those requirements for next year will be for the school year if there's ppe requirements if there's different continued requirements that may be something that we'll have a need for um but we're just i would say we need to wait and see how we need to spend those funds if we have requirements are we still getting federal funds

111for the lunch programs even though we're back in how does that work right now the federal program continues until september 30th and so we continue to offer free meals to everyone until september 30th unless the legislature again changes that there is there are bills out there right now for free lunches not really sure how that will be handled in the future but we have that that that has just recently been extended to that september 30th and i believe that is to make sure that we start getting those applications in for free and reduced lunch okay thank you um any other administrative reports okay board reports let's start with abby i gotta get this to work first hello i feel so loud today is it like am i doing it good yeah you're good okay i

112don't have a super huge report um this week because we've had a lot of time away from school with this weird week of spring break and weird coming back to school week so student council is trying to get rolling on some spring activities and figure out what we can do we have a meeting coming up with administration where we're our exec board is planning on meeting with them and just discussing what we can do and trying to figure out ways that we could adjust the things we have done in the past to still be able to do them or if we need to come up with new ideas we're always open to do that so um that's kind of all we'll i'll keep you guys updated on what the going ons of student council are

113but we hope obviously to engage the student body as much as we can with the limitations that we're given so we'll see what those are coming up with our meeting with administration awesome that's all good we're figuring it out we'll figure it out um all right any other board reports booze you want to go first sure amy i'll talk a little bit um so the plsca ctoc recently hosted a town hall event in support of the increased teachers of color act that's being proposed in the legislature and as part of our public engagement and legislative committee some of us participated in that town hall we had community members board members teachers administrators parents and most notably students in attendance it was a fantastic opportunity to hear stakeholder voices really our students voices and parents but

114a lot of wonderful student stories in an effort to better understand the student experience at plsas so we just want to take a moment to thank the ctoc for creating and hosting this event and you know we just really appreciate that that their work is helping us in our journey in our community and perhaps today more than ever we say thank you any other board reports mary well i was there at the thing too and and they i wouldn't call the students stories wonderful but as usual they were eye-opening and reaffirmed the need for change i think that's the most important thing as far as local community we had the state science and engineering fair occur the week and before last and i was thoroughly impressed with the number of educators here from prior lake

115as well as parents who came to help out and volunteer with the judging of the various projects we didn't have any prior lakes students actually participate in that but i was really impressed with the number of educators that came on to help out and also just help in general and our percentage of by the way of uh of um diversity of students increased about 65 percent this year michael um we had an amsd meeting on friday morning dr stallow and stacy were there as well they had two legislators served as guests with significant education experience representative lisa demuth and representative cedric frazier and in addition peter leatherman of morris leatherman presented to the group he shared an overview of their most recent public opinion survey which was entitled light at the end of the tunnel

116so it was interesting to hear that public feedback the public engagement legislative committee the legislative piece i just sort of want to follow what dr stello said our committee has been following the bills as they go and now that the two major e-12 education bills have been put forth by the house and the senate they are as she mentioned miles apart typically in the spring our committee would go on behalf of the board to the state capitol visit with our legislators and talk about how those bills would directly impact our district we're unable to do that this spring so we will be sending email letters to our legislators addressing the bills and specifically how they do or do not support our board approved legislative platform so just so that you know we're following up they

117do need to hear our voices and then i would just like to echo the comments of my fellow board members who attended the virtual town hall on march 23rd about the increased teachers of color act um and again thank our teachers of coalition of teachers of color for supporting and hosting and putting a panel together that elevated voices and especially those student voices the more we can hear from our students the better we can respond in terms of the actions we take i do want to point out and thank the ctoc because in addition to this work they have been working hard in providing resources to our staff to the teachers much needed and very timely and have been stepping up as leaders in our community as well and several members of the ctoc were

118key members in the stakeholder group that helped create our board approved resolution committing to equity and inclusion and we developed that to not only raise our awareness but also to increase our commitment to actions that will support all the learners in our district so we want to thank the ctoc for all of the work they're doing there and also acknowledge that many of them may be struggling more today than they were a few days ago and to know that their voices matter and the voices of the students they elevated mattered as well thanks okay any other board reports jonathan i don't know okay all right um i think we are at future events um future events are as follows no school k-12 staff work day april 14th volunteer appreciation week april 19th to the 23rd

119administrative professional days april 21st child nutrition employee appreciation week april 26 through the 30th and then the school board study session will be april 26th at six o'clock with that um i'll look for a motion to adjourn homemade that was mary second any second bye julie all those in favor say hi hi hi opposed that passes 7-0 i don't think i have to do a roll call on that one thank you