001is 704 pm on monday december 7th 2020 and i call to order this regular meeting of the richfield school board attending this evening's board meeting our board members paola cole christine malik tim paulus allegra smishuk and peter tensing and i am crystal brackey we are also happy to have one of our student representatives for this school year with us naomi ferguson as well as superintendent yanowski and members of the team that you will hear from throughout the meeting as well ridgefield public schools mission statement is that we strive to inspire and empower each individual to learn grow and excel and we are certainly going to work hard to keep that at the center of our discussions this evening especially as we transition back to holding all virtual school board meetings for the time being so
002thanks to those of you who are watching this meeting live or on in the future via youtube we're excited to have you with us so with that our first item of business this evening is to approve the agenda before us and since this is a routine business item i'm just going to briefly pause to see if there are any comments or questions related to the agenda okay seeing and hearing none is anyone prepared to move the agenda as presented um i heard the motion by mr tensing and i heard ms malek's voice the loudest i'm gonna give her a second any final discussion okay um since we are back in virtual meetings we are going to be conducting all votes this evening via roll call which will be facilitated by our board clerk christine malik
003so we'll start with ms cole hi mr paulus hi miss misha hi mr tensing the agenda is approved and we will now move into the information and proposals non-action items section of the agenda which has a number of really big and important presentations this evening before we move into those i just wanted to share a reminder that the next opportunity for public comment will be at our board meeting on monday december 21st since we anticipate that meeting is also going to take place virtually just wanted to remind everyone that we now allow public comment to be submitted in advance in video audio and written format and anyone who would like to make a comment can get in touch with me using the contact information that's available on the richfieldschools.org website so superintendent yanovsky over to
004you all right so we have a set of scintillating presentations today including the truth and taxation hearing which is an annual presentation of the overall budgetary information and the impact on the taxpayers of richfield we'll also have a conversation around the upcoming january reorganization of the board then we will have a fun presentation from stem talking about some of the exciting things that they offer and then an update on our strategic plan um but first foremost and most scintillating is really some conversation around money and so cassandra you can play that presentation and get it rolling and this will be the annual truth and taxation presentation mr holgi's presentation good evening as part of tonight's board meeting we are including the public hearing for school district taxes payable in 2021. this hearing is required as
005part of minnesota state law based on timing requirements to ensure appropriate access and to include certain information to encourage transparency in property tax levy and district budget operations this presentation will cover a background of school funding information about the district's budget in 2021 this hearing is required as part of minnesota state law based on timing requirements to ensure appropriate access and to include certain information to encourage transparency in property tax levy and district budget operation this presentation will cover a background of school funding information about the district's budget information about the proposed levy for it is important to note that the minnesota constitution actually requires the state of minnesota to provide a uniform system of public schools minnesota funding for schools is highly regulated the state establishes funding formulas that are usually based on the
006number of students enrolled in their school it also provides tax policy for local schools and establishes a maximum state authorized levy amount the state also allows local school boards to seek additional funding from local taxpayers based on a referendum but also state funding is a major portion of local school districts revenue for our current fiscal year there was an increase of two percent for 129 per pupil unit from state funding there's been no additional formula increase authorized for next fiscal year as this would generally be discussed during the upcoming legislative session which is the first year of the biennium since 2000 2003 the general education revenue has not kept pace with inflation and an additional increase of 503 in our current year would be needed to adjust for this inflationary lag in funding this slide
007illustrates that difference in funding versus inflation since 2002-2003 it is also important to note that there has been a continued underfunding of special education in the state with fiscal year 2018 analysis showing programs underfunded by about 40 percent or 822 million dollars statewide this translates into about 5705 per special education student this requires funds to be transferred from parts of the regular education programming or increasing local referendum funding in minnesota there has been a growing dependence on local taxpayer funding with the minnesota average for referendum or local optional revenue for the current year at about 1 570 per pupil unit this provides for about 14.3 percent of general fund revenue statewide for richfield this amount is one thousand eight hundred thirty eight dollars and sixty cents per pupil unit the statewide capitalist funding is two
008thousand five hundred fifty one dollars and fifty four cents per pupil unit there are a number of metro districts operating at this maximum amount it is important to note that the tax levy does not determine the change in budget the tax levy is based on many state formulas some increases in revenue are offset by reductions in state aid the expenditure budget is limited by total revenue available from multiple sources and an increase in taxes does not always equate to an increase in budget schools budget planning requires significant advance planning because the tax years do not correlate with the district fiscal cycle our budget year begins july 1 but the tax year that funds the budget cycle actually starts the previous january so actions we take in december in establishing the local tax levy will be
009funding the next fiscal year that starts july 1 2021. our actual budget will be approved by the board in june of 2021 next we're going to move on to a review of the current school year budget as required by state statute as part of this presentation as you can see there are multiple different funds within our overall district budget for most of our work we would focus on the general fund because that is what funds the majority of our annual work this slide provides an overview of the richfield public school budget for the actual fiscal year 2020 and budgeted current fiscal year 2021. as you can see this provides an overview of the revenues and expenditures for each fiscal year as well as the actual and projected end-of-year fund balances our current year total revenue
010is projected at 83 735 888 of which 67 million 844 101 is in the general fund we also have projected expenditures of 122 million thousand 850 hundred thirteen dollars with sixty nine million three hundred eighty two thousand four hundred six dollars in the general fund a significant portion of the difference in revenue and expenditures lies within our building construction fund which was funded by a previously issued bond referendum this slide highlights the sources of revenue by fund obviously the largest portion is within the general fund representing 81.1 percent of our overall revenue when we look specifically at the general fund we see that 68 of our revenue comes from state aid with 27.7 coming from local property taxes as we look at our general fund expenditures you can see that 44 of our expenditures go
011toward regular instruction and 18.5 towards special education instructional and pupil support combined for another 17.4 of our expenditures these areas include counselors social workers transportation and other support programming sites and buildings comprise 12 percent of our expenditures with 4.1 percent directed administration and 2.9 for district support services salaries and wages along with employee benefits make up the largest portion of our program with 77.2 percent of the total expenditures in those two areas finally we're going to move on to the proposed 2021 property tax levy we will discuss how the levy is determined compared to the current tax year and discuss reasons for these changes as well as the impact on taxpayers every property owner pays property taxes based on the taxing jurisdiction where they are located these jurisdictions include the various municipalities and service districts
012in richfield the bulk of our school district is within the richfield city area but we also have some parts of our school district in etaina as well as fort snow the local municipality establishes the tax levy based on state limits but the county is responsible for sending bills collecting the revenue and distributing it to the various taxing jurisdictions this is why local taxpayers receive both a notice of proposed taxes as well as the actual invoices for taxes from the county local property owners receive proposed tax notifications between november 11 and november 24 which lists the total proposed tax levy for the property as well as the itemization by taxing jurisdiction it also includes information about the time and location of this meeting school district property taxes are based on state authority among 40 different categories
013the maximum levy available for each district is calculated by the minnesota department of education the next slide illustrates the various components of the property tax determination essentially cities or counties determine the assessed value of each property the legislature establishes formulas for how properties are taxed which is then calculated by the county auditor the legislature sets formulas and limits for local school districts which is calculated by the minnesota department of education the local board adopts a proposed levy in september and then a final levy in december for the following calendar year this levy is calculated based on the tax capacity of each property to distribute this levy among all property owners as noted the board approved a proposed libya in september which was then calculated and distributed in november 12 taxpayers our public hearing is a
014part of this board meeting following this public hearing the board must vote to certify a final levy prior to december 28th the ritual public school's proposed levy for 2021 is projected to be one million one hundred eleven thousand three hundred seventy one dollars and forty nine cents less than the current tax year this represents a four percent reduction in tax levy this slide illustrates the overall areas of the tax levy and how they are impacted by this year's proposed levy in highlighting major areas of change in the levy the first category we are going to review is the voter approved and local option revenues this is showing a net reduction of 168 which is primarily based on the projected reduction in enrollment next we are anticipating an increase in our capital projects levy for technology
015referendum of 202 478 this is based on a voter approved tax rate and is increasing because of an increasing tax base in the district each year adjustments are made under levy based on prior year levies that were based on projected enrollment this year we're seeing a net reduction of adjustments of 638 thousand one hundred ninety one dollars we have positive adjustments on our 2020 levy and are now looking at negative adjustments in our 2021 level finally we are seeing a reduction of 608 in our debt excess which supports the district in making bond payments the state requires that we levy 105 percent of projected expenditures to eliminate the impact of delinquencies in tax collections over time districts build up excess revenue in this area that needs to be adjusted based on state law many factors
016can impact the tax impact on a local property these include change in individual property value a change in total value of all properties in the district and any increase or decrease in levy amounts based on the various funding factors the following slides illustrate some of the changes in the district's property taxes since 2018 as they relate to the school district all examples are based on the projected increase in property values over this four-year period of 16.3 actual property changes may be different based on individual situations and all of these amounts are customers but are merely meant to show anticipated impact based on current data that is available this slide illustrates the various impacts on property value in ridgefield the average home has a current value of approximately 250 000 four years ago that value was
017214 984 for next year this average home is expected to see a reduction in school district property taxes of 55 or 5.3 from 2020 to 2021. despite the increase in property value over the four year period this reduction will be 68 dollars since 2018 which is a 62.6.2 reduction from four years ago as you can see we have worked to minimize significant changes from year to year and have held school district taxes relatively consistent over this period of time this slide is just a visual representation of that same information over the four-year period and this slide looks at the impact on commercial and apartment properties in the district finally i just want to highlight a couple of opportunities for our community members to consider if they are eligible as it relates to local property taxes
018the first is a minnesota homestead credit refund which provides refunds to eligible homeowners based on income and property tax levels the second is the minnesota special property tax refund which is available to some homeowners who experience significant increases in their property tax amounts and finally there's a senior citizen property tax deferral which provides for a delay in property taxes for qualified individuals until the property is sold or the homeowner dies so that is a relatively long review of our tax levy and district budget but is important in providing for the transparency regarding the school's budgetary operations the board will now accept any public comment regarding the proposed levy and later in the agenda has a request to approve and certify the 2020 payable 2021 levy thank you thank you craig i know there was a
019mechanism that was posted on the public website if there is a member of the public who would like to make a comment or ask a question about the presentation um superintendent yunowski will you just reiterate that right now on the off chance there's somebody watching who would like to do so sure so uh well craig moves on with the presentation and is answering some questions if there are those in the public who would like to make public comment in regard to the truth in taxation uh please email me um that is located on the website otherwise stephen.younowski s-t-e-v-e-n dot u-n-o-w-s-k-y at rpsmn.org and i will link you in to public comment um and so i'll i'll keep track of that over the next several minutes as mr holgi moves on with um answering some questions
020and sharing some additional info mr holzer very good thank you very much so um obviously bringing the entire levy as well as our budget projector budget um analysis into a 15-minute presentation is pretty difficult and then to watch some of the numbers go by very quickly i also want to remind people that the presentation is posted as part of the board packet if anybody wants to look at specific numbers or kind of dig into some of those illustrations that are included in that as well um one of the things to note just as part of that is at the end with the levy analysis we did work hard to factor in the increasing cost of property within the city of richfield or within the richfield school district so those comparisons of the reduction of 55
021dollars on a house value of 250 000 this year that 55 reduction does include the increases in property values from that time period and going back to 2018 that 250 000 home at that time was projected to have been worth about 214 000 on on an assessed value so um just to kind of highlight the big message around that is that does mean the if you own a 250 000 home that's been assessed um by the local um assessors in richfield right now um you are projected to pay 55 less next year and 68 less than in 2018 so just kind of a highlight to kind of reinforce that those do include any of the increases in property value on an average across the richfield school district on community um a couple other just kind
022of notes and comments um that we received from some board members um one when we were looking at the budget um expenditure specifically this year compared to the revenues we saw about 37 million dollars in excess expenditures compared to revenues but that 37 million dollars was primarily in our building construction fund and that building construction fund was something that bonds were authorized to be issued a number of years ago where the revenue came in at that point and then we've been paying off that construction as it occurs from that fund at that point and then there's the levy that's affected by that is helping pay off those bonds specifically um another question asked about some breakdown and typically when we do the um budget in june as well as the revised budget we were able
023to dig into the budget in more detail on some of the more analytics um and there was a question about the admin and the 4.1 it is primarily salaries and wages but it is also going to include some of the office administrative work as well for the operations of that component of it so it might be some general miscellaneous supplies for the office as well as copy machines and things like that might be included in some of that work but um like most of our budget most of our overall budget as well as most of the admin is tied in with salaries and wages specifically a couple questions about the technology components specifically and the increase um really from our levy standpoint we are authorizing the revenue um which then initiates the budget planning process
024for these expenditures um it was highlighted in the presentation about the levy that um the capital projects levy which is that technology referendum is based on the tax capacity of the district at a rate associated with that taxable value and so as we've seen taxable values go up in the community of richfield that um revenue that comes into the district also is supported with that um that isn't just home prices going up but it also is seen with development within the richfield community um as well as other commercial properties and things like that that may have come changed in parts of our ritual school district specifically um there are a variety of pieces and especially at this time when we're doing distance learning looking at additional devices that have been purchased additional infrastructure additional software
025um that are all needed services that we've come into even more awareness around in our hybrid and our distance learning models um our large components of that there's a certain level of instructure infrastructure that's included in that other software as well as staffing and we have seen it as an area where some of our other revenue is declining we're able to continue to support the technology expenditures and technology support staff within the community with some of that increasing revenue coming in from that capital projects levy specific to that um we talked a little bit about market values and there was a question that came up about um specifically why we see some uh 200 000 home and a 250 000 home um seeing differences in decreases or percentages and things like that as well as
026the impact on commercial property as well as apartments um but if you kind of look back at one of the slides it references along the steps of the process that we have the county assessor that's responsible for determining the tax capacity as well as built in by state about how different properties are taxed within the richfield within any municipality or any tax levy and so all of that is set um by standards across the county as well as across the state for how different properties are impacted by it we see that varying based on the changes within the net tax capacity as well as the referendum market value which are two different types of levies some are directly tied to the student enrollment and some are tied to the property value and there's different balances
027around it it probably is a master's class by itself to define how each one of those referendums and levies is impacted but what i can tell you is the state is responsible for calculating that and then the county is responsible for calculating how that levy is impacting the different taxpayers we also see especially within the commercial property some of that decline caused by the fiscal disparities component of it which merges a pool of each municipality's tax levy and balances it out so communities that have greater commercial property are impacted in a different way that municipalities that have less commercial property and some of that tax capacity value and so there is some balancing that plays into those calculations as well um i think that responds to most of the questions or tries to provide some
028quick summary of the answers i'm available for additional questions and then just a reminder if any of the community members are wanting to make a public comment specific to um this truth in taxation hearing that is something that is available to you and you're encouraged to email steven at ins for that information so with that i will turn it back to you chair rocky or respond to any questions that the board may have thank you craig and i just heard from the superintendent that we do not have any requests for public comment at this time so we'll move into board member comments and questions and certainly leave the floor open for members of the public for as long as we are on this topic so with that um i will pass it first to board
029member paula cole each board member will pass it on to the next person in alphabetical order um ending with me in which uh point in time i will check in with our student board members tyler and naomi to see if there's anything that they would like to add as well so paula starting with you i don't have any comments other than say thank you to craig and the staff for putting this report together very uh i think for those of us watching and wondering about taxes uh it it's really nice to see like how the funds are spent and uh and how uh we are trying to be as much as uh as much as possible uh responsible with taxpayer uh funding and just to say thank you to the community for supporting uh richard
030public schools and i'll pass it to miss malik thank you paula um i would also like to thank craig and the team the background information and historical information included in that is really helpful to hear again every year but i also think it's very beneficial for the public who may not have that information um to be able to kind of look through all that and see the whys and hows of how this is all done also um really i say this every time but i really do appreciate the regular updates that we have in meetings throughout the year that makes when we get to this everything already makes sense and it's all nicely laid out and we've been looking at it regularly throughout the year so i don't have the same i don't have questions
031like i used to have when we did this and we didn't do the like really pointed check-ins that we do now so thank you for doing that and i will hand it off to mr thank you craig i think you answered a number of the questions i've submitted um in your your comments at the end i really appreciate the clarity that you gave on those um on the technology levy you know i i i think i had asked you know it it kind of stands out that it's actually increasing this year um and while we cite the in you know while we cite the opportunity you know the levy is driven by percent of tax base that is not a mandate you know we that that we are authorized to go to that limit but
032we are not required to the the voters asked us to to to demonstrate why we need it on an ongoing basis this year in particular though um i think that with the whole system running on the backbone of technology more than ever um it really does you know highlight that just how critical it is that we keep our technology infrastructure humming along very well with staff with machines for more more students than we ever envisioned and so on so i appreciate that but on an ongoing basis i think it really does you know it's incumbent on us to come back annually and really and not just use the maximum tax base as our basis for this is what we this is what we do we really have to demonstrate what we plan to do with
033it um it's the total amount on the you know on the increase in tax base i think has gone up by about 50 percent since it was passed and for the first five years of that 10 years i mean we planned on spending half of it on the infrastructure part of it so you know then we got free and we could spend it all on you know the more important things or things that would be held in hands more than been hidden behind walls um so i you know there's a point in which the i don't support the broad justification that we're authorized to do this so we're doing it i you know this year i think it's it's abundantly clear we need all the money we can to support the technology uh but an
034ongoing basis i i caution us from falling into that trap so thanks i'll pass it to ms meshech thank you mr wallace um i just want to reiterate what others have said and and i appreciate the overview so thank you i will pass to uh director attention all right thanks um i'm also appreciative of the content i thought it was presented um very clearly for a topic that can get to be pretty kind of mind-numbing at times um and i definitely really appreciate the summarization um it's important i think to just emphasize that you know we are seeing this uh overall decline in the levy um which is obviously reflecting largely the client enrollment but also i think some good stewardship on part of uh director holgie and superintendent so thanks back to me the
035only thing i would add is just appreciation for the fiscal planning advisory committee um the group of community members uh and staff who really spend a lot of time digging into this and sharing their thoughts with us so um we always appreciate them i also want to just pause for a moment on the off chance that tyler or naomi have anything that they are eager to share on this particular topic i don't but thank you okay me i think thank you though thanks to you both we know that this is not exactly the most directly relevant of topic uh to you all as current high school students but we're always so grateful that you're with us um i will do one more pause to see either if there is a public comment that has come
036in uh before we close the public hearing or if there is another comment from a board member um i would just add as far as the technology levy um they are they keep a regular update on the web page about how that money is being spent and where it's going and not only did we do all of that infrastructure work but they have also really built in um built in the update updating and upkeep of that infrastructure so that we don't run into some large money that has to come up with down the road their planning has been very careful and thoughtful and i just wanted to point out that that information is available on the website and they update that regularly on what's going on with that technology lobby thank you all right we
037will bring this topic and this public hearing to a close we will come back to the business item at the end of our meeting so probably in a few hours time we will come back and actually take action on this item uh with that we will move on to the next topic in the superintendent update all right so the board had asked for deliberate statement or opportunity for board members to talk about the reorganization of the board that occurs in january so every year in january new roles are available or the opportunity to elect new board members to the chair or the vice chair or the secretary or the treasurer and so uh board had requested just an opportunity to have that conversation publicly so we put that on the agenda and i will put
038myself on mute and see um crystal if you want to go around the board members to see if there's any conversation to be had sure we'll do um and i'll probably ask mr paulus to go first since i remember he specifically asked for this topic um the one thing i would say in advance is uh you know my two years as chair is drawing to a close and so i will be very glad to start the organizational meeting in january and then pass the now virtual gavel on to the next chair so with that mr paulus do you want to kick us off well thank you crystal um yeah i know so i had asked if we if we could have time to talk about it publicly just because i think from the public perspective
039if we don't have this conversation openly it may seem you know how do we how do we come up with this roster the first monday in january without having had open discussion of it so um as crystal had said she she planned on on this you know this being the end of her two-year run and not being interested in moving forward i'd be interested in serving in the role if that's what the board would support i'm also interested in supporting whatever the board supports and so if it were someone else i'd be happy to to go that route as well but i am interested um in you know any role the board the board would would offer me including chair so i'll just leave it like that i have no designs on anything else other
040than i could fill any role that that was asked of me and now i'll pass it to miss cole because she's alphabetically first is that correct thank you we're talking about the organizational uh yes yes dreams hopes you know i i asked i had i came to my bedroom to hide and then nadia of course came to find me and she's been laying down next to me listening to frozen two songs and i got a little distracted and then i yelled for help and then alan's got her uh i interrupted his couch sleep by the snoring i could test so yeah my life is very exciting uh these days uh so uh well first i i think tim you've been a really good uh vice chair these past two years and i know you've collaborated
041closely with crystal and i know we're not choosing today but i'll be happy to uh to see you in that role you know uh you know unless one of other of you makes like a very persuasive case as well you know because like team says we're public servants so you know whatever the world wants the world wants uh we don't have power of one here um should you move to that place i will be interested in considering the vice chair position but again i am happy to support someone else uh in doing that you know um and i really i've had fun being a treasurer too so i'm okay with that or i'm okay with having someone else do something else and uh sitting this one out too but i think uh develop from i
042guess development and and leadership wise uh i'll be happy to be your sidekick as chair if that's what happens with you tim uh and if not we'll see i should i should caution you that that um i probably have the you know more if the extent that the regular regular life resumes um i have more work travel than average that that for the for the six of us so that that guy then i can't always protect mondays so you you could with planning of course you you'd find out before 6 30. when i reconsider that it's like show me your schedule for the community yeah you'll know it as far in advance as i do well we'll see what happens ah but let's see miss malika you're next um i have enjoyed my time as
043the clerk and i'd be happy to continue that and i think just like everybody else here i'd be willing to serve wherever i was needed as well i think something we should um think about is that um next year uh pete tim and i would be up for re-election and so we would want to be sure that we had someone queued up in case one of us didn't run or was not reelected someone queued up for the vice chair position that would be ready to take over in january as the chair because you really want to have that time with some mentoring from a functioning chair before you jump into that position you don't have to but i feel like it really helps and makes you feel more comfortable in the position um so other
044than that i'm interested to hear what everyone else is thinking and that goes to since we've already heard from tim miss misha um i fully support the suggestions that have been made so far i think um i would benefit from knowing um a little bit more of the rules like if i might i think i'd be well i'd be willing to do anything but paula for example if i were to step in the role of treasure if you were to step in the role of vice chair i would really appreciate appreciate some mentorship from you as well which i expect you would give um so but i i i'm grateful to each of you for your willingness to lead and um also to crystal for the great job she's done and my first year of
045being on the board i'll pass to mr tensing so thanks um so i think that christine's i mean really my statement would be to i think reiterate what christina is saying in terms of the importance of having a vice chair who is shall we say off cycle from the standpoint of of the election i think that is really smart just from a continuity perspective um and yep having served in all these roles i mean i would agree basically with what christine has said that the role of chair which i think crystal has really done a very fine job of executing over the last two years um that that role is one that it is good to have a little time before you jump into it um head first or feet first or whatever however it's
046gonna go um so i think from that perspective i would really support christine's comment on um you know the importance of sort of selecting that i share and uh yep and tim obviously has got all of the skills and and um and traits that are necessary to be effective as chair as well so i will happily serve in whatever role uh sort of fits the will of the board i think this was the most minnesotan of power grabs ever with everyone being willing to do anything um and which is great i mean i think i think i i do appreciate that about this group and that you know none of these conversations are firm until we actually vote in january so if anyone were to go home or sign offer tonight and feel differently you
047know just because you said you were interested in treasurer today doesn't mean that you have to do treasure and it doesn't mean that's all you could do um but but the reality is we do need four people uh willing to serve as officers out of the six of us so that is required and we'll we'll how we figure that out who who gets to be the two without titles is um is is just our challenge and so i i imagine we'll we'll handle it like we do all our challenges which is collaboratively and and whatever works out best for the district so to be clear while i'm willing to be treasurer i'm also willing to be the titleist finalist members again um thank you as am i um and and thanks tim for just prompting
048the initial conversation i understand what you're saying that it's helpful for people to just have a sense of how this comes together um and to hear just some of the initial things that people are interested in thinking about and yes the most minnesotan of ways um so i think we can also work on getting um just some of those brief descriptions about each one of the roles and what uh responsibilities and expectations come with that so that that could also be part of just what we put together and share in that organizational meeting as we take action at the very beginning of january um i will pause again not exactly a topic where we would expect naomi or tyler to have questions or comments but certainly welcome them if you do you can either come
049off mute or you can use the raise hand function if there is something that you want to say if that's easier because i can see you okay i will okay all right seeing and hearing no other comments we are going to move on to an exciting one up next so superintendent unofficially will you introduce this all right so i am excited to share our team from stem i think the presentation starts with their bitmojis um it looks like miss winter and miss sarazen are here at this evening um and so what we're gonna do is we're going to play their presentation and then turn it over to amy and darcy to see if they want to say anything um and then open things up for questions so whenever the video begins i will certainly stop
050talking good evening everyone thank you so much for coming and listening to our presentation my name is amy winter and i am the principal at the richfield stem school i also have help tonight i have darcy sarahzin with me and she is the talent development teacher at the richfield stem school and then she is here to help present our programs around math at stem hello everyone so we're going to talk a little bit about some information that we have actually presented here before but over the past couple years the programming has continuously been modified and continuously been expanded just to support all of our students at stem so we started this math journey back in and like i said we had presented this at the school board meeting around launching a k-5 enrichment math program
051along with providing enrichment opportunities for all students down at a k2 level using the pets curriculum over the the time of the past couple years we have then added a school-wide math intervention program and then this year we launched our bridges math curriculum in all of our classrooms and then we've also launched an advanced math classroom and that's really where we're spending most of our time tonight on our presentation around this new advanced math class so in thinking about that on our new curriculum bridges kind of supports all learners in the fact that we're really trying to get fully and deeper into students discussing and learning the processes of math and we know that number corner is providing that discussion piece as well as throughout the lessons it's providing them to actually talk and think
052about their process and especially with the accelerated kids that's super powerful because they just want to rush through and they understand things so getting them to understand that process and discuss is very important we are also doing pets curriculum like amy said with grades k through two this is just allowing students to really be able to think about things in a much different way and getting them to use different parts of their creative thinking and visual spatial and we're doing that through a curriculum and lessons and we want to do that so we can identify more of those kids later on when they take the cogat because it gives them that um that kind of that advantage about doing that nonverbal and that um visual spatial thinking we um are doing as well for enrichment
053project m squared and m cube and i know that we've already talked to you about this but this is a deeper understanding of the standards um for that grade level so k2 is doing m squared and 3 5 is doing m cubed and it just gets to that deeper understanding of standards so those are some of the things that we've talked about in the past here is kind of a quick visual around how those pieces all come together so we kind of have a standard path that is now the bridges math curriculum and also the pets curriculum that on ramps and this year we're doing a k1 level we have a support option uh which is a bridges math curriculum but it's intervention and that is done to supplement through either small group or one-on-one
054we also have an enrich option which really focuses on continuing to help students understand grade level standards but just going deeper and we're doing that through project m squared and m cubed so like i said um the new pathway is then an advanced pathway this begins in fourth grade and students complete fourth fifth and sixth grade math in two years with both of these standard path and the advanced path we want to make sure that they're getting on-ramp to the middle school and that they are supported and have ways that they can continue their math journey even though they leave the stem building so for this particular year and again this is a unique year with um with everyone dealing with a pandemic we um needed to create an identification process that really found our
055students who needed to be challenged who could do this acceleration um and and that struggle um especially in this virtual platform so we use the nwa math map fall and winter scores and then we also use the bridges comprehension assessment and this is a year-end assessment for grade four but we were giving it to students at the beginning of fourth grade once we had that information we reviewed the data as a committee and then we communicated with families um around what their options were available the current model has classes occurring five days a week in synchronous class that last 60 minutes and one of the big pieces that's important is that there's continuous progress monitoring and unit assessments because the pacing is quicker than a normal class you really want to make sure that kids
056understand the concepts and that there aren't gaps in their understanding and then obviously we need students and families to commit for the fourth and fifth grade year to make sure that there is continuation of their learning so so far as we've gotten started some of the observations that we've noticed is that students really share that how they've had previous frustrations when they've been in a grade level math class they know a lot of the information they don't feel challenged the other thing that we've talked about is again that pacing and really staying on top of the pacing really making sure that students demonstrate their understanding before you move on and moving at a pace that's appropriate for them the other thing that we've noticed over the past couple years is making sure that we have
057a building-wide system that provides support for all learners and it's just not something that can be built in one year one of the things that we have learned with the the initial launch this year is that we have eight students that i were qualified for this year one is a female seven are males and so obviously that doesn't necessarily represent um our gender in our building nor our demographics and we wanna continue to review that and make sure that we're serving all of our kids and giving them all opportunities so this year has been really amazing in the fact that i've got to take these eight kids and i've really we've been going quicker but they also we also found the sweet spot they we took a few quotes we get to reflect a lot
058and i know that the kids think that it's challenging but they still love it and they like going at the pace that we're going at and we're going at the pace that it's good for them so i think that that's been a really great and eye-opening for me is that they like what we're doing but yet it's still challenging so we've talked a lot about what are the next steps that we need to do and so obviously we need to continue to refine um on-ramping opportunities for students at all levels we need to find effective ways to communicate this and share our programming with our families and community obviously we need to support these learners this year moving into next year and then on ramping a new cohort for next year and then making sure
059that we are tight with our relationship with the middle school so that there is flawless um continuation of students learning um with the last couple seconds here i just wanted to give a quick example of even just something you can do as a parent when you're at home in in pushing some of these thinking skills with students and so here's an example of divergent thinking where asking your child to make an observation and once they see the observation asking follow-up questions about how they could make the item work better or make it safer or make it easier to use and so having them generate lots of solutions and then pushing them further if you want to have them write it down or draw the answer um so that's just kind of a quick example of
060maybe something you could even just do as a parent um to continue to have students practice some of these thinking skills that we're wanting to do with them you know through this math program so i want to thank you so much for your patience and your time and attention um and want to give you an opportunity that if you have any questions we're available to answer them the best that we can so thank you very much for listening thank you group we'll move on to year two um next year and then we will on ramp a new uh a first-year group in fourth grade and then um we are continuing our collaboration with the middle school to really make sure that we on ramp our students that they have a way to get there that
061they don't get just um cut short in that transition you know i just popped this slide in very quickly just for any of our families who happen to be watching the presentation it's just a great example about how um going through some thinking routines is just something that you can start at a really early age and so we gave the example of just you know as you're driving the car or you're noticing observations and you notice something having your child uh make that observation but then asking them follow-up prompting crush questions so if they notice something in the car and saying you know what did you notice well how could you make that safer for somebody or how could you make that easier to use and just asking your kids to think um to that
062next level next step are really some of those thinking skills that we're trying to get our kids to have exposure to at that early ages so thank you i appreciate you guys um with your flexibility in this and then we'll open it up for any questions you may have and before you jump into that i want to thank amy and darcy obviously that was a little bit different but it shows a great example of what happens to our educators all the time which is that at times when you're in a google meet with a wide range of videos at the moment 11 people have their video on uh trying to also do a shared screen video sometimes can hit that buffering circle again and again and again and so uh one of the things we
063work on is trying to figure out ways around the technology and to use the technology most effectively so in this case we switched up and so thanks to amy and darcy for their flexibility on that uh crystalline board great thank you uh we will give everybody the opportunity to share anything that's on their mind so we'll start with paula thank you i want to say thank you uh to uh this winter and i hear everyone call you darcy so i'll do the same guys that's perfect um in this time of uh covey is i think it will be so easy to try to think of less water things down let's survive the year and what now which would be the wrong approach so i'm happy to see that as them things are you know still
064con we continue to push students and uh differentiate instruction and really continue as i don't want to say as usual but you get the meaning right like it's nice to see that the mindsets uh is is in the right place uh and i'm very uh excited to learn about the the happenings and that the world continues so thank you and thank everyone at this uh thank you to everyone at the staff at stanford for that as well for setting the pace thank you miss malek thank you paula um i would agree thank you guys for a very thoughtful presentation and for all of the work that's going in it's nice to see this kind of effort in a time when we are just struggling to get through each day sometimes um i really appreciate the
065thoughtful process of choosing the kids to enter into this program and i think that's really important and i really look forward to seeing the impact of this um down the road when our students move into the upper grades i really hope that brings an increase in diversity in our cis and ap math classes when we get to those upper high school grades which is something we've really been looking for it's hard to do it once they're there but when you're starting with a program like this when they're all small it gives everybody that opportunity to move into a program like that so thank you very much this is great and we will move on to mr paulus thanks christine i would echo what you just said about um you know you have to grow you
066know if we if we have a goal of increasing participation uh diverse participation in those cis and ap classes that that is not a happenstance that you can fix in a year you have to you have to grow the kids into it and we have to start and intervene as early as possible so i'm very excited to see programs like this finding kids getting them interested and challenged and showing them that they have the capabilities as early as possible i do want to warn ronan that equivalent fractions even though he gave them a thumbs down is actually extremely useful in every aspect of regular life let alone um mathematics and science it's it's it gets into baking it gets into shopping and being a consumer and comparing different prices unit prices of things at different
067um you know as things are packaged differently but i'm totally with eli that mixed numbers are a thumbs down they are mixed numbers you know don't tell eli this but they're borderline useless their one use is showing that fractions do have a place in the number line um and that that you can express seven and three eighths as something else and it actually is somewhere between seven and eight so the mixed number teases that out but other than that it doesn't it doesn't persist and get used anywhere else um other than than that placement of something in a number line so it's just anyway thank you for that i'll pass it miss misha my math teacher has to say please don't listen to team mixed numbers are important it's a lot of fun to see
068with fifth graders and try to have them took place and it's great for number sense it is it is i said that it fits it in the number line but it doesn't get used anywhere in the higher curriculum doesn't get used at all mixed numbers sorry fast don't kill the kids i haven't though higher than fifth grade so maybe you're right um i wish i could like match tim's math jokes but i do have some questions i think i'm like oh i'm gonna have to go back to last year's um presentation because i i'm curious about some of the aspects that you presented last year um i don't expect you to have like exact numbers but i am curious what percentage of fourth and fifth grade students are participating in the advanced math like do
069you know an approximate breakdown so because this is our first year we just have fourth grade we don't have any fifth graders yet uh and we entered um eight students this year okay i loved hearing the you know comment that they are feeling the right challenge you know maybe for the first time we don't you know you don't know for sure but that's really really neat um of those eight dude would you say they their racial demographics are those of the rest of the stem school or is that a goal for the future yeah it's definitely been some rich conversations that darcy and i have had along with our leadership team and i think it's also evidence around when you start a program you're that first year you're kind of um these are these are
070kiddos that i would say are not necessarily representative of our our student population these are kids who are who have probably had some additional support you know i mean along the way um and and this is then fitting nicely into their pathway what i am encouraged about though is we have been doing the enriched math model and we also have identified gt students beginning at the end of second grade and both of those demographics are much more aligned to our student demographics and so again we don't anticipate you know a kiddo going from regular math all the way into accelerated math we see it more you know students going from regular math to enriched math to then advanced math we see that pool being much more representative um and and the numbers match up um
071so we're really encouraged that as we build this program those numbers should also you know what i mean we're working towards that goal and could you go back to the pets um and just tell me a little bit more about that is that something that you do in the younger grades it's a supplemental curriculum we actually um discovered it when we went to the gt national conference a couple years ago a lot of other districts were using it and again it's just a nice foundation um to get kids thinking um about thinking um so you know divergent thinking visual thinking you know all of those kind of different pieces and again what we really talked what we we talked about at that conference was you need to backfill for some of our kids if they
072don't have these experiences so if they've never practiced these skills you need to give all students opportunities to practice these skills early so that when we start getting to the identification process that this is not just the first time that they've been asked to do these skills so the pets is something that all stem students are experiencing in the younger grades thank you so much and thank you for the presentation but almost always the top of my mind um it actually goes back to a conversation that i had um my very first year on the board um sitting with the staff at sheridan hills when the the message that i heard a lot of unclear um at that point in time was um that uh teachers were eager to do to sort of do new
073stuff and be cooperative or not cooperative but to be innovative but at the same time when there was you know lots of every year something different you know you could sort of burn people out so what's always been really important to me as we have kind of been transforming and working on improving is also understanding what how this all fits into sort of long-term plans and and how you kind of because it sounds like i guess that's what i was most um kind of reassured by you know you're telling me okay this is going to be a while to kind of build this whole system up um and so i guess my my question is sort of what is that what is the vision so how do you see this kind of evolving um when
074do you know you're kind of at that point of maturity um and so how would we kind of see that playing out over the next say five years or so that's a tough question um what what i would say in in our planning at a site level has really kind of been looking at a three-year plan so we've mapped this out you know kind of every um looking three years in advance obviously um you know this is a partnership with the middle school and you know and beyond because that's really you know the measurement of success i think for our students and so um you know from from my lens at my site what i know our steps in the next few years need to be is you know making sure we have a solid
075program that on ramps those fourth graders and carries them into fifth grade and carries them into sixth grade um and really making sure that that's strong that's kind of our immediate focus um but we are also partnering you know with um you know we have previously partnered with tia you know the director of secondary and you know um you know from a gt lens we've been you know partnering with rachel jenn the director of you know elementary education with you know dr daniels because we really have the expectation that this will look um much more systematic um for our families and our students and one of the things that we are looking at is stem sort of moving this forward to build capacity to learn the things that they learn um rolling this out to
076their students and as a good practice expanding this to our other schools as we know how to most successfully implement and expand across our entire system excellent thanks very much i will pass it over to chair rocky thank you and um naomi and tyler just know that i'll look for your raised hand if there's anything that you would like to ask or add about this as well the one thing i was just going to share with how much i appreciated the focus on this being a multi-year effort because i do think that there is often the expectation that you know things can be implemented quickly and and we will see results quickly and we know that that's not how systems work we know that that's not how education in particular works and so i i
077just wanted to share my gratitude for having that orientation and that i know we as a board need to be reminded of that sometimes too that this is not a one-year effort but this is a multi-year effort and we need to give it time and space to grow and for us to learn from it so just wanted to specifically call that out okay any other final comments or questions okay naomi please i was like does this work i've never done that before yeah i'm so glad thank you but i didn't have any questions but i just wanted to say it was like awesome to see you guys still pushing hard to be better in our education even though it's such a hard time and like as you present it and as you answered questions you
078could tell how much you cared and were like really receptive so that's it thank you thank you so much naomi naomi was a former student of mine so that's really extra special and as always the students are the highlight so i'm glad naomi has the last word on this um okay so with that superintendent yanuki our final presentation in the update section all right we'll see if we're gonna hear me live or if we're gonna hear me tape so cassandra's gonna share um an update on strategic plan this is superintendent yunowski with our final strategic plan process update this is superintendent yanowsky with our final strategic plan process update prior to the publication of our new plan richfield realized 2021 through 2026. we've been on a long journey together starting back in december of 2019
079where we reviewed our 2015-2020 strategic plan examined our vision cards and our progress of work over those past five years we held large community meetings along with smaller committee meetings to gather wide-ranging input from our stakeholders and we also surveyed the community for feedback to help prioritize our goals covet 19 slowed down our planning process in the spring and summer but we returned in the fall revising our draft examining our plan using an equity lens and continuing to finalize our work then we brought the draft out to students staff families and community members to gain final feedback our board package shows our revised plan and publishes it publicly for any final pieces of input prior to a january launch followed by our creation of vision cards to help measure and communicate about our progress and
080areas of focus the draft in the packet tonight has been updated based on the wide-ranging feedback from a diverse group of individuals committees staff and team members this is the last of our draft publications that will occur before formatting and translating our final draft for approval in january as you were able to read in the board packet and is being shared publicly in the packet tonight we have the final public opportunity for review prior to our publication in january with that said i open things up for any questions or comments some of those final inputs and changes and additions that have occurred over these last couple of months we are still taking any communication input over the next week or so before we format things and move them forward for ideally approval of our strategic
081plan in january as a school board and so we'll see this back again in january but wanted to make sure that it's publicly out there um with all the draft language and all the draft information in it so with that i will pause turn it back to crystal great thank you um we will start the round of any questions comments or just pass on to the next person with paula i don't have any questions thank you steve for the presentation miss malik thanks um i have no questions or comments either thank you for the update um we have been seeing these in our district advisory committee meeting so i i have seen some of the things discussed already show up in there so nice work mr paulus i have no questions or comments appreciate the
082the information miss me i like it better every time i read it mr tensing orbit for me to uh to rock the boat here um i know i think that everything looks quite good and um i couldn't remember if i had comments on this or on another one of our multiple policies that we've got coming through so um yeah we'll be good naomi sorry what did i miss what did you ask me sorry your hand is raised i thought there was something that you found in your heart naomi there you go you have to unclick when your hand is raised to make it go away okay it's a legacy raised hand yeah that's right we're good um i i just wanted to share uh i was able to attend one of the community um feedback
083meetings a couple of weeks ago and so it was really helpful to hear the things that were raised in that conversation and to see them um reflected in this version so it would just reiterate that yes it's exciting to see every time that it gets stronger and better and that's because of the input that we're gathering from our community um my one question is just uh steve or anybody else on your team if you can just share what has happened with students around this i know that was one of the questions that we had asked is is just how to ensure that we are getting broad input and representation from students as part of this um given that we are so close to the finish line similar to many of the other ways we brought
084it to these safe and supportive schools and then i believe that they also have an additional meeting coming uh next week to see it one more time um and so and then the members of that group are charged with going out and checking in with colleagues and sharing that information also bring it back to the group similar to where school board representatives do for us thank you any final comments or questions uh and then steve is there anything else you would like to add as we are here at the end of the superintendent update i think we are in good shape okay fantastic uh the next item is approval of the consent agenda containing routine business items um since this is a standard agenda item i'm just gonna pause for a moment to see if
085there are any questions or requests before we proceed with a vote so seeing and hearing none is there a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented i move that we approve the consent agenda as presented i will second we have a motion by ms malik in a second by mr paulus any final discussion seeing in hearing none i will pull the board ms cole hi mr paulus hi miss mesheck hi mr tensing hi the clerk votes i and chair brocky aye the consent agenda is approved and we move into old business where this evening there are two policies before us this evening for continued review and possible action first up is a proposed final read of revisions to board policy 201 on the legal status of the school board so i will turn it
086over to the superintendent all right so we jump ahead to page 88 in the board packet uh legal status of the school board something we have talked about on repeated occasions um just tightening up the policy and bringing that up to speed and then really looking at on page two there are really two areas on the second page that we really work to tighten the language specifically stating that the school board makes and authorizes contracts but that's delegated to the superintendent but also clarifying um and you'll see policy 715 coming later in the packet tonight um delegating um that any contracts exceeding the dollar amount outlined in the administrative guidelines for purchasing or involve law enforcement personnel shall be reviewed publicly by the school board either a consent agenda or as an individual agenda item
087so making sure that any of those larger contracts are specifically brought in a public forum um to the school board um and then also making sure that um in item four that the board is reviewing curricular changes constituting a full change or an entirely new curriculum used by the district so when we do something like moving on to bridges or lucy calkins it'll definitely be a board presentation and sharing of that information publicly for that public review and conversation and just clarifying that the board retains rights and power in all of those areas but really trying to clarify and outline when things definitely come to a public meeting of the board um going back and forth on what makes the most sense great thank you and and thanks for the responsiveness because as people may
088remember this came up over the last few months as we realized that this is an area that uh as a superintendent said we could just be clearer about um and be able to make those lines um more consistent so thank you for that uh and the recommendation is that um if there is board support we could actually take action to approve this this evening so we'll do one final round of comments or questions you're starting with ella i don't have any uh questions about this one so one's kind of short and sweet ah miss malek i have no questions or comments either mr paulus um i i have a couple of comments one i think is just preference i don't think we need to list an item e there the new the new bit shall
089be reviewed public publicly by the school board we can stop there we only have consent agendas or individual agenda items um so we we could skip that last phrasing right because that that's all we have to review as a school board um the reason you would do that is that there are contracts that are made without dollar figures that don't necessarily come up in an agenda or could be in a superintendent reports right but it's but is it okay so you by review do you mean reviewed and approved uh they would be voted on and then yes obviously if they're in a consensus so that puts them into voting areas okay that that then that that's okay um as as for the other part i don't know if we need to single out law enforcement
090specifically here it could be addressed in 715.1 because i imagine law enforcement is one of those no-bid contracts and we could just adjust the threshold to capture it um i mean like the you know i mean we could add it but it just there's other contracts we have concerns about and i guess we can bring them up in 7 15. um it's just um you know there's a size of a no-bid contract that i think we should be concerned about um this one in particular you know would have been caught in with you know any kind of uh i think reasonable threshold of review if we've been um strict on it so but that's okay i'm not i'm not the reason i'm suggesting language specifically here and outside of the purchasing component is that those
091guidelines change quite significantly um and so you're going to see that the current state recommendation has moved from 100 000 to 175 000 and then so those dollar figures change quite significantly at times yeah um and so we wanna make sure to specifically outline that one in particular um and we couldn't think of very many um larger or long-term contracts um that would come to us as a district um and so thought that that was actually quite a unique contract that we have um milk bids or bread bits or anything else like that is is that 175 000 threshold for competitive contracts or or no bid contracts because there's a distinction within the guideline right um i'm gonna have to see if craig is listening to this scintillating conversation i'm just foreshadowing where we're going
092as we update some of the purchasing rules and regulations as it changes i mean it's okay as is i i just i think we could you know we could address it later in 715 also and we would we would accomplish the same thing but it's okay as this so i can stop we can talk later at 7 15. okay so i'll i i will i will pass the mic to miss misha i don't have any additional questions or comments on this policy so i'll pass it to mr sensing likewise i am uh i don't have any additional questions share rocky great thank you and um again tyler and naomi if there's anything that you would like to share feel free to raise your hand and i will call on you um but otherwise i also
093do not have anything to share for this one um so it sounds as though we may be ready to take action and could entertain a motion to approve the revisions to board policy 201 if someone is willing to make that motion sure i will move that we improve more policy 201 as presented all second great we have a motion by mr temping and a second by ms malik any final discussion and hearing none i will pull the board ms cole hi mr paulus hi miss meshach hi mr tensing hi the clerk votes eye and chair brocky hi the revised policy is approved uh next up we have a second read of the proposed new equity policy for the district yes and so we are now on page 95 of the board and we are on
094we'll likely be read four um so that we can make sure we get comprehensive student um input um at present this went out also to advisories along with the strategic plan and began to gather input from a wide range of different constituents um changing certain linguistic components um really talking publicly about our commitment to equity and racial equity and equity across our district for all students um and then adding a concept around intersectionality um and that categories can't slowly be determined in isolation from one another and really adding some components about uh restorative practices um and then continuing on down those same roads um on page three um in addition around hate speech and harassment um which are not allowed and tolerated any points which are also in our other policies um and then also
095adding not just uh families in ge uh but families and community members uh and their partnership with our district so again continuing to evolve with this policy as we continue to gather additional input and anticipating i would suggest probably four reads prior to being ready to finalize so with that i will pause and turn it back to crystal great thank you and again i think this is one that we all understand and respect why we're taking the amount of time that we are to really gather that input all along the way before the board were to take action so with that we'll just do another round in case there are additional thoughts or pieces of input that people would like to share at this point in the process and we will start with pella i
096don't have any further comments uh as it sends miss malek just to thank you for the effort to get as much information and feedback from students and uh community as we work our way through this one but no questions or comments beyond that mr paulus no questions or comments miss meshech um it might be preemptive to do this before the policy is approved but one thing i think we should consider as a board um like in the the second paragraph under purpose it says ritual public schools is committed to viewing and analyzing all of our work through racial and cultural equity lens that intentionally subverts the policies and practices of institutional racism and then in part 4d scrolling the school board and superintendent may establish specific goals to implement this policy as permitted by a
097law um so i'm just thinking about um process if it might be like a school board workshop or something of that nature where we dive into like what implementation of this policy would mean for us as board members um and i know like mbe has um an equity magnifier with like question equity um focus questions that you could ask as you're looking at policy and there might be something like a tool like that that we want to adopt or create or explore um so that would just be something i would i'd like us to consider as you know partnered with the passing of this policy as we continue to review it mr tensing so thanks um the i had a couple of a couple of thoughts um one piece that comes to my mind is
098the uh is for us to be very intentional about um defining so i think i think we have along the way as we talked about equity traditionally in this district we've been very intentional about making certain that equity is a very inclusive concept and that you know we are we're also very certain to be i think actively rejecting the notion of transactionalism um that any that an equity action which results in somehow taking away from you know from some other group if it's not particularly equitable um and i think it would be worthwhile for us to call that out um i'm not exactly sure how that how that's done but you know to sort of be cough be clear that equity is not a transactional process the other language piece that i saw has been
099apparently there's been some back and forth in terms of the language pieces around the terms of whiteness and white supremacy um and and that that those would be some terms that we're not specifically defining um as opposed to anti-racism and some some of the other terms in the document that are defined and i'm not certain if that is a term that would be generally 100 understood across the board by everybody um exactly what we mean when we're talking about those terms so those are my those are the pieces that i have peter could you elaborate what you mean by transactional process it sounds very interesting but it's not i don't understand what you mean right right well you know i think that and i and this might be reflecting sort of a dated view but
100um i think that one of the things that can potentially be one of the things that can potentially be a sort of a thorn or a stumbling block for a an equity policy is the the thought that by giving something to one person you must be taking away from somebody else it's essentially the zero sum uh the zero sum sort of transactional um thinking um and i think we've been very intentional about you know as we think about investing in students who have traditionally not have been under invested in that putting that investment into those students does not mean that we're taking away from any other student and so that's where we're very intentional about using the language of all thank you yeah so the thing that i wanted to share is just some feedback
101that i received from somebody who saw an early draft of this and i think both wanted to share enthusiasm and excitement for some of the boldness that we are putting um onto paper with this and some of the commitments that we are saying we want to make as a district um while also having the reaction that it does feel like this is a racial equity policy um specifically and yet it is called an equity policy and there are places where we do talk about other forms of identity and lines of difference and i really appreciate how intersectionality has been brought in um but i do think that it might be a little bit confusing or unclear to some folks who are reading this is this really our commitment to racial equity or is this striving
102to be our commitment to um equity across multiple lines of identity and and so i think that that's something that we can probably get tighter and clearer about as we move forward as well um i will pause to see if naomi or tyler has anything that they would like to share or if there's anything that another board member would like to come back to okay seeing and and hearing none we will continue to work on this um probably for several more months before we get to a point where we feel confident we have a policy that we feel good about and are ready to take action on so um thanks in advance for all of the hard work still to come on this so we will move into new business where we have several items
103um and among them a number of policies that we're going to look at for first read so first up is um policies 407 and 408 which are really focused on staff beliefs of absence so i will let the superintendent share more thank you so as miss paul was doing an analysis of our policies and trying to figure out how to get them all reviewed in five years um she found it would be very challenging and so we are continuing to find creative ways to do some of this work and what we realized is uh policy 407 leave of absence and 481 leave absence specific to classified personnel um or something that could be combined which would actually make it more efficient um and so we are presenting to you tonight two very similar policies um
104one was just some additional specifics around uh classified personnel and so in the end what we are suggesting is that we do the work to combine these two policies in one um and we would do that over a couple of reasons um which would then make things more efficient and effective in the future but that's i will pause and see if there's any input otherwise just reminding that this is just the first read to refamiliarize ourselves as we go through this process great thank you paula i'll start with you i don't have any questions or comments miss malik no questions just um thank you for finding more ways to help us be more efficient mr paulus the same as miss malika thank you for finding ways to be more efficient miss mishak likewise mr tensing
105i have no questions okay i think we are good i don't see any hand hands raised from our student representatives either so let's keep moving with the force first read of existing board policy 103 um which is really focused on harassment and violence yes and there have been some updates and changes to the title ix uh sex non-discrimination policy grievance procedure and process um and so we are bringing this policy up to integrate some of that new statutory language in um and so just bringing you this particular policy which will then uh be updated accordingly um so again first read so just making sure we're getting that full read through and then we'll go on with some of those changes due to the title nine changes that have now occurred um so with that i
106will pause um and again first read of several um input if anybody wants it now otherwise over the next couple of weeks anything on email or in any other fashion i realize it probably feels ridiculous to keep going through person by person on these first reads but i'm also loath to arbitrarily mix it up and do things differently so i'm going to stick to the process and stick to consistency so just want to sort of proactively name that i know it feels weird but i think it's worth being consistent in how we do things in our meeting so with that paula i think he's fine uh first of all crystal like i don't think that this is awkward at all ah you know it's covered time working from home time and this is the year
107i've seen it all so uh it's all okay um and that's for the policy i really don't have uh any any questions uh about this i i do find i i appreciate the pattern or the type of policies that we are reviewing they all feel very timely and very important and i'm glad that cycle or not uh is it's good that we are taking care of this now so thank you miss malek um my only question comment is um based on the accessibility of the report form and if there's an online format for that for someone to submit or where if where you where you would come upon it you'd have to find someone to talk to to fill it out is other other ways to fill it out that kind of thing so i
108know we're early on in this but that's just something i was thinking about as i looked through it uh mr paulus i have nothing to add now i can wait for the first um redline sort of update to offer suggestions or just to see how the administration interprets the the changes required by statute and see and and then spend i'll spend the time then getting under the hood miss music this last night the place i had a question about but oh um part six letter a and this might be a card question um upon completion of the investigation the school district will take appropriate action and then it lists possible actions like what they may include and i'm curious what determines what's appropriate based on the investigation like and is that based on our legal
109counsel is there a sort of flow chart if you will so there's so many factors in these situations that it makes it hard to put down any specific component so hr has experience and what they do is they compare two similar cases um if need be consulting with our legal counsel um and it also depends on the level to which the incident incident that occurred um is is is uh found at the end of the investigation um but there's a lot of professional knowledge experience and consultation that goes into that craig was there anything you wanted to add uh nope that summarizes as well internal and external consultation with approved individuals so thank you yeah i'd say the one other piece i'd add is obviously if there's history if there's repetitive behaviors things like that
110and also another piece that ties in with it um mr tensing so i i think i maybe know i know the answer to this question um in fact as i was working my way through the packet i think the answer bubbled up but so the first thought i had in terms of reading this policy was um you know obviously we're calling out all the protected classes um and yet um you know obviously you know free of harassment whether it's a protected class or not is obviously our goal um and then i think then that really comes up later on in some of our other policies um you know things around school climate and all that kind of stuff and so my question is and i think i know the answer on this one i would
111assume that this you know the need to call out these protected classes is really based upon what's in state and or federal statute is that correct yes yes and what you're going to find mr tensing is that in the policy that comes right after this bullying prohibition um it is actually very similar um and we're actually suggesting to realign some of the forms to align to the harassment forms um but harassment ends up being particularly based on specific categorization yeah that's exactly what i found so yep just thanks for clarifying that and i just wanted to kind of point that out for anyone who's watching that's that's why it's structured that way so i'm good thank you uh i am good as well just gonna pause and see if there are any additional comments or
112questions mindful this is the first read and we'll be coming back to it seeing none um let's move on then to board policy 113 on bullying prohibition all right so jumping ahead to page 160 in the board packet um on bullying prohibition um and again just a regular update of this policy and then really looking to align some of the forms and um the overall bullying report form and make it look a little bit more like the racial religious and sexual harassment and violence form so as mr tensing pointed out they are very similar they're just some nuances to it and to have those much more similar is where we're going in those next steps uh so with that i'll pause and see if there's anything on that as we swing through great um and
113i meant to say this last time paula thank you for saying that you understood and respected why we were continuing with going through each person that actually made me feel better so thank you we will start with you again well you're very welcome i don't have any comments or questions about this one thank you miss malik um no questions or comments mr paulus nothing worth sharing live i had a couple of editorial things that i could just send in so i'll do that through email miss me check nothing else for me mr tensing so uh i guess i'm not as disciplined as mr palmas um i'm gonna just it's really a language issue um it was section seven e i think it's 70. it's on page six uh where it reads where appropriate for a
114child with a disability to prevent or respond i just felt that i think i know what we're getting out there but i just felt that the language could be more clear um you know that we're recognizing that disabilities um may sort of change a little bit the skills and proficiencies that various children have to sort of you know in terms of their behavioral skills and proficiencies so then we want to respect those um and be compassionate and understanding so does that make sense but i'm getting that i mean that it's just a matter of cleaning up the language a little bit yep so we will get that in our notes and then we will also um read through and review for all language and look forward to the email from mr paulus and those other
115suggestions um and the only thing i would add is just that i do appreciate the effort and and thought around how to align these various forms um so that they feel recognizable and consistent across the various policies because i think if as we're thinking about this from a student family staff point of view we should think about the experience and how to make sure that there is some consistency there um so i just wanted to appreciate that intentionality and look forward to seeing the next round okay so with that we will move on to um the first read of another existing policy but uh the next two that we're going to look at are actually more in the financial realm so superintendent yanovsky that's right and so again as a reminder as we were grinding
116through policy six on the evening on on road to seven just trying to make sure that we are able to keep pace and catch up a little bit in some of that review cycle and so we have the development and maintenance of an inventory of fixed asset and accounting system along with the guideline and so just reviewing this and then knowing that we will be updating this to reflect current best practices and so that'll be coming in the next draft thank you we will start with paula i don't have any comments uh miss malek no questions or comments mr paulus no questions or comments miss meshach nothing from me mr tensing i'm good too miss bracky as am i all right and i don't see any hands raised so we will keep moving um to
117policy 715 on purchasing guidelines all right so as we intimated there are some changes in state recommendations uh mr holgie i think there were some nuances so i'm going to see if there are any questions you are able to answer or mr palace can ask you during our whip around as we as we work to realign and just make small minor changes and updates to our purchasing policy and our company guidelines so with that i will pause and turn it either to by the board or mr halji um i i'll just give a little preview on this is as working with our audit there have been changes some to some of the federal guidelines for the uniform grand guidance as far as the limits that are in place for the micro purchases and so one
118of the recommendations coming forward is going to be to increase that from 3 000 to 10 000 for the micro purchases with the competitive bids um we still do competitive analysis and things like that all the way up but it just kind of puts a new standard in place so um if we do have a need to respond more immediately it targets that a little bit specifically and then state guidelines um have also increased the bid law to 100 175 000 from 100 000 um and so that's another item that will be coming through as part of that recommendation um both of those sit within the guidelines portion of this versus the policy that provide more flexible fluid movement within those areas and then we do also have separate guidelines in place for our federal
119grant administration for the uniform grant guidance that you see some policy put together of an msba model policy our auditors have indicated that just having a handbook with our internal operations for that is sufficient um and you'll see some of those references to the non-competitive contracting and micro purchases into some of these guidelines as well so with that if there are questions or comments we can certainly respond or build those in as well thank you craig hello i don't have any questions about this one ah thank you uh miss malik no questions or comments mr paulus oh yeah i um i think i'd asked something about this before when we talked about what we would what what would make sense for us to review and what would be too much and i guess it comes
120down to if we moved competitive contracts from 100 000 to 175 how many are we talking about does that change the number from you know are we catching 100 of them at 000 and only 25 at 175 or fewer or or what um and and i think also to clarify the recommendation from the state moving from 100 to 175 that is for competitive it's for the competitive bid law so that's the portion that requires that we post within a local paper it is a little bit more stringent around it just being a price comparison versus some things that um are more service based and things like that you'll see that there are variances within this that professional services can be purchased outside of that so professional services generally don't fall within the rfp or even
121a bid law component of it insurance is another one that doesn't require that formal bid law although we do contract reviews of those with renewals on rfp processes right okay i guess i guess my question is still how many how many contracts would we be talking about if we deviated from the state and went lower the state's recommendation to 175 doesn't mean we have to follow it but we could um you know would be it would be risky in my my opinion to go to review less than what the state suggests so we wouldn't go to 250 you know but if we're currently at 100 what would what number make sense and it part of what makes sense is our concern for what you know 100 the state moving to 175 affects different districts of
122different sizes differently and it might be material to us and not material to anoka hennepin for example uh who who are much larger and so there's that that component and also i think there is a different threshold for non-competitive that we should employ for non-competitive contracting and that's the piece i was talking about earlier um on on the other contract review if we set a threshold of non-competitive that that is worthy of review um again how many are we talking about and what would it capture so um i guess we'd have to come up with what kind of you know what thresholds make sense to us i guess we're talking about competitive 100 and as are in the guideline now your guideline the guideline is 100 000 on competitive and proposed to move to 175
123with state guideline what volume of contracts are we talking about yeah we don't we don't currently i'm not asking you you don't have an answer now i don't expect you to that's something that would be interesting to me um and then i would think our threshold for non-competitive contracting would be would be lower than the competitive contracting because at least with competitive contract and we know that more than you know multiple responded and so for example the law enforcement contract um that we that we currently have would be an example of non-competitive and if we had a threshold that was different from 100 but was as low as say 50 we'd we'd have captured it and reviewed it you know perhaps differently so i i don't have an answer i'm just again i'm asking if
124if we're currently 100 000 uncompetitive how many contracts is that that that would be that we don't already review you know um and in non-competitive contracting if we said it was 50 000 or 25 000 would that would that be would would that be the entire you know two-thirds of every meeting or would it be five minutes of every meeting um i'll take a look at that with numbers again the one piece from a operational standpoint is the cost and time delays of the competitive goods um i'll look at the exact numbers and see if we have some information about that um it does come with the cost of posting that in the paper and most competitive bids that that do end up with about it you know you have to post it at least
125a week before um just to get in the paper on the 17th or on the thursday and then there's the timeline to respond um with the competitive bid so operationally it's more efficient um and certainly we can take a look at that the non-competitive component of it i believe actually came into play specifically with the uniform grant guidance and some of the federal regulations versus something that is a state identified component of that um so those tended to be more specific to the federal grant programs like our title one our two um in those sorts of areas or like we've seen with the cares act and the crf funding right now is where the non-competitive i believe came in to play with this um as it did with the federal funds and that micro purchases
126that letter c but i'll look into that a little bit more specifically um looking at the federal guidance in both the msba i'm not seeing that piece that actually that's requiring that those go to board so that might be a richfield specific piece right now um in that operational site around the non-competitive um i did just a quick review of that as we were meeting here and i wasn't seeing that in two other documents that we have specific to that so i need to look a little more at the history on that and talk to our auditors about that specifically too okay thank you i have no additional comments or questions mr tinsey i have no additional comments or questions cheer brocky thank you i am good as well so we'll just take a moment
127to pause and make sure we don't have any hands raised or any other comments that people would like to share i don't see any so we are going to um turn to uh exciting and good annual item of business for us which is reviewing our proposed legislative platform um this time for the 2021 legislative session and this is in advance of a study session with our richfield area legislators that will be held at six o'clock p.m on monday december 21st so the hour before our next board meeting so with that i will turn it over to the superintendent to share these draft priorities just a couple of housekeeping items with this before i jump into those um so as chair brackie mentioned we will have a 6 p.m study session with our elected legislators on
128december 21st attached to our proposed legislative platform you will see the association of metropolitan school district platform which was actually just passed last friday um and then also the yearly session how much we will announce again i am sure later um on january 8th which is the legislative preview so you have the attachment and the board packet about the legislative preview uh to take place at 8 a.m on on january the 8th um and so what our role is tonight is to talk about um not necessarily past just have a conversation briefly about our legislative platform we will actually have that same conversation with our elected legislators at our study session um in two weeks um and hopefully pass that legislative platform so we can use that for any work that we'd be doing at
129the capitol and this is a budgetary session so just as a reminder every two years um we go through a state budget and so there are policy years and state and and budget years this is a budget year so it's very important that we have a significant amount of budgetary conversations um and really what we're looking for or what i am proposing that we look for in the budget area are really things connected to cobit 19 and some areas that we consider might be possible challenges um so a philosophy of holding us as a district harmless to the negative financial impact of cover 19 related enrollment fluctuations in areas that have created challenges um so specifically there's a senate file uh bill number four which is suggested to um look at last year's numbers to
130help create our budget for this future coming year which would really um mitigate the impact for at least one fiscal school year of of what has happened in relation to uh relation to enrollments across the state of minnesota and the thing about this particular bill is it it goes across a comprehensive number of funding formulas many bills are just on one funding formula or just general fund uh this one is general fund it includes referendum special education english learner ladies pretty much the comprehensive bill suggesting that we try to fund schools for 2122 the same way we funded them for which would be very helpful to us as a district so that is one area on the proposal second would be streamlining the qualification for free and reduced lunch and so as a reminder free
131andrews lunch counts support our budget in compensatory education and title 1 and provide large numbers of our services to students families know these as value because of by filling them out they could receive a free lunch if they are qualifying for free lunch and obviously one of the challenges in the incentive for families to fill them out um is is that all of our families have been receiving free lunches and will continue to do so in addition to adults who are in our community who are receiving free lunches and free meals through the end of this calendar year uh due to this challenge we're actually projecting an approximate million dollar loss um due to our account of poverty within the district and so essentially as poverty goes down and poverty is judged based on the
132number of forms that qualify for families for free and reduced lunch um those dollars that go to serve those same students go down and so while we don't believe that um due to the economy that poverty has gone down within the city of richfield or within the city of richfield public schools our ability to document that really has and so we're looking to streamline that process in a way that doesn't necessarily involve the forms um and then finally um knowing that pre-k and early childhood intervention is is great for students great for families and certainly one of those things that in a dire budget time could be on the chopping block um asking the state to maintain that commitment to full funding of early childhood and pre-k programs including the voluntary pre-k and pathways uh
133so these are similar budgetary financial conversations that we have been in the area of in the past but these are now integrating into them uh the impact of covet um and then a couple of areas that we would be repeating because there are things that we have supported in the past and they have been things that our students talked about and things that we support one is continuing to expand programs to increase and diversify the educator workforce by creating programs and expanding incentives to attract and develop and retain teachers of color and those in shortage areas and then also asking the state again to allow flexibility in standardized testing particularly allowing us to replace the high school mca with nationally recognized college entrance exams and so those are what we are proposing as a first
134draft of the platform but we are obviously open to significant revision inputs um and continuing to move this forward so with that i will pause and turn it back to chair brackey thank you and and just to be clear we're gonna have a conversation with the legislators at our study session that will revolve around all this but also make clear that our platform is still evolving and so it will be helpful to hear their thoughts as well on this um to actually get that before we officially take action as a board so just wanted to sort of name that uh timing piece so with that paula so um i don't have questions about this i do wanna share is in alignment to obviously what the uh the uh amsd is uh thinking about i wanna
135add that the minnesota school board association had their assembly last week i think wednesday night virtually and uh a platform uh i'm one of the delegate assembly members for our area and the platform of um resolutions that were brought up uh were uh kind of different than these there was a big but that's more of a grassroots organizing so a lot of the proposals had to do with coffee relief uh technology access finding ways for students to have equitable access to to resources and something important to us as a district there's a resolution about how to ask the legislature to count the students using numbers from uh previous year and not the october numbers for right now during covet uh but obviously this is just their platform and it's gonna go to the legislature these
136are things they're gonna be focusing on next session um so i just felt that i was gonna share this during like general comments but it just felt that if it's better here um that's all i have so i i lost my sheet um so i also i support the items that were brought up but i also wanted to to bring up the um on the second page of the amsd platform there's a section about um sorry i'm trying to pull it up there it goes um increasing safe schools levy to allow districts to hire additional support staff to address growing mental health needs of our students which have been compounded by the covert 19 pandemic i think that is also another um very worthy area that we should be considering i think that is a
137i think it's i think it's having a huge influence on all kids on our kids included and i think it's something we should be looking at i think we know it's happening and i think we're just going to find out more and more about it as time goes on and as they are separated from school again right now i think it's an area we should invest some work and some dollars into as well all right so to add to that um miss malik that is one of the areas that our students have commented on which was look continuing to look for more services in those areas um so we can definitely look at adding that to our platform um and sort of doing some renaming around our our covet impact area great um mr paulus
138um i i have nothing to add i agree with christine that we should you know we should consider adding the um you know opportunities to add counseling and supports for our students miss meshech um likewise i also wanted to note that i recognized someone on the first page of the msd newsletter so thank you for representing us at the forefront superintendent unowski mr tensing uh so i'm gonna have don't have anything to add either um it's funny i say that and then i think of something um but i think actually as this pops into my head i think that we have the right focus and we probably don't want to distract um i know in the past um the number of years of uh eligibility as an english language learner has been something that has
139um come up with senator torres ray um i'm not certain that that rises to a level where because you know i think for us to keep our focus in on the stuff that really matters makes sense [Music] so that was kind of the only other thought that i had um i think i i think i'm good with with you know kind of the priorities that we're setting chair brocky thank you um i i appreciate that they're sort of the umbrella category of holding districts harmless due to the um effects of kova 19 and very much agree with thinking about how to integrate mental health specifically um under that umbrella for all of the reasons that christine said i think the one place where it could probably be more explicit is how the pre-k one fits
140in um i understand how it fits in because we are fortunate to have um you know really significant support from the state for our pre-k programs um but that bullet is not quite as covet specific as i think the other ones are so i would just make that connection probably a little bit clearer and then i do also appreciate that we have the two non-financial items because i know the legislators also appreciate one that the financial is going to be our priority in this budget year um and that if we were really you know gonna pick two things that are not financially related that we would want them to know and hear from us it is around diversity um both in the recruitment and retention side of things um and in like continuing to focus
141on standardized testing and how to reform that in the ways that our students are truly every single year telling us um they they would like to see and what a difference that would make so i appreciate that uh all right pausing again for any last comments questions or additions i don't see any specifically crystal let's see if naomi or tyler has anything uh on this specifically yes i was looking to see if they had a hand raised a signal whether or not there was something that they wanted to share so tyler and naomi i'm not sure if you can hear us if there is anything we would certainly love to hear from you i'm good over here okay me too thanks to you both we know that this is a long one that's a bed
142full of things that probably don't feel quite as directly applicable to your daily life um but we're glad that you're still with us so our last item of new business is to go back to where we started the meeting with our annual levy certification very good thank you and it is nice to start and end the meeting basically talking about levy and finances so um this goes back to the first portion where we are requesting authorization um to levy twenty six million six hundred ninety thousand six hundred and sixty three dollars and thirty eight cents um for the uh twenty levy payable in and i'll just note on the board agenda item it had lots of corrections on the 20 and 21s but the second paragraph missed updating the 19s and 20s in those areas
143so that resolution should be levied in 2020 to be collected in 2021 is set at 26 million um that is one million one hundred eleven thousand three hundred seventy one dollars and forty nine cents and the current levy um as we've talked about previously much of that difference right now has to do with adjustments that were made that were positive adjustments on our current year levy and we're realizing some negative adjustments on next year's levy as well as changes in enrollment the net impact again as we talked about is um a four percent over reduction the levy impacting property taxpayers by about a five to a seven percent um reduction in levy payments um that have been accounted over the last four years on that average homeowner that's current value is 250 000 um that
144four years ago was 214 000 is realizing a 55 reduction in the levy um as part of that portion for next year and 68 dollars less than what they were paying in 2018 on average across the board um obviously individual homeowners might be impacted differently based on their individual property valuations in any given year but that's kind of the net impact on property owners across the richfield school district so that does we're requesting an authorization here tonight on board action is required prior to december 28 this year which is timeline based on statute for reporting in those areas um so with that we ask for your authorization great thank you um we will do one final round for any comments or questions before we could entertain a motion to approve the resolution paula i don't
145have any questions no comments or questions mr paulus um just just to clarify the the resolution is that the levy be levied in 20 20 20 collected in 2021 yeah so you're authorizing the levy in 2020 okay collected from the taxpayers in okay with me a while to get used to that lingo but that's yeah yeah yeah references are phrased that way all right i'll i'll get i'll get there eventually thank you now that i just want to be sure since someone's gonna have to move this and we're gonna have to get it right so thank you nothing more miss me nothing else for me mr tempting nothing from me either care brocky i am good as well um we'll pause just to make sure that there are no final comments or questions being none
146um we could entertain a motion to approve the resolution as presented i will move the resolution um reflecting the corrected years as indicated by mr holgi so that it would be levied in 2020 to be collected in 2021 in the amount of 26 million 690 638 663 and 38 cents i will second the motion with those amendments that we have a motion by mr paulus and a second by mr tensing as specified any further discussion i'll just note one thing to complicate matters even more just a reminder that funds the 2021 2022 fiscal year for the school district fortunately that does not change the resolution in any way shape or form okay just just to be clear okay uh christine will you call the role please yes um miss cole aye mr paulus hi miss
147meshach aye mr tensing aye the clerk boat's eye and chair brocky aye the resolution is approved thank you craig and to your team for all of your hard work uh last but certainly not least we will recognize donations made to the district since our last board meeting superintendent that's funny all right so it was give to the max day and so we had a wonderful month of gratitude and a wonderful month of support so central education center received donations in the amount of twenty five dollars from glory amongst and fifteen dollars from an anonymous donor to give minnesota rdls received donations in the amounts of one hundred dollars from heather axeman 25 from victoria manson hundred dollars from brenda francois one hundred dollars from john lindsay one hundred dollars from katherine jenny and twenty five
148dollars from an anonymous donor through give minnesota our dls also received donations totaling four hundred dollars since uh july 22nd from marchessacon through mighty cause rms received the donation in the amount of one hundred dollars from ann schwartz through give minnesota sheridan hills with donations the amount of seventy five dollars from coralie beckman one hundred dollars from shane chisel one hundred dollars from michelle lundy and fifty dollars from brianna gehring through give minnesota stem received the donation in the amount of one hundred dollars from ann schwartz through give minnesota the rps sunshine fund received donations in the amount of fifty dollars for michelle lundy and one hundred dollars from an anonymous donor through give minnesota and the rps general fund received donations in the amounts of fifty dollars from samantha johnson twenty five dollars from
149jennifer valley fifty dollars from michelle burnside twenty dollars from lisa ferrara twenty five dollars from elizabeth cothful and forty dollars from anonymous donors through give minnesota so we thank our generous and wonderful funders for supporting our students in our schools wonderful thank you um and then this is a routine though deeply appreciated uh business item i will not go through each board member but instead we'll just pause to see if there are any comments or questions before we entertain a motion to approve the donations with gratitude okay seeing none is there a motion i move that we accept the donations with gratitude i'll second we have a motion by miss meeshak and a second by malik any final discussion seeing and hearing none i will pull the board ms cole hi mr paulus hi miss
150meshach hi mr tensing hi the clerk votes eye and chair brocky hi the donations are accepted with gratitude and we move into the advanced planning section of the agenda we've already done some legislative discussion with conversation about our draft priorities um which alluded to the amst platform that's been recently approved as well as the msba delegate assembly so i will just look to peter tensing and the superintendent to see if there is anything else you would like to share with us this evening on the legislative front so i think uh i think that the key thing that superintendent actually had shared with us in the uh in an email um it was relative to the budgetary forecast that the basically the hole in the state budget is not as deep as it has been projected
151to be um and so there's there's some good news um on that front um that uh you know we of course have been very concerned that the economic impacts of the pandemic could be more painful than they've turned out to be at this point um and so that's a positive um the other aspect of that of course is that um the uh the projections as their release at this point do not necessarily factor in inflation um so it's you know it's one of these things of don't start counting your chickens before they hatch kind of a thing and of course as you start getting into the out gear it's always the case that um deficits do start to mount and so so we know that while i think we're optimistic um you know it still
152is going to be something where we're going to have to be you know really mindful of the fact that resources will not be unconstrained um the only other piece to mention is that we did have a small group breakout session at amsd to talk about the um proposed constitutional amendment which seems like it's actually a lifetime ago that that was something that was in the news and being discussed the general feeling from the amsd members has been that uh you know of course this constitutional amendment the proposal is to shift the language from um an adequate education to a quality education um and um while i think that there's a general sense of that the spirit of the constitutional amendment is something that many of us would like to get behind it's so unclear about
153how this would be implemented and there is so many basically the risk of unintended consequences seems to be pretty substantial um when we're modifying the state constitution so that there seems to be kind of a general feeling right now that it's just not quite ready for prime time and that's kind of how that conversation went um steve i don't know if you had any other reflections um the only thing that i would really add um is it's important to note that even though we came out fiscally better as a state than had been projected we did receive 2.2 billion dollars in federal funding um as uh cares money and coronavirus relief funds and so uh without another stimulus package um that would flip quite significantly in in the next six months and so it's just
154something that that i think down at the legislature they're going to be watching very closely thanks to you both um we will transition into information and or questions members of the board would like to share with each other or with the public um paula we'll start with you i do not have anything else to add thank you um i have more of a i don't know if this should go under questions or future agenda items um but something i've been thinking about i've seen a lot of articles about high school students and students really struggling in their school year this year and large percentages of students failing and i just would like to do a check in on how our students are doing the beginning of this year and towards the end of this first
155semester with everything going on and maybe just kind of get an update on how what those rates are like for us and um what we're doing to help um help them along in that area uh we can certainly do that and provide an update either at our next meeting or the first meeting in january sounds good thanks all right mr paulus okay thank you i i guess um one thing that that came up for us not too long ago and and by our next meeting is is the first time it might be a date of importance is that the state high school leagues propose that the theoretical possibility of athletics being allowed to resume on the 21st of december um and so as as we had discussed previously and we've we've discussed publicly and we've
156discussed um you know with people who inquired you know when we were having students in the buildings and we looked at county numbers we looked at city numbers both of which are dreadful but there is that weird loophole that at the very local level our buildings are currently empty which technically and i mean only technically means that they are case free and therefore one could argue from the guideline standpoint that we are that we are um you know voluntarily in distance learning as opposed to required to be and so that that is that that is the truck size loophole that other districts were utilizing to um to pretend that they could continue in good conscience with with their athletics and activities and so we we would it will be something we revisit if you know
157sooner rather than later if the governor does not extend the um sort of moratorium on on activities like that and so i i have every reason to believe that with the numbers not improving at any time in the next two weeks uh that that things will probably persist in the state they are through the winter break and buy us some time but that is something that that we should be prepared for as a group to discuss openly you know just that the public knows that we're aware of it and and that it's we have to have a response for it yeah i think that is definitely a conversation for us to have at the next board meeting um not sure if the governor will be taking steps or action uh what mr palace was pointing
158to is that the minnesota state high school league produced three possible calendars uh with proposed start dates of winter sports on december 21st january 4th or january 18th which would actually become january 19th through the holiday um and so we will see what is happening as we move ourselves forward um the one thing i would just put out there is is as i was watching rates rise um there seemed like a very obvious decision to me which is why on december 6th i was able to make the announcement that i did for a closing that actually uh matched weirdly and this was literally random timing um that it matched the governor date for date um but but the the rates were going up at that point i don't think it is as clear as we
159look to the future what exactly is going to happen uh there have been different components that have changed quite significantly so i don't know where we're going in terms of school opening longer term or athletics activities and certainly look forward to that conversation on the 21st as we continue to examine what is happening with rates what is happening with the high school league what is happening with other schools and what is happening with the governor things to definitely monitor moving forward all i have thank you uh miss mishak i don't have anything to add uh mr chanting yeah i just want to i just want to kind of echo that uh you know we are seeing a you know it looks that if we just look at the case counts that um statewide we peaked
160um in the second week of november timeframe um as far as uh getting new cases um on the other hand um we're still going up with deaths and so this is this is the way that this pandemic works um that there's a lag in terms of um you know kind of the the use of the um kind of hospital you know critical care and hospital resources and whatnot um and we don't know we just don't know what what's going to happen with these with these velocities so um it's nice that we're it does appear that the interventions that the governor has taken have helped to slow that exponential rise that we were seeing in you know prior to thanksgiving um so i'm optimistic that we'll see some movement but i agree it's way too early
161to have any idea about um kind of reopening anything and i would add from our previous discussions that we are basically staying with what our policy and plan set out for if we had a certain number this is what's going to happen this is when we close our schools and at that time we closed athletics as well so i don't see any i mean i totally agree with tim's point that we need to talk about it and make sure that families and and community know that we realize that minnesota state high school league might change their season but that doesn't necessarily mean that we need to change we need to change our policy or our plan so we just make sure that we think about it in a complete way and make sure that we're
162still following what we said that we what we all voted together on as our plan okay so that will be a important and good topic of discussion at our next meeting and obviously having two more weeks of information is only going to help us as we get there as well uh let's see here our final meeting of 2021 will be at seven o'clock p.m on monday december 21st and as we've discussed will be preceded by a study session that will take place virtually with um richfield legislators and our mayor and city manager will also be attending as well um finally are there any uh additional items that have not already been raised that board members would like to request for a discussion on an upcoming agenda um sure frankie it does appear tyler has his
163hand raised unless that was from before i'm not sure oh thank you i didn't see it tyler please yeah so is it possible that like we can talk about the new high school schedule for high school students because i heard like me personally i'm okay but a lot of my peers are not and they're like dealing with some big stress issues about the new schedule we can uh did you want to talk about that now chair brackey or do we want to talk or present on that and discuss that overall on the 21st um i will be honest and say i am personally ill informed on this topic and the details and so i'm grateful to tyler for bringing it up in terms of the fact that while it's maybe working well for him it
164is it sounds like not working well for others and so i would love to know more about what students are experiencing than the types of things um that people are sharing and so tyler if you want to give sort of a quick headline of that that can maybe help us set up a more in-depth conversation for our meeting in two weeks okay um so basically uh our golf days or our asynchronous days are now required for you to meet secret synchronously with a teacher with your teachers and a lot of people are saying they have to work or watch their um siblings you know to to you know help the family and also people are just saying you know they're really stressed out to be required to stay and watch like look at their computer
165screen for multiple hours and then go and do homework for multiple hours and they just you know it's hard for them to deal with this type of thing yeah it's one of those challenging components we're trying to thread the needle on what is the right amount of synchronous live instruction time and interaction with teachers and how do we balance that with our course pass rate and student success rate data so it does seem like that is a conversation that we can put those two things together um in a presentation on the 21st and talk about overall pass rates what we are doing in terms of intervention um we did add synchronous live live learning time when we moved away from the um in-person advisory in our hybrid and our airpods and so that is something
166we can absolutely talk about more at our next board meeting and have a presentation on that okay thank you tyler thank you so much for bringing it up um and yeah i think it's great that we're going to talk about it in uh two weeks and um we are also going to have a presentation from the middle school um at our next meeting so it sounds like we'll have a lot of good conversation at the very beginning of the next meeting it's all deeply student-centered in terms of how our students are doing right now um and important things for us to know and be able to talk about as a board so very much looking forward to tyler naomi and hopefully lucy being able to share more of your experiences and also what you're hearing
167about from your classmates you can ask chris just a quick question uh for tyler um tyler would it be correct that for me to assume that the you know as you're talking about your peers who are needing to sort of watch their siblings um is it correct for me to assume that a big part of this is also the changes that we obviously made with our moving to full distance for the younger grades yeah so it's really that it's really that holistic look okay thanks the good connection and um clarification to make pete thank you for that all right i am gonna just pause to make sure that there isn't anybody else who has a agenda item that they would like to request okay i don't see any um so we will now consider a
168motion to move into closed session as allowed by minnesota state statute 13d .03 for the purposes of labor negotiation strategy do we have a motion so moved second we have a motion by ms malek in a second by mr paulus any final discussion seeing and hearing none i will pull the board ms cole hi mr paulus hi miss misha hi mr tensing bye the clerk votes eye and cheer brocky hi um after a very brief recess um the board will begin a closed session in a private virtual meeting we will return to this current virtual meeting to officially adjourn upon completion of the closed session um so there will just sort of be a pause screen running while we are in closed session but just know that there will be no further business taking place
169at this meeting other than to adjourn once we are completed so just wanted people to know that for all intents and purposes um our business in the public meeting is over for this evening we appreciate you being here and board members i will see you momentarily in the private session good night everyone so allegra you have to step out of this one to come to the other one uh you should have it on a nine o'clock on your calendar you